Page 53 of Anchor

It was a fucking miracle I managed to put that light off without passing out.

I looked at the wide street with longing, then at the trailer on my right, wondering,what the hell are you doing here, Rora?

No fucking clue.

I’d just gotten on my bike again, and I’d wanted to drive as far away fromeverythingas possible.

I’d just wanted to get away from the mansion, from the reporters, from the IDD—and I had nowhere else to go but here. The Blue House was no longer an option, and my own body had simply brought me to this neighborhood before I’d even realized where I was headed. I’d left my bike a street down because Ididn’t want anybody to see me coming, and then I’d walked between two houses, and all the way to the end of the street near the forest. Near the trailer that had its door and windows closed, and it didn’t look like anybody was home.

Of course, there wouldn’t be—it was eleven a.m. and people were either at work or in school at this time, but I still couldn’t help myself. I still couldn’t keep from going closer, inspecting the trailer, the spigot on the rock in front of the first tree of the woods, the house closest to the trailer that looked just as empty as the rest of them right now.

I breathed in deeply for a moment and I reminded myself that this was not any of my business. Just because I had been Mud for a few days, it didn’t mean that everybody else who was Mud was like me, and it most definitely didn’t mean that they were somehowmyresponsibility now. They weren’t.

And I should have argued with myselfbeforecoming here, but no matter because now that I’d seen the trailer in daylight, I was sure that I wasn’t going to come back ever again.

With that thought in mind, I turned around to leave, when…

“I saw you last night.”

The voice came from somewhere on the other side of the silver and white trailer, and my heart all but jumped out of my chest.

It took a second for my legs to start working again, and when I went to the other side, I found Taylor Maddison sitting on the ground with a coloring book on her lap, and two wooden colors in her hands.

I don’t know why the sight shocked me as much as it did when it was just her sitting there with her back against the trailer. Clothes were hung on a thick rope tied to the nearest tree branches behind her, and there were a couple of plastic buckets near the trunk, too. A basket full of dry clothes was by the edge ofthe trailer, and near it a trash can with the lid broken—definitely not something shocking.

Yet I still had to urge myself to get my shit together before I could speak.

“You did?”

She hardly looked up at me once before she nodded and continued to color.

“I was playing with my brother and sister. You didn’t come to say hi.” Her voice hadn’t changed. Her appearance hadn’t changed at all—she was the same girl with the same brown hair and old clothes and big, bright eyes—yet she was different, too. She sounded like another person altogether and I couldn’t even tell why.

“I didn’t know you had siblings,” I said because what the hell else could I say to her when I had no idea who she was?

“Tom and Trinity,” she simply said. “What about you? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No, actually. I only have a cousin.”

“Why did you come here?”

The question took me off guard, just when my heartbeat was starting to slow down.

“I, um…” Fuck, what the hell was I supposed to say to her when even I didn’t know the answer? “Are your parents home?”

Taylor raised a brow. “No, they’re at work.”

“Siblings?”

“School.”

“What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be in school, too?”

She shrugged. “I lied and said I have a tummy ache. Mom let me stay home.” Another shrug. “It’s not like I have a lot to learn in a human school, and Iridian schools won’t teach us so I’d rather color.”

Closing my eyes, I took in a deep breath and thought about a reply, just to realize that I had, in fact, zero ideas about what tosay to a fourteen-year-old girl who thought school was a waste of her time.

I had no clue what to say—none.

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