Hunted (7 page)

Dani looked back and forth between the two of us. “You both know the F.A.T. center where you were held. If you were able to get in there, you could get the power bars for us. We could take them to a lab and have them tested to see what ingredients are inside. If we had the word of a reputable lab to back us up, we could go public with this information.” Dani smiled at Jack. “This could be a turning point for us.”

I looked at Billy, who was staring at Dani.

“What do you mean, ‘if we were able to get in there’?” he asked. “How would we get in there?”

“We’d have to work that out later.” She waved her hand in the air, like it was a small detail. “The important thing is to get the hard evidence to show what the government is doing in those centers. People have turned a blind eye to what is happening, and with our help, their eyes will be reopened.”

Billy sat back, his lips pressed together, then he looked at me and shook his head. I knew what he meant. These people were clueless. And if they wanted our help, they’d have to come up with a better plan. They had no idea how hard we’d worked to get
out
of that place. There was no way I’d go back in there willingly.

“Why don’t we just stop a delivery truck that’s taking power bars to Camp Willowmoss and get some that way?” Billy asked.

“That would definitely help,” Jack said, looking at Billy. “But I think we need more than just the power bars.” He looked at Dani. “It would be more effective if we had some documentation from Camp Willowmoss.”

“What did you have in mind?” Dani asked.

“If they have some documentation that shows they
know
the bars are laced with drugs, and are still giving them to minors, that would get everyone’s attention.”

I pictured Dr. Tasco’s office on the night Billy and I escaped. We’d been standing right next to his filing cabinets. Did he have information in there? Or was it all on his computer?

“So there’s no way around it,” Dani said. “We have to get inside the building.” She paused, then she turned to me. “Morgan, you said they drew your blood, right?”

I nodded.

“How many times did that occur?”

“Just once while I was there. And just for the kids in the counseling group.”

“I wonder if they’re planning on drawing blood from the other kids. And if so, where are they sending it?” She smiled at Jack. “If we knew where the testing is being done, maybe we could get our hands on the results.”

“Sounds like we still need someone on the inside though.” He looked between Billy and me. “I don’t think there’s any way around that.”

I shook my head so hard, I felt dizzy. “No. No way. I’m not going back there.”

“Look, Morgan,” Dani said, her voice more stern than it had been before. “If you want to change the way things are, you have to be willing to take some risks.”

I regarded the people sitting around me. Why was I the only one who could pull off this assignment? Why couldn’t any of them do it? Surely they were as capable as me. I looked at Jack, then Dani. “I’m sure any of the people in this room could do this as well as I could.”

Dani raised her eyebrows, like the answer was obvious. “As you well know, only teenagers go to Camp Willowmoss. Since Mitch is eighteen I think they’d send him to an adult camp, which means besides you and Billy, only Brynn or Nathan would be eligible.”

I looked at Nathan, the boy who had been kicked out of his home because his family didn’t want to be held responsible for him once his weight moved above the approved limit, and tried to imagine him at the Saturday Challenge where basketballs would be thrown at him during a game of dodgeball. Then imagined him being forced to exercise for hours and getting hit in the legs if he dared stop running on a too-fast treadmill.
 

Then I looked at Brynn and thought about her belief that the rules were wrong, and wondered if she would be able to stand by that belief when getting pulled into a pit of writhing spiders, or when being punched in the stomach by a sadistic Enforcer who hated her for no reason.
 

Did either one of them stand a chance of getting the power bars and other information,
and
surviving Camp Willowmoss long enough to do it?
 

Then I looked at Billy. He’d spent a lot more time at Camp Willowmoss than I had and I seriously doubted he’d be willing to go back. Then I thought about myself. If it came down to me, did I care enough about changing this society that I was willing to risk going back to Camp Willowmoss? In just six weeks I’d be back in my own world and this world would just be a bad memory. Why put that in jeopardy? “I’m sorry,” I said, my gaze meeting those of Dani and Jack. “I can’t do it.”

Dani stared at me a moment, then sighed and nodded. “I understand.”
 

She looked away from me and I felt a gush of relief. I was off the hook.

“Why don’t you all relax for a while?” she said. “I need to talk to Jack about some other issues.”
 

She stood and left the room and Jack followed her. I wondered if they were going to go into the front room to talk and I wondered what they were going to talk about. Would it have anything to do with Billy and me?

“Who wants to play Monopoly?” Nathan asked.

Brynn groaned. “That game takes too long. How about a nice game of poker?”

Everyone agreed and we played for a while. I was having a great time with this new group of people who seemed so much more relaxed than the people at Camp Willowmoss or the kids at school had been.

“I hate to interrupt,” Jack said as he walked into the room, a smile on his face. “But who’s up for a field trip?”

Chapter Seven

Everyone seemed eager to go, but Nathan, Kelly, and Mitch seemed especially excited and I wondered how often they left the house.
 

“Where are we going to go?” Nathan asked.

“We’re going to test Morgan and Billy’s new looks,” Jack said.

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but I also realized I couldn’t stay in this house for the rest of my life.
 

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“Well,” Dani said, “We’ll have each of you go into some public place and see if anyone recognizes you. First we’ll have you each go in alone, then we’ll have you appear together.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Nathan said.

I wholeheartedly agreed, but didn’t want to sound afraid, so I stayed quiet.

“The rest of us will be just outside,” Jack said. “So we can take off quickly, if needed.”

“What do you think, Morgan?” Billy asked.

I shrugged, not wanting to express my fear, but not wanting to encourage this exercise either. “What about you?”

“I guess it’s worth a try.”

If he felt okay about it, then I would do it too. I’d literally trusted him with my life over the last few days. In fact, he was the
only
person I trusted. “Okay.”

“Good,” Dani said, smiling. “This is the only way to see if your new looks will work.”

I had to agree, though I wished there was another way.

We all piled into a van. Jack drove and Dani sat in the passenger seat, Billy and I sat in the middle bench next to the door—somehow Brynn had managed to sit on the other side of Billy—and the rest of the group crammed into the back seat. The windows were tinted and I liked the feel of invisibility that gave me, even though I knew it was just a thin sheet of glass separating me from those who would capture me.

As we backed out of the garage I looked out the window. I’d been asleep when we’d arrived earlier that morning so I had no idea where we were. The neighborhood looked ordinary—nothing to make it stand out at all—and the houses were copycats of each other. I looked at the front of Jack’s house and noticed a neat row of flowers planted on each side of the walkway that led to the front door. I wondered who’d planted them—Jack? Or maybe Tracy? How much time did Tracy spend here anyway?

We drove for about fifteen minutes before we reached a strip mall and pulled into a parking slot far from the walkway that lined the store fronts.

Dani turned in the front seat and looked between me and Billy. “Who wants to go first?”
 

Sudden fear swept over me and I looked at Billy. He looked right back at me. “I guess I’ll go first,” I heard myself say, and immediately wanted to take it back.

“Okay,” Billy said, stopping me from saying I changed my mind.

“Go into that clothing store,” Dani said, pointing to a store whose windows showed the latest fashions.
 

“What should I do once I get inside?”
 

“Just browse the racks. You know, pretend you’re looking for a new blouse or something.”

“Okay.” I looked at Brynn, who nodded with encouragement—probably because she was the one who created my new look. Then I looked at the four people jammed into the back seat. Nathan looked worried, reflecting exactly how I felt. Mitch stared out the window, apparently more interested in what was going on outside than what I was about to do. Tracy said, “You’ll do great,” though I wasn’t so sure. And Kelly gave me a half-smile, which I didn’t know how to interpret.

“Go ahead,” Dani said, which was easy for her, since she wasn’t the one who was being hunted by Enforcers.

Reluctantly I undid my seatbelt and turned to the sliding door. I hesitated, hoping Billy would say he would go instead, but after a moment it was obvious I would have to follow through. I pulled on the handle and the door slid open easily. I stepped onto the pavement and turned toward Billy. “Here goes nothing,” I said.

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. As I began sliding the door closed, I saw Brynn tap on Billy’s arm and he turned away from me and toward her. The fact that he would turn away from me at this very moment—the moment I was about to put myself at greatest risk—upset me and I slammed the door without meaning to. My gaze went to the passenger window and my eyes met Dani’s. She had a questioning look on her face. I mouthed the word
sorry
, then with a feeling of anxiety growing in my gut, I walked toward the clothing store.

When I reached the door I hesitated a moment, but forced myself to pull the door open. A little bell rang and my eyes widened as the clerk looked up from the book she was reading and regarded me.
 

“Hello,” she said.

“Hi.” My heart pounded as I waited for her to suddenly jump up and scream that she knew who I was and she was going to call the Enforcers that very minute.
 

She set her book down. “Is there anything you’re looking for in particular?”

“No,” I quickly answered. “Just browsing.”

She smiled and picked up her book. “Okay. Let me know if you need any help.” Then she immediately went back to her book.

Sighing softly in relief, I went to the farthest rack—there were no other shoppers in the small store—and began looking through the clothes. I hardly noticed what I was looking at as my gaze kept wandering to the clerk, scared she would suddenly realize she’d seen my face before and knew I was the escapee from the F.A.T. center who had a price on her head.

My mind was so focused on my certainty that she would recognize me, that when I glanced away from the girl and looked to my right, I gasped at the face of the girl looking back at me. For a split second I thought she was staring at me, until I realized it was a mirror and I was looking at my own reflection. I felt myself relax as I reassured myself that I looked nothing like the Morgan who had escaped Camp Willowmoss.

Feeling confident, I began to enjoy the feeling of normalcy that shopping brought, and selected several shirts and a pair of jeans and asked the girl if I could try them on. She set her book down and unlocked a dressing room.

“Let me know if you need any different sizes or anything,” she said, though I could tell she hoped I wouldn’t interrupt her reading again.

I tried on all the clothes and actually liked two of the shirts and the jeans. I wondered if Jack or Dani would buy them for me—I didn’t have any clothes of my own, after all—and admired myself in the dressing room mirror as I tried them on again.

I put on my own clothes and opened the door. Just as I did, a woman and two teenage girls walked into the store. Suddenly I knew that only having one person see me in my new look wasn’t much of a test and a new feeling of anxiety crashed over me as I prepared myself for phase two of this test.

The sales clerk greeted the new customers, then called out to me, “Did any of those work for you?”

I felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights as I noticed the woman and her daughters looking at me. My gaze went from the sales clerk to the three new customers and back again. “Uh, yeah,” I managed to say. “Can you hold these for me?” I held up the items I wanted.

“Sure,” the clerk said. “What’s your name?”

“Mor…Michelle,” I quickly corrected.

“Michelle?”

“Yeah.”

“We can only hold them for twenty-four hours.”

“Okay.”

I glanced back to the woman and the two teenagers and saw they were ignoring me now, which thrilled me. Four people had seen me and exactly zero had recognized me.

Giddy with relief, I left the store and went back to the van. As I slid the door open, I immediately noticed that Billy was absorbed in a conversation with Brynn.
 

“How’d it go?” Dani asked.

I glanced at her, than back at Billy, who finally turned and looked at me.
 

“Hey, Morgan,” he said. “I see you made it back.”

“It was fine,” I said to Dani. “I hope you don’t mind, but I asked them to hold a couple of things for me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay. Yeah, I guess you need a few things.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll have someone pick them up later.” She paused. “What name did you give them?”

“Michelle.” My gaze flicked to Billy—he was the one who’d originally given me that name—then back to Dani.

“Good,” she said. “Okay, Billy. Your turn. Go into that sports store over there.” She pointed to a store several doors down from the store I’d been in.

“Okay.” He smiled at me and I could tell he felt a little nervous. I knew how he felt, but now that I’d finished my turn, I had confidence that he would do fine.