Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) Read Online Free PDF

very well. The bed had been hard—and it stank—the lights had been on all night, and the place had never really gotten quiet.
    He’d said his goodbyes to Mamacita and Rosalita already; they’d come to say adios yesterday, during official visiting hours, since Mamacita had already lost the day at work because of him. Saying goodbye had been hard. He could tell Mamacita was about ready to cry, and angry at the same time. She’d wanted to give him a lecture about doing good at this school, but she’d probably figured out a lecture was the last thing he wanted to hear. Rosalita had just stared at him with big sad eyes, and in a way that was worse, because he had the feeling she knew exactly what he’d done and how bad it was, and he knew that somehow he had failed her. And that wasn’t fair, nothing about this was fair, he’d done all of this for her.
    Hadn’t he?
    But who was going to take care of her now that he was gone? Who was going to walk her to and from school, and make sure she ate, and make sure nobody laughed at her when she talked to the friends that nobody but her could see?
    He wanted to tell Mamacita about the money tucked into the back of the kitchen cupboard, but somehow he didn’t dare. Maybe it would still be there when he got back. Maybe she’d find it and forgive him.
    He didn’t know any more.
    So this morning he’d gotten into the van with the little bag Mamacita had packed for him, and tried not to think about anything at all. Reform School had to be better than prison, and certainly easier to escape from. As the van sped through the steel canyons of the city, he stared out the window broodingly, frankly expecting at any moment it would pull into a security gate, and he could start the process of figuring out how to get himself out while he pretended to go along with the program.
    But it didn’t.
    In fact, the van kept going. An hour passed, then two, and by then Tomas was really worried. They were out of the city, out of the ‘burbs—all he could see was trees and Interstate. Were they going to Canada? If he did manage to get over the wall—he was sure by now this place, wherever it was, had a wall—where was he going to go? By the time the van actually pulled off the Interstate, he had no idea at all where they were, but they drove for another half hour along back roads before they finally got to where they were going.
    It did have gates after all, although they wouldn’t keep anybody out—or in. They were just sort of standing there, open, at the foot of a long drive at the bottom of a hill. There were more trees than he’d ever seen in his life.
    There was no way he could escape from this place. None.
    Then they got to the top of the hill and he saw the place itself.
    It was a freaky dump.
    The van pulled up in front of this ancient old house like out of some kind of a horror movie, and surrounding it were a bunch of sad old two-story buildings that practically screamed “low rent housing project.” Cracked old sidewalks connected them.
    And there were bars on the windows. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
    There were two people standing on the steps of the Horror Movie House. One of them looked like he really belonged there: he was a tall—really tall—skinny, long-faced pale guy with the whitest hair and the greenest eyes Tomas had ever seen, wearing a black, really formal kind of suit with a vest. Looking at him gave Tomas a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t fear, exactly—not what he’d felt looking at Señor Prestamo—but it was like that. Like you’d better pay very close attention whenever this vato was around, because if you didn’t, it could cost you. Why this guy, who didn’t look like he could crush a paper cup, would make Tomas’s hackles go up, he could not imagine.
    But the other…
    Oh, she didn’t look like she belonged here at all.
    She was tiny, blonde, and Anglo; as perky as a cheerleader in a commercial, wearing a cute