Run For Cover
I
grab Louisa’s arm and click off the flashlight she’s holding. She’s smart; she doesn’t make a sound when she sees the look on my face, just before the light disappears. Behind us, Evelyn opens her mouth to ask one of her loud, yappy questions, but Louisa signals for quiet and Maddie claps her hand over Evelyn’s mouth.
We stand very, very still.
There it is again.
Quiet, but unmistakable: out there in the dark, somebody hiccups. And it isn’t one of us.
We’re not alone.
Someone is following us through the forest.
TOMORROW
GIRLS
Run For Cover
BY EVA GRAY
I
’m not like the other girls.
Louisa and Maddie and Evelyn — it’s like we’re from totally different planets.
It’s not just the obvious things, like the fact that I grew up with palm trees instead of pine trees, hibiscus instead of hydrangeas in my yard, tamales in place of tuna fish sandwiches for lunch.
It’s not that I’m faster and stronger and better at surviving than they are … although I am.
It’s not even that my home is gone, or that I watched it being swept away, while they have their nice
comfortable houses to go back to, and they can’t even imagine anything bad ever happening to them.
It’s not all the secrets I’m hiding.
I’ll tell you the biggest difference between us.
It’s that they think they know what it’s like to be scared.
But they have no idea.
We’ve been in the woods for only five minutes when I start thinking this escape might be a little bit doomed.
Not that we had any choice; we had to run away. Our parents sent us to a hidden boarding school because they wanted us to be safe from the dangers of the War. But it turned out we’d walked right into the worst danger of all.
Country Manor School did seem like a weird place from the beginning. They took away all our electronic devices, snipped off the ID bracelets we’ve been wearing our whole lives, and forced us to do our homework by
hand.
By hand!
With
pens!
I should have
known
they were evil just from that!
But I figured they were just old-fashioned. Plus I liked the outdoor survival training and the friends I was making, and the chance to act like a regular girl again. If I’d been rooming with cooler people, I’d have been happier than I have been anytime in the last three years.
Then everything fell apart. First Louisa’s “twin,” Maddie, got caught. The headmistress, Mrs. Brewster, figured out that they weren’t really sisters (something I could have told her on day two). Then Louisa overheard a TV news broadcast saying Canada had surrendered to the Alliance … who, in case you haven’t guessed, are the bad guys in the War.
Canada’s only a few miles from CMS, but that’s not the dangerous part. The really bad news — the news that has us fleeing through the forest in the middle of the night — is that CMS is a sleeper cell and all our teachers are Alliance agents. The children of America’s wealthiest
families were brought here to be hostages. Louisa overheard their plans, and we decided none of us were going to hang around and let Mrs. Brewster use us to manipulate our parents.
So here we are: escaping, in the dark, with no idea how we’ll get back to Chicago. And instead of any of my tough, cool, outdoorsy friends, I’m stuck with my suite mates.
I glance over at pale, blond Louisa. She can be cool sometimes. But the others, Maddie and Evelyn, are not exactly the first two people I would have picked to run away with. In fact, they’re pretty much the last people anyone would want to drag through the woods. Maddie — skinny, brunette, brown eyes, looks nothing like Louisa, in case you’re wondering — is always moping and griping; plus she totally hates me for no apparent reason.
And Evelyn is a world-class conspiracy freak, convinced that everyone is part of a secret Alliance plan. She’s hyperalert all the time and she scribbles notes in her little notebook every time anyone says anything. Sure,
okay, she’s right some of the time, it turns out. But she is also annoying
all
of the time. And PS she hates me, too. Just because I made my own friends instead of sitting with my roommates at meals.
See why I’m a little worried about this escape plan? I’m not sure which is more likely: us getting captured by the Alliance, or Maddie and Evelyn throwing me under a bus the first chance they get. Or me losing my mind. That one could definitely happen, like, by the end of the night.
Maddie starts complaining first. “I’m tired,” she says. “My feet hurt. Can we stop and rest?” She leans one hand against a tree and rubs her left ankle. There’s a chilly breeze rippling through the leaves, which makes me nervous. It’s only September, but we’re so far north that it could get horribly cold very quickly — long before we reach Chicago, for instance. I’m not a big fan of the cold. Especially when I know I’ll be sleeping outside for the foreseeable future.
“We’ve barely been walking for five minutes!” I say. Although we’re surrounded by dark forest, we can still
see the glow of lights from the school behind us. That means we’re way too close, since the only lights still on are in the teachers’ rooms. We need to get much, much farther away before we even think about stopping. I cross my arms and frown at Maddie.
“Yeah, but we hiked all weekend,” Maddie points out, “and I’m still exhausted from that.”
“Shhhh,” Evelyn says. “They might have bugged the trees.” Her dark skin blends into the shadows, but in the glimmers of moonlight I can see her eyes darting around in that annoying everybody’s-after-us way that drives me crazy.
“Bugged the
trees
?” Louisa says. “That’s a little paranoid, even for you.”
Evelyn flares up at once. “I might be paranoid, but I’m right, aren’t I? I mean, I was right about the school!”
I roll my eyes. “Maybe one or two of your insane theories were right, but when you’re shooting a million ideas into the sky, it’s not surprising that a couple of them will land.”
“I was right that it was a conspiracy!” Evelyn’s voice is getting too loud. “The Alliance
was
luring us into a trap! The secret locations, the weird classes, taking away all our electronics — it was all part of their plan!”
“Shhh, all right,” Louisa says. “We’re not disagreeing with you. You were right all along. You’re a conspiracy-detecting genius. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Can we keep moving, please?” I say. Maddie sighs loudly, but she doesn’t argue as we start walking again. I would rather try to find our way in the dark, letting our eyes adjust, but not enough moonlight penetrates the thick canopy of branches, so we have to use a flashlight. I let Louisa hold it, since she has a steady hand. Twigs and pine needles crackle and snap under our feet, and we’re surrounded by the Christmas smell of the pine forest. If our situation weren’t so utterly terrifying, it would be kind of nice and peaceful out here.
“I don’t understand their plan, though, Evelyn,” Maddie says after a minute. “If they were planning to hold us hostage for our parents’ money, why would they
teach us survival skills and all that other stuff? Why train us like we’re soldiers? We’d never fight for the Alliance, no matter what they did to brainwash us!”
“Too right,” I say. “I’d break Mrs. Brewster’s face before I ever helped the Alliance.”
“Wow, Rosie,” Louisa says. “Tell us how you really feel. No, I’m kidding. I agree with you.” A low-hanging branch snags her blond hair and she stops to disentangle herself.
“Maybe —” Evelyn says, and then pauses. Her shoulders are hunched and her hands are shoved in her jeans pockets.
“Maybe what?” I say.
“Never mind,” she mumbles. “You’ll just think it’s stupid.”
“I won’t,” Maddie says, bumping her shoulder. “Go ahead and tell us. I like hearing your theories.”
I exchange a glance with Louisa. In the dark I can’t see her expression, but I’m sure she’s thinking what I am — that it’s kind of annoying how Evelyn and Maddie
always stick together and encourage each other’s worst impulses. I don’t say anything, though. As long as we’re still walking, leaving CMS behind us, I don’t care how much talking everyone else needs to do at the same time. If I were them, I’d be saving my energy, but I can only boss them around so much without someone snapping. I need to pick my battles.
“Well,” Evelyn says, “I was just thinking … maybe not all the girls there were hostages. Maybe some of them were really on the Alliance’s side.” She hurries on before we can respond. “I mean, we don’t really know anything about them. Maybe a lot of the others were being trained to fight in the War, and they knew it was secretly an Alliance training camp the whole time.”
“I did hear something like that,” Louisa says slowly. “The teachers were talking about getting certain girls to the cafeteria for a debriefing or something. The kids of Alliance parents.”
We all fall silent. I think about my friends at CMS — Mary Jensen and Chui-lian Lee especially. I
miss them. They would be a lot more useful out here than Evelyn and Maddie — that’s for sure. I’d also take Anne or Erica or Rae or Carole over them any day. But were they all lying to me? Were they secretly working for the Alliance? Would they have turned on me and helped to hold me hostage if — when — everything came out in the open?
“I don’t believe it,” I say, but my voice catches, and I don’t sound as confident as I want to.
Of course, part of me can’t help wondering … if it’s true, is the secret I’m keeping any better than theirs?
An hour later, I let everyone stop for a break. I’m a little worried about how deep in the forest we are. Evelyn is doing a great job with the compass, but I hope we can find a road to follow soon, at least from a distance. At the speed Maddie’s going, I’m not sure staying in the woods will get us all the way back to Chicago anytime before January.
I crouch in a dim circle of moonlight under a break in the trees, stretching my aching muscles. I’d never admit
this to the others, but I’m pretty sore after our long weekend of hiking, too. Part of me wishes we could have stayed at CMS for one more night, just to get a real night’s sleep in a bed. But by tomorrow it would have been too late. Tonight was our only chance of escape.
“I wish we had our ID bracelets,” Louisa says, rubbing her left wrist. “Maybe we should have tried to find them and steal them back. How are we going to get anywhere without them? How will we convince anyone we are who we say we are?”
“It’s like they took my whole identity, not just a band of metal,” Evelyn says. She’s perched on top of a boulder. I’m sure she remembers my advice about not sitting down in case her muscles cramp, but if she doesn’t care, I’m not going to keep bugging her about it.
“I know,” Maddie agrees, climbing up next to her. “I feel naked without mine, especially now that we’re away from the school.”
I concentrate on my shoelaces. They don’t know this, but their ID bracelets will be a lot easier to replace than
mine. I tried to act like I totally didn’t care when Devi cut it off on the first day, but inside I felt like she might as well be cutting off my hands. Mom and Dad are going to be so unhappy with me when they find out it’s gone. I wonder how much a new one will cost us this time, and whether we can use the same guy as before.
“I still don’t understand why they took them,” Maddie says with a sigh.
“To demoralize us,” Evelyn says firmly. “It’s classic psychological warfare. Take away our very identities, so we lose our senses of self and become easier to manipulate.”
I can’t help snorting. They all look over at me.
“You have a better theory?” Evelyn asks.
I hesitate. How much will I give away if I answer truthfully? Will they suspect anything?
Or will it be more suspicious if I don’t answer at all?
“They’re selling them,” I say, rubbing my hamstrings and trying to sound casual. “A recoded ID bracelet is more valuable than a fake passport these days. The
Alliance uses them to get their agents in and out of the country without being caught.”
Louisa gapes at me. “They can do that? Change all the information on the tag?”
“You know that,” I say, nodding at Madeleine. “Didn’t your family get someone to change her tag, so it said you were sisters?”
I hear Maddie’s little intake of breath in the dark. “You told her we’re not sisters?” she whispers.
“She figured it out,” Louisa says. “And yeah, we did get a guy to do that, but all he had to change was her last name and her birthday. And I guess he didn’t even do that right, since a ghost of her real info showed up on the tag when Mrs. Brewster scanned it.”
I shake my head. “That probably only surfaced because they were trying to reformat and change the whole ID. Most hackers are better at it than your guy. Sorry.” I shrug. “But they can construct entire new identities for people using an old bracelet bought on the black market.”
I should know.
“Crazy,” Evelyn says. “I bet they can raise a lot of money for the Alliance by selling them, too.”
Louisa shivers. “I really hate the idea that some bad guy is out there wearing my ID bracelet, using it to sneak around and do horrible things.”
I want to tell them that it’s not only bad guys who need the black-market ID bracelets, but that would definitely give too much away. Safer just to change the subject.
“Sorry, everyone, but we should keep walking,” I say. “Get as far as we can while it’s still dark. Okay, Maddie? I know you can do it. You were totally tough on the camping trip.” This is not entirely true; mostly she whined and grumbled a lot. But I’m sure she can be tougher with the right encouragement.
She sighs again, but she slides off the boulder and we all start walking through the trees in the direction Evelyn points, which I guess is still south. I try to stop worrying about how soon the Alliance will come after us, or how far we can get before morning, or what we’re going to eat
when we’re hungry. I try not to think about how familiar this feels, the prickling sensation between my shoulder blades like someone is following us … someone who might suddenly shove a knife in my back at any moment.
I should feel calmer, out here where no one can see me. At least I’m not going to mess up and get caught by a teacher. No one’s going to turn me in to the authorities. I don’t have to freak out about following the rules anymore. I’m already so far outside the rules that now I just have to keep running until I get somewhere safe again.
But I won’t feel comfortable until CMS is far, far behind us. If we get caught now, I could be in worse trouble than anyone else, even Maddie.
Night noises are all around us as we step cautiously through the trees, using only one flashlight to save batteries. I can hear crickets chirping and leaves rustling and a chorus of weird animal sounds, like snuffling and chittering and hiccupping and croaking …
