The girl shrugged. “She hung out here.”
Somehow I managed not to grab her shoulders and shake her till her teeth rattled. “Then. What,” I said tightly.
“She left,” the girl said. “Like around two, two thirty.”
“Where did she go?”
The door opened wider and another guy stood there. He had shaggy blond hair and needed a shave.
“Lookin’ for Becca? I heard her say she was going to the Boundary, man,” he said, shaking his head.
“The Boundary?” I felt like I’d been punched. “Why would she do that?”
The guy shrugged. “’Cause she’s Becca.”
Well, he had me there.
“So at two in the morning she headed out to the Boundary?” I asked. “Did anyone see her actually try to cross the Boundary?”
The blond guy nodded. “Taylor went with her. Like they were daring each other. Egging each other on. He was on his moped, and Becca had the truck.”
My truck.
“Did Taylor come back, or is he missing, too?” My heart was beating fast and my mind was racing.
“Naw, Taylor’s back,” said the first guy.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
The first guy opened the door wide enough for me to go in.
“Taylor’s here?” My voice was thin and screechy.
“He’s downstairs,” said the girl, and drifted into another room toward the back of the house.
Inside, the house was just as creepy as outside. The tall guy led me through one dark room after another. I was aware of several people sitting on broken-down furniture, either sleeping or drinking silently, or watching a Cell News show with no sound.
The tall guy opened a door and gestured down: these were cellar stairs, and they led into total blackness. And it was only then that I realized that there might not be a Taylor at all, and that maybe I’d made a really stupid mistake.
14
BECCA
OUR PRISON ROOM HAD FOUR narrow metal beds. There were five of us in here. As the newbie, I was elected to sleep on the cold concrete floor. I was already in so much pain that it didn’t really make it worse.
Another fun thing: we had a tiny metal sink that dripped constantly. Around 2:00 in the morning I decided they made it drip on purpose to drive us totally batshit. And it was working.
There was one toilet, just a metal bowl attached to the wall. No seat, no lid. One toilet out in the open, and there were three girls and two aim-deficient guys in here. It was enough to make you want to hold it, like, forever.
I’d been gone a long time. Cassie must be frantic. Frantic and super pissed. If she were missing, I’d be flipping out. Since it was Cassie and I was missing, I knew she was doubly flipping out. That’s how she is. Sorry, Cass.
Anyway, between the concrete floor, worrying about Cassie, and my various bruises and injuries, I got almost no sleep last night.
Around 6:00 the big gate down at the end of the hall screeched open. The noise woke Robin, and she quickly leaned down to me. “I meant to tell you,” she whispered, “the first thing they’ll do is test you.”
“On what?” I whispered back.
“Everything,” she said urgently. “Do as best as you can. How well you do determines how you’re treated.”
The footsteps were getting closer. Maybe two guys with boots? Three?
“How you’re treated, how much you get to eat, and how long you get to live,” Robin hissed, then turned her back and pretended to be asleep.
Oh. So, no pressure.
Sure enough, the guards stopped in front of our rusty sliding door. One of them pointed a beefy finger at me.
“You. Get up. It’s time.”
I pretended not to know what he meant. “Time for breakfast?”
“Just get up.”
He unlocked the door and pulled it open wide enough for me to get out. The other guard immediately spun me around and clamped handcuffs around my wrists. I saw Robin, and the other kids now, too, watching silently. Robin gave me a very, very tiny thumbs-up. I didn’t react—didn’t want to get her in trouble.
Then the guards were hauling me down the row to… I had no idea what.
15
THERE WAS THAT FAMILIAR PRE-HURL feeling—the sudden clamminess, the extra spit in my mouth, the tunnel vision.
I stopped walking. The guards clamped onto my arms and dragged me forward. I pressed my lips together and swallowed a bunch of times.
Robin had said we were on death row. Were they taking me to be executed? Was I going to die without knowing why, without saying good-bye to my sister, or even Pa? Suddenly I felt like I had wasted a lot of years.
Actually, it turned out to be worse than death: I was strong-armed into a classroom.
I wasn’t an enthusiastic student when not in prison, so death row wasn’t going to up the scholarly factor. Still, the guards plunked me down in a chair behind a desk and took the cuffs off me. I rubbed my wrists, feeling the zip tie cuts start to bleed again.
Everyone’s favorite warden, Ms. Strepp, strode into the classroom and motioned for the guards to stand in the back. Today she was wearing an olive-green suit with pants and looked sort of military.
She gave me a good glare, then turned and wrote on the whiteboard at the front of the room. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela.
My eyes narrowed. I had no idea who this Nelson Mandela guy was, or what he had to do with life at home in the cell.
“You will now be tested on some core subjects,” Ms. Strepp said, handing me a test booklet and a pencil. “Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are crucial for our society today. Let’s see how much you were paying attention during the years you received free schooling at the United’s expense.”
Robin had said that how well I did on these tests would determine how long I lived. Well, I was already dead, because none of these were my strong suit. Sure, I had passed the initial testing for my electrician’s license, but basically the only good that did me was teach me how to hot-wire Cassie’s truck. The truck that had been abandoned on the boundary road, and had no doubt been confiscated by now. If these tests didn’t kill me, if I wasn’t executed, then I knew my sister would definitely have my head on a pike when she found out I’d lost her truck.
Things were not looking up.
I met Ms. Strepp’s eyes calmly. “I haven’t eaten in more than a day. There’s no way I can concentrate on this stuff.”
Her face turned to concrete. She motioned one of the guards to come up, and my heart started pounding as I braced to get hit. “This man has a Taser,” Ms. Strepp said icily. “You will start taking the test, or he will tase you. Have you ever been tased?”
I shook my head.