Why is he limping?
“You okay back there, Heavenly?” His voice is too deep. Too rough. Like he’s been yelling the whole day.
I’m jolted up and down with every step. He keeps going slower and slower, and something tells me we should be speeding up.
“Let medown,” I whine.
“Yeah?” Kai sounds relieved as he lets me slide down his back to the ground.
I swear, if he’s going to call me a fat cow or something, I’m gonna punch him in the nuts. We both know it’s a lie. IwishI were a fat cow, but I’m all elbows and knees, skin and bones.
It’s a lot farther down to the ground than I remember, but that’s because he’s sobig.
He was never this big.
What’s going on?
I try to brush off my hands, but they’re sticky with something that looks black in the moonlight. When I squint around, a sinking feeling hits my stomach.
“Where are we?”
“In the woods,” Kai grates.
An icy breeze cuts through the trees, causing me to wrap my arms around my chest. I don’t recognize the thick clothes I’m wearing, but I also know I’m not playing dress-up.
Something weird is going on.
“Huh…I was right,” Kai says. He’s holding a phone, turning this way and that like it’s a compass before taking off in a random direction.
I try to walk faster, but my legs don’t work the way they should. They’re too long. Too heavy. My whole body feels wrong—bigger than it’s supposed to be, weighed down.
“Kai?” My voice comes out slurred. Distant. “Kai, wait.”
He turns, and even in the dark I can see how tall he is. How broad. This isn’t the scrawny kid who used to climb trees with me and steal raspberries from Mrs. Henderson’s garden.
But weird as that is, I know it’s okay. Thathe’sokay.
Just the light playing tricks.
“Come on, Jane.” His hand engulfs my fingers. “We have to keep moving. The cannibals are right behind us.”
Thecannibals.
Right.
That’s why we’re running. I remember now.
“I’m cold,” I mutter.
“We’re almost there. Just a little farther.”
Almost where?
We never had a destination when we played Columbus and Jane. The whole point was the running—escaping into the woods, leaving everything bad behind, pretending we were explorers in a world where nothing could hurt us as long as we kept moving.
Is Kai changing the rules?
Something white drifts past my face. Then another. And another.
