"That was smart back there," Connor tells Risa, as they approach the antique shop. "Pretending to be clappers, I mean. I would never have thought of that."
"You thought quickly enough to take out that Juvey-cop the other day with his own tranq gun."
Connor grins. "I go by instinct, you go by brains. I guess we make a pretty decent team."
"Yeah. And we're a bit less dysfunctional without Lev."
At the mention of Lev, Connor feels a spike of anger. He rubs his sore arm where Lev bit him—but what Lev did today was much more painful than that. "Forget about him. He's history. We got away, so his squealing on us doesn't matter. Now he'll get unwound, just like he wants, and we won't have to deal with him again." And yet the thought of it brings Connor a pang of regret. He had risked his life for Lev. He had tried to save him, but had failed. Maybe if Connor were better with words, he could have said something that would have truly won him over. But who is he kidding? Lev was a tithe from the moment he was born. You don't undo thirteen years of brainwashing in two days.
The antique shop is old. White paint peels from the front door. Connor pushes open the door, and bells hanging high on the door jingle. Low-tech intruder alert. There's one customer: a sour-faced man in a tweed coat. He looks up at them, disinterested and maybe disgusted by the baby, because he wanders deeper into the recesses of the cluttered store to get away.
The shop has things from perhaps even' point in American history. A display of iPods and other little gadgets from his grandfather's time cover an old chrome-rimmed dinner table. An old movie plays on an antique plasma-screen TV. The movie shows a crazy vision of a future that never came, with flying cars and a white-haired scientist.
"Can I help you?"
An old woman as hunched as a question mark comes out from behind the cash register. She walks with a cane, but she seems pretty surefooted in spite of it.
Risa bounces the baby to get its volume down. "We're looking for Sonia."
"You found her. What do you want?"
"We . . . uh . . . we need some help," Risa says.
"Yeah," Connor chimes in, "Someone told us to come here."
The old woman looks at them suspiciously. "Does this have something to do with that fiasco over at the high school? Are you clappers?"
"Do we look like clappers to you?" says Connor.
The woman narrows her eyes at him. "Nobody looks like a clapper."
Connor narrows his gaze to match hers, then goes over to the wall. He holds up his hand and jabs it forward with all his might, punching the wall hard enough to bruise his knuckles. A little painting of a fruit bowl falls off the wall. Connor catches it before it hits the ground and sets it on the counter.
"See?" he says. "My blood isn't explosive. If I were a clapper, this whole shop would be gone."
The old woman stares at him, and it's a hard gaze for Connor to hold—there's some sort of fire in those weary eyes. But Connor doesn't look away. "See this hunch?" she asks them. "I got it from sticking my neck out for people like you."
Connor still won't break his gaze. "Guess we came to the wrong place, then." Glancing at Risa, he says, "Let's get out of here."
He turns to leave, and the old woman swings her cane sharply and painfully across his shins. "Not so fast. It just so happens that Hannah called me, so I knew you were coming."
Risa, still bouncing the baby, lets out a frustrated breath. "You could have told us when we came in."
"What fun would that be?"
By now the sour-faced customer has made his way closer again, picking up item after item, his expression showing instant disapproval of everything in the shop.
hen salvation arrives in a most unlikely form.
"Hi, Didi!"
It's Alexis, the talkative girl from the school bus! She comes up beside her, with Chaz gnawing at her shoulder. "People pull the alarms all the time," she says. "Well, at least I got out of Math."
Suddenly the policeman's eyes shift to Alexis.
"Stop right there, miss."
Alexis looks stunned. "Who, me?"