Free I.D. by Peter Lerangis Page B

purpling.
    She’s passing out.
    “Breathe!” Eve urged. “Hang on, they’re coming!”
    Tanya nodded vaguely. Her eyes opened, frightened and pleading. “Help me.”
    Arms. Pushing.
    Eve lost her balance. She scrambled to her feet.
    Three burly ski patrollers were kneeling around Tanya.
    They asked her a few questions, then gently eased her onto the sled. One of them began to shout into a walkie-talkie.
    As they pulled her away, a crowd formed around Eve. A bright sea of Gore-Tex and nylon. In the distance, she spotted an ambulance swerving into the parking lot to meet the sled.
    She tried to elbow her way forward.
    “Eve, are you all right?” Mom’s voice.
    “Yes!” Eve shouted. Tanya was vanishing, swallowed up by the gawkers.
    “What did you do to her?” That was Kate.
    “It wasn’t me!” Eve said.
    She could hear mutterings: “food poisoning”…“broken leg”…“hotdogging.”
    No. Something worse.
    As the ambulance sped away, siren blaring, Eve began to shiver uncontrollably. The wind seared through her coat.
    Mom and Dad were on either side of her now.
    “Sh-she skied r-right into me,” Eve explained. “S-s-something’s wrong with her.”
    “Let’s go inside, honey,” Dad said, putting his arm around her.
    There. Tanya’s family.
    A mom, dad, son. The resemblance was unmistakable. They were being escorted by a ski official toward a station wagon.
    “Excuse me?” she called out, jogging after them. “Wait!”
    The man helped the family into the backseat and shut the door. He shot Eve an impatient look.
    “I was the girl Tanya collided with,” Eve said. “Where did they take her?”
    “Keene Mountain Hospital,” the man replied, climbing into the driver’s side.
    “Is she going to be okay?” Eve pressed on.
    The window rolled open. “Too early to tell,” the man said.
    “What happened to her?”
    The car’s engine roared to life, but not enough to obscure the answer.
    “Heart attack.”

Bernsen. Second case this week.
    The girl with her is Case 1449.
    So there’s hope.
    But she doesn’t know.
    How old is she?
    By their measurements, thirteen years, eleven months, and two weeks.
    She’d better find out soon.

4
    “N O HISTORY OF HEART trouble on either side of the family, Mr. and Mrs. Bernsen?”
    “No.”
    “Has Tanya been taking any new medication?”
    “No.”
    “Any signs of illness, weakness, shortness of breath?”
    “Well, yes. But she has occasional asthma. She insisted she’d be all right skiing…”
    Eve could hear the voices all the way in the waiting room. They floated in from an examining area down the hall. She hated listening. Tanya’s parents sounded so wounded and confused, the doctor so cold and clinical.
    She tried to ignore them.
    Sit tight. Give it a few minutes.
    Someone would be out soon. A doctor who knew about cases like this, who’d tell them that Tanya was going to be just fine.
    Kate was sitting to Eve’s left, eyes fixed on a TV that droned overhead. Mr. and Mrs. Hardy sat to Eve’s right, reading magazines. Around them, patients walked in and out, some on crutches, almost all wearing plaster casts—sprains, broken bones, injuries you were supposed to get at a ski resort.
    Not a heart attack.
    The eyes.
    Eve couldn’t stop thinking about Tanya’s eyes. The way they’d looked at and through Eve at the same time. The way they’d seemed to focus on something just behind her. Something dark and horribly unexpected, but somehow inevitable.
    Just once had Eve ever seen anything like it—a year earlier, the only time she’d been hunting with her dad. They’d just about given up when they’d spotted a deer within range. The moment Mr. Hardy had taken aim, it turned toward them. Its eyes had instantly flashed with the knowledge that it was going to die. But rather than run, it had leveled its gaze at Eve. Not in fear, exactly, or even panic. Something more like accusation. As if to say, Not now. Not like this. Not fair.
    Eve had