Dangerous (19 page)

pulling a T-shirt out of his backpack and tossing it at me.

He’d printed his own design: “Blueberry Bonanza™: Now

with superpowers in every box!”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Should I go?”

I wanted Luther away from here and safe with his oblivious

parents in their tidy house. The Earth was spinning at a crazy

angle and way too fast, and I needed to pack or think or run, do

something to force it back in control again. But I also knew that

this might be the last I’d see Luther for a long time. Or ever.

“Can we try this again?” I held my arms out.

“What have I done to deserve such a fate,” he said, though

he came closer. He was taller than me, and as his arms went

around my back, his chin touched my temple. He didn’t hold

me close at first, but I squeezed him tighter. And I thought the

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words, I love you, Luther. His arms relaxed after a couple of

seconds as if signaling an end, but I didn’t let go. So he sighed

and hugged me for real. One of his hands opened on my back,

pressing me closer, his head leaning against mine. I turned my

head so my face fit into his neck and squeezed my eyes tight to

keep from crying.

I love you, Luther, I thought again, more fiercely this time.

When he let go, his arms fell as if they were really heavy.

He turned and then stopped at the door.

“I could—”

“No,” I said. “Don’t do anything.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Who?” he asked.

I shook my head.

His shoulders slumped, and he walked out the door. Into

the night. Into our neighborhood that suddenly felt as safe as a

coal mine on fire.

“Wait!” I wanted to walk him home, but I wouldn’t leave

my parents. Laelaps trotted along at my ankle. “Wait . . . I want

you to have Laelaps.”

Luther’s eyes got wide, and he looked six years old. “You lie.”

“He barks whenever strangers come to our house, but he

didn’t bark at you. And he’s way cooler than your freaky shiver-

ing rabbit.”

“My parents will have a conniption,” Luther said, but he

was already kneeling on the lawn, scratching the dog’s neck.

I watched from the front porch until I couldn’t see Luther

and Laelaps anymore. My heart pinched in on itself. At least

Luther would have some kind of guard.

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Shannon Hale

My parents were in their room. They’d packed a bag for

me too.

“It’s late,” said Mom. “Let’s get some sleep.”

If the house wasn’t bugged, it’d be better to leave in the

morning when it wouldn’t look suspicious and get far away be-

fore anyone realized we were gone for good. Besides, we might

need the rest.

Mom invited me to sleep on their bed between them like I

used to when I was little. No way I would risk waking up flailing

from a bad dream. I sat on the floor, listening to their breathing

and folding a gum wrapper into squares.

A couple of hours into my watch my eyelids felt weighted. I

was about to give up and sleep when I noticed that the tips of my

fingers were tingling. Little black dots danced in my periphery.

My parents’ breathing had slowed.

Maisie Brown, I asked myself, if Ruthless were asleep in a

house, what would be the safest way to catch her?

Why, flooding the house with odorless gas. The kind that

knocks you out. Permanently.

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C h a p t e r 2 3

I flung Mom and Dad over my shoulders, and they didn’t

stir. I grabbed the bags as I passed, hoping one of them had the

car keys, and ran for the garage, kicking a door off its hinges on

my way. I could feel their hearts beating against my shoulder

blades and their diaphragms slowly contracting as they inhaled.

Alive still. I needed to get them into clean air.

I placed them in the backseat, got in the driver’s seat,

locked the doors, and clicked the button to open the garage

door. It groaned and creaked. Slow. Painfully loud and slow. But

at least it gave me time to ruffle through my mom’s purse and

find her keys. Success.

I’d just started the motor when a car zoomed into our

driveway, blocking us in, the headlights blinding. This was defi-

nitely not the friendly neighborhood watch.

I jumped out, grabbed the car’s chassis under the front

bumper, and flipped it upside-down into the street. I hoped the

occupants were wearing seat belts. Kind of.

“You trying to kill my parents?” I shouted at the night. “Kill

me first!”

I backed out Mom’s Camry and screeched down the street.

At the last moment, I remembered to hit the remote button,

shutting the garage door. As if we were just going to run an

errand and would be back soon. As if that house was still our

home.

“¿Qué pasa?”
Mom asked, what’s happening?

“Someone gassed us in our sleep,” I said, the car stuttering

Shannon Hale

as I braked around corners. I was not a great driver.

Dad was groaning, and I guessed they’d woken to head-

aches. At least they’d woken.

There were car headlights behind us. I sped up. The car

sped up. I made a fast left. So did they. I wasn’t sure if I was

scared or mad, but my chest felt like red-hot metal and my

mouth wanted to scream.

“Who wants to drive?” I asked.

“I can,” Dad said.

I screeched to a stop, jumped out, and ran toward the on-

coming car. The tires squealed as the driver braked and turned

at the same time, its side slamming into my side. I rolled, Fido

tucked to my chest, got back to my feet, and ran forward again.

A couple of bullets stung my shoulder. Not cool. My par-

ents were close by.

I punched the hood of the car. Not quite enough. I jumped

up and came down on it with my elbow, like those brightly

Spandexed wrestlers. Now the engine was a bowl of spaghetti.

“Holy crap!” I yelled, because suddenly there was a really

big gun pointing out the window—the kind that shoots rockets.

I yanked it out of the guy’s hands and bent it into a circle, tossing

it back into the car with them.

“Who are you?” I asked, sticking my head through the win-

dow. They stared back, wide eyes in unfamiliar faces. Not the

Howell or GT guys I’d seen. “Who?”

I pulled the closest one out of the window and held him

over my head. I felt a rush of energy, as if every cell in my body

was
awake
, and I could do anything.

Ruthless believed she could do anything, I thought.

Another car sped around the corner, the yellow headlights

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Dangerous

burning straight for our Camry. I dropped the guy on the roof

of his car and ran.

“Drive!” I told Dad. He hit the gas and took off. I veered

straight for the new car. It sped up as it approached me. I stomped,

planting my feet in dents I’d made in the asphalt, and I leaned

my shoulder into the oncoming car. The tires screeched, the

metal groaned, and half the car went accordion before I fell into

a backward somersault. I didn’t pause to interrogate this time. I

ran after the Camry, reaching it in a dozen huge strides. Dad

slowed as I opened the front passenger door and hopped in, and

then we sped off.

Dad took back streets, eventually merging onto the inter-

state a hundred miles to the south. The highway was only two

lanes here, the landscape brush and low hills.

Mom had been keeping boxes of protein bars in the back

of her car since I’d hulked out. I lay in the backseat, eating and

watching for cars and helicopters. I was sleepy, but I couldn’t

sleep.

In Phoenix, Mom found a chop shop and sold the Camry

for parts. We walked to the bus station.

It was early afternoon, the streets were crowded, the build-

ings too shiny, nearly melting in the sun. Everything felt sharp

and fast, like a dream of falling.

In the back of the bus, I made phone calls on Fido. It was

the only safe phone to use, but only I could use it. I called both

my parents’ work managers and told them we had to leave town

for an unexpected emergency. I asked the post office to hold

our mail, canceled our utilities, and called the bank to arrange

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ongoing automatic transfers from my parents’ savings for the

mortgage.

“How much money do you have saved?” I asked.

“Enough to pay the mortgage for four months,” said Dad.

“And if we’re gone longer than that?”

Mom closed her eyes. The bank would take our house.

And everything in it. My mom loved that house. My dad loved

his job. I pressed my knees to my chest, imagining that I could

just get smaller and smaller until I disappeared.

And we just kept going. Sleeping on buses, eating in truck

stops, washing our faces and underarms in gas station bath-

rooms. We didn’t stop till we’d reached the Atlantic Ocean.

Florida. Mom and Dad had withdrawn the maximum cash

from ATMs in Arizona, and we used all that for a deposit and

first month’s rent on a one-bedroom furnished apartment.

Traffic screeched outside our window. There was no air-

conditioning. We ate street tacos by the open window, listening

to Cuban and Puerto Rican-accented Spanish, the hard slap of

basketballs from the weedy court.

The whole world was orange-hot and loud as a train. I

looked at the scalding sky and wished for something. That my

parents wouldn’t die. That we could go back to our small house

and small life. I was invulnerable. And I was scared.

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C h a p t e r 2 4

Wake up. Breakfast. Shower and dress. It was still gray

every morning when Dad and I took a bus to the golf course.

We’d discovered a wild area behind the manicured links, per-

haps reserved for a future expansion. No one was ever around.

I scouted out lightning-struck palm trees—headless and dead-

standing—and pulled them up by their roots. I cracked the

trunks into sections and left them in piles.

And sometimes I just ran.

In moments my skin was as hot and sticky as the air. Dirt I

kicked up stuck to my skin, the shower undone. It was the only

hour of the day I actually felt alive.

When we got back, Mom was already gone to work at the

convenience store. We’d learned that people would hire a La-

tina woman without an ID but not a white guy.

Dad did the shopping and cooking. I did the cleaning. In

the afternoon, he went to the library. I had to avoid public spac-

es. With or without Fido, I was too recognizable.

One month. Two months. Three.

When the fourth-month anniversary struck us, I curled up

on my sofa and cried quieter than the sounds of night traffic.

Back home, the savings account was empty. Foreclosure immi-

nent. Very soon, our house would no longer be our house.

It was Christmastime when we started getting careless. I

couldn’t sit in that house one more day, reading library books

to the tune of electric piano music that marched through the

walls. Dad didn’t argue when I followed him to the local library. I

Shannon Hale

started in the poetry stacks. Hungry for the kind of winter Robert

Frost knew, I added him to my internal anthology:

And lonely as it is that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less

I glanced at the computer bank and back at Dad. He was

lost in the history stacks. It felt like a crime, but I eased into a

computer chair and got online.

The news sites read like incredible fiction. Parliament in

India was shut down, rioting in Beijing, an entire town of peo-

ple disappeared in Australia, some new scary flu in South Amer-

ica. Maybe the world was always this crazy. Maybe it felt more

dangerous because I felt dangerous, cut off and raw, untethered.

I didn’t dare email Luther. I wouldn’t paint a target on his

back by letting any big bads know I cared about him. But like

my brute body constantly craved food, my whole self craved

Luther. Somebody. A friend.

I checked the Japanese teeth-whitening site for the most re-

cent post from user LEX. It was a month after I’d fled Utah, and

all it said was: “I’ll save the Poo Project for you.” Nothing since.

But there was a recent post in English from a user named

Talos—the same name as Europa’s guard, a gift from Jupiter.

My adrenaline spiked like needles in my heart and wrists. I read

the post.

Poe would come in handy right now

because I can’t use my own words.

My whole body shivered as if Wilder were there beside me,

breathing against my ear. How had he found out about that site?

If I responded, Wilder would know that I was alive and on

a computer. What if he was loyal to GT or Howell or whoever

gassed our house?

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Dangerous

Blame the faulty adolescent brain. I logged in as new user

“DG” and replied.

Poe said, “I wish I could write as

mysterious as a cat.” I wish I could do