Текст книги "The Earth Dwellers"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Elsey runs over, out of breath, giggling. She practically falls into my lap, even though she’s getting far too big to do that. “I was only ‘it’ once, and that was because I let someone tag me,” she says.

I laugh and push her off. “You’re sweaty, you little bragger.”

“Mother says sweat is a good thing. That it’s what makes the world a better place.”

I glance at my mother, who tries to hide her smile. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I want your sweat on me,” I say.

As I watch Elsey brush a moist strand of hair away from her face and charge off to rejoin the game, I feel an unexpected swell of emotion in my chest. Is this……real? Can life go on like none of the awfulness ever happened?

The answer comes to me as I watch Elsey let herself get tagged again. In a move that reminds me so much of myself, she immediately hones in on the tallest, fastest boy, chasing him across the lawn.

No, the world will not go on in denial about its past. And it shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of the past, so long as we remember it and learn from it, united in our belief that humans are inherently good and that the evil is the exception, not the rule. Always hope and strive for a better future.

Elsey gains a step on the boy, then another. She’s so close, her fingers swiping and missing his back by the tiniest margin. She springs forward, diving to try to make the tag, but a brown blur rushes in from the side, catching her before her fingers can find their mark.

Roc does an exuberant and overzealous celebration lap around the park, slinging Elsey—who’s giggling and protesting—over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Tawni shakes her head at Roc’s antics and makes her way over to us. Her white-blond hair practically sings under the reflected rays of the sun. I stand and hug her, holding her longer than normal. “I missed you too,” she says, understanding me the way she always has.

Behind her is Tristan, his arm around his mother, talking and laughing, his mouth closing only when he sees me and the way I’m looking at him:

With fire and ice and water and storms in my eyes. With the red sky and the yellow-white sand and the green grass. With gray rocks and dim lighting and painted walls. With life and love and memories.

Does he stop laughing because he sees all that in my gaze?

When he smiles I know that he does.

Because I see it in his eyes too.

A million memories and the future.

He hugs me and I’m home.

He kisses me and I’m never alone.

Whether our mothers had any idea what they were really doing when they stuck those chips in our necks, we may never know, but it doesn’t matter now. Because we were always meant to be together and I can’t imagine a life apart.

I’m his rock and he’s mine.

And thus ends (and begins) the greatest adventure of my lifetime.

~*~

Keep reading for:

1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories

2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler

3) A sneak peak of Brew, the first book in David Estes’ new YA paranormal dystopian series, The Witching Hour, coming January 16, 2014!

A personal note from David…

If you enjoyed this book, please, please, please (don’t make me get down on my knees and beg!) consider leaving a positive review on the major book review sites. Without reviews on the major sites, I wouldn’t be able to write for a living, which is what I love to do! Thanks for all your incredible support and I look forward to reading your reviews.

Acknowledgments

No way! *blinking quickly while pinching my arms and slapping my cheeks* It can’t be over, can it? 7 books, more than 700,000 words, and 18 months later, and the combined Dwellers/Country Sagas are finished. I’m in shock. Complete shock. Speechless. Well, not completely, as us writers almost always have something to say. And what I have to say is mostly a whole lot of THANK YOUS.

First and foremost, to my wife, the real Adele, you have been more than just a support to me on this journey—you’ve been my partner in crime. You’ve suffered my endless babbling about plotlines and characters and promotions and rejection letters and on and on. You’ve been there for my greatest defeats and my greatest triumphs. You’ve sat with me and pored over copious amounts of beta feedback, helping me decide how to improve my early manuscripts. You’ve added your own critical feedback to my stories, never holding back, always being honest, determined to not let me be complacent in my earlier successes, to make each and every book the best that they could be. You are my best friend and the most important person in my life.

To my readers, you are the best, most wooloo people I’ve ever met and I’m so searin’ glad to know so many of you on a first name basis through the David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite group on Goodreads. You people make me laugh, cry, and throw my laptop across the room on a daily basis, and I’ll always love you for it. If you keep on reading, I’ll keep on writing. Thanks for sticking with me.

A huge HUGE HUGE thanks to my cover artist for this book and for the other three Dwellers books, Tony Wilson at Winki Pop Design. Your art and designs have been PERFECT for this series and I’m never surprised when readers tell me how much they love the covers.

To my beta readers, many of whom have been around for all seven books, you all are so AWESOME I can hardly even put it into words. This is the seventh book in the series, and yet you took your job so seriously, challenging me on the smallest of minutiae, forcing me to think about the decisions I was making and why I was making them. The improvements I made to the story based on your feedback will undoubtedly be well appreciated by my readers. So thank you Laurie Love, Alexandria Theodosopoulos, Kerri Hughes, Terri Thomas, Lolita Verroen, Rachel Schade, Brooke DelVecchio and Anthony Briggs Jr.

And last but not least, to my remarkable Street Team, I love love LOVE reading your reviews of my ARCs, they keep me going sometimes when building a writing career feels like the hardest thing in the world. Thanks for all your reviews, support, and genuine kindness. You are the definition of good people. And a special thanks to Kelly in particular, who has been the ultimate street team member and has taught me so much about how to get the word out about my books. I appreciate everything that you do.

The saga continues in other books by David Estes available through the author’s official website:

http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

or through select online retailers including Smashwords.com.

Young Adult Novels by David Estes

The Dwellers Saga:

Book One—The Moon Dwellers

Book Two—The Star Dwellers

Book Three—The Sun Dwellers

Book Four—The Earth Dwellers

The Country Saga (A Dwellers Saga sister series):

Book One—Fire Country

Book Two—Ice Country

Book Three—Water & Storm Country

Book Four—The Earth Dwellers

The Witching Hour:

Book One—Brew (Coming January 16, 2014!)

The Evolution Trilogy:

Book One—Angel Evolution

Book Two—Demon Evolution

Book Three—Archangel Evolution

Children’s Books by David Estes

The Adventures of Nikki Powergloves:

Nikki Powergloves—A Hero Is Born

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers

Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure

Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws (Coming soon!)

Connect with David Estes Online

David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite

Facebook

Blog/website

About the Author

David Estes was born in El Paso, Texas but moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he was very young. He grew up in Pittsburgh and then went to Penn State for college. Eventually he moved to Sydney, Australia where he met his wife and soul mate, Adele, who he’s now been happily married to for more than two years.

A reader all his life, David began writing novels for the children's and YA markets in 2010, and has completed 17 novels, 15 of which have been published. In June of 2012, David became a fulltime writer and is now travelling the world with Adele while he writes books, and she writes and takes photographs.

David gleans inspiration from all sorts of crazy places, like watching random people do entertaining things, dreams (which he jots copious notes about immediately after waking up), and even from thin air sometimes!

David’s a writer with OCD, a love of dancing and singing (but only when no one is looking or listening), a mad-skilled ping-pong player, an obsessive Goodreads group member, and prefers writing at the swimming pool to writing at a table. He loves responding to e-mails, Facebook messages, Tweets, blog comments, and Goodreads comments from his readers, all of whom he considers to be his friends.

Dwellers/Country EXTRAS!

1) Three awesome Dwellers short stories

2) A long-awaited interview with Perry the Prickler

3) A sneak peak of Brew, the first book in David Estes’ new YA paranormal dystopian series, The Witching Hour, coming January 16, 2014!

1) Three Dwellers Short Stories by David Estes

The Shattered Stones of Fate

Adele

Originally posted on Confessions of a Bibliophile on July 21, 2013.

Hours before The Moon Dwellers…

Sometimes time ticks by at a pace so dismal you can almost see the stones of fate gathering moss before your very eyes. And other times…well, life seems to roar past with the speed of an inter-Realm through-train, whipping your hair around your face and forcing your eyes shut against the airborne debris.

Today starts with the former, but you can never guess which way it’ll end.

Class is heavy and tight on my skull, full of “important” dates and wars and a history that only half sounds real. Did humans really live on the earth’s surface once? It’s hard to believe, and yet everyone says it’s true. And if they did, why did they seem to be constantly in the midst of disagreement and strife?

My grandmother—may she rest in peace—used to say that being outside was like laughter and a warm blanket and the hug of a friend; but of course, those were the same things her mother had told her. No one really knows anymore—all we have are stories from the generations before us. Do I believe them?

Does it matter if I don’t?

I massage a knot in my forehead, the beginning of a sharp headache. Something pokes me from behind. I ignore it.

Poke poke.

“Gannon, you do that again and I’ll break your arm,” I hiss.

“Ms. Rose…something to share?” Mrs. Hill asks, stopping in mid-lecture, her hands on her hips.

“No,” I mumble, writing Gannon on my blank notebook page. When the teacher resumes her monologue about some kind of civil war, I slash through Gannon’s name with a single stroke of my pencil.

Poke poke.

You’ve got to be kidding me. I whirl around, my pencil snapping under the strain of my fingers, which are already curling into fists. My chair falls over with a slam. “Do that I again…” I say, pushing the unfinished threat out into the air.

Gannon’s face is even whiter than usual, his big blue eyes as wide as false moons. “I—I—”

“Yeah, everyone’s sorry,” I say, feeling bad seeing Gannon look so scared. After all, he’s one of the few people who are ever nice to me anymore. But my breathing is heavy, my blood running hot and angry through my veins. An overreaction. Something my father has always warned me against.

I try to swallow it down but all I get is a lump in my throat.

“Ms. Rose…”

Suddenly I’m aware of the many eyes on me, staring, some with open mouths of shock and others with smirks of amusement. I cringe and turn to face Mrs. Hill, who’s placed her lesson plan on the table in front of her. Never a good sign.

I know I should apologize but the lump gets in the way. So I just stare at her, feeling my face redden.

“I’ll not have students threatened in my classroom,” the teacher says. I’m already grabbing my pack and pushing for the door when she says, “Detention. Now.”

The grey-stone halls are empty and hollow, like the feeling I’ve had in my chest ever since the other kids started talking about my father a week ago. I asked Father about it, but he swears everything’s okay, that it’s no big deal, that the rumors and gossip are exaggerations. But his words don’t match his eyes like they usually do. He’s protecting me from the truth: a dangerous world has become infinitely more dangerous.

As I stride down the hall toward the detention room—my fourth such journey in the last week—the playground shouts hit me like bursts of gunfire:

“Your father’s a dead man!”

“Better start looking for a new dad!”

“Complainer!”

I touch a hand to my gut, half-expecting to feel moist holes in it, but all I get is the brittle texture of my school-tunic. Dead man! New dad! Complainer!

Are things really that bad? If they weren’t, would I have broken those three kids’ noses? Would I have two black eyes and fire roaring through my skin?

When I reach the detention room, I glance through the window and see the regulars: Drummer, the heavily pierced kid who can’t seem to stop tapping his fingers on his desk; Gina, the girl with the spiked purple hair and unexplained scars up and down her arms; Chuck, the dude who smells funny and is addicted to pulling bad pranks. Freaks. Am I one of them?

I stride past the room and push through the school doors. Mother will be furious when she finds out I ditched school again, but she’ll just have to deal.

There are a couple of punks on the corner, smoking something that doesn’t smell like normal cigarettes. “Try it,” one of them says as I pass, holding out a joint.

An insane urge to kick him rolls through me, balanced only by a desire to take him up on his offer. I ignore him and run past, wishing my feet had wings—that I could fly: out of subchapter 14 of the Moon Realm. Out of the underground world of caves and rock and disappointment. Excitement shivers down my spine at the thought, making me feel nauseous because of the conflicting emotions, like I’m spinning and spinning.

Turning a corner, I take the next block in stride. It’s only when I reach my neighborhood that I slow to a jog, hoping Mother will be out.

She isn’t.

Worse, she’s standing in front of our house, looking right at me, like she has delinquent-radar or something. I stop, consider turning and running in the other direction, think better of it, and cautiously approach her.

“I know what you’re going to—” I start to say.

“Come inside, I’ll make you something to eat,” Mother says, cutting me off.

She turns and makes her way back to our small stone cube of a house, holding the door for me. I follow her inside, wondering whether this is one of those mom-pretends-to-be-your-friend-as-punishment teaching moments. I hope not—I’d prefer a harsh punishment dealt by a swift hand any day.

“I shouldn’t have left school,” I say, dumping my pack and my words in a heap on the floor. My only hope is to control the conversation.

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Mother says. She doesn’t sound angry. Why?

She starts chopping something with a dull knife. Potatoes. I gawk at her, unable to feel my feet, like I’m floating. Who is this woman?

Before I can consider the possibilities, Father pushes through the back door. “Hi, Adele,” he says, as casually as if school and work are meant to be over.

“Why aren’t you at the mines?” I ask, more sharply than I intended.

“Why aren’t you at school?” he counters, but a smile plays on his lips. His eyes disagree with his mouth, remaining downcast and tired, like he’s just woken up.

“The school called,” Mother says, stirring a pot. “Adele was supposed to go to detention but she left.”

God. Word travels fast. Mrs. Hill must have expected it. “I hate school,” I say. I hate people, I don’t say.

“I know,” Father says, to my surprise. If Mother is a clone, Father is a robot. Where are my real parents?

I stare at him. He stares at me, his smile gone. Mother nonchalantly stirs a pot.

The unanswered question springs back into my head. “Father…why aren’t you in the mines?” I ask again.

He sighs, scratches his head, looks more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. “Oh God,” I breathe.

“They let me go,” he blurts out, turning to head back outside.

“They what?” I say, following him onto the back patio, a familiar place where we’ve trained every morning for the past ten years. Now a place so foreign and frightening I barely recognize it. “You lost your job?”

He nods. “I guess I stood up for one too many people,” he says.

“Fix it,” I say, a knot forming in my stomach. People don’t just lose their jobs in the Moon Realm. There are always repercussions, especially when it’s related to a complaint.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” I protest.

“It’s unfixable,” he says, and before I can contradict him, he throws a punch at my head.

I duck, grabbing his arm and swinging a low kick at his legs, which he easily hops over. He lets me try again, this time with a hooking fist, but at the last minute he ducks and my momentum of my wayward punch spins me around. He grabs me from behind, trying to lock my arms, but I manage to twist out of it before his hands can get a good grip.

I whirl around, my chest heaving, my blood flowing, my adrenaline higher than the dim and rocky cavern ceiling that arcs above us. I charge my father, aiming dual jabs at his chest.

He grabs my arms, pulls me into him. I’m squirming and clawing and bucking…and then I hear it.

A strange sound, low and guttural. A groan. I stop moving, listen to the slightly disturbing noise.

“Adele,” Father says, hugging me, crushing my face into his chest. “It’s going to be okay.” That’s when I realize: the strange sound is me. Grunting and groaning and protesting the truth.

“Nothing’s okay,” I manage to wheeze out, breathless. A hot tear spills down my cheek and I wipe it away angrily. “Nothing.”

Father’s eyes are sad, and this time they match his lips, which couldn’t form a smile if we were suddenly rich and living in the Sun Realm. “Be strong, Adele,” he says. “For your mother, for your sister, for me, for yourself.”

“No,” I say, even though I know I will. It’s the only way I can be. It’s the way he’s built me.

“No matter what,” he reminds gently.

I push away and go to bed early, eating my pathetically unfulfilling supper alone in the room I share with my sister and parents, wishing I was oblivious the world that’s about to end.

And times races on and on and on, shattering stone and bones and lives, twisting fate into a blind whirlwind of grief and splintered moments.

I awake to the sound of our front door slamming open.

~THE END~

The Runaway

Tawni’s Story

Originally posted in Furthermore: an Anthology.

Even when you know it’s the right thing to do, running away from home is never easy.

Although my small bag is packed and dangling from my shoulder, my nondescript black boots are laced, and the door is open, I linger on the threshold for a moment, and gaze back at the house I’ve called home for as long as I can remember. Everything I see—from the flat-screen telebox, to the sturdy stone table, to the photos of my parents and me hanging on the wall—should be familiar, but it’s not. It’s as if I’ve never seen any of it before. Ever since I overheard my parents talking last week, my entire world feels foreign.

I cannot wait any longer or I know I might change my mind. Swiping a long lock of straight, blond hair away from my face, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and try to muster what little courage I can.

It’s such a normal thing, stepping through the door, something I’ve done a million times. But this time it feels so unnormal, like it’s not me, not my legs—someone else. Not me. When I close it behind me I feel an errant rush of wind through the cave; it washes over my face, my arms, through my hair, as if the unlikely breeze is cleansing me, washing away the sins that are mine by association. Having left the house in which my parents are still sleeping, I feel cleaner already.

They’re not good people. I can’t stay here anymore.

With practiced steps I zigzag through the rock garden in our front yard. Most moon dwellers can’t afford to waste perfectly good stones for decoration—but my parents are not most moon dwellers. Now that I know why my family is so wealthy amongst such poverty, seeing the polished and shiny stones makes me sick to my stomach.

It’s still too early for the broad overhead cavern lights to be on, but I don’t risk illuminating my flashlight for fear of drawing the attention of one of the Enforcers that roam our subchapter at all times. This deep below the earth’s surface, we don’t get much electricity anyway, so I’m used to seeing in the dark. But still, I take extra caution with each step, being careful not to stub my toe or kick a loose stone.

As I exit our walled-in property, I feel the pace of my heartbeat pick up. Although I’m walking slowly, my heart is racing. I might be walking, but in my heart I’m running away.

I’m running away.

I’m.

Running.

Away.

The words feel prickly in my mind and I wince as the dull throb of a headache starts in my left temple. I feel a trickle of sweat slide intimately down my back beneath my gray tunic. Ignoring the sweat, my racing heart, and the icy stab of the truest words I’ve ever thought in my head, I take another deep breath, reposition my shoulder satchel, and walk faster, stepping on the tips of my feet to remain as quiet as possible.

The night is quiet.

The neighborhood I grew up in, played in, made friends in, disappears beneath the soles of my boots, like the cool night air vanishes in the wake of the wings of a bat. With each step I gain strength in both my legs and my heart. Another suburban block slides away behind me.

My goal is to make it to the train station before the morning rush. Then, when the mass exodus of workers seeking work begins from our faltering subchapter, I might be able to blend into the crowds and escape the roving eyes of intra-Realm security. I bought my ticket in advance, which doesn’t require an intra-Realm travel authorization; however, when I go through security I’ll be required to provide my pass. Unfortunately, there’s no way a sixteen-year-old girl would be granted such authorization, so I was forced to hurriedly purchase a cheap fake from a shady guy at school.

I hope it’ll pass the scrutiny of the security guards.

Travelling intra-Realm without authorization is a serious offense that automatically requires time in the Pen, our local branch of the Moon Realm juvenile detention system. A lot of kids that go in there don’t come out alive. My best friend, Cole, got sent there three months ago when an Enforcer tried to rape his sister. Cole killed the guy, but then his buddies killed Cole’s sister and parents. They sent him to the Pen for life.

I still cry for him sometimes at night, especially after I get one of his letters and I miss him all over again. If I do end up in the Pen, at least I’ll get to see him.

I’m not sure what I’ll do if I get out of subchapter 14. I guess I’ll just keep running, moving from underground city to underground city, until things cool off and my parents and the authorities forget all about me. Then I’ll try to make things right with the girl named Adele Rose.

My thoughts are running amok and I know it, but I can’t seem to turn them off as I turn a corner, cutting a path through the back roads that will eventually get me to the heart of the city, where the train station lies. The strange route will add twenty minutes to my trip, but might protect me from the Enforcers.

In the darkness of a rarely travelled street, I feel somewhat safe, which is the first lesson I’ll learn out on my own: you’re never safe.

Feeling safe, I pass right by a stone stoop that sits just off the road at the front of a small house. There’s a flash of red in my peripheral vision and I jerk my head to see what caused it. That’s when I smell the bitter smoke from a freshly lit cigarette. My eyes zero in on the scene before me, taking in every awful detail before my brain can put it all together. Two men, both smoking, gazing off to the side, away from me, smoke curling around their heads. One of them is an Enforcer, dressed in bright sun dweller red, a gun and a sword hanging awkwardly from his belt as he sits on the steps, one knee raised higher than the other. An open door revealing the soft glow of candlelight.

Engrossed in their own thoughts, they haven’t seen me yet, staring absently out onto the small front patio.

You’re never safe.

But I do have half a chance because they’re oblivious to my presence. My heart pounding in my chest, I back away slowly, retracing my steps in reverse, holding my breath as I move further and further from their field of vision.

Three steps from safety.

The non-Enforcer—a moon dweller who likely owns the house and trades cigarettes to the Enforcer in exchange for freedom from persecution—can no longer see me, as I move behind a wall.

Two steps.

The angle of the wall is such that I can still see the Enforcer, the crimson of his uniform like a warning beacon on the edge of my vision.

One step.

As if some inner instinct alerts him to my presence, his head snaps to the side and his black eyes lock on mine. He smiles.

I run.

Although I can’t see him, my ears pick up the scuff and scrape of his shoes on stone as he moves off the stoop. He’s not wasting any time coming after me, probably already feeling the excitement of the chase that will add some fun to his boring night. Maybe a juvenile girl breaking curfew is about the most excitement he ever gets, who knows? My only chance: get out of sight as quickly as possible. I might not be a fighter, but I am a runner.

I hear a shout as I cut a hard right down an alleyway. It’s the obvious move, but the only one available. Lengthening my already-long strides, I abandon my quiet footsteps and thunder down the narrow path between the houses. The alley is longer than I’d like, and I know the Enforcer will enter it before I get to the end.

Get out of sight.

I listen to my own advice and swerve to the left, using a hand on the top of a chain-link fence to propel myself over it. Landing in a crouch on the other side, I make for a gap between the houses, cringing as I hear the rattling of the metal fence in my wake. I feel a sting of pain and warmth on my hand from the sharp barbs at the top of the fence, but I bite it back and dash to the front of the house.

I don’t have time to open the front gate so I hurdle that, too, stumbling when I land awkwardly on the street. Keep moving, I urge myself, using my uninjured hand to catch my balance. From the property I just exited, I hear another shout, this one closer. Despite my efforts, the Enforcer is catching up.

Doing my best to ignore a twinge of pain in my ankle and the burning in my hand, I sprint down the road, running faster than I ever have before, my breathing ragged and gasping, my heart like a jackhammer in my chest. Up ahead there’s an alley on the right and one on the left. Although it shouldn’t be, it feels like a crucial decision. Right or left. Freedom or capture. Neither feels right as I approach the intersection, but I lean toward the left and prepare to dive in that direction, hopefully before the Enforcer gets out onto the road.

Just as I bend my knees and start to push off with my feet, I feel a rough hand grab a handful of my tunic and yank me hard to the right. Unless the Enforcer has been blessed with inhuman speed, it cannot be him; more likely it’s another Enforcer that I didn’t see or that was radioed in by his buddy. Either way, I’m toast.

And then I’m in the alley to the right, a firm hand over my mouth, kicking and clawing and bucking like a wild animal, desperately trying to get loose. A harsh voice hisses in my ear. “Quit yer fightin’ or that Enfo will catch the both of us!”

I have no reason to obey the voice, but instinctively I do. I guess I’ve just always been a rule follower, not one to disobey an order. The second I calm down, the hand moves away from my lips and clamps around my arm, urgently pulling me further into the alley and behind a dumpster. I try to get a look at my captor (hero?) but all I get is a flash of thick, long dark hair attached to a sturdy frame. He’s dressed in all black, nearly invisible even to my used-to-the-dark eyes.

He turns to face me and I catch a glimpse of a very young-looking face, before he whispers, “Under here,” and throws a thick blanket over the both of us, casting us into darkness. “Get down,” he commands.

I’m not sure how a blanket will protect us, but I have no choice but to trust this young stranger, who seems just as intent on avoiding detection by the Enforcer. I sprawl out on the rock alleyway, unconcerned with getting scraped and dirty. The guy with the young face is closer to me than I’ve ever been to a boy, and instantly I feel warm—hot even. The heat might have been slightly pleasant, if not for the putrid odor of rotting garbage that assaults my nostrils.

But now is not the time to complain, so I do my best to breathe through my nose and remain perfectly still. We’re in place not a moment too soon, as we hear the pound of boots on rock, a pause, and then urgent footfalls heading right for us.

They get closer and closer until I swear he’s about to step on us, and then stop with a suddenness that throws my heart into a frenzy. There’s heavy breathing and a grumbling voice. “If I find you, you freaking little blond-haired bitch, we’ll have a little fun before I turn you in, you mark my words. Damn strays, always making things harder than they have to be.” There’s a clang that almost makes me jump out of my skin as the Enforcer opens the dumpster lid. He’s literally right next to us, searching through the garbage in case we’re hiding inside. But why doesn’t he see the blanket with the two human lumps under it?

After a few minutes of rummaging in the garbage, the lid slams shut with a frustrated bang! and the guy mumbles, “…might just have to kill you for putting me through all this trouble…” before scuffing away, his footsteps becoming more and more distant until they disappear into the night altogether.

Neither of us move or speak for what feels like hours, our bodies close and warm and covered in a haze of nose-plugging odor.