Read Online No Safety in Numbers by Dayna Lorentz - Free Book Online Page A

“you’re going to feel like a real moron for saying that.”
    Mike nearly hurdled over the seat back. Drew threw himself across the table and grabbed his friend’s arm, cocking his head to indicate the approach of an old balding guy.
    The old guy—the manager, Ryan guessed—folded his arms across his chest and stood beside Marco. “We have a problem here, boys?” He looked like one of those old guys you messed with at your own risk.
    Mike slid back into his seat. “No problem,” he said.
    “I think it’s time for your check,” the manager said, sliding a black holder across the tabletop.
    As he paid at the hostess station, Mike muttered, “This is so not over.”
    A sinking feeling took hold of Ryan’s gut, which when combined with the greasy chicken, made him feel sick. But sick was weak and weak was shit, so Ryan stowed it and followed Mike and Drew out into the throng.



S
H
A
Y
    S hay huddled under the bowed branches of the stunted tree stuck in the giant pot beside Nani’s table in the food court, a wrinkled scrap of paper pressed against her jeans. On it was one of her poems. She’d written it Friday, part of an assignment for English due Monday. They were studying haiku, and Shay had drafted several as she sat alone in the courtyard during her free period. The one in her lap had been her favorite:
    The summer of birds
ends in migration to cliffs,
the fall of dead leaves.
    Shay named the seasons of her life: the winter of the ice trees, the spring of chicken pox and mono. Last summer had been the summer of birds. She’d seen them everywhere, more than normal, always twittering in theshadows. On the day of the move, a flock of crows lurked in the trees around her old house as if hoping to steal the boxes on their way to the truck. She’d tentatively dubbed this season the fall of dead leaves. Given her present situation, stuck under green leaves in the calculated warmth of the glassed-in food court, threatened by a bomb of unknown-but-not-nuclear composition, she felt a new name was in order.
    Pulling a pen from her bag, she scratched out
leaves,
but left
dead
.
Dead
what?
People
had too many syllables.
    She crumpled the poem and tossed it into the mulch of the pot. She turned up her iPod and tried to lose herself in the blaring bass line.
    Nani was still hunched over her Sudoku. Shay had bought her a thick book of puzzles that morning after the mall cop announced that shoppers were allowed to roam the halls. Last night, a customer service rep had brought Nani some insulin. Nani, however, still did not seem one hundred percent okay. She sighed a lot. Her skin looked ashy. She had bags under her eyes. In the darkest moments—between songs, when someone’s shouts echoed around the mall—Shay couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with the bomb.
    Shay hadn’t said anything to Nani or Preeti about the bomb. What could she say? “Oh, by the way, there might be a bomb in the basement and we could all be dead by sunrise”? Not the kind of thing to share over a dinner of fried rice and tofu. The only person she could talk to was the boy from the police car—Marco—and he was upstairs at the Grill’n’Shake. Shay was desperate to talk to him, if only to have someone nearby who was as petrified as she,who knew what was really going on. The only problem was how to convince Nani and Preeti to leave the food court—to go to another restaurant.
    Shay’s contacts were killing her, but she couldn’t ditch them entirely; she did not need the world to fall any further out of focus.
Time for another visit to the PhreshPharm.
Maybe her old friend at the pharmacy counter could get her solution and a case. She’d been so helpful the first time around.
    “I need to get some stuff at the pharmacy,” Shay said, turning off her music and sliding down from the pot. “Can I get you anything?”
    Nani did not look up from her puzzle. “Take Preeti with you,” she said.
    “Do you need more