Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,20

to her family who loves her so we can have a nice and reasonable parent supervised first meetup. Maybe you’ll get lucky??? Or something???? Please just get this situation sorted

Wendy: FINE fine yeah, I’ll do it.

Eleanor: you had Better

Wendy put her phone back in her pocket and took a deep breath. Then she stood up and looked around for a cop who didn’t look intimidating. There was one across the street that seemed kind of mom-ish. Late fifties, short, and kind of pudgy. She seemed like a good bet. Gambling with the police state, here we come.

Wendy swung her leg out to start in that direction when a hand covered her mouth and several others pulled her backward. She tried to turn around to figure out who was grabbing her, but before she could, they wrapped a T-shirt over her head and shoved its fabric in her mouth.

Wendy screamed, but the cloth muffled it. The deafening noise of the police and the crowd drowned out everything else, anyway. The hands held her upper arms in a firm grip, dragging her down the alley and up too many stairs for her to count. Her assailants were silent and seemed organized. She could tell there were more than three of them, and they didn’t seem to need to communicate to get things done. After a disorienting ride in what felt like an elevator and a few stomach-churning jaunts down and up flights of stairs, making sure she couldn’t identify which direction she’d come from, Wendy was pushed down into a hard metal seat. Her arms and legs were tied to the chair firmly before her assailants ripped the T-shirt off her head and pushed it back into her mouth.

CHAPTER 6

The first thing Wendy noticed was the incredible mess. Or maybe clutter was the right word … Either way, she was in a kitchen. There was art tacked up all over the walls to the point where none of the original surface was in sight. The art was a mix of finger paintings, crayon drawings, and surprisingly high-quality pencil sketches, all together like a giant mural. A massive sculptural arrangement of glass bottles of many colors hung from the ceiling, twisting from the entryway into the kitchen and back out of the room. The bottles were tinkling lightly, and the street light coming in from the window was throwing specks of brightness off their glass. It was stunning, and Wendy wished she could look more closely, but only the bottoms of the bottles were visible from where she was sitting. There was a stack of dishes by the sink and crates of plants stacked in the corners. On one side of the room was a massive pile of cans sorted by type into jagged towers, like stalagmites. On the other side was a large table that looked handmade out of two doors stuck together, with at least ten chairs around it. There was so much stuff crowding the space, but all of it was neatly arranged. Not exactly organized, but delicately placed, almost like an art project, for the pleasure of the viewer.

The second thing Wendy noticed was the children. Or teenagers, to be specific.

There were seven of them, ranging in age from ten to about seventeen, if she guessed correctly. The younger four children sat by her arms and legs, looking ready to grab her if she began to struggle. The three oldest were standing in front of her, having the strangest screaming match that Wendy had ever had the displeasure to witness.

“The boys were in the streets?” the first boy said angrily. “At this time of night and with the pirates swarming?” He looked like he might be the youngest of the three, but clearly too old for “grab her” duty. He was African American, with smooth dark skin and slender eyes. Unlike the others in the room, who were in varying levels of disarray, he was dressed in an expensive-looking black turtleneck and black jeans. He also had an apron on and a plastic soup ladle in his hand. His voice was soft and rich, but he was clearly just as angry as the other two.

The boy directly next to him reared back, scandalized. “Fuck you, Slightly, you didn’t have to make that decision. What Peter says—” This boy, the loudest of the three, was much taller than both Slightly and the redheaded boy on the other side of him, and skinny. His pants were too small for him, and