Bits & Pieces (Benny Imura 5)

The girl said, “Umm . . . no?”

“You’re darn right no. And I’ll bet you a full bag of prime goods that Gummi Bear’s going to be a full-out player before he’s twelve.”

“A player? What’s that?”

Jolt didn’t answer; he was too busy yelling compliments at Gummi Bear.

The boy suddenly lunged up, pulling the front end of his bike completely off the road. He waggled the front wheel back and forth, landed with a dusty thump and was off, dodging and weaving on and off the road, slipping past zees with inches to spare.

Laughing.

All the time laughing.

It was all so crazy and so well done that, despite everything, the girl laughed too.

She turned and saw with a start that the town was much closer. Without realizing it she and Jolt had run more than half the distance to the cluster of buildings. It was incredible. The hunger, the aches, and weariness were still there—but at the moment her system was flooded with adrenaline and something else. She didn’t dare call it by its name because “happiness” was such a rare and elusive thing she was afraid of chasing it away.

“Hey, Riot!” called Jolt. “You daydreaming?”

“That’s not my name,” she yelled back, but there was a laugh in her voice.

“Okay—what is your name?”

She had to think about how to answer that. When it was just her and Dad she’d been Maggie. Then once they’d somehow been absorbed into her mother’s Night

Church she’d been Sister Margaret. But neither of those names seemed to fit anymore. The first was too weighed down by loss and grief. The other was burdened by horror.

So—who was she?

Jolt squatted down, his muscular thighs bulging, his blond curls stirring as a hot breeze blew in off the sand. Even from thirty feet away, the girl could feel the impact of his stare. There was genuine interest there, and honest happiness. The one thing she could not find, no matter how hard she searched in those bottomless blue eyes, was a single flicker of judgment.

“I . . . guess my name’s Riot,” she said.

“Booyah!” He rose and shouted through cupped hands. “Hey, Gummi Bear! Riot thinks you have mad bike skills.”

The boy somehow lifted the back end of his bike and rolled forward on just the front tire, then popped the whole bike up, spun it in a 360-degree turn, and zoomed off.

Jolt laughed, then he turned to Riot. “You need to get back to somewhere?”

She said nothing.

“What about your people? Are you lost out here or—”

“I’m not lost and no one’s waiting up for me,” she said. “I don’t belong nowhere.”

As an after-echo she heard the deep bitterness in her voice. Vicious and hard.

Jolt’s smile flickered as he studied her eyes. She had no idea what he saw there, or what he thought any of it meant, but for just a moment he looked very sad.

“Somebody hurt you?” he asked.

She did not answer the question.

“Okay,” said Jolt, accepting her silence, or perhaps her right to silence. Then he beamed another of his bright smiles. “You can come with us, if you want. We got a camp up near the town, and we’re going to play some games tomorrow. You in?”

“Games?” she asked suspiciously. “What kind of games?”

He frowned. “You serious?”