The Loners

“Would that help at all?” Lucy said.

Belinda slapped down the wet laundry in her hand with a huff.

“Or . . . not?”

“A little late now, don’t you think?” Belinda said.

“Late?”

Belinda grumbled down into the bucket, “Just because the little princess finally wants to help—”

“Excuse me?”

Belinda looked up and jutted her jaw. “You heard me. Just because David thinks you’re so special doesn’t mean we do

. . . Pretty One.”

Lucy was mortified. This was worse than she’d expected.

She wanted to say something to defend herself, but nothing came. She was sick at the thought that everyone thought she was slacking off. She should have been working harder to build friendships.

“Hey, Haunches, you got a problem with Lucy?” Will said.

Lucy turned to see Will. He wore a cocked sneer, and his eyes were squeezed to slits. Something about the way he was holding his head, his shoulders back, made Lucy notice how muscular he was now. He had a nice body. Belinda must have noticed too, and she backed up with a startled whinny.

“Will, don’t. . . . It’s okay,” Lucy said.

“No, it’s not okay. You’re trying to help,” he said, and turned to the rest of the room. “Hey, listen up, anybody that’s got a problem with Lucy has a problem with me. Got it?”

“Will, stop . . . ,” Lucy said with a blush. She tugged on his sleeve, and he put his arm around her and gripped her hip. It felt good. The rest of the Scraps stared at her.

The door to the Boiler Room swung open, and David stepped out. Lucy felt hot all of the sudden. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress.

“What’s going on?” David said. He looked perturbed.

“Nothing,” Lucy said. “It’s fine.”

She didn’t want him upset with her.

“He called me Haunches,” Belinda said.

David looked at Will and sighed, “What are you doing?”

“She’s trying to freeze Lucy out of the group,” Will said.

“Hey,” David said, projecting his voice for everyone to hear.

“Let’s try to get along, okay? All we got is each other. So let’s make it work.”

David clapped his hands and strode back to the boiler room. Will walked after him, taking Lucy’s hand and pulling her with him.

“That’s it? She was a total bitch to Lucy,” Will said.

David grabbed Will’s arm and pulled him into the room.

Lucy stumbled along with him. The door shut behind her. The giant industrial boiler took up half of the room; a tangle of pipes led off the top and sides of it and reached across the ceiling. Raw heat pressed in all around Lucy.

“Do me a favor, Will,” David said. “Just play nice. We need a hundred and ten percent from everybody right now, and if you’re calling people bitch, it’s gonna fall apart.” David looked pained. He massaged his jaw. She wanted to massage it for him.

“It’s going to fall apart because we live in a trash pit, man,” Will said.

“I’m working on that.”

“Maybe it’s just better if me and Lucy split.”

“No,” Lucy said, a little more forcefully than she meant to.

She couldn’t leave David. It made her nervous to be far from him.

“But they don’t understand you,” Will said. “They’re calling you a Pretty One, and you’re not. They’ve got no respect. It just makes me want to—”

Lucy put her hand on Will’s arm to calm him.

“It’s okay,” she said, then looked to David. “I can change their minds. This is where I want to be.” Relief eased the wrinkles in David’s forehead. He gave her a little nod of thanks and focused on his brother. It warmed her to know she’d done well by him.

“Don’t bail on me yet, okay?” David said. “I can still make this work. If we can bring in more Scraps like us, we’ll have something. You’ll have a gang, man.”

“You gotta pick up the pace,” Will said, and then turned to Lucy. “Let’s go.”

“Bye,” Lucy said to David before she followed Will out the door.

“Bye,” he said. They held eye contact until the door closed between them. Whoa. She wondered if the look meant that he secretly wished she wasn’t leaving. The idea that they could be more than friends made Lucy’s stomach flutter.

Every head in the camp turned and stared. Mort and Nelson were in the midst of stashing the new food out of sight. An idea gave her a little rush.

“Will, I know what we need to do,” she said, gripping his hand in both of hers. She jumped a little, getting herself excited. When Lucy moved to Pale Ridge, she’d been bummed about being in a new town, in a strange house. She didn’t like her new bedroom, but it was that first meal with her family that made the place feel like home.

“We need to get out of here,” Will said. “I was serious in there. If just you and me went back to the elevator, we’d be fine on our own. You don’t belong in this nastiness. This is David’s thing.”

Lucy frowned. “Will, you just promised your brother you’d stick by him.”

“I didn’t promise anything.”

“He’s your brother. He loves you. You promised. And we’re not going anywhere.”

Lucy eyed a large sheet of plywood.

“Help me with this,” she said, and pulled him toward it. Dorothy, the ex-art Geek, pushed her stringy hair off her face and poked her little beak of a nose toward them.

“I’ll help,” Dorothy said.

“No, thanks,” Will said.

Lucy gave him a soft punch and waved Dorothy over. “We’d love it.”

David paced in the heat. He was slick with sweat. He hadn’t left the boiler room since he’d spoken with Will and Lucy.

Thank God for Lucy. She was the only thing keeping Will here, and David knew it. He’d tried to thank Will for saving his life several times over the past week and a half, but it didn’t seem to make a dent. Everything David did seemed to piss Will off.

This boiler room was hell, but he couldn’t leave until he came up with a plan. Nothing changed the game like a good strategy, but he’d been racking his brain for too long. It wasn’t just Will; everyone was starting to get anxious. He knew what they were thinking when they stared at him. If David’s our leader, then when’s he gonna lead? What’s the next move?

David had no idea.

He didn’t even know how they were all still alive. Everyone seemed to believe that the fact that Varsity hadn’t attacked this whole time meant that no one knew they were down here, or that Varsity was scared of David. David didn’t buy that. He knew there was no way Sam would let things end like they had in the quad. Every day that Sam didn’t attack, David grew more wary. What was he up to?

David tripped over his laundry bucket. The dirty water splashed onto his browned sneaker. He’d thought the laundry business could be a trade for the whole group, but it was a miserable failure. Will and David had barely eked out a living doing laundry before. There just wasn’t enough business to spread the profits between fifteen people and have it be viable. The pathetic amount of food they’d managed to get in the past week and a half was proof of that. On top of it, they couldn’t keep running a laundry service out of a dump. Everything smelled worse on the way out than it did on the way in.

There was no trade in McKinley that wasn’t already accounted for. And if the fifteen of them tried to fight in the upcoming food drop, Varsity would take them out in five minutes.

David’s stomach growled at him. His neck was still sore from the attempted lynching. He tried not to think about how he was as hungry and afraid as the others. Maybe more. He couldn’t be. He was the one they were depending on. He had to be fearless.

He heard the excited voices of his gang outside the door.

Then there was a knock. David stared at the door. Maybe they would just go away if he didn’t answer.

“David? It’s Lucy. It’s dinnertime.”

“Uh . . . that’s okay. I’m not hungry,” he lied.

“Oh,” she said. “But Will and I have a surprise for you.” Shit. A surprise. Only an asshole turns down a surprise.

“Okay . . .”

He opened the door. The stench of curdled trash bit the inside of his nose. Lucy was wearing a scarf over her nose and mouth, but he could tell by the crinkles in the corners of her eyes that she was smiling.

David did a double take as he stepped into the camp. No one was around, or so it seemed at first glance. A brand-new structure stood behind the largest trash pile—a twelve-foot-long tent made out of black garbage bag plastic. Conversation emanated from the tent.

“You ready?” she said, and reached for David’s hand.

“Everyone’s inside. Now, when we go in, be quick. So far, I’ve managed to keep the smell out.”

“Then I guess the twins aren’t in there.” Lucy laughed. It made him feel a little better. She pulled apart the layers of hanging black plastic, and they ducked under it.

Inside, everyone sat around a plywood table. The only light came from three flashlights, sitting pointed up, like a candle centerpiece. One had a weak set of batteries, and it flickered like a dying flame. If hobos had banquets, this was what they’d look like. The others quieted upon David’s entrance.

Nelson stood and saluted him. Leonard tugged on Nelson’s sleeve, signaling him to sit back down.

Everyone watched as David took a seat at the head of the table. Lucy sat to his right. Will had positioned himself at the other end of the long table. As a result, he was barely visible to David, just a pair of eyes in the darkness.

David breathed in deep for Lucy’s benefit. He was amazed by the legitimate lack of stink. Instead, there was a distinct, familiar scent.

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