One By One by Freida McFadden(40)

“You can’t just wash them?”

She glared at me. “Maybe if you washed yourself better, you wouldn’t be covered in lice.”

I should have been able to guess what she would do next, but it still came as a surprise when she whipped out the razor. I took a step back. “No,” I said.

“If you don’t hold still, half your scalp is coming off too.”

In the end, I let her do it. My hair was already very short, only about half an inch from my skull, but it felt different to be shaved bald. My head felt cold.

She put me in the shower after that. She watched me bathe, cranking the heat up so high that my skin turned bright red. She didn’t leave until she watched me soap myself up. Then she finally left. Maybe to burn the rest of my clothing.

After I finished showering, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My scalp was so white. And round. I looked like an alien.

I went to my bed and lay down on the bare mattress, because the sheets had been stripped. I’m sure my mom meant for me to put on a new sheet, but I didn’t feel like it. Snowball wandered into the room and peered up at me curiously. I reached out to stroke her white fur, hoping it might comfort me, and she hissed at me. Even though she was just a cat, my mother had taught her to hate me. Snowball would never be shorn like I was.

I wanted to wear a baseball cap to school the next day, but they weren’t allowed in the school, so I had to take it off when I entered the building. As I walked into the room, everybody started laughing. A note had gone home in our backpacks yesterday that a child in the class had been diagnosed with lice. My shaved head made it obvious it was me.

Ever since the beginning of the year, Bryan McCormick had made my life miserable. As soon as recess started, he came up to me with his buddies, and I knew I was in for it. He got right in my face.

“We all knew it was you,” Bryan said. “You’re the one with the cooties.”

I looked away. Tried to ignore him like my dad told me to.

“I bet they’re all over your body too,” he said.

I felt my face turning red.

He laughed. “I bet they’re even in your mouth.”

“Shut up, asshole,” I mumbled under my breath.

He raised his eyebrows. “What did you just say to me, loser?”

I lifted my eyes. “You heard me.”

“Yeah?” He took a step closer to me. “Well, maybe you should take it back.”

He wanted to fight, and that was fine with me. My hands balled into fists. I was small, but I was strong. I pulled back my right arm.





Chapter 22


CLAIRE



A couple of hours later, we’re still lost.

I’m beginning to wish I had trusted Noah and gone off with him. Maybe we would have found some sort of civilization by now. It couldn’t possibly be worse.

Or could it?

We all look like people who have been wandering through the woods for the last day. The hair in my ponytail is sticking to the back of my neck and I’ve got dirt ground into my shorts and shirt. All the guys have a day’s worth of beard on their faces, and their clothes haven’t fared much better than mine. Even Warner doesn’t look so good, although GQ would probably still take him for somewhere in the catalog for a segment on “roughing it.”

We come across another small pond. There are a couple of gray-colored birds drinking from the water, their beaks slurping up the liquid in a way that is starting to make me jealous. Warner nudges Jack. “You should try shooting one of them.”

Jack frowns. “Shooting them?”

Warner rolls his eyes. “We’ve had nothing but trail mix and beef jerky to eat for the last twenty-four hours. We can make a fire and cook up those birds.”

“Oh.” Even though Jack was the one who wanted to go hunting, he doesn’t look excited by the idea of shooting some birds. “I guess.”

“No shit. Just shoot the damn things.”

Jack hesitates, but he finally lifts his rifle. I take a step back, because I have no idea what sort of shot he is. I wasn’t on board with the idea of going hunting, but I feel oddly dispassionate about the idea of shooting these birds. It’s not quite as bad as shooting Bambi’s mother. Although they probably have little birds waiting for them back in the nest. The babies are probably waiting for them to come home and regurgitate some worms into their mouths or something. They’re probably getting hungry.

Ugh, I need to stop thinking about this before I start crying.

Jack aims the rifle, but his hands are shaking like crazy. He adjusts it several times, but I don’t know how he could hit anything.

“Christ, you’re shaking like an old man,” Warner snorts. “Don’t you know how to aim?”

“Just let me do this,” Jack says tightly.

“You’re just going to waste a bullet and scare them off.” Warner holds out his hand. “Let me try.”

Jack tightens his grip on the rifle. “Yeah, right.”

Warner throws back his head and laughs. “What do you think? You think I’m going to steal it from you and shoot you?”

Jack narrows his eyes. “You said it, not me.”

“Well, in that case…” Warner takes a step closer to Jack. “You better keep a close eye on that gun.”