50
Sage
I ran faster than I ’ d ever run in my life.
I ’ d always been good at running. I was the quickest in my class, every fall when we had to run the mile. Everybody always complained, but not me. It was the one time Mia and the cool girls looked at me with something like jealousy.
Mr. Tamura, the PE teacher, told me I should join the track team in middle school. Grandpa said the same. “ Make the most of those gangly legs,” he told me. “ You ’ re like a little deer.”
I kept thinking that while I ran down the dirt road, away from mean Jesus. Like a little deer.
Crack.
A loud noise from behind me startled me so bad, I nearly lost my balance and went down hard on the broken rocks and dirt.
It took a second for me to realize it must have been a gun.
Greasy Hair was shooting a gun at me.
I leaped to the right, then the left, moving even faster. Anything but a straight line that would give him something easy to hit.
Like a little deer.
I had to be a deer. Because there was a hunter right behind me, his heavy footsteps thudding hard no matter how fast I ran.
“ Stop, you little bitch,” he kept gasping, breathing hard, but that only made me run faster. I could tell from his thumping footsteps that he wasn ’ t running as quick as me.
Maybe he didn ’ t have to, though. Because he had the gun.
Crack.
I waited to feel the bullet hit the back of my head, knock me down. Instead, I felt a rush of energy that was stronger than any Pixy Stix high.
Faster, faster, faster like a deer , I told my legs, and they listened.
I couldn ’ t see very far ahead down the dark, narrow road. That was terrifying, but it was good, too. Because as long as I stayed ahead of Greasy Hair, he couldn ’ t see me very well, either.
I didn ’ t dare look back over my shoulder.
When I ’ d very first crawled out of the place where they ’ d buried us—before the dirt and mud collapsed into it—I thought I was so tired I could barely walk. But now, it felt like my legs were unstoppable. Like I could run all night if I had to without ever slowing down.
I didn ’ t know where I was running to . At first, the towering cliff-like walls—the ones I ’ d glimpsed through the hole I ’ d scratched in the van ’ s painted window—followed the dirt road closely on both sides. As I kept running, those cliff walls got lower and lower, and the dirt road started to branch off into other, smaller roads. They led to what looked like giant pits. And there were huge excavators and other machines in different places, like it was a construction site. I couldn ’ t figure out what this place was—just that it was big and empty and full of dirt and rocks and junk, like some forgotten part of the world where no one was supposed to go.
All I really knew was that it felt like a nightmare, and if I ever wanted to wake up I had to keep running, had to stay ahead of Greasy Hair. Had to find help for Bonnie and Ms. Jessa and the others.
“ Goddammit, stop! ” Greasy Hair gasped again, but his voice was getting farther and farther away and only made me move even quicker.
I was faster than him.
There was a sliding sound behind me, then a thud, then the sound of his sneakers scrambling over gravel and a sharp thwack sound.
Maybe he dropped the gun , my mind told me. Keep going, you ’ ll lose him now.
“ Shit,” he spat again, and there were more of those scrambling noises on the gravel.
I still didn ’ t stop to look behind me, just kept pumping my arms and legs, praying I wouldn ’ t slip like he just had.
Because if I did, he was going to catch me.
I whipped my head side to side as I ran. But there was nowhere to hide that I could see. Just rock and empty space and the dark. Mostly, everything around me looked the same—gray and dark.
After a few seconds, I couldn ’ t hear him behind me anymore.
Just the sound of my own feet running, running, running.
I gasped for air. My chest hurt really bad all of a sudden—and so did my legs. I sucked in a big breath and tried to keep going, but that Pixy Stix energy was running out fast. And to make things worse, the road was going steep uphill now, making it even harder to keep up my pace.
However, as I staggered closer to the top of the hill, I saw something beautiful.
Flickers of light, small and distant. Like stars, but on the ground.
That ’ s what Bonnie always said when we drove home from a camping trip at night and saw the first city lights twinkling in the distance. Ground stars.
There were houses and people that way.
I just had to get there.
My heart leaped, and I forced my legs to keep moving, even though they felt like they might give out any second. The ground started to change beneath me, still rough but less gravelly and more like a real road. My feet could move quieter here, as long as I didn ’ t slap the ground with my sneakers.
In a few more feet, there was a gate—and a big, rusty white sign staked into the side of the road I ’ d just run up. It was tall, but it wouldn’t be too hard to climb the fat, spaced-out rungs.
I swung myself up and over the rungs of the gate easy enough, except it made a loud clanking noise the second I started to climb, like that gate was yelling, “ Here she is, come this way!”
My legs nearly gave out when I hit the ground on the other side of the gate, but I kept going. Bonnie and the other kids—and Ms. Jessa—didn ’ t have much time. I had to help them, had to find someone who could dig out all that mud in the hole.
What if they were hurt down there? What if there was so much mud that they didn ’ t have any air left at all …
I shut those thoughts out of my mind.
Thoughts like that were going to make my legs dissolve into jelly.
I turned my head to see the words on the rusty white sign as I passed it.
WEST ENTRANCE: NORTHSIDE QUARRY
I memorized those words and made myself keep running.