Two Schools Out - Forever

107

Well, it had been a whole day without an Eraser crashing-literally-our party.

I snapped my fingers softly twice, and five heads turned toward me, alert and tense.

"Someone's here," Angel repeated softly.

Fang kept turning things in the fire, but his back was taut and straight, and I knew he was reviewing escape plans.

"What are you getting?" I asked Angel out of the side of my mouth.

She frowned, her blond curls glinting in the firelight. "Not Erasers." She cocked her head to one side, concentrating. "Kids?" She looked puzzled.

I got slowly to my feet, scanning the darkness around the fire. Moving to the edge of our little circle, I peered intently into the woods. Then I saw them. Two small, skinny forms, inching toward our fire. Much too small to be Erasers. And human, not animal.

"Who's there?" I said strongly. I stood tall and put my shoulders back, making myself look bigger. Fang got up and came to stand next to me.

The two little forms slunk nearer, more quickly.

"Who are you?" I asked, sounding mean. "Come closer, where I can see you."

They crawled into our small area, two dirty, skinny, big-eyed children. I mean, all of us bird kids looked really long and slender compared to other kids our ages, but our bones didn't really stick out. Theirs did.

They gave us all wary glances but seemed riveted by the fire and the smell of food cooking. One of them actually licked her lips-they were a boy and a girl.

Hmm. They didn't seem like the biggest threat I'd ever seen. I leaned over, put some hot dogs onto a paper bag, and placed it in front of them.

Yo. I thought Gazzy and Iggy were repulsive eaters. I made a mental note to not ever let them get this close to starving. Those two kids fell on the hot dogs and virtually shoved them whole into their mouths. It made me think of a TV special I'd seen that showed hyenas ripping apart their prey.

I put two slices of bread in front of them, then two more, then two more, then two more hot dogs. They all disappeared in instants. After that I gave them candy bars, and their eyes widened as if I'd just handed them-uh... candy bars when they were starving. Finally their chewing slowed. Now they seemed to savor every bite. Fang passed them a canteen of water. They drained it.

They crawled closer to the fire and sat in front of it, looking sleepy and unafraid, as if it would be fine if we killed them now, because they weren't hungry anymore.

"So-what's your story?" I asked, wanting some answers before they nodded off.

"We got kidnapped," said the girl, her dark eyes reflecting the flames.

Well, okay, I hadn't seen that coming. "Kidnapped?"

The boy nodded tiredly. "In south Jersey. From two different places-we're not related."

"We just ended up in the same place," said the girl, yawning.

"And where was that?" I asked.

"Here," said the boy. "We escaped a couple times. Even made it to the police station."

"But both times our kidnappers were already there, like, filing missing-kid notices. They just found us again, real easy." The girl sighed heavily and lay down on the ground, curling into a bony clump. We weren't going to get any good answers out of them tonight.

"So, who were your kidnappers?" Fang tried.

"They were, like, doctors," the boy said sleepily, lying down too. "In white coats."

He closed his eyes, and within seconds both he and the girl were asleep.

Which left the rest of us wide-awake, frozen in terror, staring at them as if they carried the plague.