Hope for the Best

CHAPTER 2-1

Chapter 2

Never had Lareina known relief like reaching the end of that guardrail. Leaping as far from the edge of the water as possible, she sank shin deep into mud along the saturated creek, but she didn’t care. She would have one more day of freedom and one more day to live.

Turning around, she spotted Galloway standing, hands pressed against the top of his head, across the water. Another chunk of the bridge collapsed and the guardrail bobbed wildly. He made no attempt to come after her. His eyes, surrounded by puffy eyelids and dark circles, scrutinized the scene as his lips stretched into a thin flat line.

“Your precious pendant is safe.” She stood tall as she shouted at him, the adrenaline of her stunt and the reality of her freedom racing through her body. “And if you want it, you’ll have to take it because it belongs to me now.”

As she turned away from the water, she heard him yell, “I’ll find you no matter where you run. I’ll always find you.”

The threat constricted muscles in her shoulders and jaw, but instead of turning around she walked toward the promised shelter of houses on the horizon. Galloway could try to follow her, but the flooding would give her time to disappear while he looked for a way around the obstacle. Gray clouds piled in from the west, tumbling past one another and swallowing those too slow to keep up. The creek would only swell with the rain overnight, and she laughed out loud at the perfect timing of the approaching storm.

Kicking mud off her shoes, she imagined the comforts of the house she would sleep in that night. A soft pillow, somewhere dry to rest, and some clean clothes were the only luxuries she needed. In the city she slept in libraries and churches—the only places she felt safe and could be alone. All abandoned buildings in the city had been looted, but she’d heard rumors that houses outside of the city tended to be not only empty of people, but still stocked with supplies left behind by their owners.

Although the economic downturn began when she was too young to remember, she had felt its affects all her life. She guessed it was the reason her parents had abandoned her, why so many children had been left to a system unprepared to provide for their needs. Every new home for children she was sent to seemed to have less food and more orphans assigned to a room than the one before. By the time she was twelve, a fuel shortage nearly doubled the population of cities across the country. People couldn’t afford to commute far for work, and they wanted to live close to the best hospitals, restaurants, and entertainment. A few years later, when the fever started, the overpopulation of urban areas allowed it to sweep through like a wildfire.

Only six in ten survived the flu-like virus that started out as a cough and ended in a high fever. The vast majority of survivors were between the ages of ten and twenty-five. Lareina took comfort that at seventeen she fell in that age group, but still she worried she couldn’t beat such a formidable illness without anyone to take care of her. Unfortunately it didn’t show any signs of dying out, so she feared it was only a matter of time.

Cutting across overgrown playing fields, she could make out the shapes of tree houses and deteriorating trampolines behind the wood fences outlining backyards. How different would her life have been had she grown up in a house with green grass, a trampoline, parents and siblings? Maybe she would have learned to play the piano so beautifully people would have traveled miles to hear her in concert. Maybe she would have studied medicine and found a cure to the dreaded fever. She definitely wouldn’t have turned out to be the thief and fugitive she’d become.

The houses that had appeared as black silhouettes against the gray sky from across the bridge became gloomy two-story homes with dark windows. They differed in the color of their siding and the locations of chipping paint but were otherwise identical. She remembered stories of desperate homeowners unable to sell their houses located too far outside of city limits to be valuable. To protect what they had left in case their fortunes or the economy turned, they transformed their homes into burglar traps before fleeing to the city.

“They like to hide nets under the leaves,” a boy named Joe had told her once. She had been huddled around a trashcan fire under an overpass with a dozen other children who had run away from children’s homes or replacement families. The others, hardened after being on their own for years, looked at Joe with a mixture of disbelief and disregard. They knew the rules.

There is no friendship. Trust no one. Share nothing.

“Sometimes turning on the kitchen sink triggers an explosion that can take your hand right off,” Joe exclaimed. No one listened. Joe claimed to loot houses, hauling the goods into town and selling them for any profit he could make. Lareina and others like her didn’t dare leave the city, focused more on surviving the cold winter than Joe’s stories, which they considered to be nothing more than fantasies.

But only twelve then, she had listened. She had been on her own for a month. Perhaps it was that she didn’t know the rules, or the earnestness in Joe’s voice made her stop and listen. “The worst are the pits,” he told his wide-eyed audience of one. “You never see them until you’re face-first in the dirt.”

Her cautious eyes immediately noticed how the field behind the houses had rectangular sections that sunk lower than the ground around them. Some areas had completely dropped away, exposing rotted edges of blue tarp still staked into the ground above. Easing closer to the nearest backyard, she tested the ground in front of her with one foot before putting her weight on it. She didn’t believe anyone could really lack the observation skills to fall for such an obvious trap, but the uncertainty of what she might miss had kept her in the city. Now Galloway had forced her from the place where at least she knew the rules to survive.

Clouds approached, thickening, darkening, and blotting out the ever-dimming light. Ten feet to the fence, then the safety of an overgrown backyard, then the warmth of any house she chose.

A snapping sound drew her attention upward to a red- and-white striped tarp blowing in the wind. Once the roof of a treehouse, it lifted, twisted, fell, and her memory did the same. Nearly eight years earlier in a place almost a thousand miles away, she had spent summer evenings watching fireworks and fall afternoons reading books in a treehouse almost identical to the one in front of her. Although she had lived in the Maibe, Nebraska, Home for Children, she spent most of her time with Rochelle Aumont, the only friend she had ever made in her life. For that brief year, she had been given a childhood.

A mosquito hummed near her ear. She swatted it away and stepped forward.

To her left an open pit swallowed up the ground, daring any visitor to take another step. Large chunks of tarp shivered on stakes after being torn away at strategic cuts when strained under too much weight. She edged closer to investigate. Thunder rumbled in the distance as she looked into the pit.

Something orange stood out against the dull mud in gray light. When it moved she took a cautious step forward, sending little clumps of earth rolling into the hole. A boy with a dirt-smudged face and mud-speckled blond hair stared up at her.

“Hey, are you all right down there?” She leaned forward as far as she could without tumbling over the edge.

The boy scowled up at her and rolled his eyes in a way that involved his entire head. “Does it look like I’m all right?”

She shrugged and turned away from the pit, ready to find some shelter before the storm crawled any closer. Interacting with other people would only be done for necessity of survival. Trust no one. Share nothing.

“Wait.” The small voice sounded so different from the first that she had to look again to verify only one boy sat in the trap. “I’m hungry and I hurt my ankle.”

Any gruffness had fizzled from his voice and deflated from his stature. He winced as he pulled his knees up to his chin. Pathetic, terrified, and desperate. Would he die if no one else came along to help him? She imagined herself in the same situation, Galloway’s face hovering above, and shivered.

“I’ll be right back.” She turned and maneuvered through a rotted section of fence into the knee-high grass of a backyard gone wild. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out.”

Easing around the yard to avoid any other traps, she maneuvered to the tree house she had noticed earlier. Barely visible through lush grass, hid the remnants of an old tire swing. She ripped the tire away from tangled weeds and surveyed the frayed rope attached to the end. It would have to be good enough. She hoisted the tire and walked awkwardly back to the pit as the wind picked up intensity, gusting out of the north, complementing sharp lightning that streaked through the darkening sky. Although she anticipated it, each roar of thunder sent a tremor through her body.

She set the tire down at the edge of the pit and lowered the rope. When the boy gripped the frayed end, she wrapped her arms through the tire and leaned back with all of her weight. Nothing happened.

“You’re going to have to help me,” she shouted against the wind. “Try to climb up the side.”

Hugging the tire as if it were a teddy bear, she pulled. Tension on the rope slackened and she took a step back. Inch by inch she stepped away from the pit. With one last tug, she stumbled backward and the boy sprawled onto the grass.

Lareina sat on the soggy ground, too drained and proud of her ingenuity to remember fear. She remained still, head bent forward, watching as the wind lifted strands of her long black hair.

The boy crawled toward her without letting his left ankle touch the ground. He tilted his head to the side and curly blond hair flopped over his forehead. “Are . . . are you all right?” His voice trembled with uncertainty.

She smiled and nodded. “Yeah, just resting.”

He settled next to her, injured ankle stretched in front of him, and extended his hand. “I’m Nick Ziel.”

She shook his hand politely, but an introduction didn’t come readily to her lips. Was it safe to tell this boy her name? Would he know she was a wanted fugitive? She didn’t even have a last name to give him.

Nick’s puzzled expression let her know she had hesitated too long. She nodded and smiled to buy another second, to think of the kind of person she wanted to be, then met his puzzled eyes and replied, “Nice to meet you, Nick. My name is Rochelle Aumont.”

The image of a smiling eight-year-old girl with kind green eyes flashed through her mind. Lareina had only been ten years old for a week when she said goodbye to Rochelle. The last day of the eleven months and fifteen days that she had lived in the Maibe Home for Children was one of the few times she’d cried in the past ten years. It felt wrong to steal an old friend’s name, but it was too late to change her mind. Nick let go of her hand as the first raindrops landed on her face.

“It’s starting to rain,” he complained. “We have to get up onto a porch before we get soaked.”

“What’s the rush?” She laughed. “You could use a shower anyway.”

Wide brown eyes, thin nose, and pointed chin all nodded forward to observe his clothing. A deepening frown warned her that he hadn’t appreciated the comment.

“Me? How about you?” he shot back.

She had momentarily forgotten about the muddy grime that had accumulated on the worn jeans and baggy t-shirt she had nabbed from a fire escape rail as they dried. Rain poured heavier and, for the second time in less than an hour, she decided to leave Nick on the ground and find herself shelter for the night. She had pulled him out of the trap, and now he had his freedom and could fend for himself. Standing, she started toward the house.