No Safety in Numbers Read Online Free PDF Page A

stumbled into Shay.
    “They’re still here!” she said. “Preeti got hungry, so they went to the food court.” She pushed the phone into his chest and began to jog back down the hall.
    The cop pointed vigorously at the entrance to the nearest store: PaperClips.
    Ryan jammed his hands into his pockets and shuffled into PaperClips.
    Shay didn’t follow.



S
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    S haila Dixit drove a French fry through the puddle of ketchup on the crumpled wrapper in front of her. It’d been hours since she’d left Ryan in the corridor, but she couldn’t stop replaying every second of their half hour together in her mind. The whole day had felt blessed—and then he’d abandoned her.
    She’d come to the mall to get out of the house. The place was still a cluttered mess from the move. Shay couldn’t sit for five minutes anywhere without being asked to unpack something or
get out of the way, I’m vacuuming!
She was losing her mind.
    As if moving itself weren’t enough of a nightmare. All her friends had been like, Edison’s only an hour away, we’ll come visit all the time, but none had come in the four months she’d lived here. More than that, though, instead of Shay the Actress or Shay the Poet—in Stonecliff, she was Shay the Indian Chick.
    Shay tried to put on a brave face about it all. During lunch at school, she joked about Mom overdoing it with the cumin. She fashioned outfits out of her Indian garb to better look the part. But her weekends were still an endless expanse of time with no one but Preeti and Nani to fill it. So when she needed to escape, she came to the mall like every other teenager in America. Here, she was normal. Anyone who saw her would think friends were coming to meet her later, maybe they were waiting in another store and she only had to finish this purchase before joining them. When she could no longer pretend, she excused herself and went somewhere to hide in music and poetry. Toxic had seemed as good a place as any.
    But then this gorgeous guy had pulled her out of her loneliness. For thirty whole minutes, she’d had a friend. She’d felt ready to explode out of her skin with happiness. But she’d pushed it too far. How could she have expected him to keep following her? Especially when she was basically asking him to disobey the cops. She couldn’t have expected it. But she’d hoped.
    “Shaila-bhen, when can we go home?” Preeti whined, slumping into the seat next to Shay. They’d been stuck in the food court for hours, staring out the wall of windows at the parking lot as the sun set.
    “When they tell us,” Shay answered, shoving a fry into her mouth.
    Why had she given him her book? He who turned out to be less knight in shining armor than coward with good hair. He’d seemed so enthralled by her—yet another instance of her radar being way off. Ever since the move, Shay felt like she’d been stumbling in the dark. Maybeif her friends had visited like they’d promised, it would be easier to fake the smiles. Maybe if the theater program at her new school didn’t suck. Maybe, what if, whatever.
    Nani flipped open her phone, then slapped it shut again and shook her head. Their parents had called Nani’s phone every fifteen minutes. It was funny to watch her grandmother’s surprise and confusion each time the phone rang, like she hadn’t noticed the thing existed, even though it was clenched in her fist.
    “Perhaps it is for the best,” said Nani in Gujarati. “Perhaps by the time we leave, that henna will have worn off and your father won’t kill us both.” She smiled and shifted on the metal chair.
    Shay touched her cheek. She’d snuck into Nani’s room the night before and taken the henna, then worked for hours with a flashlight and a hand mirror to create the design. Shay had been in charge of the makeup for all the shows at her old school, meaning the tattoo was awesome, if forbidden. Nani had gasped at seeing her in the morning, then been more than happy when Shay