Page 70 of Uncontrolled

Allie, it starts. Please don’t be weirded out that I came to get my stuff. I didn’t want you to have to see me again. I left the key so you know you’re safe.

There are a series of dots and small dashes on the paper where he held the pen before deciding what he wanted to say next.

In the end, he wrote Ploy, the four letters inked into the paper like a wound and then underlined.

Below it is a hand-drawn map. The cross streets are written in a careful scrawl. Squares represent the number of houses from the corner. There’s an arrow pointing to one. I don’t remember the exact address, he wrote. House is brown. Under the note is a list of names starting with Quinn, the hunter he mentioned last night. It describes each of them along with the role they play in the group.

It’s everything I need to pull off the big move I alluded to with Talia.

If he’s giving me the information on the hunters, he knows I’m going to do something with it. It’s as close to a guarantee he won’t be there as I can get. So, he’s not with them after all.

It still won’t put him in the clear with Talia; she’ll count his hurried note as an attempt to manipulate me. Or she’ll think he only told me this information as a trap.

I cross the room and make for my closet, ripping my bloodied shirt over my head and tossing it onto the floor beside the dirty clothes basket. In it is one of Christopher’s undershirts.

Before I can stop myself, I stoop and press the fabric to my battered face, but I can’t inhale his scent through my swollen nose. I should take it to him, the shirt. He’ll be downtown if he’s sticking to his old routines. In person, I could convince him to leave town. He won’t appreciate it, especially not coming from me, but he might listen.

His shirt’s still clutched in my hands. I hesitate and then toss it into the laundry basket, trying not to think about how unhealthy it is to cling to the crumbs he’s left behind. I get dressed, and I make a quick stopover in the bathroom to take stock of my injuries.

I’m wrecked. My nose is clearly broken. Worse, near each of my tear ducts is a smudge in a horrific shade of blue, the skin under both noticeably puffy.

“Damn it,” I whisper to the mirror. I need ice. I need painkillers and a nap and instead I’m about to go traipsing around the damn city searching for Christopher. I don’t have a choice. If I don’t find him before Talia, he’s dead.

I can’t be the reason he dies. I can’t.

He saved me in the cellar at Jamison’s, and like it or not, he gave me information I needed on the hunters. This is only me returning the favor. If the second part of my plan doesn’t work, at least I did this right.

Tilting my chin, I swipe a wet washcloth to clear the last of the crusted blood from my nostrils. I debate using some cheap drugstore coverup in my medicine cabinet, untouched since I moved in, and then decide it won’t be worth the time and effort.

I head out of the apartment, locking up behind me, my mind on Christopher’s note. I left the key so you know you’re safe.

A missing key isn’t what kept me awake last night. Neither did knowing there was no one to thwart intruders. What had me tossing and fitful was how I sensed the empty living room. I’m acclimated to the sound of his breaths. The springs on the couch never creaked.

I just need time, I tell myself.

The second I hit the sidewalk, I break into a quick walk that nudges its way into a jog. My escalating pulse thumps pain through my head with every beat. I ignore it, scanning the growing crowds in snips of faces I dismiss until I catch a shaved head, a row of x’s trailing across the base of the skull like the bottom of a crown of thorns. LowLow’s distinctive enough to recognize instantly, even from behind.

I search for Christopher, but don’t find him. Can I trust LowLow to pass him a message? Or, better yet, will he have Christopher’s phone number?

There’s another gutter punk pressing herself against LowLow’s shoulder in a lazy lean. When she rolls her head to whisper something in his ear, it’s all I can do not to stare at the prickly blue spikes of her pixie cut. Not just blue, I think. Cobalt.

Sadness floods my chest. My steps slow. The girl spots me first, her attention drawn to my staggered pace as I watch them. She straightens. Her brow furrows in confusion, though I’m not sure why. She doesn’t know me.

Her lips move and LowLow swivels toward me. The plastic heart-shaped sunglasses he’s wearing go askew as his head tilts to the side. His gasp is loud enough that I hear it from where I’ve finally stopped a good twenty feet from them.

I wait, not sure where I stand with him. I picture Christopher slinking into the Boxcar Camp yesterday after dark and hate the thought of him going back there, but where else would he have ended up? What would he have told them about me? About our fight? Would he have kept my secrets? Thoughts like this are why Talia’s convinced we should kill him, but even now, I trust him.

Folding the sunglasses and tucking them into the pocket of his tattered pants, LowLow hops to his feet and beckons me closer as if he’s expecting me to bolt. To give us privacy, the girl with the blue hair saunters to the other side of the street and hovers a few storefronts down.

“Hey,” I say as I approach him. “Listen, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’m looking for Chri… For Ploy.”

“He said you got in a fight,” LowLow says. Today, his drum is missing, but he’s got a small broken bucket on the sidewalk at his feet, the bottom coated in a smattering of coins. The chunk of cardboard beside it reads “Spare Fortunes” in black marker letters.

“A fight. Yeah.” I bite my lip and force myself to hold his gaze. This was a mistake. He’s never going to help me. But if Christopher told LowLow about our fight, it means he’s seen him.

When he raises a hand toward my face, I flinch, not sure what he’s doing. He catches my chin. “What’s this about?”

“What?” And then I remember my bruises. Embarrassment and anger heat my cheeks as I tear out of his grip. “Jesus, LowLow. These aren’t from him.”

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