Cold Springs(39)

No, she thought. Don't cooperate.

But the whistle blew, and Mallory hit the mud on her chest, started crawling under the rope net.

Leyland yelled, “Don't you touch my ropes, Zedman! Don't let your dirty back touch my ropes!”

Then he turned and yelled at Morrison, who was lagging behind.

Morrison got in trouble almost as much as Mallory. Not because Morrison was a rebel, but because she was a weak fat slob who could never make the course. She'd taken all the abuse the instructors could dish out, but every day she failed to get even halfway. They all had to wait for her while she tried repeatedly, and cried, until finally the instructors walked her through and punished the whole group for what she couldn't do.

Mallory was grateful for her, though—grateful that there was another girl in the group. Grateful that Morrison sometimes took the instructors' abuse instead of her.

Mallory's elbows felt like spikes going through her skin, pulling her along through the mud.

“Move, Zedman!” another instructor yelled. Always a new voice—another anonymous demon with a pitchfork. “This is what you ran away for, isn't it? You're all grown up now! Take care of your own life!”

Mallory clenched her teeth to keep from screaming obscenities.

She got out from under the rope net and started the tire gauntlet.

The two boys in her unit—Bridges and Smart—were already ahead of her. Smart was the kid with the spiky yellow hair, the one who'd gotten his mouth taped for cussing the first day. Ever since then, the instructors had had a good time calling him Smart-Mouth, like that was some hysterical joke.

Bridges was the fat kid with the bad acne, yet somehow he was always the first one under the ropes.

Mallory didn't know their first names. She didn't care.

Behind her, Leyland yelled, “Come on, Morrison!”

Mallory could hear Morrison sobbing, which was predictable, like every other damn thing in this place. Every day—yelled awake, drilled to death, fed bread and water for breakfast. Then the damn counselors pulled them aside for the “program”—lectures nobody wanted to hear, followed by chances to talk nobody ever took. And then there would be the slave labor—building a new dorm for the next group of victims.

What would Race think of this? Mallory tried to imagine him here. Race would fight the instructors, she decided. He would succeed where she failed.

She slowed down on the tires. The new assistant instructor got in her ear, yelling at her to keep her knees up. Mallory didn't look at the guy, but she could tell it was one of the older kids—the ones they called white levels. No one would ever brainwash Mallory like that.

She tried to keep her mind on Race. The guilt swelled up in her again—the knowledge that she had left him, didn't even know where he was staying now, or if the police had caught him.

Everything had gone horribly wrong. Her mom finding the gun in the locker—somebody must've told her to look, but Mallory couldn't figure out who. Then the argument with her mom, running away to Race, that nightmarish week at Talia's. The Halloween party, coming home and finding the body. Then afterward . . . hiding out with Race, holding him while he cried, making love in the stairwell of that abandoned apartment building.

It had all been a mistake—even the sex.

She understood now why they called it losing virginity. She had lost something of herself, and what had she gotten in return? She didn't even feel what she had wanted most—closer to Race.

She tripped on the last tire, fell flat on her face. She turned over, wheezing, her eyes stinging with mud, and stared at the canopy of cypress branches above. The white level's face hovered over her, hollering at her to get up.

She got to her feet, managed not to take a swing at the kid. She'd tried that when—yesterday? She'd popped some instructor in the eye and paid for it with four hours in solitary, locked in a lightless shed until she'd started to see spots like jellyfish floating in the darkness.

She jumped up to the balance beam—still thinking about Race, and Pérez's words. If it wasn't for those people, your dad would be okay. They keep a gun to his head.

Mallory wasn't stupid. She'd never met Race's older brother but she knew Samuel had supplied Katherine's drugs. She understood why her dad wouldn't like her hanging out with the Montroses. But still, the hate in his voice when he talked about them . . . it was way beyond fear for Mallory. It was murderous.

And the idea that he was planning something, that the Montroses were keeping a gun to his head—what the hell did that mean?

She'd tried to talk to Race about it, but he'd gotten really quiet.

He admitted his brother had been a dealer, a real bad-ass. He told her how Samuel used to beat up his mother's boyfriends—grown men, twice his size. Samuel had made Race work as a spotter for cops on the street corner. The same year Mallory had been starting kindergarten, Race had been working the drug trade.

But that was a long time ago, and Race had been adamant—Samuel wasn't in the picture anymore. He wouldn't say where Samuel had gone, but Mallory was pretty sure Race was telling her the truth—on that point, anyway.

What bothered her, the more she thought about it, was something Race had told her after they'd made love, when she'd asked if there was any relative he could go to—anybody he trusted.

He had propped himself up on his elbow, stared over her shoulder long enough for a BART train to blare past outside the grimy window. “Insanity runs in my family, Mal. There's nobody I trust. Nobody.”