“I knew he’d be safe with you,” she whispered.
The look that then came to her face melted away Newt’s anger. A purity of sadness. Her eyes, her mouth, her ears, her cheeks, they all dropped toward the ground, as if they’d just remembered the law of gravity.
“What’s going on?” Newt asked. “Where are you going? How could you leave Dante?”
The boy was squirming and Newt finally let him down. He ran to his mom, who overcame her madness long enough to drop to her knees and embrace her only living child in this world. She hugged him fiercely and he hugged her back. Tears poured from her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She said it over and over.
Newt didn’t know what else to do but sit on the ground, himself. How was he supposed to approach this incomprehensible situation? What was he supposed to say? Nothing came to mind so he stayed silent, watched the reunion that never should’ve happened. She’d left her kid. Could her mind really have slipped so much, so quickly?
A minute or two passed. Nothing changed. Keisha finally broke the silence, with a sentence so unexpected and void of context that she had to say it twice.
“I have a cell phone.”
“Huh?”
“I have a cell phone.”
Chapter Eleven
Newt had never had a cell phone. Like many things in his weird, swiped mind, he knew what it was, of course, that it had been extremely common in the world before the apocalypse. But it had become almost a thing of the past, something forcefully replaced by physical landline or radio communications in a broken world.
Keisha seemed to think her answer sufficient to explain why she’d left her kid behind, stolen Newt’s things, and headed for the exit.
“Okay,” Newt said, leaning forward on his elbows, their bony tips pressed into his folded legs beneath him. “You have a cell phone. So... what? Does that mean you work for WICKED? You’re some kind of evil agent for some evil doctor that’s come to study me? One of the infamous Gladers? Is that it?”
The questions were enough to snap Keisha back to reality a little. “Huh? What in the world are you talking about?”
“Why do you have a cell phone?” Newt asked with swelling impatience.
Keisha shrugged. “My husband stole it. A month or so before he... Nevermind. I swore I’d never tell you that story, didn’t I?”
“Not really. You just made me promise never to ask about it. I haven’t.”
“Right.” She looked at him for a long time. Dante did as well, something like a smirk on his face, which made Newt feel the slightest bit better. “Anyway, the point is that I have a cell phone.”
Newt threw his hands up in frustration. “Why is that the point, Keisha?”
“Because it works. I only turn it on once a day to save the battery, then turn it right back off again. Times have been few and far between when I’ve been able to charge the damn thing.”