Lies (Gone 3)

“What are you supposed to be, mummies?” Diana asked. She wiped sheep’s blood from her mouth and then realized that it had saturated her shirt and that there would be no wiping it away.

“We’re lepers,” the tall kid said.

Diana felt her heart skip several beats.

“My name is Sanjit,” the tall boy said, and extended a hand that seemed to be stumps of fingers bound with gauze. “This is Choo.”

“Stay back!” Caine snapped.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Sanjit said. “It’s not always contagious. I mean, sure, sometimes. But not always.”

He dropped his hand to his side.

“You have leprosy?” Caine demanded.

“Like at Sunday school?” Bug said.

Sanjit nodded. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, if your finger falls off, you kind of don’t even feel it.”

“I felt it when my penis fell off, but it didn’t hurt that bad,” the one called Choo said.

Penny yelped. Caine shifted uncomfortably. Bug faded from view as he backpedaled away.

“But people are scared of leprosy, anyway,” Sanjit said. “Silly. Kind of.”

“What are you doing here?” Caine asked warily. He had put down his food, keeping his hands ready.

“Hey, I should ask you that,” Sanjit said. Not harsh but definitely not willing to be pushed around by Caine, either. “We live here. You just got here.”

“Plus, you killed one of our sheep,” Choo said.

“This is the San Francisco de Sales leper colony,” Sanjit said. “Didn’t you know?”

Diana began to laugh. “A leper colony? That’s where we are? That’s what we half killed ourselves getting to?”

“Shut up, Diana,” Caine snapped.

“You guys want to come back to the hospital with us?” Sanjit offered hopefully. “All the adult patients and the nurses and doctors are gone, they just disappeared one day. We’re all by ourselves.”

“We heard there was some movie star’s mansion out here.”

Sanjit’s dark eyes narrowed. He glanced right, as if trying to make sense of what she was saying. Then he said, “Oh, I know what you’re thinking of. Todd Chance and Jennifer Brattle pay for this place. It’s, like, their charity.”

Diana couldn’t stop giggling. A leper colony. That’s what Bug had read about. A leper colony paid for by two rich movie stars. Their charity thing.

“I think Bug may have gotten just a few of the details wrong,” she managed to say between dry, racking laughs that were indistinguishable from sobs.

“You can have the sheep,” Choo said.

Diana stopped laughing. Caine’s eyes narrowed.

Sanjit quickly said, “But we’d rather just have you come back with us. I mean, we’re kind of lonely.”

Caine stared at Choo. Choo stared back, then looked away. “He doesn’t seem to want us to come to this hospital,” Caine said, indicating Choo.

Diana saw fear in the younger boy’s eyes.

“Have them take off their bandages,” Diana said. All urge to laugh was gone now. Both boys had bright eyes. The visible parts of them seemed healthy. Their hair wasn’t brittle and broken like hers.