Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,35
another explosion that followed as Peter presumably threw another Molotov firework. Wendy flinched, and Curly reached back and pulled her in front of him, protectively.
The instant they turned the corner, Curly started picking up speed until he was jogging.
“He’s going for the bus!” one of the boys exclaimed, and they all ran behind him. Curly smacked the side of a bus with a flat hand, and the doors that had been on the verge of closing reopened. Curly jumped inside, then stuck his hand out, waving for them to follow quickly. Wendy thanked God and also Jesus that she’d worn tennis shoes and forced her aching legs to continue churning until she was safely clinging to the pole just inside the bus’s front door. Curly pulled his wallet out of his jacket and slid two twenties into the meter.
The bus driver, a rotund and serious-looking Black man, eyed the group of children warily. His eyes slid from Wendy’s garish makeup to the welts on the other kids’ wrists to Tinkerbelle and Omi holding hands tightly, landing at last on the tool with which Curly had wrenched open the cop car door. A tool which, in the hand of a teenager and not a locksmith, was clearly only to be used for mayhem. Then, with a sigh, he decided to mind his business and close the door. The bus pulled away from the street.
Wendy’s heart felt like it was about to slam right out of her chest. She needed to sit down, and she needed to sit down now. She pushed through the group, made her way to the back of the bus, and collapsed into an empty seat. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, covered her face with her arm, and focused on breathing hard enough to get oxygen back into her tired muscles. There were so many horrifying things happening that her thoughts were reduced to only the most banal, probably as a psychological shield to protect her from going completely to pieces. Currently she was thinking about how she needed to start working out more. She’d probably done what was equal only to about a mile of running and walking, but physically, she felt like she was about to die.
Fabric brushed her leg and Wendy cracked her eyes open. The rest of the group had settled around her, completely filling the seats in the back, Curly and the Russian on her left side, Tinkerbelle and Omi on her right, and three other boys split between the two forward-facing seats right in front.
Now that Wendy was finally catching her breath, she did some inventory of the people she’d released from police custody.
Omi was gazing at her with a lot more concern than someone who had only recently been in a cop car should have for someone else. She, like the rest of the group, looked about seventeen years old. She was wearing black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt with a matching blazer over it, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her black hair was parted down the center, and she had one side braid tied off with a thin red ribbon. She looked like she was on her way to an art gallery, not like she’d left the house specifically to run around in the streets.
In fact, all the kids were dressed nicely.
The Russian boy was in actual dress pants, although he had a T-shirt on and no jacket. To Wendy’s amusement, his blond hair was combed back into a pompadour. He was clearly trying to look charmingly vintage, and if Wendy was honest with herself, it was working. He was also the tallest of them and seemed the most laid-back about what had happened, his legs propped up on the chair in front of him as he gazed out the window.
The least laid-back about what had happened had to be the boy who had begged her to cut off his zip ties. He was openly weeping into the shoulder of the boy sitting next to him. He, too, was dressed fashionably in a slender-cut denim button-up shirt, with chinos rolled up at the bottom. He was African American, and like the rest of them, he was very muscular and stocky.
His friend, an Asian boy who seemed quietly shaken, had on a white dress shirt and dark jeans. He looked self-conscious about comforting his friend and was pointedly looking away, but he kept his arm firmly wrapped around his crying friend’s shoulder.
The last boy