Locked (The Heaven's Gate Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

end up in the same
classes?” His eyes danced as he took in my puzzlement.  “C’mon, Hope, I can’t
be your stalker.  We only just met.”
    His choice of the term “stalker”
stopped me in my tracks.  Stalker is only one step away from kidnapper.  Was it
just a coincidence he’d used that word?  What did he know about me?  I was
surprised, and secretly ashamed, with how easily I’d wrapped myself in the
mantle of my father’s paranoia, but it didn’t stop me from asking my next
question.
    “Just how new to this
school are you?” I demanded, telling myself not to be drawn in by his easy
jokes.
    “Just off the turnip
truck three weeks ago,” he smiled, putting a finger to his lips to quiet me as
the teacher stepped to the front of the room.
    My day was a whirlwind of
new classes, but with Michael as tour guide it was not as overwhelming.  He
seemed to radiate a sense of authority so that the endless torture of being
singled out as the new girl miraculously stopped.  One look from him and people
swallowed their questions, bit off that smart comment before it even left their
lips.  Everyone kept a wide berth of us so that by the time we emerged from our
last class, I felt like I was secure in my own little bubble.
    Who could have that
kind of effect on teenagers ? I thought to myself.  I peppered him with questions, trying to figure
him out.
    “Where are you from?”
    “Here and there,” he said
vaguely, not even bothering to hide the grin that stole across his face.
    “But where most recently,
before Dunwoody?”
    “What is this, a crime
scene? Relax, Hope, there’s nothing fishy about me that you have to uncover.”
    “So where are you from?”
I pressed him.
    He turned to the locker
bay and started twirling a combination absentmindedly while I fumbled with
mine, waiting for his answer.  “I grew up on a commune in Iowa,” he said.  “I
didn’t really have parents; the whole community raised me.  You know, that
whole ‘takes a village’ thing.”
    “A commune?” I said,
unsure of what that meant.
    “Some called it a
commune.  Some called it a cult.  It doesn’t really matter.”
    “Oh,” I said dumbly,
trying to take this in.  “So what happened to your parents? I mean, your
commune?”
    “It was shut down by a
police raid last year.  And because I was over sixteen, the District Attorney
gave me the option of staying with the community as they went through social
services and the courts, or of being declared an emancipated youth.”
    “An ‘emancipated
youth’?”  The term was starting to make more sense to me as I began to
understand his situation.
    “For all intents and purposes,
I am treated as if I were eighteen.  It means I operate on my own.  No adults
telling me what to do.”
    “But how…?”
    “I had distant relatives
here in Georgia and apparently a bit of money stashed away that my real parents
had never told me about.  It was against the rules, you see, to have any
private property or money on the commune.”
    “So your real
parents….?”  I left the question hanging in the air, afraid of what he might
say.
    “It was all a big
mix-up.  They weren’t really brainwashing people or anything.  So they have
moved on to California.  And now I’m here.  I live by myself and drive myself
to school and every now and then a relative checks in on me.”  He flashed me
that brilliant smile again and shrugged.  “I know it’s an odd story.  Probably
one of the strangest you’ve heard.”
    I laughed to myself.  If
only he knew. 
    “I’ve heard stranger
things,” I said, knowing exactly how it must have felt to have such an odd
upbringing.  I was impressed by what he had shared with me.  I’d had enough
experience in the juvenile legal system to know that to be able to convince a
judge to treat you like an adult was no mean feat.  It seemed to explain how
comfortable he was around everyone, the weird sense of authority that he just
seemed to