Chapter 7
“Ben, hold on,” Tara says to me after class, as we’re all heading back to town. She stops for a second so I have to wait for her, making it just the two of us. “What did Burly say to you?” she asks when no one else can hear.
That he’s doing exactly what you guessed, I type. Using the infection thing as a distraction.
“I knew it,” she says.
The infection is probably just made up.
“No, there’s really an infection,” Tara says. “I’ve seen the proof.”
From your mom? I type, making a skeptical face.
“Hey,” she snaps quietly, “I was agreeing with you. Don’t be a dick. Apart from everything else, she actually is a doctor, after all.”
One who’d be pretty invested in blaming the Land for everything, I type.
“And there you go,” she says, “being a dick.”
Off she walks, angrily.
By the time I’ve typed Wait on the comm, she pretends she’s too far away to hear it.