UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,60
for good. He never said good-bye or left any sort of explanation. Let them wonder, he thought. Let them wonder why their straight-A, college-bound son disappeared. Let them cry the tears they should have cried for Ryan.
He told no one he was leaving—not even his friends. He was there one day, and the next he was on the other side of the planet. He suspected his brother had a similar problem, only more divided.
That was a month ago. Now he wanders the streets of Bangkok, in that dizzying place between possible futures.
He peels one of the lychees and takes a bite, its sweet flavor unlike anything he could get in the West. Looking around, he takes notice of how many obvious AWOLs he sees in this part of town. Many of them are adults now. He wonders how many would still be unwound by their parents today, if they had it to do over again. One of these former AWOL kids shouts at him for blocking the road and throws a half-eaten hamburger at his head. As it bounces off him, he figures that at least one of these kids still would be unwound.
At the sound of a girl’s laughter, he turns to a small restaurant where stray cats wind through patrons’ feet. A blond girl with a wide smile laughs at the cat rubbing up against her leg. She’s maybe sixteen and covered in tattoos from head to toe. Angels, demons, tigers, and clowns fill out a veritable circus of ink. A nose ring pierces her septum. She’d look like a bull ready to charge if she weren’t still smiling. He sits at an adjacent table, and then makes his move.
“So how long you been on the run?” he asks.
“What makes you think I’m running?” she responds in a thick Cockney accent.
Britain, Colton thinks. Just another country that reneged and made unwinding a legal and acceptable practice. In fact, they were the first ones to come up with the term “feral teens.”
He smirks. “It’s written all over you.” Then he adds, “Like a dare.”
She puts out a cigarette that he just notices; so much about her draws attention, the cigarette was the least of it. She says, “You’re right. Been AWOL for two months now. How about you?”
“A month or so,” he tells her. It’s a half-truth. He chooses not to tell her that he isn’t an AWOL—that he left of his own free will. There’s a sort of triumph in taking on the role that he wishes his brother could have had.
She looks him over, reading him far too well, and narrows her already suspicious eyes. “You’re lying.” Then she gets up to leave.
This girl is a strange one, he thinks. There’s something off about her, more so than most AWOLs. He finds it intriguing. Alluring. As she tries to slip away, he instinctively stands in her way, trying to think of something witty to say that might keep her there. Nothing comes out, but they make eye contact. She stops and stares into his eyes.
“Hazel eyes, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Nice.”
“Listen—us AWOLs gotta stick together,” he says. “I’m sure you know how dangerous it can be out on these streets. You could get arrested for vagrancy. Or worse—sold to the Dah Zey.”
She smiles, showing yellow-stained teeth that Colton finds oddly alluring, and says, “You don’t know a thing about danger, Hazel.”
• • •
Her name is Karissa. She doesn’t give her last name, even though he asks for it. She tells him that she left it in England with her bloody parents. He gets that. At first he tells her that he left because he found his own unwind order. Like the Akron AWOL. But eventually he tells her the whole story about his brother and the real reason why he left home. In turn she tells him her story, emptying her broken life out onto him like he’s a shrink. It’s a lot to take in.
He finds out she has a place. They talk till nearly midnight, and by then, she’s ready to take him back to it. They stroll through the streets and get into a tuk-tuk, a small, three-wheeled taxi. When he looks to his left, she’s gotten out on the other side. She winks at him and hurries off as the tuk-tuk takes him away without her.
“American?” asks the tuk-tuk driver in an uninterested tone.
“Yeah,” he says, equally uninterested and shocked he’s just been ditched by the girl.
“I’ll take you home now,” he says. Colton gives