She bit into a bruised apple and crunched. I followed suit, testing my newly loose tooth against the apple.
“What did you do while I was gone?” I asked.
“Hid,” she said matter-of-factly.
I nodded. That was what most of the lab rats did, most days.
Calypso was around eight, I thought, and had been dumped here in the Children’s Home when she was maybe three? She’d been wearing a diaper and a dirty T-shirt that had a picture of a sunset and the word Calypso on it. I’d been taking care of her ever since. I gave her another apple and she ate it, expertly avoiding the bruise.
Moke always said that Calypso looked like a match, right before you light it. She had curly, bright red hair, really white skin, freckles, and green eyes. I’d taught her to read and write her letters, and Clete was still teaching her numbers. Moke let her tag along when he snuck into the abandoned gym between here and McCallum Incarceration. He said she could climb anything and lift almost as much weight as he could, and he was almost twice as tall and three times as heavy, at least.
“Want me to check your back?” I asked, and she nodded. I got closer and pulled out the neck of her shirt. Peering down, I saw her small black antennas, four of them, arranged in two neat rows against her white, white skin. I reached a few fingers down and stroked them lightly.
“Can you feel that?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can feel more and more,” she said, rummaging in my backpack for something else to eat.
“Okay, they’re about maybe fifteen centimeters long now?” I said. “Should we cut little holes in the back of your shirts, or do you want them more protected? Gotta say, you’re lookin’ a little insecty.”
Calypso grinned, liking the idea. “I want them to be more protected,” she decided.
“Good enough,” I said, and jumped off the table to throw our trash away.
Take that, I thought, pretending I was throwing away my parents. These lab rats are my family now.
CHAPTER 8
“Victory! We have victory!” McCallum shouted at us from at least four screens.
“Yay,” Moke said sarcastically.
“Stay still,” I said, holding the clippers away until he quit moving.
It was family haircut night—we all kept it pretty short. Why? Because we were on the edge of fashion? No. Because of lice. We lived next door to a prison, and the less hair you had, the better.
“My citizens,” McCallum said, “today we have achieved a goal I’ve been working toward for two years! In a brilliant sting operation devised by myself, our own CD Police Officers have apprehended the worst of the worst.”
“Oh, he was squawking about this earlier,” Clete said. Sometimes he talked out loud, but not aimed at anyone, you know? Not looking at anyone. We didn’t know how to respond sometimes. “They caught some huge criminal.”
I looked up. “One of the Six?”
“No,” said Clete, facing the wall, rocking slightly on his feet. “Someone else. He killed a bunch of kids and some other stuff.”
“Whoa,” I said, pushing Moke out of the chair.
“They’re bringing him here,” Calypso said suddenly, her eyes bright. She looked off in the distance and held up one finger.
Twenty seconds later we heard the whining sirens of cop cars. A minute after that their flashing green and yellow lights flashed across our faces.
“How bad is this guy?” I wondered out loud.
“This is the worst, biggest criminal we’ve ever caught!” McCallum shouted, almost like he was answering me specifically. “He’s going into our maximum-security lockdown at McCallum Incarceration. We do prison right!”
“Huh,” I said, mystified. “And he’s not one of the Six. Amazing.”
“They’re in the courtyard,” Moke said, and we all ran to the big windows overlooking what passed as our play yard.
A green police van, siren and lights still going, stopped and two cops got out. They unlocked the van and yanked out their prisoner.
“He’s gonna be a troll,” Rain said, watching from under her hood. “Guy like that… he just sounds nasty.”
Suddenly I gasped. “Ridley!” My hawk had just come down and landed on the creep’s shoulder! She’d never done that to anyone but me. “Oh, my god, she’s gonna take his eyes out!” I predicted with excitement.
“Go, Ridley, go!” I shouted, urging my bird on. I knew I sounded just like the crowd the other night, excited at the idea of blood. But this guy had killed kids. He deserved whatever he got.
But Ridley didn’t attack. She pushed her beak through his black hair, then took off into the night. My mouth open, I watched as the worst of the worst turned around. Of course he could see us—we were standing in front of big, brilliantly lit windows. Quickly I pushed my lab rats aside and flicked our lights off.
“Why’d you do that?” Clete asked.
I shrugged. “Better for them not to see us, no?”
Since Ridley had left, the horrible murderer had been staring right at us, like he was memorizing our faces. Like we would be his next victims. A shiver ran down my backbone and I realized the covert feathers at the top of my shoulders were bristling. I stepped farther backward into the darkness.
Still the murderer seemed to see right through everything, right through me. The guards prodded him along, and the gate to the long walkway leading to the prison opened on the other side of our play yard. True, we had never used the play yard much—it was a quarter of an acre of depressed grass and eager weeds, but who had thought it would be good to put a prison right on the other side? A MORON.
Until he had to turn and go through the tall iron gates, the murderer seemed to keep his black eyes on me intently. Was he looking at my black mohawk, the ring in my nose, the feathers tattooed above my eyebrows? I didn’t look that unusual—lots of kids looked like me. Without the actual wings, I mean. Which were hidden.
And me—I couldn’t look away from his angular, strikingly handsome face. He was the furthest thing from a troll, despite his evilness. My feathers were bristling, my wings itching to expand, and my breath was coming faster, almost like my body was responding to him.
What was the deal between this horrible killer—and me?
CHAPTER 9
My gang was talking about the murderer like it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened. Maybe it was. But I felt uneasy, maybe a little afraid, and I didn’t want to show it.
“It’s time, Hawk,” Clete said in my general direction. He tapped the watch on his wrist, the watch I’d stolen for him. He was intense about time and schedules.
“Right, right,” I said, and took off my poncho. Everyone here was a freak—my wings didn’t make anyone blink.
“Will you be gone long, Hawk?” Calypso asked.
I pushed my fingers through her short red curls. “Depends on how much laundry there is, kid,” I said.
“K,” she said.
The manager of the Children’s Home—a woman named Stella Bundy—had put us to work a couple years ago, once she realized there were some freakish misfit kids still living in the McCallum Children’s Home. She couldn’t turn us out into the street ’cause then McCallum couldn’t claim a charity Children’s Home as one of his good deeds, but I bet she thought about it. Instead, they came up with the next best thing—free child labor. During the day, Clete fixed the office computers and phones and stuff. Moke did like plumbing and electricity. I could never be found, for some reason . During the night Moke sometimes helped out in the gym when the prisoners were allowed to use the equipment. I wondered if the prison manager would let the new murderer use the gym.