Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,34
by immovable walls. My eyes go wide as I reach out in front of me and hit a ceiling that’s just as close. My heart begins to race, and my lungs stop working altogether as I pat and slap and thrash against the box I’m locked inside of.
I kick the roof of my prison, hearing a metallic bang with every blow.
Then, I hear a similar banging coming from the other side.
“Help!” I scream, kicking harder. “I’m trapped! Help!”
“Pull the handle, dumbass!” a familiar voice calls back through the steel.
Handle?
Handle!
I reach up and feel around until I find a cord with a plastic grip attached. Then, I pull it as hard as I can. The trunk lid pops open, and morning sunlight blinds me as the events of last night come back in a rush—getting a ride from the Bonys to the capitol, getting swarmed by junkies and dealers and prostitutes as soon as they left, deciding to hide in the trunk of a wrecked Dodge Charger so that I could actually get some sleep.
Guess it worked.
As I sit up and stretch my arms over my head, I groan in appreciation. My muscles feel the kind of sore that only comes from a really good night’s sleep.
The gold dome of the capitol building looms over Lamar’s head as a steady stream of homeless, strung-out Atlantans shuffle past us on the sidewalk. Quint fits right in as he walks over from the busted blue Toyota he spent the night in. He’s been wearing the same clothes since April 23, his once-tightly-cropped hair is overgrown and matted, and for the first time in his life, he has a beard.
“Gotdamn, woman.” Lamar chuckles. “It’s, like, ten in the mornin’. I was about to bust in there to make sure you wasn’t dead.”
“Not dead yet.” I yawn. “How’d you guys sleep?”
“Like shit,” Quint and Lamar complain in unison.
Quint rolls his neck, careful not to stretch the side with the bandage too far, as Lamar sits down on the bumper next to me.
“Next time we decide to sleep in abandoned cars,” he huffs, “I’m findin’ me a Caddy or a Lincoln or somethin’ with some legroom.”
“Boy, you’re the same height as Rain,” Quint teases.
I grab my duffel bag out of the trunk and slam it shut.
“Not for long! I got them growin’ pains. I’mma be taller than Carter pretty soon!”
My stomach sours at the mention of his name. I drop the bag on the trunk lid and pull out a couple of cans of soup, each one less appetizing than the one before it, but Lamar snatches the chicken and dumplings like it’s made of solid gold.
“Dibs on the dumplin’s!”
When the Bonys offered to give us a ride down here last night, I managed to shove all the groceries I got from Huckabee Foods into my duffel bag before climbing onto the back of a perfect stranger’s dirt bike. I should have been terrified as we zigzagged through the crowded streets of Atlanta, but it just reminded me of the days I spent hugging Wes on the back of his dirt bike as we tore up the woods in Franklin Springs, looking for a bomb shelter.
Before I knew it, they were dropping us off right in front of the capitol building with nothing more than a, “Fuck ’em up, y’all,” and a pat on the back.
And here we are. We’ve got supplies, shelter, and a means of self-defense.
If only we had a damn can opener. The one I got from home was still in Agnes’s purse when it got stolen.
After scouring the abandoned cars nearby for tools and coming up empty, we end up trading a can of Mexican chicken and rice soup to an exceptionally crazy-looking homeless guy in exchange for the use of his sword.
Yeah, I said sword.
Over breakfast, the Jones brothers and I decide to start our search for Wes at the capitol building. Not for any real reason other than the fact that we are sitting right in front of it. As we walk up to the front steps, past marble life-size statues of men on horseback and toward actual, real-life men holding machine guns, I begin to get cold feet.
I stop in the middle of the cobblestone walkway and turn to face the guys.
“Uh … Rain? You okay?”
“What are we doing?” I whisper, trying to catch my breath. “The place is surrounded by cops. We can’t just walk through the front door.”
“First of all, we haven’t done anything wrong, and second