Heroes Take the Bike Lane

Tomas stood in the center of the cafeteria while the entire school chanted his name.

“Checker Champ!

“Checker Champ!

“Checker Champ!”

The sound rolled across the tile walls and rattled the banners hanging above the lunch tables.

Pizza boxes covered every table. Grease-stained cardboard stacked like trophies. Melted cheese and pepperoni thickened the air.

Someone had taped a hand-drawn banner above the soda machines.

CONGRATULATIONS, CHECKER CHAMP!

Tomas turned slowly.

Three hundred people stared at him as if he had done something miraculous.

No one laughed.

No one whispered.

They smiled.

At him.

Coach Chad clapped a heavy hand onto Tomas’s shoulder.

“You earned it, Calder.”

Students moved closer.

Hands slapped Tomas’s back. Someone ruffled his hair. Another student shook his hand as if Tomas had won something that mattered.

Across the cafeteria, Bryce leaned against a table.

He clapped slowly.

One deliberate clap after another.

A student pushed a microphone into Tomas’s hand.

“Speech.”

The cafeteria fell silent.

Three hundred faces waited.

Tomas leaned toward the microphone.

“Uh...”

His voice boomed through the speakers.

“I feel like I’m dreaming.”

The cafeteria exploded.

Students cheered. Teachers applauded. Someone whistled loudly enough to hurt Tomas’s ears.

Bryce pushed away from the table and approached him.

Still clapping.

Still smiling.

“Since you’re the champion,” Bryce said, “you’ll help us, right?”

He dropped a textbook into Tomas’s arms.

The weight surprised him.

Before Tomas could answer, another book landed on top.

Then another.

Students stepped forward.

“Do my homework?”

“Mine too.”

“Just the math problems.”

“I need an essay.”

Books stacked higher against Tomas’s chest.

History.

Biology.

Algebra.

English.

The pile rose toward his chin.

“Guys—”

A binder landed on top.

Someone added a backpack.

“You’re the champ.”

“You can handle it.”

“Just help a little.”

Students pressed closer.

They kept smiling.

The weight forced Tomas backward.

Another book hit the stack.

His knees buckled.

Tomas collapsed beneath an avalanche of paper and hard covers.

The books pinned his arms against the tile.

Three hundred smiling faces looked down at him.

Bryce entered the center of the circle.

He crouched beside Tomas.

“You’ll help me too, right?”

Tomas couldn’t breathe.

Bryce lifted a thick textbook over his head.

He smiled.

Then he slammed it down.

Tomas woke with a gasp.

He threw both arms across his chest.

No book struck him.

His bedroom ceiling hovered overhead. The light remained on, pale and steady. The blankets were tangled around his legs.

For several seconds, Tomas didn’t know where he was.

Then the memories returned.

The argument downstairs.

Kay saying his father.

The shadows gathering in the corners.

Red hanging in the Collector’s grip.

You came back.

Tomas sat upright.

“Red?”

His voice sounded small in the room.

The chair beside his desk stood empty.

“Red?”

No answer came.

Tomas climbed out of bed too quickly. The floor tilted beneath him, forcing him to catch the mattress.

His head throbbed.

The bedroom looked almost normal.

Almost.

His trash can had been moved. Two dresser drawers stood open. The mattress sat crooked on the frame.

Someone had searched the room.

A folded piece of yellow paper rested on the pillow beside the place where Tomas had been sleeping.

He picked it up.

The handwriting was blocky and pressed deep into the page.

Want your friend back?

Bring what you took.

Midnight.

The woods.

Tomas read it twice.

“Bryce.”

His hand went to his pocket.

He was still wearing the jeans he had worn during the break-in.

The pocket was empty.

Panic rushed through him.

He dropped to his knees and searched beneath the bed.

Nothing.

He checked the blankets, the floor and the open dresser drawers.

The phone was gone.

Bryce had found it.

Tomas turned toward the door.

Something black caught the light beneath the dresser.

He froze.

The prepaid phone lay against the baseboard, nearly hidden by shadow.

It must have fallen from his pocket when the Collector threw him against the wall.

Tomas stretched one arm beneath the dresser and pulled it free.

The screen was dark.

The phone still demanded a passcode when he woke it.

Bryce had searched the room but hadn’t found what he came for.

So he had taken Red instead.

Tomas shoved the phone into his pocket and ran downstairs.

The smell of soup reached him before he entered the kitchen.

Warm broth. Garlic. Something herbal simmering on the stove.

It was the kind of smell that usually meant everything was all right.

Tonight it made Tomas’s stomach feel hollow.

Berezina stood over the pot with one hand wrapped around a wooden spoon. Steam curled around her face and fogged the window above the sink.

José sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee.

Both looked up when Tomas entered.

Relief spread across Berezina’s face.

“You’re awake.”

“How long was I asleep?”

José checked the clock.

“Four hours. Maybe five.”

Tomas rubbed his temple. “What happened?”

“We heard something upstairs,” Berezina said. “Your mother found you on the floor.”

“Was anyone else in my room?”

José shook his head.

“You woke up when we moved you,” he said. “Said you were tired. Then you went back to sleep.”

Tomas didn’t remember that.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Out,” Berezina said.

“With Sagen, Eljen and Marleen,” José added. “They are looking for the girl.”

“Courtney.”

José nodded.

Tomas leaned against the counter.

“Did anyone come here while I was asleep?”

José and Berezina exchanged a glance.

“A boy,” Berezina said.

“Bryce?”

“How did you know?” José asked.

Tomas took the yellow note from his pocket.

“He took Red.”

Berezina frowned. “The bookbag?”

“Yes.”

“No,” José said. “He did not take anything.”

Tomas held up the note. “He was in my room.”

“He brought your clothes from school,” Berezina said. “Your jeans and shirt. He said the coach made him return them and apologize.”

“You let him upstairs?”

José’s expression tightened.

“He asked if he could tell you himself. We thought you were sleeping.”

“You let Bryce into my bedroom while I was unconscious?”

“We stayed in the hallway,” Berezina said. “He was inside only a minute.”

“Long enough to search it.”

Berezina looked toward José.

José rose from the table.

“He had a red bookbag,” he said slowly.

Tomas stared at him.

“What?”

“When he left.” José frowned, trying to fit the memory together. “He had a red bag on his shoulder.”

“That was Red.”

“No.” Berezina shook her head. “He came with that bag.”

“He brought my clothes in his hands.”

Berezina’s certainty faltered.

José looked toward the ceiling.

“He came with a bag,” he said. “I think.”

“You watched him walk in carrying clothes,” Tomas said. “Then you watched him leave with Red, and your brains made up a reason it was normal.”

Berezina stared at him.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

People saw what they expected to see.

A teenage boy carrying a bookbag wasn’t unusual. The fact that the bag belonged to someone else had vanished beneath the ordinary shape of the act.

José held out his hand. “Give me the note.”

Tomas passed it to him.

José read it.

His expression hardened.

“We call your mother.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“If Mom finds Courtney before midnight, what do you think she’s going to do?”

“That is not your concern.”

“Red is my concern.”

“You are fifteen.”

“So?”

“So you do not meet this boy alone in the woods.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

That was technically true.

Tomas had no plan at all.

José reached for his phone.

Tomas caught his wrist.

“Wait.”

José looked at Tomas’s hand until Tomas released him.

“Please,” Tomas said. “Bryce thinks Red is just a bookbag. If Mom shows up with Sagen and guns, he might throw Red into the fire before anyone gets close.”

Berezina turned away from the stove.

“What fire?”

“The note says the woods. Bryce and his friends have parties out there. They build a bonfire.”

Courtney’s warning surfaced in Tomas’s memory.

Separation.

Then fire.

Berezina lowered the heat beneath the soup.

“We should call Kay,” she said.

Tomas looked between them.

“You can call her. Just don’t tell her until we know where she is.”

“That makes no sense,” José said.

“It does if she’s already close to Courtney.”

José unfolded the note again.

“You believe this girl can help?”

“I believe Bryce is expecting me.”

“That is not what I asked.”

Tomas thought about the Collector holding Red.

The memory felt real.

So did the cafeteria.

He no longer trusted sleep to separate one from the other.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

José placed the note on the table.

“No one goes anywhere until your mother returns.”

Tomas looked at the clock.

Ten fifty-three.

Midnight was just over an hour away.

He nodded.

“All right.”

José studied him.

“You are lying.”

“I know. I need work.”

Berezina placed a bowl of soup on the table.

“Sit.”

Tomas sat.

José remained near the phone.

Neither adult left the kitchen.

Tomas ate because refusing would make them watch him more closely.

The soup tasted like nothing.

At eleven twenty, José went outside to check the barn.

Berezina remained in the living room with the television on low. She sat where she could see both the staircase and the front door.

Tomas went upstairs.

He closed his bedroom door and waited.

The house settled around him.

Berezina changed the television channel.

A floorboard creaked near the kitchen.

Tomas slipped Bryce’s burner phone into his jacket.

He took the yellow note.

Then he opened his bedroom window.

The porch roof sloped beneath it.

Tomas climbed out, lowered himself over the edge and dropped into the grass.

No one shouted.

He crossed the yard behind the line of trees, staying outside the light from the windows.

The ATV shed was locked. Kay had taken the spare key from the barn office.

His bicycle leaned inside the barn.

Tomas wheeled it out through the side door.

He walked until the farmhouse disappeared behind him.

Then he climbed onto the seat and pedaled.

Hard.

Midnight was coming.

The road was almost empty.

Frogs called from the ditches. Wind rushed past Tomas’s ears. Moonlight turned the pavement silver between the trees.

His legs burned.

He pedaled faster.

Bryce had Red.

That meant Bryce had the stones.

It also meant Bryce was carrying something the Collector wanted but couldn’t take yet.

The thought made Tomas push harder.

Gravel rattled behind him.

Headlights flooded the road.

Tomas jerked the handlebars and nearly lost control.

A truck slowed beside him.

Courtney leaned across the cab and rolled down the passenger window.

“Get in.”

Tomas kept pedaling. “How did you find me?”

“I wasn’t looking for you.”

“Comforting.”

“I felt the stones leave the farm.”

Tomas looked at her.

Courtney’s eyes remained on the road.

“Their connection moved,” she said. “Weak at first. Then faster.”

“Bryce took Red.”

“I know.”

“Mom’s looking for you.”

“I know that too.”

“She thinks you work for the man whose delivery she refused.”

Courtney glanced at him. “I don’t.”

“She thinks you killed the horses.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s still just your word.”

“Yes.”

The answer surprised him.

Courtney didn’t argue. She didn’t demand trust.

She kept the truck moving at the bicycle’s pace.

“What happened at the farm?” she asked.

“The Collector was in my bedroom.”

Her hands tightened around the steering wheel.

“You’re sure?”

“It held Red in the air. Put me to sleep.”

“Did it touch the stones?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Did Red turn black?”

“I don’t know.”

Courtney looked frightened now.

Not surprised.

Frightened.

“Get in the truck.”

“I can handle Bryce.”

“No, you can’t.”

“He’s just a bully.”

“Yes,” Courtney said. “And that would be dangerous enough without a Collector waiting for him to make things worse.”

Tomas slowed.

“Did the Collector make Bryce take Red?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Collectors don’t need to create cruelty. There’s already plenty.”

The truck rolled beside him.

“Bryce would have done this without the Collector,” Courtney continued. “Your mother’s enemy would have retaliated whether the stones existed or not. The Collector is simply standing close enough to profit from the chaos.”

“How?”

“It thinks conflict will finish healing the stones.”

Tomas stopped pedaling.

Courtney stopped the truck.

The road fell quiet around them.

“Finish healing them?” Tomas asked.

“They’re recovering faster. Pink is injury. Rose means they’re waking. Purple means they’re whole.”

“We already know that.”

“What you don’t know is that recovery isn’t passive. The stones respond to protection, danger, choice and connection. Everything that has happened between you and Red has forced them to remember what they are.”

“And the Collector wants that.”

“It wants them ripe.”

Tomas stared at her.

“Like fruit?”

“Exactly like fruit. It could pick them now, but they would be damaged. Weak. Maybe useless. It would rather wait until they’re ready.”

“And tonight might do it.”

“The Collector thinks so.”

“Do you?”

Courtney looked down the dark road.

“I think forcing anything to mature usually damages it.”

“That isn’t no.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

Tomas looked toward the truck bed.

“Help me load the bike.”

Courtney climbed out.

Together they lifted it over the tailgate.

When Tomas entered the passenger side, the cab smelled faintly of coffee and rain.

Courtney accelerated down the road.

For several minutes, neither of them spoke.

Tomas watched the trees pass.

“My mother doesn’t believe you’re fifteen.”

Courtney kept her eyes forward.

“Your mother is observant.”

Tomas turned toward her.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No.”

“How old are you?”

Courtney shifted gears.

“Time doesn’t work the same way where I come from.”

“So you aren’t fifteen.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just said time works differently.”

“It does.”

“That sounds like something a person says when she’s a thousand years old.”

Courtney almost smiled.

“I’m not a thousand.”

“Two hundred?”

“No.”

“Forty?”

She glanced at him.

“Stop guessing.”

“Then answer.”

“Not tonight.”

Tomas leaned back.

“My mother thinks you might work for my father too.”

Courtney’s expression changed.

Not recognition.

Attention.

“What do you know about him?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“She took me away when I was young. She won’t even tell me his name.”

“Then don’t start inventing answers because she refuses to give you one.”

“That sounds like advice you should take.”

Courtney accepted the hit without reacting.

Tomas looked down at his hands.

“Why didn’t the Collector take Red when it had him?”

“The stones aren’t ready.”

“That’s all?”

“No.”

Courtney slowed as the road curved toward the state park.

“The stones also chose you when they were injured. Until they’re fully awake, the bond between you matters. Taking them by force could damage them further.”

“So the Collector needs me.”

“For now.”

“What happens when they turn purple?”

Courtney didn’t answer immediately.

“Then they can choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Whether to remain with you or return home.”

“And if they choose me?”

“The Collector will try to take them anyway.”

“And if they choose you?”

“I’m their Keeper.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Courtney’s jaw tightened.

“No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t.”

The state park sign flashed through the headlights.

Tomas touched the phone inside his pocket.

“Bryce knows I stole something.”

“What?”

“His phone.”

Courtney looked at him.

“You broke into his house?”

“He has a picture of me.”

“That doesn’t explain why you broke into his house.”

“It explains it to me.”

“What’s on the phone?”

“I don’t know. It’s locked.”

“Then why does he care enough to take Red?”

Tomas remembered the cash envelope. The prepaid packaging. Four charging cords.

“Mr. Gramble said Bryce goes through phones. He hinted Bryce has some kind of side business.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know.”

Courtney exhaled.

“So Bryce has his own secret, your mother has an enemy, the Collector is waiting for the stones to mature and everyone is heading toward the same bonfire.”

“That about covers it.”

“This is why Keepers aren’t supposed to form attachments.”

Tomas looked at her.

“Is that what happened to your family?”

Courtney’s hands tightened around the wheel.

“Not tonight.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Because you ask questions at terrible times.”

The truck turned onto the narrow park road.

Gravel ticked against the wheel wells.

The forest closed around the headlights.

Music reached them before the fire appeared.

Not the distant hum of a stereo.

Bass struck hard enough to vibrate through the truck’s floorboards. The sound moved through the woods in slow waves, rattling leaves and shaking the rearview mirror.

Cars lined both sides of the dirt road.

Old pickups. Rusted sedans. A Jeep with its doors removed. Several vehicles sat crooked in the weeds as if their drivers had abandoned them mid-thought.

Teenagers’ voices drifted through the trees.

Laughter.

Shouting.

Someone whooping because they had done something stupid and survived.

Orange light pulsed between the trunks.

Courtney stopped the truck and killed the engine.

Neither of them moved.

Tomas stared through the windshield.

Bryce waited somewhere beyond the firelight.

With Red.

Courtney rested both hands on the steering wheel and listened.

“You ready?” she asked.

“No.”

Tomas opened the door anyway.

Cold air rushed into the cab, carrying smoke, beer and damp leaves.

Courtney stepped out beside him.

The music pounded through the woods.

Someone shouted Bryce’s name near the fire.

Tomas’s stomach tightened.

Courtney tilted her head, separating sounds the way Sagen did when tracking something through the pasture.

“Stay close,” she said.

“Why?”

Her gaze moved beyond the fire.

Past the teenagers.

Toward the deeper darkness between the trees.

“A person alone can witness something impossible and remember it,” Courtney said. “In a crowd, everyone waits to see what everyone else believes. If no one screams, they decide there was nothing to fear.”

Tomas watched silhouettes moving around the bonfire.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying three hundred people could watch that bookbag walk through fire and swear someone pulled it with a string.”

A shape moved between two distant trees.

Too tall.

Gone too quickly.

Courtney stepped closer to Tomas.

“Collectors love crowds.”