Page 4 of Praying for Rain

I stand in a daze and face my attackers. They don’t even have the decency to look ashamed. In fact, they don’t look at me at all. Their eyes, a few pistols, and at least one rifle are all trained on the person holding a gun to my head. They’re not mad that he’s about to kidnap me. They’re mad that he’s kidnapping my pills.

“Who the hell are you?” Mr. Lathan, our former postman, growls from the back of the crowd. One of his eyes is squeezed shut as he stares down the length of his rifle, ready to fire.

My abductor shrugs as he walks me backward toward the door. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

I watch the glow of anger in everyone’s eyes cloud over with despair as they take in the meaning of his words.

Today is April twentieth. Nothing matters anymore.

I don’t struggle. I don’t even turn around and look at him. I let him drag me behind the building and pray that, whatever he does, he does it quick.

So much for not drawing attention.

I realize along the way that I’m limping, but I can’t seem to pin down the location of my injury. And my mouth tastes like blood, but it doesn’t hurt. And my body feels all floaty and light even though I just got jumped by half the town.

Damn, this hydrocodone is some powerful shit.

I giggle at the absurdity of my situation as the gunman behind me guides me toward a parked dirt bike with the heel of his palm on my shoulder.

“What’s so funny?” His voice is soft, just like his touch as we come to a stop.

I turn to answer him and almost choke on my own spit. The words dry up in my mouth as I stare into the mossy-green eyes of a guy not much older than me. A tall, gorgeous guy who should be on a poster in my bedroom, not kidnapping me from Burger Palace.

I expected my captor to be some middle-aged, beer-gutted, gray-bearded, bald guy, not … this. This guy is perfect. It’s like his parents were so rich that they went to the doctor and selected his DNA from a menu before he was conceived—high cheekbones, straight nose, soft eyes, strong eyebrows, and full lips that he’s chewing on absentmindedly.

But the rest of him doesn’t look rich at all. He’s wearing a white ribbed tank top under a blue floral Hawaiian shirt, his jeans have holes in them, and the disheveled brown hair tucked behind his ear looks like it hasn’t seen a pair of scissors in years.

Mine, on the other hand …

I run my fingers through my hacked-off locks, suddenly feeling super self-conscious about my frumpalicious appearance.

My captor raises his dark eyebrows a little higher, indicating that he’s still waiting for me to tell him what’s so funny.

I think about the painkillers that made me giggle, which causes me to remember all the other stuff I pulled out of my pocket along with that little orange bottle. “Shit!” I gasp, frantically patting my lower belly, feeling for the contents of my hoodie pocket. “I left all my money on the counter in there! And my keys!” I grimace and pinch the bridge of my nose. “God, I’m such an idiot.”

“You still got those pills?” The boy pulls back one side of his unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and shoves his handgun into a brown leather holster.

“Uh … yeah …” I wrap my fist a little tighter around the plastic bottle.

“Good.” He flicks his chin toward the dirt bike behind me. “Get on.”

“Where are we going?”

He lets his shirt fall back into place and pins me with a look that I can’t quite read. It’s been so long since I’ve seen somebody display anything other than the swollen red eyes of despair, the gnashing teeth of mob rage, the panicked twitchiness of fear, or the distant stare of sweet, drug-induced numbness that his calm, focused demeanor confuses the hell out of me.

“Shopping.”

I pull my eyebrows together as he strides past me.

“Shopping?”

The stranger stops next to the dirt bike and shoves a black helmet onto his head, ignoring my question.

“A helmet. Really?” I snort. “We only have three days to live, and you’re worried about safety regulations. You’re not one of those lifers, are you?”

Lifer is a term the media coined months ago to describe those disgustingly optimistic members of our society who simply refused to believe that the end was near. You used to be able to tell them apart by their stupid, smiling faces and cheerful greetings. But, now, they look just like the rest of us—mad, sad, scared, or numb.

“I’m not a lifer. I just have shit to do, and it’s not gonna get done if my head is splattered all over the asphalt.” The boy straddles the black-and-orange machine and turns his masked face toward me. “Get on.”

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