It took three hours for Newt’s heart to settle back to a normal beat, for the blur of his vision to crystallize into clarity, for the roar in his ears to fade away to quiet. Somehow he’d made it back to his little shack though he remembered nothing of how he got there. He slept, though he didn’t remember falling asleep or waking up. He’d closed his eyes and opened them again a thousand times, willing that white haze to depart from his vision. The noise dissipated too slowly to notice, and then seemed gone in an instant.
But his head still hurt. He imagined it would hurt more often than not from then on.
“Newt?”
He looked up from a spot on the floor, saw Keisha, her eyes filled with concern. She’d probably been with him for a while, but as far as he could remember, this was the first time he’d seen her since the riots ended that morning.
“You feeling like yourself again?” she asked. Dante appeared then, Keisha dangling the kid in front of Newt’s face to cheer him up. “You wanna try to sit up?”
Newt tried to nod, failed. Tried to speak, but only got out a grunt. So he got his hands under him and pushed his body up and around to sit with his back against the wall. The world swam for a minute but then settled back into position. Surprisingly, the movement didn’t send a shockwave of pain through his skull. He was better. He was definitely better.
Keisha and he exchanged a long look, their eyes showing sadness for the day past and fear for the next one up.
“Wanna talk or… nah?” She finally asked. “Maybe we should postpone—”
“No!” Newt snapped, grimacing at the pinch of pain in his forehead. “No way. There’s no way in hell we’re bloody postponing anything. We’re getting you to your family. Tomorrow. I need that more than you do.”
Keisha nodded and kept nodding, as if she wanted to say something but had to fight back tears. After a hundred times or so, she’d finally stopped asking him if he was sure about trying to bust out and find her family. But it obviously still touched her and frightened her, both. It scared him, too, but for some reason it was now the sole purpose of his life, the only thing that prevented his mind from slipping into that ever-expanding void of… dissonance.
“Tell me about today,” Keisha said quietly. “How bad was it? That walking freak Jonesy… he wouldn’t know an intelligent conversation if it leaped up and bit him on the nose. I barely understood 10 words when he dropped you off.”
“Jonesy brought me back?” Newt asked. “I shot him with a bloody Launcher grenade!”
“Yeah. He said to tell you that he forgives you and that he knows you did it by accident. He actually laughed about it. Dude’s hilarious.”
Newt made a sound that slightly resembled a laugh. “Can I have some water—I feel like I swallowed a bucket of dirt.” He didn’t mention that he wasn’t so sure it had been an accident when he shot Jonesy. He certainly deserved it for attacking Tommy. Oh well. The guy was merely a tool, anyway.
They had an old milk jug full of clean water and Keisha poured him a cup. When she handed it to him, she repeated, “How bad was it?”
He drank the water in one long series of gulps, gasping for air when he finished. “It was bad,” he finally said. “I guess I know what it’s gonna be like, now, when we push past the Gone. I went bonkers, Keisha. Completely bonkers. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think straight. It’s a wonder everyone walked out of that place alive. Especially me.”
“Oh, man, Newt. I’m sorry. Something ain’t right up there, that’s for sure.” She tapped her right temple.
“I’m sure the stress had something to do with it,” Newt said. “All that ruckus this morning, those idiots attacking the guards for no reason whatsoever. Like that wasn’t bad enough—I was exhausted, scratched, bruised. I went to the bowling alley because it was close, thought I’d rest up then come back here. Then, of all the bloody things to happen, my…”
He didn’t know what she knew. Even if she had understood every word Jonesy said earlier, which she obviously didn’t, would it have even mattered? No one fully realized, not even remotely, what Newt had been through inside that old rickety building. The shock of his friends returning, the pain it took to stick to his guns and insist they leave, the trauma of how horrifically it all ended. The despair on Thomas and Minho’s face had somehow burned into Newt’s mind despite the fact that he’d temporarily lost it.
“Newt?” Keisha prodded. “Tell me what happened in the bowling alley.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, you do.” She smiled, and it made him think of his own mum, returning from the fog of his memories. “Talk to me, boy. It’ll make you feel better. I think they used to call it therapy, back before the world went to hell in a hand basket.”
“I went crazy,” he said, barely above a whisper. “That’s all there is to it. I went crazy when I saw Tommy and Minho. He… they were… it’s way too long of a story to tell. You’ve heard some of it. But they were everything to me. Are everything to me. It ripped my heart out to get the Flare, to know they were immune and I wasn’t. And then it ripped my heart out again—”
“You have two hearts?”
Newt laughed, the kind that popped through your nose. “What is this, comedy-hour now? I’m trying to tell you how bloody miserable I am.”
“Ok I’ll shut up. Keep going.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Anyway. It just about killed me to leave them after they went into Denver. Yeah, if I’d had two bloody hearts they’d have both been ripped out. So I guess I have three since one’s still beating. But… when I heard that they’d come looking for me, and then even worse when they walked into that bowling alley… my mind just started shutting down. I was so mad, so bloody angry, it was like every liquid part of me had started to boil and shoot out steam. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t think. I lost control.” He paused, wishing he could describe it better. “Like I said. I went crazy.”
“Ugh. I’m so sorry. What happened next?”
Newt shifted his position to give some of the bumps and bruises a break. “I hardly remember any specifics. I was screaming and yelling, Jonesy tried to act like king of the world, people were brawling on the floor. And my mind just wasn’t working. I knew I needed my friends to leave. They have something they’re trying to accomplish and it’s much, much bigger than me. Plus, this is all crappy enough for me without constantly worrying about how hard it would be on them .”
He shrugged. “So, ya know, I did what any rational human being would do. I waved the Launcher around like a cracked-up junkie, shot Jonesy, started threatening to shoot Minho and anyone else who dared piss me off. Then a bunch of my new Crank buddies chased them out of town and back to their Berg. It all went exactly as I’d planned.”
Keisha raised her eyebrows. “Now who’s performing comedy-hour?”
“At least I’m funnier than you.”
She scoffed. “No offense, Newt, but you have all the humor of my big toe.”
Dante made a noise then—the kid was so quiet that it was easy to forget he existed sometimes. He’d been napping in the corner. Keisha scooted over and picked him up, placed him in her lap. Then she hugged him long and hard, maybe imagining her son going through the awful types of things Newt had just described.
“Do you ever regret it?” he asked, pretty sure it was a dumb thing to say.
“Regret what?”
“Bringing kids into this horrible world.”
Her look confirmed it. It had been a very dumb thing to say.
“Don’t you ever ask a mom that question, Newt. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Crazy or not, don’t ever ask that question.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could take this whole day back.”
They sat in silence for a while. Newt decided it would only make matters worse if he kept apologizing. He’d meant it as a way of saying how sorry he felt for Dante, for his future, for the angst she must feel every minute of every hour wondering what lay in that future. And Jackie’s.
“You’ll be with your daughter soon,” he said into the silence. “You and Dante both, along with your brother. You’ll be together, and that’s something. Maybe you guys have a big purpose in the grand scheme of things. In the universe.”
She gave him a look. “Okay, Socrates. Then why didn’t you want to be with your friends, huh?”
That stung, more than he was willing to accept. “I told you why. They’re trying to accomplish something bigger than—”
Someone banged on the door, hard and fast, then opened it without waiting to be invited. Newt’s nerves jumped in alarm but then he saw that it was Jonesy. Then they jumped again because he remembered that he’d shot the poor guy with a Launcher grenade.
“What… a… day!” the man shouted. “What a damn day!”
Newt and Keisha just stared at him, wondering if he had a point.
He finally explained. “All the Munies who worked here up and quit. Just like that. Got together, must’ve talked all of five minutes, then decided. Opened a gate, took their weapons, walked out. Didn’t even bother locking the door. I guess our little riot this morning and the visit from your psycho friends woke them up to just how lame it is to work in the Crank Palace.” Then he laughed. He laughed as if he were the happiest man on Earth, his greasy hair shaking with each new chortle.
“You’re serious?” Keisha asked. “You mean we don’t have to break out?”
He touched his nose and said, “On the button, my good lady.”
Keisha looked at Newt. “I think this damn fool has lost his mind.”
“Come see for yourself!” Jonesy hollered. “The gate is wide open and people are streaming out like it’s a holiday.”
He ran off before anyone could respond, probably to share what he thought was good news. Newt wasn’t so sure about that.
“What do you think?” he asked Keisha, who looked the opposite of enthused.
She thought a moment before responding.
“What do I think? I think it’s a bad sign when the people with weapons start running away from the ones who don’t.”
