Page 97 of A Better World

“Josie, I’m trying!” Frustrated, her words slipped out. “Your dad’s got an excuse for everything happening here. I need to present hard evidence. He understands numbers. I swear to God, I’m trying. I’ve been trying. Give me some credit.”

Josie’s wet eyes got big. “You’re looking for dirt?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yeah. I’m looking for dirt.”

Josie smiled very faintly. “What dirt?”

“This Omnium sludge—I think it’s carcinogenic. The missingkids—their mom Gal Parker thinks they’re still here, stolen someplace. There’s a lot that doesn’t add up.”

“You think those kids got stolen?”

Linda let out a long breath. Looked to Josie. Felt sorry to weigh her down with this information but knew holding back would be worse. “Yeah. I do. Gal thinks they’re going to be used in the Winter Festival. She thinks they’ll be hurt. I don’t know about that. I just know those kids are still in this town.”

“Beware the sacrifice,” Josie answered, and Linda’s skin crawled.

“What?”

“All the signs say that. Everybody at school says it, too, as a joke. It’s written inside practically every bathroom stall. But maybe when someone warns you like that, you should believe them.”

Linda pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed. “I can’t tell if they’re serious or it’s twisted humor, like those sugar skulls or the dead goat. The race sucked but nobody died. The haunted maze scared the crap out of me, but we all got out okay. You didn’t get in serious trouble for the stop sign. So far the threats are huge, but the consequences are light. Even Gal was exonerated, and she almost murdered her own children! It feels to me like expulsion is their greatest punishment. But I don’t know. They keep saying the Winter Festival’s indescribable. We have to be there to understand. Have you heard anything about what happens?”

“Not really,” Josie said. “But we’d better figure it out because it’s happening in less than a week.”

“So soon? It snuck up on me. Do you think the festival will put us in danger, physically?” Linda asked. This should have concerned her long before now, but she’d been preoccupied.

“I don’t know,” Josie said. She seemed relieved to be talking about this, too. To finally be in Linda’s confidence. She was taking every question seriously, feeling its weight. “They’re polite so it’s hard to picture.”

“I keep thinking something bad might happen,” Linda said. “But I don’t really believe they’d do anything openly violent. They’d never get their hands dirty.”

“Yeah,” Josie said. “I feel like it’ll be crazy. It might even be bad, like they’ll dissect a horse while it’s still alive and then feed it to the birds, and they’ll all be like:The sacrifice! The sacrifice!But no, I’m not scared of getting hurt. Everybody at school’s always talking about how they’re wild rebels but they crap themselves over Bs.”

Linda nodded. “It’s hard to tell, honestly. Maybe they’re dangerous to us, maybe not. I can’t figure it out.”

“I wish we’d never left home,” Josie said.

“I know. But you need to be patient with me. I need evidence. It’s the only way we’ll get your dad and Hip to come.”

“I can respect that,” Josie said, her voice softer.

Linda realized that she could respect it, too. She had a plan.

“I’m not a milksop, Josie,” Linda said. “I’ve made compromises and I don’t regret them. I don’t regret you or your brother and I certainly don’t regret marrying your father. I’m proud of everything I have and none of it was easy.”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said.

“I don’t need you to be sorry. I just need you to understand.”

“I do.” Her daughter had given up her blue gown and had stripped off the bottom half. She held it now, a crinkled wad of blue paper. “But Mom, can I help you?”

Countdown

Sunday

The hospital inCleveland sent her an email. They’d looked at Carlos’s bloodwork, agreed that his illness fell under the idiopathic leukemia umbrella, and were glad to accept him into the trial, as they needed more participants. Long before first light, Linda tried to call Danny Morales, but her device didn’t have outside reception. Before anyone was awake, she drove just outside PV’s walls, passing a night guard who wasn’t Sally, and called from the clinic.

Danny said he could borrow a truck for the journey to Cleveland. He’d leave that Friday, drive through the weekend. She had no solutions to the practicalities of his situation—would he have a place to stay? Battery-charging money? When she said as much, he was surprised. “I’ll be fine.”

When she returned to PV, the sun was rising, but still not visible behind the eastern wall. The town was awash in a red glow. She stopped at the river and collected a sample of the water, then returned home and went through the day like it were any other.

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