Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,34

its door, and began wrenching at it.

Wendy spared a moment from watching Curly try to break into the car to witness the aftermath of the most dramatic act of crime she’d seen in real life. All the law enforcement that had previously been focused on detaining the kids on the ground had adjusted their level of alarm to calling for backup, screaming into their walkie talkies, and peeling off in their cars or running toward the explosion on foot. As curious people began making their way over to see what was making all the light and noise, only to start screaming and coughing from the smoke, the remaining police began to focus on crowd control.

Wendy realized that Curly was tugging on her sleeve.

“Cut their zip ties off,” he said.

“What?” Wendy asked dazedly. She realized the people who had been lying on the ground in the throes of being arrested were crouched on the same side of the cop car as they were. They were about high school–aged and looked as terrified as Wendy felt.

Curly handed her a wicked-looking pair of gardening shears. “Come on! We don’t have much time. They’re minors and they didn’t do anything.”

“We don’t know that!” Wendy cried, but Curly was no longer listening to her. He had backed up about ten feet from the cop car, then without warning, sprinted back at it, leaping at the last minute. He flew at a horizontal angle, slamming the bottoms of his feet against the bar wedged in the door with breathtaking athleticism and accuracy. The car door gave a groan of protest before hanging at a looser angle, but still firmly shut. Curly landed hard on the pavement. He groaned in pain, but scraped himself up off the ground, anyway. Then he grabbed the bar tight in his fists and wrenched again, this time with all his might. The bandanna over his mouth and nose had fallen and revealed his face, still soft with baby fat, teeth clenched in a grimace of effort, eyes pressed shut. He pulled so hard an involuntary screech escaped his throat.

Then with a noise quieter than Wendy would have thought, the police car door cracked open, and the girl inside flew out and right into Tinkerbelle’s arms. They pressed foreheads together, Omi cupping Tinkerbelle’s jaw in both hands, an inch away from a kiss. Tinkerbelle swooned against her, sobbing something Wendy couldn’t hear, looking more tender than Wendy could ever have imagined the icy girl who had painted her face and shouted at her in the street could look.

“Oh my God, dude, please!” one of the guys behind Wendy begged, his eyes wide with terror. “I just got a college scholarship, and all we did was walk out of the train station, and they said we were witnesses or something. I can’t get arrested. My parents will kill me. Please. Please!” He looked like he was on the verge of tears, so Wendy numbly started working on cutting his zip ties off.

Curly was standing there, looking at Tinkerbelle and Omi with the gentlest expression. He put his arms around the pair and held them as they rocked back and forth in relief. He kissed Omi on the top of her head and curved his arm up so he could cup the back of Tinkerbelle’s skull in his hand.

“This nice, but we need to leave from here,” one of the boys on the ground said in a heavy Russian accent when Wendy finally got to him last. The instant his hands were freed, he leaned over and smacked Curly on the back, hard. “Focus,” he said firmly.

Curly pulled away from Omi and Tinkerbelle, looking a bit dazed for a moment, and then his vision sharpened. He tilted his head to listen, then started walking away from the car.

“Don’t run,” the Russian said to Wendy in a conversational tone. “Draws attention.”

Wendy looked over her shoulder, and the other boys were following at the same pace, occasionally glancing over at Curly like he was their savior and a demon at the same time. They blended in with the crowd that had come to watch the explosion, as they walked up Broadway to Lawrence Avenue. Wendy tried not to look around too desperately, thinking hard about how she looked and wishing she hadn’t let Tinkerbelle decorate her face so ostentatiously. Behind them, over the sounds of people yelling and cop car sirens and fire truck sirens, there was the flash of green light and the boom of