The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(36)

I wished I didn’t know what Martin’s story was.

Chubs slapped the side of the minivan. “Don’t tell me you believe that, Lee. We knew everyone by the time we broke out.”

Broke out. They actually escaped? Shock left me speechless for several moments until I asked, finally, “Really? All three thousand of them?”

The boys took a step back at the same time.

“You had three thousand kids at your camp?” Liam asked.

“Why?” I looked between them, unnerved. “How many were in your camp?

“Three hundred at most,” Liam said. “Are you sure? Three thousand?”

“Well, it’s not like they gave us an official number. There were thirty kids per cabin and about a hundred of those. There used to be more, but they sent the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows away.”

Apparently, I had blown his mind. Liam let out a strangled noise at the back of his throat. “Holy crap,” he finally managed to squeeze out. “What camp was it?”

“It’s none of your business,” I said. “I’m not asking you where you were.”

“We were in Caledonia, Ohio,” Chubs said, ignoring a sharp look from Liam. “They stuck us in an abandoned elementary school. We broke out. Your turn.”

“Why, so you can report me to the nearest PSF station?”

“Yeah, because, clearly, we’d be able to stroll up and lodge a sighting report.”

After a moment, I blew out a harsh breath. “Fine. I was in Thurmond.”

The silence that followed seemed to stretch on longer than the road beneath us.

“Are you serious?” Liam asked, finally. “Crazy Thurmond, with the FrankenKiddies?”

“They’ve stopped testing,” I said, feeling strangely defensive.

“No, I just—I just…” Liam raced through the words. “I thought it was all filled up, you know? That’s why they bused us to Ohio.”

“How old were you when you went into camp?” Chubs’s voice was measured, but I saw his face fall all the same. “You were young, right?”

The answer popped out before I could stop myself. “The day after my tenth birthday.”

Liam blew out a low whistle, and I wondered exactly how much of Thurmond’s reputation had leaked out in the time I had been there. Who were the ones talking about it—the former PSFs assigned there?

And, if people knew, why hadn’t anyone come to help us?

“How long were you guys in Caledonia?”

“Suzume was there for about two years. I was there for a year and a half, and Lee was there for a year or so.”

“That’s…” A small, ugly voice inside my head whispered, That’s it? even as the better part of me knew full well that it didn’t matter if they had been there for one year or one day—a minute in one of those camps was enough to smash you into pieces.

“And you’re what, sixteen? Seventeen?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and the thought nearly knocked me back against the van. I really wasn’t sure—Sam had claimed it was six years, but she could have been wrong. We didn’t keep track of time at Thurmond in the usual way; I recognized seasons passing, but somewhere along the line I had stopped trying to mark it. I grew bigger, I knew every winter that I must be another year older, but none of it…it just hadn’t seemed to matter until now. “What year is it?”

Chubs snorted, rolling his eyes heavenward. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped once he got a good look at my face. I’m not sure what kind of expression I was wearing, but it erased his exasperation in two seconds flat. His narrowed eyes widened into something that looked very much like pity.

And Liam…his expression seemed to dissolve entirely.

I felt the hair on my neck begin to prickle, my fingers twist the fabric of my uniform shorts. The absolute last thing—the last thing—I wanted was to be pitied by a bunch of strangers. Regret washed down through me, flooding out even my anxiety and fear. I shouldn’t have said anything at all; I should have lied or dodged the question. Whatever they thought Thurmond was like, whatever they believed I’d gone through, it was bad enough to mark me as pathetic in their eyes. I could see it in their faces, and the irony stung more than I expected it to. They’d taken in a monster, thinking it was a mouse.

“Sixteen, then,” I said, once Liam had confirmed the year. Sam had been right after all.

Something else was bothering me. “They’re still creating new camps and sending kids to them?”

“Not so much anymore,” Liam said. “The younger set—Zu’s age—they were hit the hardest. People got scared, and the birthrate dropped off even before the government tried banning new births. Most of the kids that are still being sent to camps are like us. They escaped detection during collections or tried to run.”

I nodded, mulling this over.

“At Thurmond,” Chubs began, “did they really—”

“I think that’s enough,” Liam interrupted. He reached past Chubs’s outstretched arm and opened the sliding door for me again. “She answered your questions, we answered hers, and now we’ve gotta hit the road while the going is still good.”

Zu climbed in first, and, without looking at either boy, I followed, heading to the rear seat, where I could stretch out and hide from any more unwanted questions.