that I’m the girl who used to live next door to her? I’m too far out of context.
So instead I write a different name, making the letters as large and bold as the pen’s thin tip will let me—a secret we kept between the three of us.
Greenwood.
I glance toward the windows again. The man has shifted away from Mia, turning to lean his shoulder against the wall. His voice is a low murmur of sound, almost indistinguishable from the heat snapping and hissing out of the vents around us.
Mia’s eyes are fixed on the ground, like she’s trying to find the scattered pieces of herself there. I wave my arms, hoping the movement is big enough for her to see it out of the corner of her eye.
It is.
Her face goes blank with surprise in the second before I see her start to gasp. I hold up my makeshift sign, hands shaking. Please, God, please let this work, please, please let me get her out of here, away from them….Mia’s forehead wrinkles, and I know the exact moment she realizes who I am. Her eyes are electrified, her mouth starts to form my name. My pulse is hammering, and I barely manage to get a finger up to my lips in time to shush her and wave her forward.
She’s confused. Glances over to where the man is still on the phone. I shake my head.
And then she gets it.
Mia rises slowly, silently, her eyes fixed on the man’s back. Her movements are as light as a mouse’s as she weaves through the curving furniture, and her sneakers barely register a sound as she starts toward me. I turn, already prepared to spring forward as she reaches my side.
“Sam?” she whispers, and it’s the best thing I’ve heard in weeks. I take her hand and drag her forward, past the clean, empty surfaces of the bar. Her backpack’s strap catches one of the chairs and sends it spinning. Whatever is inside rattles, too loud, too loud—
We are halfway down the hall, the side exit in sight, when a loud “Hey!” cracks through the air.
I swallow the burning as it rises in my throat; my lungs suck in more air. Mia and I both look back over our shoulders in time to see the man rush out the front, and bark something at the soldier still smoking there. I am so high on fear and exhilaration at pulling this off that I’m worried I’ll rip the door off its hinges when I finally reach it and fling it open.
“Stop!” the man shouts. “Mia!”
Will they kill me for this? Will they hurt her? Did I just destroy what little chance we had for a good life? I can’t predict the response—I don’t know their minds the way I knew the PSFs’—
The emergency exit opens up on one side of the parking lot. There aren’t any cars or trash containers to duck behind, nothing for cover when the man shouts, “I’ll shoot!”
“Sam!” Mia gasps, feet slipping against the black ice. I’m already slowing us down with my limp. Pain lances up it, spiking each time I swing my leg forward. “Sam!”
“Keep going!” I choke out. Across the street is a line of storefronts, and behind them, the car. “Don’t stop!”
The gunshot tears through the dusk, echoing back to us a thousand times over. The bullet pings against one of the streetlights—he’s shot wide, a warning.
Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop. My thoughts keep pace with my tortured gait. Lucas, Lucas, Lucas—
Mia whirls around, dropping my hand. I skid forward against the ice, my breath a harsh white cloud around me. “No!”
But she’s not turning back. She throws her arm out at the same moment the guy takes aim, and she sweeps it sharply to the right. I stop, stunned, as the man goes sailing right back into the hotel’s brick wall, and he folds, as limp as any of the trash blowing by our feet. The papers didn’t list what ability each unclaimed kid has—Mia, then, is Blue.
“I…never tried that…before….” Mia’s teeth are chattering, and I can’t tell if it’s from the shock or the cold.
I take her arm. “Come on, it’s just a little farther.”
“W-where are w-we going?” she asks. “W-what are you doing here?”
I don’t stop, not until we’ve crossed the deserted street and bolted straight through the ravaged storefront directly in front of us. The racks and overturned shelves are totally bare, but if you take a deep enough breath, you