The One Safe Place (6 page)

“Why are you telling me?” Devin asked.

“They can’t take every kid,” Roman explained. “They have to choose. And they only choose special kids.” His hand tightened on Devin’s shoulder. “I can take you there. Tonight. Think about it, Devin. Tonight you could be sleeping in a bed, with a full stomach, far from this filthy city, far from danger.”

“I don’t know,” Devin said.

Roman straightened up and took his hand away. “Well, it’s up to you,” he said. “But don’t think about it too long. I’m leaving tonight.”

“Can Kit come too?”

“That girl you were with last night?” Roman frowned. “I don’t think so. No. She’s not . . . she’s not right for the Home at all.”

“Then I can’t go,” Devin said simply. “I’m very sorry. Thanks for asking me, though. And thanks for saving me from the baker.”

“You won’t change your mind?”

Devin shook his head. “Not if Kit can’t come. There’s no way I’m leaving her behind.”

Devin clambered up to join Kit on the roof. All her stuff had been put back in place.

“You were gone for ages,” she said. “Get anything?”

Devin handed her the loaf of bread.

“A whole one! And it’s fresh!” her eyes narrowed. “Did you steal it, Devin? I didn’t think you’d be able.”

“I didn’t steal it.” Devin sat down on the mattress. “It’s a long story. I met a boy. He was at the gym last night. His name’s Roman, and he bought it. I was going to be beaten by the baker and he saved me.”

“You’re not making sense,” Kit said, tearing a chunk of bread from the loaf and stuffing it hungrily into her mouth. “Start from the beginning.”

She listened in silence until he came to the part where Roman had told him about the home.

“That’s nonsense!” she burst out. “It doesn’t exist.”

“But he said it did. He said he lives there.”

Kit screwed up her face until her freckles almost merged into one. “Devin!” she cried. “He was messing with you. Only you would have believed him. You’d believe anything.”

“I said I wouldn’t go,” Devin told her. “He said you couldn’t come, so I said no thanks. I just walked away.”

“You believed him about the home but you still walked away?”

He nodded.

“Because I couldn’t come?” Her face looked as shocked as if he’d just slapped her.

“Yeah. And then he came running after me and said okay, you could come too, but nobody else. And he gave me the bread. And he said we have to meet him tonight.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know what this boy Roman is up to, but I don’t like it. We’ll just eat the bread and forget about it.”

“Why?”

“Devin,” Kit said softly. “You lived on a farm all your life, but even you have to know that people don’t buy you bread for nothing. And people don’t drive you off to homes where you can live happy ever after. Not in the real world.”

Devin looked at her. She was wearing a different shirt, a ragged yellow tank that showed the top of her arms. Now he could see that there were marks all over her shoulders, a dense crisscross of scars and ugly lines of raised skin where she had been beaten. The marks were faded purple, and into Devin’s ears came the sound of the farm rooster crowing, faint and far away like something in a dream. Kit saw him looking and raised her chin defiantly.

“Trust me,” she said. “Good things don’t happen in the real world.”

“They must sometimes,” Devin pointed out. “Maybe just one time in a hundred or a thousand. And if there’s even just a tiny chance, don’t you think we should take it?”

They talked about it for the rest of the day without being able to decide what to do. In the end, they came to a compromise. They would go to the meeting place and Kit would make up her mind after talking to Roman and hearing more about the home. Kit was certain it would be nothing but a trick and they would return to the roof for the night. Still, when it came time to leave, she hesitated.

“If we do go, if it’s real, I don’t know what I should take with me.”

“They probably have everything we need right there,” Devin reminded her.

“But my raries . . .” She hovered over the small shelf where she kept her most prized finds. The shell was there along with an assortment of tiny porcelain dolls’ heads, three old keys, and the golden nib of an ancient pen. Kit scooped them up and put them in the bottom of her bag.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

It was dusk by the time they climbed down from the roof. They hurried through the streets, making for the place where Devin had last seen Roman. He was standing just where Devin had left him, leaning against the wall, half in the shadows.

“Come on,” Roman said immediately. “We have to leave right this minute.”

“We’re not going with you until I find out more,” Kit said. “I’m not leaving without some proof that it’s not just a trick.”

“There’s no time,” Roman said. “I’ll explain everything later. You have to come now.”

He turned and disappeared down a side street that was illuminated only by a few dim lights from neighboring buildings and the half-spent moon above the rooftops. The shadows fell long and dark over the sidewalk. At the far end of the street there was a car. It was large and gleaming and lit from the interior. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat, his body nothing but a dark silhouette.

The passenger door was wide open, waiting.

Kit gripped Devin’s arm.

“This isn’t right,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t like it.”

Devin could feel her alarm, the beginning of panic.

“Look,” he said, “You’re right. We don’t know anything about this. But I think we have to go. We can’t stay in the city. Always hungry, having to steal, getting into fights and getting hurt. How long can we survive like that?”

“Okay, listen, this is a bad idea,” Kit said, talking very fast, “I should just turn around and walk away from this. But here’s the thing. You told that boy you wouldn’t go without me and nobody’s ever done something like that for me before. Not once. Not ever. This is a bad idea, but I can tell you’ve set your mind on it and someone’s got to watch your back. You wouldn’t go without me, and now I’m not going to let you go alone.”

Kit marched forward and got into the backseat of the waiting car.

Six

DEVIN HAD NEVER SEEN
anything like the inside of the car. The minute he got in, he was in a different world. Everything gleamed and the air was fresh and cool. As he sat down on the tan-colored leather seats, they made a tiny sighing sound as they shifted to fit his body. The windows—completely darkened—gave no view outside.

Roman had gotten into the front seat, next to the driver. There was a glass panel between the front and back seats. The car moved off swiftly and utterly silently.

Kit sat half curled up, her eyes wide and watchful. “I’m not going to close my eyes for a second,” she whispered to Devin. “If anything happens, I want to be ready.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

But the cool air, the comfort of the seats, and the soft vibration of the car as it sped onward soon lulled Devin into a doze and then into a deep sleep. He dreamed of his grandfather at the kitchen table at night with the light from the lantern making a circle of gold. His grandfather had the book open and was teaching him to read. “No, that’s not it,” he said to Devin in his quiet, patient voice, “you’re getting all muddled up aren’t you?”

“I am,” Devin said. “I’m really muddled up, Granddad.”

Devin looked down and the whole farm was suddenly there below him as if he were flying. And it was set inside another, bigger circle of gold that glowed bright at the edges and kept the dark away.

“You have to try again, Dev,” his grandfather said, turning the page. “Go back, try again, go back.”

“I can’t, I don’t know how! I don’t know!”

Someone was shaking him, calling his name. It was Kit. His eyes shot open. It was early morning; they had been driving all night. The car windows had lightened to clear glass and he could see they were far from the city, traveling on an empty road. Beside the road he saw thin lines of crops. They were soybeans, one of the few plants that could be cultivated on such dry soil, although even these were stunted and half withered.

“You slept for hours . . .”

Devin wasn’t listening. He was too busy staring outside, where a row of hills made a pattern against the sky, interrupting the steady clicking of the horizon with a series of soft thuds. He looked up and noticed by the sun that they were traveling west. The road forked and they turned away, moving southwest now, past great heaps of tumbled rocks.

A tray slid out from the panel in front of them and there were two glasses of a shimmering pale yellow liquid. Kit eyed the drink. “Better leave that alone. It’s all bubbly. We don’t know what it is.”

“But I’m so thirsty, Kit.”

“Okay. But I’ll try it first.”

She took a wary sip and her face shivered with astonishment. “I never had a bubbly drink before.”

The car turned off the main highway and began to wind along through trees and hedgerows. The road narrowed until it became a single lane. Finally it petered out completely. In front of them was a stone arch with words carved across the top:

Gabriel H. Penn Home for Childhood

In a second, the car had passed beneath the arch and entered a long and shady driveway.

Kit cast a look at Roman sitting in the front seat. “He was telling the truth,” she whispered. “There really is a home. It really exists.”

The driveway wound around in a wide curve. To their left were bushes and tall trees; on their right, a huge meadow, surrounded by a low fence, where three or four horses were grazing. As the car came around the top of the curve, Devin and Kit saw a group of buildings built around a courtyard, with a tower at the center. Above the tower, the sky was full of dark flecks; a vast flock of birds, which darted this way and that in sudden groups and clusters.

The car pulled up alongside the buildings and entered the courtyard with the tower. The walls around them were golden stone, faded with age and covered with patches of creeping ivy. The courtyard itself was paved around the edges, and there were beds of flowers on both sides, bright, heavy, rich-looking blooms that Devin had never seen before. They must need a lot of water, he thought. He had never heard of anyone wasting water on flowers. The extravagance of it astonished him.