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“How are things in your basement?” Connor asks. “Still up to your old tricks?”
“I’m a creature of habit,” she tells them. “And just because the ADR fell apart doesn’t mean I have to.” Then she glances to Cam, who seems to be taking mental snapshots of everything he sees, like a spy. “Can he be trusted?” she asks Connor.
Cam answers the question himself. “Similar objectives,” he says. “Under any other circumstance, I would say no, you couldn’t trust me—but I want to take down Proactive Citizenry as much as my AWOL friend does. So for all intents and purposes, Ich bin ein AWOL.”
“Hmph.” Sonia only half believes him, but she accepts Connor’s judgment for the other half. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows, as they say.”
“The Tempest,” Cam responds as if chiming in on a game show. “Shakespeare. It’s actually misery that makes strange bedfellows, but necessity works too.”
“Fine.” Sonia grabs her cane, which leans against her desk, and taps it on the old steamer trunk in the center of the cluttered back room. “Make yourself useful and push this aside.”
Cam does so. Sonia notices Connor focused a bit deerlike on the trunk. He’s the only one who knows its significance. What it contains and what it conceals.
Once the trunk is pushed aside, Connor takes it upon himself to roll away the dusty Persian rug beneath to reveal the trapdoor. Sonia, who is far less feeble than she lets on, reaches down, pulls on the iron ring, and lifts open the door. Somewhere downstairs whispers quickly give way to silence.
“I’ll be right back,” she says. “And don’t touch anything.” She wags a finger at Grace, who’s been touching just about everything.
As Sonia stomps heavily but slowly down the steep wooden steps, she conceals a devious smile. She knows this is going to be complicated. She dreads it, but she also looks forward to it. An old woman needs some excitement in her life.
“It’s only me,” she says as she reaches the bottom step, and all her AWOLs come out of hiding. Or at least the ones who care.
“Lunch?” one of them asks.
“You just had breakfast. Don’t be a pig.”
She makes her way to a little alcove in the far corner of the cluttered maze of a basement, where a girl with stunning green eyes and gentle brown curls with amber highlights organizes a cache of first-aid supplies.
“You have visitors,” Sonia tells her.
The look on the girl’s face is too guarded to be hopeful. “What sort of visitors?”
Sonia smiles wickedly. “The angel and the devil on your shoulders, Risa. I hope you’re wise enough to know which is which.”
60 • Risa
It wasn’t coincidence that brought Risa and Connor’s lives converging once more on Akron. It was an absolute absence of other options.
In all of Risa’s desperate wanderings since being loaded on the bus to be unwound, Sonia’s basement was the only place that had any hope of being safe. The Graveyard had been purged, Audrey’s shop was a nice respite, but had her on edge every day, and as for the safe houses she’d been shuttled to in the dark, Sonia’s was the only one of which she knew the actual location.
She could backtrack and stay under the odd protection of CyFi’s commune—but she knew she wasn’t really welcomed by most of the Tyler-folk. For obvious reasons she could never feel part of that community. That left only a life on the streets, or a life in hiding alone. She’d had enough of looking over her shoulder, sleeping in Dumpsters like a fresh AWOL, just waiting to be recognized in spite of her makeover. It would only be a matter of time until someone reported her to the authorities, collected the reward, and handed her over to Proactive Citizenry, who would no doubt have many plans for her.
That left only one viable option. Sonia.
When Risa arrived a few weeks ago, there were customers in the antique shop, haggling with Sonia over an unremarkable end table. Risa strategically meandered down another aisle, marveling at how so many items could be precariously perched on one another and yet not fall—empirical evidence that Ohio is not prone to earthquakes.
Finally the couple had left, struggling with their table, for which Sonia offered no help beyond, “Mind the step; it’s crooked.” Once the rusty hinges on the door squeaked closed, Risa stepped forward, presenting herself to be noticed.
Sonia pursed her lips when she saw here there, perhaps affronted that she had snuck in unobserved. “Something I can help you find?” Sonia asked.
Risa had been a bit tickled that Sonia didn’t recognize her right away. And when she finally did, the old woman let out a howl of uncharacteristic joy and dropped her cane so she could wrap her arms around Risa.
And in that moment Risa realized it was the closest she might ever come to knowing what it felt like to be home.
Now, two weeks later, Risa finds herself playing Wendy to the Lost Boys, for lately, it seems the only AWOLs who are getting as far as Sonia’s are boys, attesting to the sad fact that more female AWOLs are falling prey to parts pirates and other bottom-feeders.
When Sonia tells Risa she has “visitors,” Risa starts up the stairs apprehensively, but she picks up her pace as that apprehension turns to excitement. There are very few people Sonia would send Risa upstairs for.
She doesn’t dare hope which of those few people it might be, because she doesn’t want disappointment to show on her face if it were someone like Hayden or Emby, both of whom she’d be happy to see, were she not hoping for something more.
