Quarantine #2: The Saints Read Online Free PDF Page A

See that little spot of pink nail polish on the trigger guard?”
    “You’re wrong.”
    “Shelly,” Gates said loud and clear. “Is this your gun?”
    “Yep,” a sweet voice said from amid the Saints.
    There were giggles from some of the girls around the quad. Sam blushed. His face shook with anger, and then he pulled the trigger.
    Click
.
    The gun didn’t go off.
Click-click-click
. Three more times, it didn’t fire. Gates never flinched once.
    “We ran out of bullets two weeks ago. Been looking for more though if you have any hot tips,” Gates said.
    Sam didn’t know quite what to do now. He took his gun from Gates’s head and let it hang at his side. The crowd snickered, and the laughter was spreading like an infection. Sam’s cheeks went a darker shade of red. He pushed away from Gates.
    Lucy saw a lopsided smile bloom on Will’s face.
Oh no
, she thought,
just leave it alone. Sam’s a maniac
.
    Will cupped his hand beside his mouth to shout to the whole quad.
    “Those aren’t the only blanks he’s been shooting since I kicked his balls up into his stomach.”
    The quad erupted in laughter. This audience was all too eager to hurt Sam’s feelings, to have him put in his place. Lucy knew she was. She laughed, but it was a short laugh, because she was watching Sam’s face. She saw the pain he felt when he looked back at everyone mocking him. And she saw the fury build up in him, and his eyes lock on Will.
    Sam lunged for Will.
    Before he could get to him, Gates jumped in front of Will, and shoved Sam back.
    “I can’t let you do that,” Gates said. “This guy saved my life.”
    Will walked up and planted himself beside Gates. The two of them stood together against Sam.
    “You want to fight us both?” Will said, grinning again. “Feeling confident about that?”
    Sam flicked his jittering eyes back and forth between his opponents.
    “Varsity, back me up!” Sam yelled.
    Varsity stayed seated on the ground at the south wall. They kept their heads low, and continued to eat. Most kept their gaze trained on their food. They didn’t seem eager to be a part of Sam’s embarrassment. Sam getting rejected by his own gang really got the crowd laughing.
    Sam screamed at Varsity, “What the hell are you doing?”
    When none of them answered, Sam crossed the quad and stomped into the crowd of Varsity guys. He went berserk on them, shouting orders, all while the school laughed at him. Sam whipped his hand in the direction of the gym, and Varsity shuffled off the quad, most of them looking disgruntled and embarrassed.
    “Who was that guy?” Gates said to Will.
    “Some loser.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Will.”
    “Well, hey, Will …,” Gates said and stuck out his hand again with a giant smile. “I just wanted to thank you. I don’t know what to say really. I owe you my life.”
    Will shook his hand.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Will said.
    Will was beaming. He seemed very happy with himself for standing up to Sam. He seemed even happier that the Loners had witnessed it.
    Colin walked up to Gates. “Hey, dude, remember me?”
    “Oh shit. Puke guy. How’s it goin’?” Gates said.
    A few other Saints came rushing up to Gates.
    “You good, Gates?” one of the boys said.
    Lucy barely looked at the Saint boy’s face. She was transfixed by what was hanging from one of the belt loops on the kid’s jeans. A white leather eye patch.
    “Hey!” Lucy said.
    All the Loners and the outsiders looked at her. She pointed to the eye patch.
    “Where did you get that?” she said.
    The outsider boy held the white leather eye patch in his fingers. “Oh, this? Yeah, we were looting some houses in town. I took this off a dead kid. It’s cool, right?”

5
    DAVID WAS DEAD. WILL WISHED HE COULD unknow it. But he’d seen the evidence along with everyone else, David’s eye patch, hanging off that kid’s hip as a trinket. They’d grilled that Saint about what the body looked like. Apparently, it had