Fighting for Rain - BB Easton Page 0,7

be found collecting pictures of movie stars who play his favorite bad guys?” Mama’s voice goes up at the end like she’s asking a question. “Rainbow!”

“What, Mama? He’s my favorite! Look how cute he is!”

“Cute? He’s scowling.”

I stick my finger out and stroke his frowny little canvas beak. “He just needs somebody to love him. That’s all.”

Mama sighs and slaps the lid on the box. “Fine, but only because it’s your birthday.”

We check out, and I don’t even let the cash register lady put my shoes in a bag. I just hug the whole box to my chest and wait for the receipt to print. It prints and prints and gets longer and longer until it touches the floor.

I look up at the lady, but she’s gone. Everybody’s gone. The store is empty, and it smells bad, like the attic. Everywhere I look, the lights are off, and the shelves are empty. Even the shoe rack. The counter that was just shiny and white a second ago is now covered in dust so thick that I could write my name in it with my finger.

The receipt is still printing, so I follow it out the door and into the hallway. The benches are rusty now. The floor tiles are all cracked, and some even have grass growing in between them. And the sale banners that used to hang from the ceiling don’t say Sale no more. They’re all red with demon people riding black, smoke-breathing horses on them.

I don’t like it here. I wanna go home.

I turn in circles, trying to find Mama, but she’s gone too.

It’s just me and Bad Badtz-Maru. Even though he’s just on a pair of shoes, I know he’ll protect me. He’s going to be the king of everything one day.

I follow the receipt out the door and into the parking lot. It’s empty now. More scary banners hang from the light posts, but I ain’t afraid of them. I’m mad at them. They made everything go away. They made Mama go away. So I stomp over to a junky old car and climb up on top of it, all the way to the roof. Then, I reach up and pull one of those banners right down.

“There!” I yell, throwing it on the dirty ground. “See? You’re not so—”

But I don’t get to let all my words out before these real, real loud motorcycles drive up super-fast from all around me. The people driving them are dressed like skeletons, and some of their helmets have spikes on them.

I wonder for a minute if they’re friends with the demon horse riders. I hug my shoebox tighter, hoping they won’t be mad about me ripping down their friends’ banner, but then they do something even worse than ripping the banners down. They start lighting them on fire!

I cheer and put my fist in the air like people do in the movies.

They hate the horsemen too! Maybe they’ll help me. Maybe they know where everybody went. Maybe they can take me to my mama.

A few of the skeleton people see me and start driving their motorcycles in a circle around the car I’m on.

I smile. “See, Badtz,” I whisper to my shoebox. “It’s gonna be okay. We found some new friends.”

There’s a guy on the back of one of the motorcycles, and he’s pouring something all over the car out of a big red jug. Some of it even splashes up onto my shoes.

“Hey!” I shout, taking a step back.

I wonder if maybe the guy driving will tell his friend that he’s spilling his water, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls to a stop right in front of me, flips open a fancy lighter—the silver kind that Daddy uses to light his cigarettes—and tosses it onto the hood of the car.

I wake up with a gasp, my eyes darting left and right, looking for signs of danger faster than my foggy brain can process what they’re seeing.

I’m sitting on the ground inside the mall. My back is against Wes’s chest. His arms are around my shoulders. In front of me, I can see the broken-out windows of the main entrance. It must have rained while we were asleep. There’s a puddle creeping toward us from the door.

And one of my hiking boots is already soaked.

We’re tucked inside of the same store entrance we hid in last night. The metal gate is down and locked, but I know without even peeking through the slats which shop it used to