“Don’t bother,” Adam said from behind the curtain. “She whines about everything.”
Carol wrinkled her nose and stared upward. “At leastIwant something better in life.”
Adam ripped open the curtain and scowled at her. “You gaze out the window all night like some kind of lunatic. That’s not even your real accent.”
“It is too!”
“Nobody in the northeast talks like that. You sound like a hillbilly. At least I live in the real world.”
I stood up and yanked the curtain closed. “Go back to sleep.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled.
If I had to listen to these kids bickering for the next twelve hours, I was going to need a whole lot of alcohol. I gripped the back of Shepherd’s seat and noticed Viktor snoozing on the passenger side. “We need to pull over at a convenience store and pick up a few things.”
He looked at me in the rearview. “Later. I’m only making one stop, and that’s to top off the gas.”
“Fine, but we’re stopping for medicine.”
I went to the fridge to get a drink.
“He don’t know nothing,” Carol whispered loudly.
“Who, Shepherd?”
“No.”
“Oh, you mean Adam.”
“Thisis toomy accent.”
I filled the glass, and after I took a drink, I set the plastic cup in the sink. “But if you were raised in that orphanage—”
“Prison,” she corrected.
“Semantics. Nobody in Cognito sounds like you.”
“On the contrary, people have all kinds of accents. Even him,” she said, pointing to the back room where Christian had gone.
“But he wasn’t born here. You were. How did you end up with yours?”
She looped her finger around her gold necklace and leaned against the counter. “When I was a baby, there wasn’t anyone else my age. Just a few older kids who were like teenagers or something. So an elderly lady took care of me. She taught me how to talk and read and… well, I guess I learned to talk like her.”
“Did you at least get to say goodbye to her when you left?”
“I said my goodbyes a long time ago. She died. She was kinda old. Relics don’t live that long, you know. Just as long as humans, and they can get diseases and stuff.” Carol fished a piece of gum out of her pocket. “My last one.”
“We’ll stop somewhere a little later. You can buy gum and cold medicine then.”
Her eyes lit up, and she pushed away. “Awesome! If I fall asleep, wake me up, okay? I don’t want to miss it. Hey, can I sleep in the back by myself? It’s weird having people in there.”
“You can sleep here on the sofa.”
“I can’t sleep with y’all talking all the time. Can you please ask that lady to leave?”
I journeyed down the hall and opened the doors. Blue was facedown on the bed to the left, her arms and legs spread wide. I stared at the open window straight ahead and then to Christian on my right, who had wedged himself on a counter between two storage closets.
“Clear out,” I said. “Carol wants to sleep.”
