putting them carefully in a cardboard box. The little Gs’ beds had already been stripped, the sheets piled in Maureen’s basket with the other dirty laundry she had collected.
“Where’s Gerda?” Luke asked. He also wondered where Greta and Harry were, not to mention any others who might have died as a result of their bullshit experiments. Was there perhaps a crematorium somewhere in this hole of hell? Maybe way down on F-Level? If so, it must have state-of-the-art filters, or he would have smelled the smoke of burning children.
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Get out of here, boy, and go about your business.” Her voice was brisk and dry, dismissive, but all that was show. Even low-grade telepathy could be useful.
Luke got an apple from the bowl of fruit in the caff, and a pack of Round-Ups (SMOKE JUST LIKE DADDY) from one of the vending machines. The pack of candy cigarettes made him miss Kalisha, but it also made him feel close to her. He peeked out at the playground, where eight or ten kids were using the equipment—a full house, compared to when Luke himself had come in. Avery was sitting on one of the pads surrounding the trampoline, his head on his chest, his eyes closed, fast asleep. Luke wasn’t surprised. Little shit had had a tough night.
Someone thumped his shoulder, hard but not in an unfriendly way. Luke turned and saw Stevie Whipple—one of the new kids. “Man, that was bad last night,” Stevie said. “You know, the big redhead and that little girl.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Then this morning those guys in the red unis came and took that punk-rock girl to Back Half.”
Luke looked at Stevie in silent dismay. “Helen?”
“Yeah, her. This place sucks,” Stevie said, staring out at the playground. “I wish I had, like, jet-boots. I’d be gone so fast it’d make your head spin.”
“Jet-boots and a bomb,” Luke said.
“Huh?”
“Bomb the motherfucker, then fly away.”
Stevie considered this, his moon face going slack, then laughed. “That’s good. Yeah, bomb it flat and then jet-boot the hell outta here. Hey, you ain’t got an extra token, do you? I get hungry this time of day and I ain’t much on apples. I’m more of a Twix man. Or Funyuns. Funyuns are good.”
Luke, who’d gotten many tokens while burnishing his good-boy image, gave Stevie Whipple three and told him to knock himself out.
9
Remembering the first time he’d set eyes on Kalisha, and perhaps to commemorate the occasion, Luke went inside, sat down next to the ice machine, and put one of the candy cigarettes in his mouth. He was on his second Round-Up when Maureen came trundling along with her basket, now filled with fresh sheets and pillowcases.
“How’s your back?” Luke asked her.
“Worse than ever.”
“Sorry. That sucks.”
“I got my pills. They help.” She leaned over and grasped her shins, which put her face near Luke’s.
He whispered, “They took my friend Kalisha. Nicky and George. Helen, just today.” Most of his friends were gone. And who had become the Institute’s long-timer? Why, nobody but Luke Ellis.
“I know.” She was also whispering. “I been in Back Half. We can’t keep meeting here and talking, Luke. They’ll get suspicious.”
This seemed to make sense, but there was something odd about it, just the same. Like Joe and Hadad, Maureen talked to the kids all the time, and gave them tokens when she had them to give. And weren’t there other places, dead zones, where the audio surveillance didn’t work? Certainly Kalisha had thought so.
Maureen stood up and stretched, bracing her hands against the small of her back. She spoke in a normal voice now. “Are you just going to sit there all day?”
Luke sucked in the candy cigarette currently dangling from his lower lip, crunched it up, and got to his feet.
“Wait, here’s a token.” She pulled it from the pocket of her dress and handed it to him. “Use it for something tasty.”
Luke ambled back to his room and sprawled on his bed. He curled up and unfolded the tight square of note-paper she had given him along with the token. Maureen’s hand was shaky and old-fashioned, but that was only part of the reason it was hard to read. The writing was small. She had packed the whole sheet from side to side, top to bottom, all of one side and part of the other. It made Luke think of something Mr. Sirois had said in English class, about Ernest Hemingway’s best short