We’ll leave then, leave Thornewood and these people, go someplace else.
No more smiles from a boy who looks like Cyrus, though the more time I spend with him, the less he looks like Cyrus, and the more he just looks like Shane. And the less I feel like a girl on the wrong side.
“You smell smoke or hear a riot, you meet me down there,” Duane says. “You’ll cover me while I open the door.”
I play through how that could work.
There'll be soldiers for sure, too well trained to leave.
I’d need a weapon. And then what? If we get Ben out, will he still be in handcuffs? Where would we go? There’s a wall around Thornewood now, and even if the soldiers are distracted by a fire and a riot, we’d still have to get around the wall. And after that, we’d need a car and supplies.
“I don’t remember you being loyal to Ben before. Why now?”
“Some people found Jesus after the plague,” he murmurs. “I found anarchy. I don’t like all the rules around here.”
I’m pretty sure the low-level nausea I feel is a gut warning system telling me to get away from Duane.
I don’t doubt, not even for a second, that without rules and people like Yorke and Colleen, or even Renata and Ben around, Duane would leave a trail of blood and tears behind. He’s worse than the guy who smelled like refried beans. That guy was lonely and probably scared.
But Duane—he’s not scared. He’s just bad and happy to be it.
“You and me, little Ephie,” he breathes, leaning down so his breath wafts over my cheek.
This time, I don’t hold back.
I plow the tip of my boot into his shin bone, twist and ram an elbow under his rib.
He grunts.
I don’t stick around to find out what he’d do next. I bolt past him out of the shadows and into the hallway where light spills in from the lobby.
And I collide into a body.
Warm, gentle hands close on the backs of my elbows steadying me. “Ephie?”
I look up to find Shane’s blue eyes wide with concern, the wobbly snowflake antennae jiggling and glittering over his head.
“You okay?” He sees Duane, bent over and skuttle-walking to rub his shin as he emerges from the shadows behind me, and immediately steps around me.
“Back off,” he says, voice older and calmer than before.
Duane straightens, “Oh hoh! Guess that little crush goes both ways, huh?” He leans closer to us, sniffs the air elaborately around us. “Smells like teen spirit.”
Shane takes a step closer, but I grab his elbows and pull.
“Don’t. It’s what he wants.” A brawl between Yorke’s golden boy and him would fuel the insurrection he’s brewing.It belatedly occurs to me, that’s supposed to be what I want too, but it’s too late.
Duane holds his hands up in a gesture of mocking surrender, palms, flat to show he has no weapons. His eyes linger tauntingly on Shane’s bouncing snowflake antenna. “Easy there, Frostie. Go on if you’re bad then.”
Something about the look in his eyes as he takes me in has me wondering if I’ll come to regret this moment.
Shane watches him saunter out of sight then turns on me. “What the hell are you doing with that guy?”
“Nothing,” I say. “He’s an asshole.”
“Did he touch you?”
“He just likes to scare me.”