The Rains (Untitled #1)(21)

Patrick halted and held up his hand.

Ahead of him a shadow fell across the mouth of the makeshift alley between Dumpsters. I put my hand on Cassius’s back, willing him not to whine. The shadow tick-tocked back and forth, and a moment later a body crossed into the narrow view ahead.

Eddie Lu, one of the baggers, headed across the row of Dumpsters, his head angled toward the ground. Eddie graduated Creek’s Cause High last year. He still wore his hipster beanie and Piggly Wiggly apron. In front of me, JoJo opened her mouth, and I clamped my hand over it.

Eddie walked directly in front of us, never glancing over. He passed so close to Patrick that Patrick could’ve reached out and poked his shoulder. Eddie moved across our brief field of vision and disappeared. We heard his shoes scuff the ground as he made a sharp right angle at the corner of the Dumpster, and then his footsteps continued along the far side. We held our breath.

We listened to his shoes moving on the other side of the Dumpster. The scuffing sound came again as he pivoted to head back behind us.

Patrick gestured us forward, Alex right on his heels, me bringing up the rear behind the kids. We eased through the thin corridor between metal bins. Just past the trash area rose the chain-link that let onto our high school’s baseball field. At the bottom of the fence, the Braaten boys had cut a slit for sneaking through to play hooky during fishing season. Patrick pried up the flap of chain-link, ducked under, and held it for us.

We tiptoed forward.

Behind us we heard that scuffing noise once again as Eddie reached the lane between the Dumpsters. I turned and looked over my shoulder. Less than ten feet away, his dark silhouette faced up the corridor in which we were neatly lined. He started after us.

The eyeholes and vacant expression were made more awful by Eddie’s casual cap, the familiar ankh tattoo on his inner wrist, his yin-yang necklace. We’d seen a lot of Hosts, but none even close to our age. He was one of us.

I’d just tensed to sprint when I realized that Eddie hadn’t noticed us. His head was still oriented toward the ground. With a series of furious hand gestures, I conveyed as much to Alex, and she nodded and crept forward as silently as possible.

We kept on that way, a train of bodies filtering through the space between Dumpsters, Eddie bringing up the rear on a slight delay. Without slowing, Alex dropped to her hands and knees and slithered through the gap in the fence. Rocky crawled through next. I could feel Eddie gaining on me from behind. I didn’t know how much longer I had before my heel would catch his field of vision and he’d spring onto my back, taking me down. I didn’t dare turn around. I just moved toward that slit in the fence, trying not to let my shoulders scrape the metal sides of the Dumpsters.

I ushered JoJo before me, struggling somehow to rush her and not rush her at the same time. She barely had to crouch to get through the fence, Bunny dragging in the dirt. Cassius followed her, and then it was just me with Eddie in the tight corridor.

I could hear his shallow breaths, practically feel them against my back. My hands cramped around the handles of the baling hooks. I forced myself to release them, letting them dangle from my wrists by their loops. Fighting down my panic, I bent over, stretched my arms into the gap, and slid through. Patrick caught my hands as I knew he would and whisked me through the gap. Alex lowered the chain-link section as gently as she could, closing it like a curtain. It made the faintest click.

Eddie reached the fence, his eye tunnels aimed just in front of his toes. We stood right on the far side of the chain-link. All he had to do was tilt his head up an inch and he’d see us.

But instead he turned on his heel—a neat pivot like you see in the army when some junior officer is dismissed—and continued his course along the fence line. I exhaled.

We moved backward, keeping our eyes on him even as he continued his right-angle swivels through the trash zone. The dew-wet grass of right field shot up beneath the cuffs of my jeans, tickling my ankles. At last I felt the dirt of the infield beneath my boots and turned to face Creek’s Cause High. I realized now why Patrick had pointed us here. After a few school shootings swept through the heartland, the town council had voted to make the grounds as secure and contained as possible.

It was the only place in town that was completely fenced off.

Who’d have ever thought high school would be our last safe haven?

We spread out, breathing easier as we headed toward the dark, sprawling building. The football stadium loomed to the left. We reached the math-and-science wing first, Mrs. Wolfgram’s classroom at the near end. Cupping my hands like a scuba mask, I put my face to the window. The rows of empty desks inside looked emptier now. Proofs scribbled on the dry-erase board. Faded charts breaking down geometric 3-D shapes and surface areas. A dangling wooden octahedron made from eight equilateral triangles, an extra-credit project built by Janie Woodrow or, more likely, her overly involved mother. I thought about how competitive Janie always was, wearing down the teachers to turn her A-minuses into straight A’s, and how much I resented and envied that at the same time. A memory flashed at me, Don Braaten pinning Janie down in the middle of the road, his grown-man knee crushing into her back, her cheek smashed to the asphalt. Had there been tears? We were too far away to see, but Janie tended to cry easily.

I used to make fun of her for her color-coded Post-its, her collection of mechanical pencils, her flawless handwriting, and now I regretted every unkind word.

To my side, Patrick jiggled the handle of a service door. Locked.