“Sixteen cans,” Ritchie said with disgust. “How are thirteen people supposed to survive on sixteen cans of food?” He was standing and eating, anxiously shifting his weight side to side. It made the scars on his face seem to wriggle and writhe in the sunlight.
“Calm down, ugly. We had one bad drop, it’s not the end of the world,” Will said.
Ritchie huffed and rolled his eyes, as he turned his back to Will.
“Look at how much extra food they all have,” Mort said.
Mort was looking at the two gangs on either side of them. The Loners were sandwiched between the Skaters and the Freaks, black hair on one side, blue on the other. There were close to fifty Skaters, and roughly a hundred Freaks. Both gangs were still eating, still tearing open new loaves of bread, and opening new cans of food. The Loners couldn’t afford to open any more cans until tomorrow.
Other than Ritchie and Will, they had lost all of their best fighters in the escape. Belinda was slow. Mort was half a cripple. Lucy herself was new to running in the drops, and she’d tried her best, but she’d only managed to get one can of stewed tomatoes. Even the others, like Colin and Vincent, who had fought in every drop the Loners ever took part in, they hadn’t fared much better.
Belinda began to whimper beside her. Lucy hugged Belinda gently.
“It’s okay, Bel,” Lucy said.
“You know Freddy, that boy I told you about?”
“The Nerd you kinda sorta started dating?” Lucy said with forced levity.
“Yeah.” Belinda’s voice went softer. “Back in the processing facility, he said I could join the Nerds if I wanted …”
“He’s probably just flirting with you,” Will said. There was an edge of irritation in his voice. Lucy looked over and saw that Will had been listening to them.
“Sort of a weird time to flirt,” Belinda said.
Two guys came walking over from the Skaters. One had his head shaved except for black polka dots of hair, and the other had the top of his head shaved like he’d gone bald. Both of them had white roots. They wore braided wire rings that Lucy had seen Skater girls selling. They’d cut V-necks into their crew neck T-shirts. They walked right up to Ritchie.
“Wassup, bruiser,” one of them said.
“You were pretty impressive out there today,” the other said.
“Oh, yeah? You think so?” Ritchie replied.
“What is this?” Will said to Lucy. She could hear Will’s anger building.
“Listen, man, we were wondering if you ever thought about going Skater. We could use a solid fighter like you.”
“We got a half-pipe, rails, we have lots of in-gang competitions, you might like that. And we have lots of girls,” Polka Dots said.
“Girls?” Ritchie said. Even though Lucy didn’t like the idea of losing Ritchie, she couldn’t help but find it cute, the way Ritchie’s voice went up when he said the word girls. Like a hopeful little boy.
“Oh, yeah, bro. Tons of chicks. Unless you’re dating a Loner, y’know, I don’t know what you got goin’.…”
“Fuck no,” Ritchie said. Lucy went back to not finding anything about Ritchie cute.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Will said. He’d gotten to his feet and strode over to Ritchie, pointing his finger in his face as he yelled. “Are you serious, Ritchie? Skaters? You don’t remember our run-in with them in the commons? One of them set your arm on fire!”
“I had a jacket on,” Ritchie said.
“That’s not the point. You think you can trust them?”
“Hey, that was a special situation,” one of the Skaters said.
“How’re you gonna skate your half-pipes when we broke your boards?” Will said.
“We’re making more,” the other Skater said, crossing his arms.
“Get lost, garbage men,” Will said.
The Skaters put up their hands and backed off.
“We’re gonna bounce. Think about it, huh?” one of them said to Ritchie before they walked off.
Will focused back on Ritchie. “What do you think you’re doing, man?”
“You’re mad at me? Look at Leonard,” Ritchie said.
He pointed across the quad to where Leonard was standing by the Geeks. Leonard had a lock of purple hair clipped into his own white hair, and he was checking himself out in a mirror shard that a Geek girl held up for him. Leonard was laughing and smiling, happier than Lucy had seen him in a while.
“I don’t get it,” Will said. “Does Leonard not remember Zachary holding a knife to David’s throat? Belinda, did you forget that the Nerds ambushed us in the library? I feel like I’m going crazy here. You don’t want to be Loners anymore, just like that?”
Silence settled on the quad, and at first, Lucy thought that Will’s words were so powerful that they’d brought a hush over the crowd, but then she saw that a group of the kids from the outside had just walked onto the quad. They all had white hair, like Loners. For the first time, none of them carried any guns. They stood by the hallway, squinting up at the sky. The one with long hair and one red eye stood at the front of the rest.
“I can’t believe that dude, Gates, is here,” Colin said with a wet belch. Typical. Colin was the grossest.
“The one who told us about the outside?” Lucy asked. “You know him?”“You guys don’t?” Colin said with a roll of his eyes. He let the moment hang.
“Oh my god, will you just tell us?” Will said.
Colin smiled, satisfied. “My cousin went to St. Patrick’s. Gates is, like, a legend there. He was wild. Didn’t take any shit, not from his parents, not from teachers, not even the cops. I heard that when a cop tried to shut down one of his parties he straight punched him in the face.”
“That sounds like bullshit,” Ritchie said.
“Well, his parties aren’t bullshit, everyone in Denton knows about ’em. I went to one. No joke. It was in an abandoned Kmart. Yeah, that’s right. Fucking epic. And you know how I can barf on command?”
“Yes, we do. Please don’t show us again,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, well, he thought it was great. My cousin had me do it for him, and he loved it. Gates brought me around the whole store and made me do it for everybody at the party. I’d never barfed so much in my life. I had to keep chugging 7UP just to keep fuel in the tank.”
Belinda sighed. “The things you’re proud of, Colin, I don’t, I don’t understand you.”
Colin made a vomiting noise and doubled over. Belinda cringed and looked away, shaking her head.
“Here’s your chance to do it for him again,” Mort said.
Lucy looked over to see that Gates was walking toward them.
“Saint Gates, the party king,” Ritchie said sarcastically.
The outsiders had already been nicknamed the Saints. McKinley used to play St. Patrick’s Academy in football, and that was their team’s name, the Saints. Other names for them were floating around, but she could already tell that the Saints was the one that was going to stick. It sounded great when you said it with disgust.
Gates approached with a friendly smile. He held his hand out to shake as he neared Will.
Lucy went cold. She saw Sam out of the corner of her eye, running toward Will from the south wall, holding a chrome-plated pistol out in front of him.
“Look out,” she yelled. But Sam wasn’t going for Will, he was heading for Gates.
Gates whipped around fast, but it was too late. Sam was upon him. Sam pressed the gun’s barrel hard into the middle of Gates’s forehead. The machined lines of the gun gleamed in the sun.
“You’re coming with me,” Sam said. His sweaty, pale yellow hair was matted down across his forehead. His eyes were blasted wide open. He was breathing fast.
Gates’s bloodshot eye blinked continuously, and it scrunched up that side of his face, but his other eye was clear and piercing. It didn’t blink at all.
“We’re going to go over there to your friends. And you’re gonna tell them to hand over the rest of the guns to my gang,” Sam said, “Or they can watch me blow your brains out.”
Lucy was frozen with dread. It was a horrifying thought. Varsity with guns.
Gates busted up laughing.
“You think this is funny?” Sam said. His eyebrows bunched and he gritted his teeth.
Gates tried to stop laughing. He clamped his mouth shut, his cheeks puffed out. Lucy really wanted Gates to stop. After everything they endured, the last thing she needed was to watch Sam blow someone’s head off.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing. Go ahead. Pull the trigger,” Gates said.
“What?” Sam said.
“It was super rude of me to laugh at you like that. I understand if you have to pull it.”
“You don’t know who you’re tempting!” Sam yelled. “You think I’ve never killed someone? Ask anybody here.”
Gates chuckled again, then he sighed.
“You don’t have any bullets,” Gates said.
“Yes, I do,” Sam said.
“No … actually you don’t. I recognize that gun. That’s my friend, Shelly’s, gun. See that little spot of pink nail polish on the trigger guard?”
“You’re wrong.”
“Shelly,” Gates said loud and clear. “Is this your gun?”
“Yep,” a sweet voice said from amid the Saints.
There were giggles from some of the girls around the quad. Sam blushed. His face shook with anger, and then he pulled the trigger.
Click.
The gun didn’t go off. Click-click-click. Three more times, it didn’t fire. Gates never flinched once.
“We ran out of bullets two weeks ago. Been looking for more though if you have any hot tips,” Gates said.
Sam didn’t know quite what to do now. He took his gun from Gates’s head and let it hang at his side. The crowd snickered, and the laughter was spreading like an infection. Sam’s cheeks went a darker shade of red. He pushed away from Gates.