6

 

Jamie meets me in the hallway when I get to her apartment a half hour later. “I can’t believe you’re really here!”

The feeling is mutual.

I smile and follow her inside. “Where’s Easton?”

“Sleeping.” I peek at him for a few minutes, still barely believing this tiny baby is Jamie’s. She said he was born just two weeks ago. She said they sent her home from the meager clinic just a few hours after delivery.

We sit on the couch and I know I have to plunge right in to what I need to ask her. There’s no reason to hold back the way I did in Middle City 3. “Jamie, do you meet with the Christians here?”

Her eyebrows rise. “What? No. I definitely don’t have time for that.” A knowing look spreads across her face. “You’re meeting with them?”

“I won’t stand by and watch the people here starve. There has to be a way to make things better.”

Jamie grunts. “Yeah, by getting out.”

I freeze. “Getting out? Is there a way out?”

She shrugs and stands from the couch. Seeming suddenly restless, she paces the small room. “I’m not sure. I hear there is, but how would I really know?” When she turns back to me, tears shine in her eyes. “You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

Her look of sorrow and betrayal almost breaks my heart. How can I be thinking of helping the people one second and ready to sneak out of the first hole in the fence the next moment? But the opportunity to leave is too much to pass up. My heart races with the possibility, but then I catch her sad face again.

I look to my lap. “I don’t know. There might not even be a way out.”

She sighs and sits with a huff beside me. “You’ll find a way out, now that you know it might be an option.”

She’s right. I know it and she knows it.

“I’m going to find out. How could I not? But, you could get out with me, Jamie. They can’t feed you enough here. I got my allowances and there wasn’t a single fresh item in the box.”

She shakes her head and turns away from me. “I can’t leave. How would I sneak a tiny baby out of the city? His crying would alert every guard in the area. Everyone would be caught.”

“Everyone?”

Jamie shifts on the couch, frowning. “Well, I hear they leave in groups, but I wouldn’t know for sure.”

My mind can’t comprehend what she’s saying, what seems to be common knowledge. I scoot closer to her. “Do the guards know this happens?”

“I don’t see how they couldn’t know it, but I guess they don’t care.” She shrugs and glances Easton’s way.

I frown and sit back. This whole city is strange. Too laid back. There should be more guards, more security. It is a city of criminals, after all.

“I’m meeting with a group of Christians tomorrow. You could at least come to the meeting with me.”

Jamie’s gaze peels away from me and lands on the window. She stares out at the city, biting her lip. “We could probably come to a meeting, just this once.”

That feeling of hope bubbles up inside me.

“Where will you go?” Jamie asks. “If you run away?”

The question stops me in my tracks. Where could I go? There is always Miriam and the Free, but that would mean finding them. I don’t have any other options, though.

“Out west,” I say. “At least, I would start there. I would have to move fast, though.”

“If you could sneak out of this city, you could probably sneak back into another city. Maybe you could find Keegan.”

Her idea makes me so happy I throw myself at her and wrap her in a hug. “That is a great idea.”

Keegan’s memory burns my heart and eyes at the same time. I haven’t seen him in what feels like forever, but it’s only been a month. His last words to me were in a letter, and they weren’t even written by his own hand.

K said to tell you he believes.

The best news I’d had, ever. Keegan decided he believed in God. And now Jamie, too. Mr. Elders said something once, the night Keegan and I sneaked onto his boat. Something about God not letting people forget Him. Mr. Elders said God always leads people to Him, revealing the way to salvation.

God is good that way.

My mind spins back to Jamie’s words. Can I get into Middle 1? It is worth a try. What would they do if they caught me? Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than this.

“Will you think about coming?” I ask, even though I know the answer. She can’t bring baby Easton with her. It would be too dangerous for him.

Jamie shakes her head, her eyes sad.

Possibly leaving my best friend behind when I’ve only just found her is excruciating. I take her hand. “It doesn’t matter. There probably isn’t a way out anyway.” And there’s a huge chance my words are true. I’m making plans as if our speculations are fact.

But we both know it’s not true. Deep in my heart I can feel there is a way out, and I’m going to find it. I could help the Lessers by staying, but I can help them more by going. By fixing things. Changing things.

Jamie’s eyes begin to droop, and she sighs. “It’s hard taking care of a baby.”

“You’re tired. Go to bed.”

She nods. “I think I will.” She hugs me one last time before going to her room.

I sleep on the couch again, and in the morning I make a decision. “I’m bringing you my food.”

She frowns. “What? You don’t have to do that.”

“I might as well stay here. I don’t want to be alone.”

“You want to live with me?”

Her words stop me. I turn to her slowly. “You don’t want me to?”

“Of course I do! I just didn’t think you’d want to, not with the baby and how he cries off and on through the night.”

She moves toward me and I close the steps between us. I hug her again with all my might. “I love Easton, and I don’t mind it at all. I want to spend as much time with you as I can.”

“You might need help bringing the food,” she says as she pulls out of the hug. “Someone might take it if they see you carrying a box of food through the streets.”

“I thought of that,” I say. “I’m going to ask Isabel for help.”

Jamie moves back to Easton who’s started crying. She cradles the baby in her arms. “You know how to find her?”

“She took me to her apartment the same day she brought me here,” I say. “I don’t think she’ll mind helping me.”

I leave an hour later and make my way through the dirty streets. Rubbing my arm, a plan begins in the back of my mind. I let Miriam and her people tag me with a tracker when it was time to go into the prison outside of Greater City. Now the Greaters use the tracker to keep tabs on me and divvy up my allowances.

Could there be a way to take the tracker out and leave it with Jamie? She could definitely use the extra food. All it would take was her wearing long sleeved clothes and keeping the tracker under the material.

But something in the back of my brain tells me I shouldn’t do this. No matter that the Greater government is corrupt; mutilating my arm in order to deceive them doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.

A few of the Lessers I saw earlier sit on the steps outside Isabel’s building, and I wave at them politely. They wave back but don’t stop me as I hurry by.

Isabel’s door hangs open when I approach so I knock on the frame. “Isabel? Are you home? It’s Hana.”

She comes out from a hallway to the right, wiping her hands on a threadbare towel. “Hey there, sugar. Did you get your food?”

“I did. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” I glance up and down the halls outside her apartment to make sure no one is listening. “I’m going to stay with Jamie for a while. I wanted to move my food to her place, but I wasn’t sure that was safe.”

“We can get it done.” Her confidence is contagious.

“Thank you,” I say. She opens her mouth to speak, but I stop her. “I mean thank you for everything. Thank you for being my friend. You didn’t have to, I know, so why did you?”

Isabel draws back, a thoughtful look on her face. “The truth is I would have done it for anyone. But I’m glad it was you.”

I want to press her—ask why she would do it for anyone. Just a couple weeks ago I found it so hard to trust the one friend I’d met in Greater City, and it turned out trusting Kassy hadn’t been the best idea. Kassy had come to me. Found me. Probed me.

She wanted a friend because all her friends had been sent away after they discovered the Broken City. When I offered my friendship she wanted more. She wanted to help the cause.

Only it hadn’t ended so well. How can Isabel offer her heart to help people?

She nudges me and grins. “Are we going to move some food, or what?”

I smile and nod. “Sure.”

We walk in silence to my apartment and she helps me load the food into two oversized bags she brought with her.

“Sling it across your chest,” she says. “That way a thief can’t get it off so easily.”

I freeze but she grins. “Not that anyone would try with me along.”

I hope she’s right.

We start down the street and by the third block out my shoulders begin to relax. It isn’t much farther, and so far no one has given us a second glance. The food is heavy, but I can handle that at this point.

A commotion startles me from my vigilant stance, and I turn to see a young boy run from an apartment building on the other side of the street. A guard follows him, but the worst part is what the guard drags behind him.

I gasp when I realize it’s a woman’s body.

The small boy weeps on the broken sidewalk, but no one moves to help him. The guard speaks into a small machine then drops the lifeless form to the ground.

“Isabel?” I whisper. “Is she dead?”

Isabel slows to a stop and nods, her gaze across the street. “It looks like it.”

“What will happen to her son?”

Isabel sucks in a tight breath and shakes her head. “Who can say? Someone might take him in.”

Might, except among the small crowd gathered to watch, not one person has stepped up to help the boy. Including me.

My feet move before my brain can stop me, but Isabel clamps down on my arm. “You need to get this food out of the street.” Her words hold a warning I want to ignore.

“Why would you be so quick to help me but not help this boy?”

“What do you want to do for him?” she asks, but her voice is kind. “Bring him to live with Jamie? That’s not your decision to make when it’s her apartment. You got to make up your mind before you rush over and take the boy to live with you.”

Her words make sense. Is it OK to rush in and save the day, when it might put others in danger later? I bite my lip and turn away, but walking the rest of the way to Jamie’s apartment is one of the harder things I’ve done. My mind returns to the boy over and over, and the look on his face haunts me. Someone had to have helped him. I pray I’m right.

Isabel helps me unload the food and I return her bag. “Thanks,” I say, but the word doesn’t hold the same excitement it did earlier in the day.

She nods solemnly. “I’ll see you tonight at the meeting.”

Maybe helping the little boy will come in a bigger way. Whatever I learn at this meeting will mean more than taking in a boy whom I plan to leave shortly. It will mean helping all the boys. All the girls. All the parents and friends and family.

I nod, determination surging through me. “I’ll be there.”