“Just do what you want,” Violent said. “I don’t get any benefit from you having sex. It doesn’t affect the gang. Those girls out there are just messing around. Stay a virgin if you want to, who cares?”

“Right,” Lucy said. “Who cares.”

“We good?”

Lucy nodded. Violent walked past, and just before exiting, she gave Lucy a gentle pat on the shoulder. Lucy took a deep breath. She felt like a real weight had been lifted off of her. She was lucky to have Violent in her life. She turned for the door and headed back into the cafeteria. They’d be eating soon.

When Lucy stepped into the dining room she was met with a blaring chant, voiced by every Slut in the room, and the volume of it nearly knocked Lucy over.

“VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN!”

“I think we found you a nickname!” Lips shouted over all of it. They continued their joyous chant. “VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN! VIR-GIN!”

Lucy saw Violent laughing. She was doubled over, getting red in the face. She stood up, holding her chest like she couldn’t breathe. She’d never seen Violent laugh so hard.

“I had to!” Violent yelled to Lucy through the laughing fit. “I’m sorry, I had to, I had no choice!” Violent’s laughter took her over again, and she had to steady herself on a nearby table.

Lucy was set to break down, to fall apart from the sheer embarrassment of it, but the sight of Violent laughing made Lucy laugh too. She scanned the faces of her gang members and saw that the ones who weren’t chanting were having a great time. There was no malice to anyone’s laughter, and in a weird way, the mocking made her feel closer to them.

“You bitches,” Lucy said with a smile.

19

IT WAS A JOYOUS FOOD DROP. THERE WAS still fighting, vicious fighting over certain items, but there were far too many silly grins across people’s faces to call it anything but joyous. The parents had come through. Junk food, candy, frozen pizza, and more. Half the kids were chowing as they ran. There were tugging matches over fresh jeans, boys getting knocked unconscious over porn DVDs, pig piles on top of two video game consoles in the mix. It was as if a giant piñata had burst over their heads and now they were going berserk with adolescent sugar lust.

“Will,” a voice blared from above. “Was that the kid’s name? The one that wanted the pills?”

Will looked up. The man with the motorcycle helmet stood at the edge of the roof, behind the razor wire, his black helmet and scuba tanks gleaming in the sun. The Saints said that the toxicity put off by infected teens only attacked the lungs, and that was why these adults were able to only wear oxygen tanks. It was a step down from the military haz-mat suits McKinley was used to seeing.

Will approached the wall. The man in the motorcycle helmet spotted him and held up a plain paper sandwich bag, then tossed it over the razor wire. It spiraled down like a leaf toward the quad floor. Will broke into a run for it, but there was someone already underneath it.

Bobby, the Freaks’ leader, caught it. It landed perfectly in his hands, and he looked up at Will with a sharp-toothed smile and a flip of his blue mane.

“Uh-oh,” Bobby said. “Looks like somebody’s outta—”

Bobby never finished his sentence. Pruitt cracked him in the back of the neck with the butt of his rifle. Bobby jolted and dropped. Pruitt picked up the bag and tossed it to Will as he came running up. Bobby was at Will’s feet, unconscious but still twitching, his blank eyes staring up at the open sky.

Will looked to Pruitt. “Thanks.”

Pruitt gave him an apathetic nod and moved on.

Will tore open the paper bag. There they were. Two orange pharmacy bottles of Carbatrol. And another of Lyrica. He twisted the white plastic safety cap off the Carbatrol with such muscle he was surprised he didn’t snap the plastic. He popped one of the blue and black capsules in his mouth, and dry-swallowed.

He felt cured the moment it was in his body. Carbatrol was the medication he was on before the quarantine, the third medication he had tried and the only one that suppressed his seizures consistently. There was no way the pill had dissolved at all in his stomach, but the effect on his psyche was immediate. He felt unstoppable. Will ran into the fray. He was ready to have some fun.

Ahead, he saw Gates and a Skater both going for the same box of rum. Will expected a bloody struggle between the two of them, but when the Skater saw it was Gates, he backed away from the box with his hands in the air, smiling. Gates gave him a thank-you nod, and scooped up the box.

Will ran, past the new delicacies all over the ground, past the fights and the celebrations, and kept on going, in a circle, all around the quad. It felt so good to run. He felt whole again, on equal ground with everyone else. His body wasn’t going to hold him back anymore. He wanted to take himself to the limit, go full blast until his legs gave out.

Will ran until all the goodies had been squirreled away by the sidelines, he never once tried to pick anything up. It was his victory lap for finally making one right decision and teaming up with the Saints. He met up with his new gang by the southwest corner of the quad. Gates stood before them, looking up at the sky, his head tilted to the side like a desk globe.

“We gave you what you asked for. Let the prisoner go,” the man on the roof said.

“Prisoner? Don’t you mean, your baby boy?” Gates said.

“Stop these games,” the man above snapped. “We’ve held up our end.”

“And I’ll hold up mine. I won’t kill him. This week.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s comfortable.”

“We want to see him.”

“No,” Gates said plainly. It was a conversation stopper. The man clenched his fists and stared down.

“No one has to die,” the man finally said. “We only want to take care of you. We want the same thing.”

“Perfect,” Gates said, his voice vicious and smooth in the same breath. “Then this should work out fine. You get us the same next week, and I’ll let you see him.”

Kids laughed through mouthfuls of Pop-Tarts and sugared cereal. The laughter spread and grew. They poured soda in each other’s gullets while they gave the parents the finger. They threw crumpled beer cans up at the roofline. They were wild animals, depraved bastards, ungrateful brats, and they were loving every second of it.

“Let’s hear it for the Saints!” a Geek screamed.

Saints! Saints! Saints! The cheers kept coming.

The peal of the crowd made goose bumps rise up all over Will’s body. They roared for Gates. Like he was a pop star or a famous actor. Will looked to Gates, expecting him to take hold of the moment and make a speech. But Gates was unmoved. He wasn’t smiling, he didn’t seem proud, or caught up in the rush of the moment whatsoever. The cocky satisfaction with which he’d made his demands must have been all show for the crowd because now he looked depressed.

“It worked, man!” Will said to Gates, trying to get a little happiness out of him.

“Yup,” Gates said. His demeanor didn’t change.

“The market is going to get crazy. Hey, we should take requests for stuff you should ask for. That’ll keep everybody on our side, then we won’t have to worry so much about other gangs trying to take Sam,” Will said, his mind lit up with possibility. “We’ll be the most popular kids in school.”

“You handle it,” Gates said.

“What do you mean? You’re not coming?”

“Don’t feel like it,” Gates said. He put his hands in his pockets and slogged out of the quad without another word.

20

THE SLUTS’ TRADING POST WAS A MADHOUSE. They had a line out the door, thanks to Violent’s quick thinking during the drop. The Sluts only went for clothes rather than spreading themselves thin picking up anything and everything they saw. But just collecting clothes was no small task. It was apparent how seriously the parents had taken Gates’s threats by how literally they’d interpreted his ransom list. The parents had actually raided closets, nearly every one in Pale Ridge by the look of it. Old, moth-eaten clothes lay intermingled with new clothes that still had security tags and the prices on them. While other gangs wasted manpower lugging big ticket items like charcoal grills, the Sluts moved swiftly and left the quad early, each one carrying garment piles up to their noses.

Their classroom in the market looked like a Macy’s after an earthquake, but if anybody wanted a new wardrobe, they’d have to come to the Sluts. Sure, there were tons of new goodies in McKinley, but what good was having a bunch of toys at home when you were still walking around looking like crap? A new, clean outfit, on the other hand, not only made you feel good, it made people see you like they’d never seen you before.

Waist-high piles of underwear stood next to equally high piles of jackets, next to piles of pants, of dresses and skirts and socks and so on throughout the center of the classroom. Two Sluts were assigned to each pile to monitor shoplifting, while bartering tables ran the perimeter of the room, where a customer would take their clothes for payment. Violent and two other girls worked a tight door, allowing no more than twenty kids in at a time. The resulting line that gathered in the hall outside drummed up substantial word-of-mouth advertising, and by the time Lucy asked someone what time it was, she realized three hours had passed and business wasn’t slowing down.

Sophia set a bottle of water down on the table in front of Lucy. Sophia had been working the floor, making sure that every girl dealing with customers had what she needed to do her best work, like a snack or a pen and paper. She even doled out the occasional massage.

“How are you doing?” Sophia said, when Lucy’s most recent customer, a Freak with a binder ring in his nose, walked away with a pair of black leather pants and matching jacket draped over his shoulder. He’d paid with a five hundred count bulk box of condoms, and Lucy stashed it behind her chair, where a ridiculous pile of goods was heaped up. Lucy opened the bottle of water and took a long, patient drink.