“What?” I said, straightening up in mock offense. “You don’t find thriftiness exciting?”
“Not as exciting as extravagance.”
“Come on, then,” I said. “We can watch some of the rich people eat sandwiches.”
Ten minutes later we were back in the laundry room, spitting out sunflower shells and watching the news on a TV in the corner. I switched the washed clothes into the dryer and dropped in eight quarters. Nineteen dollars and thirty-two cents. The money was going too fast, and if we couldn’t rely on Potash’s depots to replenish it, we’d be completely broke in just a couple of weeks. What would we do after that?
“Somebody got shot,” said Brooke, jutting her chin toward the TV.
“That happens,” I said, but I wasn’t really paying attention. What if Rain was the last Withered? We didn’t really know how many there were and we thought some were chasing us, but we didn’t know for sure. And Brooke couldn’t find any more in Nobody’s memories. If we could kill Rain inside of four weeks, we could go ahead and run out of money and then just … what? Settle down somewhere? Turn ourselves in? We couldn’t keep this up forever.
“Drug bust,” said Brooke.
“Cities suck,” I said.
“It’s not a city,” she laughed, “it’s like a … village. Look at that place, it’s smaller than Clayton.”
“Little towns suck, too,” I said, looking up at the TV. Something about a tiny community in Kentucky.
“Everywhere sucks,” said Brooke gruffly, crunching on a carrot. “The whole world is garbage.” I looked at her, leery of any depressive language from her, but she was smiling, and laughed again when she saw me looking. “Rah, darkness, pain, rah.” She laughed again.
I rolled my eyes as dramatically as possible and went back to my plans. Would it be so bad to turn ourselves in? Once all the Withered were dead, and we could go back to a normal life—whatever that meant? Could we just let whoever was chasing us catch up? Could we walk into a police station and tell them who we were? Even if there were warrants out for me, which I doubted, I’d just end up back at the FBI. They knew where I came from and they’d understand that I’ve only been doing exactly what they told me to do. After yelling at me a bit for doing it without them they’d calm down and let me get on with my life. Maybe. Or maybe I’d end up in prison for the rest of my life, and Brooke in a nut house. I couldn’t let that happen. She needed me.
And if I was being honest, I think I needed her. Sitting here, talking, joking, I felt more normal than I had in ages. Even with all the running and hiding and stalking and killing, I felt more normal with her than I’d ever felt in my life. That said a lot. She was a friend like I’d never had before, not just a relative or a crush or a convenient acquaintance, but a real friend. Someone I could share everything with, and who shared everything with me. Sitting here, thinking about losing her and all of this ending, I realized that I didn’t want it to. I didn’t like who I was without her.
She made me less afraid of myself.
But was I as good for her as she was for me?
We needed to get back on the road, some way they couldn’t follow us. Hitchhiking wasn’t working, but we couldn’t afford anything else.
“Knife attack,” said Brooke.
“Then somebody’s having more fun than I am,” I said.
“No,” she said, and something in her voice was different. “John, look.”
A new personality? I looked at her, and saw that her brow was deeply furrowed. Something was very wrong. I looked up at the TV and saw nighttime footage of some cops walking in and out of a small house. Brick with wooden siding. A gray pickup truck sat in the driveway.
“It’s Dylan,” she said. “That kid from the … with the gun.”
“Dylan?” I peered at the screen, trying to read the titles along the bottom. “Dillon,” I said, recognizing the shape of the word. “The town we were just in. The kid with the gun was Derek.”
“He’s dead,” said Brooke, and the TV showed another shot—no body, just a room drenched in blood, the floor and the walls and everything else, parts of it covered with a blanket or marked with forensic tags. Whatever had happened had been brutal.
“Derek?” I asked, and then the news showed a picture of his face. It was definitely him.
Brooke nodded, her face pale. “Somebody cut him into pieces. The scroll on the bottom said it was almost a hundred.”
Derek was dead. We’d been convinced that Dillon was clean, that there were no Withered there—but now Derek was dead. The first murder the little town had seen in …
Oh no.
“Somebody followed us,” I said.
Brooke practically leaped off the bench, whirling around to look at the door. “How do we get out?”
“Not here,” I said. “Or at least not yet.” I gestured at the TV. “This happened last night, so whoever did it hasn’t gotten this far.”
“Then it wasn’t Iowa, either,” said Brooke.