“Oh, gosh, look at that,” Nudge said, pointing out her window. “That horse is totally white. Like an angel horse. And what are those rolled-up straw things?”
“Bales of hay,” said Anne from the front seat. “They roll them like that instead of making haystacks.”
“It’s so pretty here,” Nudge went on, practically bouncing in her seat next to Anne. “I like these hills. What’s the kind of tree with pointy leaves and all the colors?”
“Maples,” Anne said. “They usually have the most color.”
“What’s your house like?” Nudge asked. “Is it all white with big columns? Like Tara? Did you see that movie?”
“Gone with the Wind,” Anne said. “No, I’m afraid my house isn’t anything like Tara. It’s an old farmhouse. But I do have fifty acres of land around it. Plenty of room for you guys to run around. We’re almost there.”
Twenty minutes later, Anne pulled into a driveway and clicked an electronic gadget. A pair of wrought-iron gates swung open, and she pulled through.
The gates closed behind us, which made my sensors go on precautionary alert.
It took almost a whole minute to get to her house. The driveway was made of crushed shells and wound through beautiful trees arching overhead. Red and yellow leaves fluttered gently down onto the car.
“Well, here we are,” she said, pulling around a corner. “I hope you like it.”
We stared out the car windows. Anne’s house looked like a painting. It had rounded river rocks on the bottom part, and clapboards above, and a big screened porch that covered almost the whole front. Large shrubs circled the yard, and some of them still had faded hydrangea blooms.
“There’s a pond out back,” Anne said, pulling into a parking spac
e in front of the house. “It’s so shallow that it might still be warm enough to swim in, in the afternoons. Here, everyone pile out.”
We poured out of the car, glad to be in a wide-open space again.
“The air smells different here,” said Nudge, wrinkling her nose. “It smells great.”
The house stood on the top of a low hill. Sloping away from us were wide lawns and an orchard. The trees were actually covered with apples. Birds twittered and sang. I couldn’t hear traffic, or smell road tar, or hear any other person.
Anne opened the front door. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she said with a laugh. “Come see your rooms.”
I nodded, and Angel and Nudge started toward the house, followed by Gazzy.
Iggy was standing next to me. “What does it look like?” he asked in a low voice.
“It looks like paradise, Jeff,” said Fang.
21
The rough bark of the tree was cutting into his legs, but Ari paid no attention.
After the pain of having huge wings retrofitted onto his shoulders, this was child’s play. He grinned at that thought. Technically, anything he did was child’s play: He was only seven years old. Eight next April. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t get presents or a cake. His dad probably wouldn’t even remember.
He put the binoculars to his eyes again, clenching his jaw. He saw the mutant bird freaks get out of the car. He’d already been over the grounds, looked in the windows of the house. Those kids were in a for a cushy stay. At least for a while.
It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t even a word for how unfair it was. Ari’s hand clutched a small branch so tightly that the branch snapped, sending a long, thin sliver under his skin.
He looked at it, waiting for the pain signals to make their sluggish way to his brain. Bright red blood welled around the splinter. Ari pinched the splinter out and threw it away before his brain even recognized that he’d been hurt.
Here he was, in a tree, his team camped nearby, stuck watching the mutant freaks through binoculars.
He should be on the ground, tapping Max on the shoulder, seeing her whirl, then smashing his fist right into her face.
But no. Instead, she was sashaying inside the fancy house, thinking she was perfect, better than anyone, better than him.
The one fun thing of the last forty-eight hours had been Max’s expression when she’d seen he was alive. She’d been shocked. Shocked and horrified, Ari remembered proudly. He wanted her to look like that every time she saw him.