They were coming for Nutella and noodles, not for him.
He felt numb. Like everything that was happening was happening to someone else. He pictured himself at the lake, on a houseboat. Dekka would be there, and Brianna and Jack. He would have friends. He wouldn’t be alone.
But he couldn’t stop himself from looking for her.
She no longer had Little Pete to worry about. They could be together without all of that. But of course he knew Astrid, and knew that right now, wherever she was, she was eaten up inside with guilt.
“She’s not coming, is she?” Sam said to Dekka.
But Dekka didn’t answer. She was somewhere else in her head. Sam saw her glance and look away as Brianna laid a light hand on Jack’s shoulder.
Dahra was staying in the hospital, but a few more kids came. Groups of three or four at a time. The Siren and the kids she lived with came. John Terrafino came. Ellen. He waited. He would wait the full two hours. Not for her, he told himself, just to keep his word.
Then Orc, with Howard.
Sam groaned inwardly.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Brianna said.
“The deal was kids make a choice,” Sam said. “I think Howard just realized how dangerous life can be for a criminal living in a place where the ‘king’ can decide life or death.”
To Sam’s relief, Howard did not come over to talk to him. Orc and he sat in the back of a pickup truck. Other kids gave them a wide berth.
“It’s time,” Jack said.
“Breeze? Count the kids,” Sam said.
Brianna was back in twenty seconds. “Eighty-two, boss.”
“About a third,” Jack observed. “A third of what’s left.”
“Wait. Make that eighty-eight,” Brianna said. “And a dog.”
Lana, looking deeply irritated—a fairly usual expression for her—and Sanjit, looking happy—a fairly usual expression for him—and Sanjit’s siblings were trotting along to catch up.
“I don’t know if we’re staying up there or not,” Lana said without preamble. “I want to check it out. And my room smells like crap.”
Just before the time was up, Sam heard a stir. Kids were making a lane for someone, murmuring. His heart leaped.
“Hey, Sam.”
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Diana?”
“Not expecting me, huh?” She made a wry face. “Where’s blondie? I didn’t see her at the big pep rally.”
“Are you coming with us?” Brianna demanded, obviously not happy about it.
“Is Caine okay with this?” Sam asked Diana. “It’s your choice, but I need to know if he’s going to come after us to take you back.”
“Caine has what he wants,” Diana said.
“Maybe I should call Toto over,” Sam said. The truth teller was having a conversation with Spidey. “I could ask you whether you’re coming along to spy for Caine, and see what Toto has to say.”
Diana sighed. “Sam, I have bigger problems than Caine. And so do you, I guess. Because the FAYZ is going to do something it’s never done before: grow by one.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You are going to be an uncle.”
Sam stared blankly. Brianna said a very rude word. And even Dekka looked up.
“You’re having a baby?” Dekka asked.
“Let’s hope so,” Diana said bleakly. “Let’s hope that’s all it is.”
Pete
HE WALKED ON the edge of a sheet of glass a million miles high.
On one side, far, far below him, the jangly noises and eye-searing colors were dimmed. He saw his sister’s yellow hair and piercing blue eyes, but now he was too far away for them to hurt him.
He saw the echoes of the lurid, bright-eyed monsters who had tried to eat him. They were ghosts sinking lazily down toward the greenish glow far, far below.
They had reached for him with stinging tongues and slicing mouths. So he had made them disappear.
The pain in his body was gone. He was cool and light and amazingly limber. He turned a cartwheel along the edge of the glass and laughed.
His body, full of heat and aching and coughs like volcanoes, had gone away, too. Just like the bugs.
No body, no pain.
Little Pete smiled down at the Darkness. It did not try to touch him now. It shrank away.
It was afraid.
Afraid of him.
Little Pete felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off his shoulders. All of it, the too-bright colors and the too-penetrating eyes, and the misty tendrils that reached for his mind, all of it was so very far off.
Now Little Pete floated up and away from the sheet of glass. He no longer needed to teeter precariously there. He could go anywhere. He was free of the sister and free of the Darkness. He was free at last from the disease-wracked body. And he was free, too, from the tortured, twisted, stunted brain that had made the world so painful to him.
For the first time Little Pete saw the world without cringing or needing to run away. It was as if he’d been watching the world through a veil, through milky glass, and now saw it all clearly for the first time in his brief existence.
His whole life he had needed to hide. And now he gasped at the thrill of seeing and hearing and feeling.
His sick body was gone. His distorting, terrifying brain was gone.
But Pete Ellison had never been more alive.