کتاب 08-12

12

Allie pulled the truck to a stop where the dirt lane met Little Harbor Road.

“Where to now?” she asked.

Harper looked out the passenger-side window toward the rusting blue hulk of the school bus. The headlights were on. A skinny girl of about fifteen, with a shaved head, slumped behind the steering wheel. Someone had left a machete in the back of her skull.

Nick reached up to touch Harper’s chin, physically turning her head toward him. He was sitting in her lap. He stank of burnt hair, and it looked as if he had gone bobbing for apples in red Kool-Aid, his face was so stained and sticky with blood—but his eyes were more alert now. He spoke with his hands.

“Nick says he knows a place we can go,” Harper said, then narrowed her eyes. She replied with some gestures of her own: “What place?”

“Trust me,” Nick told her in sign language. “It’s safe. No one will find us. It’s where I hid everything I stole.” He met her gaze with a haunted solemnity. “I’m the thief.”