“So they cracked down on it?”
“Right. Most of the social networking sites are gone, and all of the e-mail services are required to monitor the e-mails being sent on their servers.” He turned to the other boys, who were staring at me with varying degrees of interest and curiosity. I don’t think Kevin—or was it Kyle?—had stopped staring at me the entire time I had sat there.
“How, then?”
“Easy,” Greg said, with a highly unnecessary wink in my direction. “We used what was left. I put an ad in my hometown paper with a message only my brother would get.”
I didn’t need to look to know that Chubs had narrowed his eyes. He tensed beside me. “And who paid for this ad? The editors didn’t just let you put that in there for free, did they?”
“No, the Slip Kid paid,” Greg said. “He set everything up for me.”
I sat up straight, kicking aside some of the empty foil wrappers. “You’ve actually been in contact with the Slip Kid?”
“Oh yes. He’s like…a god,” Collins said, his breath rushing out. “He gathered all of us together. Kids from all over New England and the South. Every color. Older kids, young ones, too. They say that the PSFs stay away from his court in the woods because they’re afraid of him. That he set his camp on fire and killed all the PSFs sent to bring him back.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
The four of them grinned at one another, the jumping shadows from the emergency lights making them look even smugger.
“What else?” Chubs said, sucking all of this down eagerly. “How was he able to send the money for the ad? What’s East River like—where is it?”
I glanced back over my shoulder to Liam, who stood behind me, leaning against what used to be a TV dinner freezer. He’d been strangely quiet the entire time, his lips pressed tight together, but his face otherwise perfectly devoid of emotion.
“They have a sweet setup at East River,” Collins said. “But if you want to get to East River, you have to find it for yourself.”
“Sounds that way,” Liam said, finally. “Are there a lot of kids there?”
The four of them had to think about this. “More than a hundred, but not, like, in the thousands,” Greg said. “Why?”
Liam shook his head, but I was surprised to see a hint of disappointment there. “Just wondering. Most never were in camps, I take it?”
“Some.” Greg shrugged. “And some found it after dodging skip tracer or PSF custody.”
“And the Slip Kid—he doesn’t have…” Liam seemed to struggle to figure out how to ask his question. “He doesn’t have plans for them, does he? What’s his endgame?”
The others seemed to find the question as strange as I did. It wasn’t until Greg said, “No endgame. Just livin’, I guess,” that I realized I hadn’t once thought about the reason why Liam would be looking for the Slip Kid. I’d just assumed that he and the others wanted to find him to get home and to deliver Jack’s letter—but if that really was the case, what had sparked the fire in Liam’s eyes? His hands were stuffed in his jacket pockets, but I could see the outline of them curling into fists.
“What about directions?” I asked.
“Well, now.” Something changed in Greg’s expression; a slick smile took over his face as his free hand landed on my foot. The brothers, Kyle and Kevin, hadn’t said a word since we’d sat down in their makeshift encampment in the freezer aisles, but now looked at each other with identical expressions of knowing. I tried to gulp back the revulsion rising in me.
“I’m sure they’d be happy to have you,” Greg said, his fingers sliding up from my shoe to stroke my ankle. I started to push away but stopped when he added, “It’s in a really great location near the coast, but there just aren’t a whole lot of girls. They could use something so…nice to look at.”
His fingers moved again, tracing a line up my calf. “You should go. It’s safer than getting caught by one of the tribes. There’s a group of Blue kids that hangs out around Norfolk—they’re nasty. Steal the clothes right off your back. There was a tribe of Yellows around here for a while, but a kid we were in camp with claims they were all taken in by PSFs.”
All of this tribe stuff was new to me. Kids banding together and roving the countryside, trying to avoid getting caught, taking care of one another? Amazing.
Greg’s warm, fleshy palm continued its ascent until it swallowed up my knee and squeezed—and that was as far as he was ever going to get. I felt the trickle at the back of my mind, the buzz that pushed past even my anger, and had to close my eyes at the flash of images that followed. A glimpse of a shining yellow shell of a school bus coming down a dirt road. A woman’s blurry face, her mouth moving in silent song. A campfire flaring up into the night sky. The faces of Kevin and Kyle leaning close to what looked like a clock radio, in the middle of a trashed electronics store; the numbers on the clock’s face were climbing, but not counting time. They lit an electric green glow in the dark—310, 400, 460, 500, until it finally stopped on—
My hand clenched into a fist as I started to detach from both Greg and his silky swarm of memories, but Chubs was already there. He reached across my lap and began to peel Greg’s fingers off, one by one, with a look of pure disdain. For his part, Greg only looked slightly dazed, his eyes glassy, unaware of what I had just done. I glanced around wildly, my heart lodged somewhere between my mouth and chest, but no one seemed to have noticed my slip. The only one who moved was Chubs, and it was just to scoot closer to me.
Damn it, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut again. One hand drifted up to press against my forehead, as if I could hold back the invisible fingers there by force. Too close. That was way too close.
“What was that kid’s name again? The Yellow who worked with us in the kitchen? Fred? Frank?” Collins lay back on his sleeping bag, folding his hands over his chest.
“Felipe—Felipe Marino?” Greg’s eyes came back into full focus and continued up my legs, past where his hand had been allowed.
“Felipe?” Liam interrupted, as if coming out of a trance. “Did you say Felipe Marco?”
“You know him?”
Liam nodded. “We traveled together for a while.”
“Must have been before he got his ass caught here,” Greg said. “He was the one that told us about this place. Said he was here with his friend—that you?”
“Yeah. What happened to him?” Liam knelt, wedging himself between Greg and me. “They brought us to separate camps.”
Greg shrugged. “He was in one of the earlier buses they were taking to Maryland. Who knows?”
So the Yellows at their camp had been removed, too. They must have only been taken from the bigger camps, not the smaller ones that had been cobbled together farther west.
“I miss that kid. He was smart. Knew how to use his powers—better than your pet, at least. Might as well send her back for all the good she’s going to do for you.” Greg nodded toward Zu, who was sitting with her back to us, working through the pages of multiplication problems Liam had made for her.
And that was about as much as I could take.
“You have two seconds to tell me you’re kidding,” I said, “or I’m punching you in the face.”
“Do it,” Chubs hissed beside me.
But Liam put a firm hand on my shoulder, effectively shutting down any chance I had of making good on my threat. He kept his face passive, easygoing, but his breath hitched in his throat. He stretched his fingers out, brushing them against mine on the floor. I jolted at the touch but couldn’t bring myself to pull away.
Greg held up his hands. “All I’m saying is there’s something off about her. She’s not like the others, is she?” He leaned closer. “Is she retarded? Did they do testing on her?”
“She’s mute, not deaf,” Liam cut in smoothly. “And I promise you, she’s probably five times smarter than the seven of us put together.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Chubs began. “I’m—”