Page 2 of Noah
He ducked and squirmed, trying to get away before she could hit him, but didn’t have a chance. The door flew open and men in boots came pounding in, making even more noise than the boy himself was making. Different hands grabbed him and jerked him away from his mother while a man pulled his mother back and spun her around to face him.
Noah fought and kicked, terrified at these new people in the house and the way they were handling him. But moments later he was handed over to a woman, and she knelt down in front of him. He looked up into her eyes... and all the fight went out of him.
Her eyes were large and blue, just like Noah’s. She had brown hair that curled around her face, and she smelled like... pears, he thought. She smelled like pears and something else. Like the smell of fresh laundry. Blankets that had just come out of the dryer and were still warm. When she put her hand up to his face and brushed his cheek gently, her fingers didn’t hurt him.
They were soft and quiet.
Her eyes darted from his face to his arms, and then down to his legs, and he knew what she’d see. Bruises and burns. Skinned knees. His mother had pushed him out the door a few days ago and he’d fallen. She’d blamed him for being clumsy and then told him she didn’t have any Band Aids. He’d gone to Mrs. Potter, who had, and she’d spent so much time doctoring him that his mother had come and shouted at her.
The woman in front of him took something out of her pocket and held it to her mouth. “Signs of malnutrition. Signs of obvious abuse. The house is a mess. I can smell alcohol, cigarettes, and...” She stopped and inhaled sharply, her eyes narrowing. “Speed. The reports were correct. We’re taking the boy.”
She put the black box back in her pocket, then cupped his cheek gently. “Poor, poor boy,” she whispered softly. “I bet that hurts, doesn’t it?” She touched his eye, where his mother had punched him.
He nodded.
Instead of answering, she took him into her arms and held him gently against her, and though he didn’t know this woman and wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, it felt so good, so right, to have someone hold him that he didn’t struggle.
“Would you like me to make it better?” she whispered. “Noah?”
He turned his face into her neck, trying to understand how this woman could feel so much like home when he’d never even met her before, and let the tears come. He wanted someone to make itallbetter. He wanted to stop being hungry and scared, and he wanted his body to stop hurting. He wanted his mother to stop hating him so much.
He wanted to feel safe.
“Yes,” he whispered.
The woman nodded, then scooped him against her chest and stood up, taking his weight easily. He wrapped his legs around her waist and clung to her like his life depended on it, and when she turned and walked toward the door, he saw his mother standing with the men, her hands behind her back and her expression furious.
But before the woman walked through the door, Noah’s mother’s eyes turned toward her son, and she became even angrier.
“Take him, then,” she hissed. “That boy’s never been anything but trouble, and I’m better off without him. I hope I never have to see his face again.”
The words shot straight into his heart and he turned his face into the pretty lady’s neck again. Breathed her in.
And wondered if maybe he could live with her from now on, instead of coming back to this place.
1
MOLLY
Icouldn’t remember where I was.
I frowned and tried to zero in on something, but all I could see around me was the fog. Bright, hazy white with a smattering of dead grass underneath, the color drained from the world and an eerie, horrible feeling that I was alone out here.
Then the boy who’d been chasing me came pounding out of the fog and I turned and ran again, heart pounding against my ribs and a scream caught in my throat. I’d thought I had outrun that kid and had hoped I’d lost him in the fog, but something had given me away. Some sound–maybe the sobbing in my throat or the pounding of my heart–had drawn him right to me.
I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was what he was going to do to me if he caught me.
I sprinted into the whiteness, praying that I could find the set of trees that surrounded the land where I’d been hiding from him. I could climb faster than the boy after me, and if I could just reach those trees–if I was actually running in the right direction–I thought I’d be okay.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’d lost him by sprinting for the trees and getting up into the highest branches. The ones he was too heavy to reach.
It wasn’t the first time he’d chased me.
Unless I could find those trees, though, this would be the first time he caught me.
I pushed my legs to move faster, my feet to fly over the ground, and started praying. The boy was right behind me now, close enough that I could hear the breath in his lungs and the laughter in his mouth as he started to realize I wasn’t going to get away. My face pulled into a grimace of horror at the thought, and something surged through me, forcing my body to move even more quickly.
Then I hit the trees, and the roots that came with them.
