Sam didn’t understand. His hands pawed at the animal’s hefty chub, doing none of the damage he’d planned to impose. This was wrong. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. His mind was flooded with regrets. All the while, the pig dug into him, shaking him like a pillow. His body became warmer, more numb. She threw him down. His cheek pressed against the cold linoleum. As his vision blurred, the whitish blue light of the quad became a richer blue, then black.

He wanted to go home.

She stood there above him, huffing through her shotgun-barrel nostrils. Sam’s blood dripped from the coarse hairs on her chin, and it was painted all around her mouth.

The pig turned away from her kill and trotted back to the den where her babies were waiting for her. They would be hungry.

38

LUCY LAY ON A GURNEY IN THE COMMONS, the same giant room where she’d fought the Skaters alongside the Loners and Will had broken all their boards. It was where she’d first drawn blood in a battle. That seemed like ages ago.

There was no fighting to be done now, her wrists were duct-taped to the metal pipes on the gurney’s sides. She strained against them, but she couldn’t slip her hands out. It was almost time for the exchange. She watched the hallway that eventually led to the cafeteria, where the Sluts would be coming from. Saints lurked in the shadows just outside the pools of orange light that polka-dotted the vast floor of the commons. Wide concrete columns dominated the space.

Gates was playing golf. He stood ten feet from her. There was a tipped-over bucket at his feet, and a pool of golf balls was spread over the floor around him. She watched him bend down and place a golf ball on the toe of an old sneaker, which he’d been using as a tee. He gripped his club, a big titanium driver, and took a heavy swing. The ball shot off the shoe and ricocheted off the concrete columns, and the hard floor, pingponging around the room. Tack-a-tack-tack! Saints ducked to avoid getting hit by the speeding ball. Gates teed up another and let it fly. She flinched when the ball cracked off the concrete column next to her head.

She saw a squat, round-faced Saint getting pushed toward Gates by the other Saints. “Okay, okay,” he said. The round-faced boy approached Gates with caution.

“Hey … um, Gates?”

Gated took another big swing and hit the shoe this time. The shoe twirled into the air. Gates threw his club to the floor. “Boring!”

“Uh,” the round-faced boy said.

“What is it, Fowler?”

He turned and looked at Fowler and his red eye fluttered. There was a little glob of yellowish gunk on the bottom lid, some sort of puss, that would jump and stretch across his eye with every blink.

“We were wondering. Why is it so important we get Will back again?”

“I told you, he knows where Sam is.”

Fowler didn’t look convinced.

“Some of us think we should just be searching for Sam.”

“Who’s some of us?” Gates said, insulted. “How many times have I saved all of your lives? How many times have we been done for, and I’ve been the one to lead us all out of it?”

“A lot of times, man.”

“That’s right. And I’ll lead us out of this one. You have to trust me. Haven’t I earned that?”

The look on this boy Fowler’s face said it all. He was frightened of his leader. Gates was losing his gang.

“Will doesn’t know where Sam is. He’s lying to you,” Lucy said to Fowler and the others.

Gates turned to her, enraged. She shouldn’t have said it. What had she been thinking? She was a sitting duck. He stomped toward her, his hands in tensed into claws.

“Hey, Eyedrops!”

Gates stopped in his tracks and jerked his eyes toward the hallway.

It was Violent. And all the Sluts. Sixty-three of them. They leaned against columns with smirks, or took a seat on the floor, picking their teeth with their blades. They glared at the forty-odd Saints with menace.

“I got something for you,” Violent said.

Will stepped out from behind the red hair and the knives in an oversized gray sweatshirt. He was one white head of hair in a sea of red.

Lucy’s heart leapt.

“Oh my God!” Gates shouted. He was covering his open mouth with his hand. His bugged-out eyes quivered as they looked at Will. It turned Lucy’s stomach that Gates’s response to seeing Will seemed to match the same kind of emotion and excitement that Lucy felt inside.

“I believe that redhead there belongs to me,” Violent said.

“Send him over first,” Gates said, still staring at Will in wonder.

Violent walked beside Will as he crossed the gap between the gangs. She held her knife in her hand; its entire handle had been dipped in red nail polish. Will looked scared, but he gave Lucy a little nod as he walked. As they got closer, Violent broke away from Will and came to stand next to Lucy’s gurney.

“What’s the plan?” Lucy whispered to Violent as Will continued his walk toward an emotional Gates. Will’s oversized gray sweatshirt made him look like a kid in a grown-up’s clothes.

“No plan,” Violent whispered back as she cut Lucy loose. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, what do you mean? How is Will getting to get out of this?” Lucy said.

“Pretty sure this is as far as he’s thought things through.”

Colton walked toward Gates. He wore a big gray sweatshirt that was too big for him. Gates was still in shock. He hadn’t expected his brother to walk out from the Sluts. He’d been expecting someone else, or something else, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It didn’t matter now. Colton had returned.

Every step Colton took toward him brought Gates closer to joyful tears. Colton looked healthy. His brown hair was combed neatly to the side, as always. He walked stiffly though, and he wasn’t smiling. He still wore those same damn black sunglasses, and Gates wanted him to take them off now more than ever. He needed to look into Colton’s eyes and know what he was feeling. He needed to connect with him.

Gates opened his arms wide, and wrapped Colton in a warm hug. Colton’s arms stayed down. Gates never wanted to let go again. The tears began to squeeze out of his eyes. The pain of not having his little brother in his life was transforming by the millisecond into gratitude. He didn’t care how this was happening, he didn’t need an explanation, they were together again. All the irrational guilt he had felt, that it was somehow his fault that Colton had tried to turn himself in, that maybe he had said something wrong, or had taken Colton for granted, that all evaporated.

Colton had never died. He hadn’t been shot by a soldier. That was just Gates’s mind playing tricks on him. His brother was alive and well and everything was fine. Gates wasn’t to blame for anything.

“Guys, get him his presents! What are you waiting for?” Gates said, while still squeezing his brother.

Behind him, the Saints jumped to his orders, dragging out old beaten boxes from the shadows, full of toys, and sports equipment, and DVDs.

Gates sensed movement to his left. He looked up from his hug and saw Lucy rushing up to him with Violent running after her. Lucy held a knife with a red handle, and before he realized what was happening, she plunged the blade into his side, just under his ribs. The pain made his legs buckle and his hands instinctively went to the wound. He fell on to his side on the floor, and looked at the red knife handle sticking out of his waist like a flagpole. Lucy pulled Colton away.

Saints ran past Gates, going after Lucy, which made the Sluts charge the Saints. A gang battle erupted through the commons.

Gates grasped the glossy red handle of the knife, and pulled the bloody blade out of his body, inch by excruciating inch. He was gagging from the pain by the time he got it all the way out, and let it clang down onto the floor. Thick blood came belching up out of the hole in his side.

Gates clutched his side, and grunted through the pain to stand up. He frantically scanned the sea of swinging weapons in search of Colton. He saw knives everywhere. He saw Sluts slicing at eyes and necks. He saw them kicking crotches. He saw a Slut eat a rifle butt to the face. He saw Tiffy swing a croquet mallet into a Slut’s stomach. He saw Lark on the floor shrieking over her dislocated jaw. He saw all that, but he couldn’t see Colton anywhere.

He had finally gotten his brother back. The only thing that mattered was Colton. And Lucy had taken him away again. He couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t take him from me!” Gates shrieked at the top of his lungs. He kept looking everywhere. “GIVE HIM BACK!”

“Shut up, rich boy,” Violent said. She came running out of the fray, and tackled Gates to the ground. His stab wound exploded with pain. She attacked him with fists and fingernails. Gates clamped his hands around the bitch’s neck, and saw her startled eyes blast wide open. He crushed down on her throat with all his strength.

Will and Lucy ran out of the commons, and down two halls. The further they ran, the more the battle sounds faded. Will pulled her into an empty classroom and shut the door. They clung to each other. She hugged him with all her strength. He was alive, and away from the grips of that psychopath. They separated.

“I have to go back,” Lucy said.

“What?”

“I have to help my girls, they’re only in this fight ’cause of me.”

“No, you can’t go back there.”

“I have to.”

“Gates is gonna be going ballistic. I don’t want you around him.”

“You’re the one who shouldn’t be around him. You need to go back to Minnie’s room and hide.”

“Come with me,” Will said.

“I can’t, Will, I told you—”

“I’ll let you kiss me.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it, she wasn’t expecting that. Will smiled at her. For a moment, she smiled too, but her face went slack when she saw twin lines of blood pour out from Will’s nostrils.

39

WILL AND LUCY DASHED DOWN THE HALLWAY, toward the quad, holding hands.

“I have another year,” Will said. “I’m supposed to have another year.”