When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [58]
She nodded and he slid the plate out from in front of her. He heaped it with spaghetti and covered it with pomodoro sauce. Then he sat down next to me. He served me and finally himself.
The girl looked at him with her perfectly round, bright green eyes. She was waiting for something. What was it? We both hung on her every word. How could we not? What would she tell us next? What would she reveal?
“Go ahead,” Kit said. He smiled that dazzler of his. “Eat, please.”
“Eat the soup,” she said in a straight deadpan.
Kit didn’t get it, but the girl and I laughed again. She wasn’t just bright, she had good social skills. Where did she get them? Where had she grown up? She had definitely been around adults before.
She folded her hands tightly on the table and closed her eyes. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.
“Thank you, Lord, for this good food, this very good spaghetti. Amen,” she said.
Tears just leaped out of my eyes.
Chapter 59
MAX EASED BACK AND FORTH in the antique rocking chair on the porch, just like any ordinary little girl on a beautiful summer morning.
She was wearing Koss earphones, listening to Meredith Brooks sing a little rocker called “Bitch.” She felt calm—calmer, anyway. She wanted to trust the two of them, but she was still afraid, paranoid, a little nutso.
Afraid of your own shadow, aren’t you, Maximum?
The tall, blond man named Kit was inside the house, talking to someone on a telephone. She worried about who it was. He made really good spaghetti—the best she’d ever tasted—but that didn’t mean she could trust him with what she knew, with her darkest, deepest secrets, with the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the School.
Frannie had gone for a walk. She said she’d be back in about ten minutes, maybe sooner. She promised that she was bringing back a surprise. We’d see about that. And what kind of surprise?
Max knew that not all surprises were good. Understatement of the year! Most of the surprises in her life sucked big time.
She wanted Frannie and Kit to help her, but she had to find out if they were really good people, if they were worthy of her trust. She definitely liked the fact that they seemed to trust her. That made it easier. Frannie told her that it was okay to go in and out of the house as she pleased. Frannie seemed real nice and easy to be around. And so did Kit, actually.
The outside door at the School was always locked, Max remembered. She felt a shiver knife through her body. Bad memories flooded her brain.
She and Matthew had called it the Flight School. Two pretty good reasons. Number one, because the two of them desperately wanted to fly the hell out of there. Number two, because they were forbidden to fly at the School. So—the Flight School.Aprotest!
She’d been absolutely forbidden to go outside at the School. Under pain of being put to sleep.
But here she was. Awake. Alive. Listening to “Bitch.”
The one time the guards had left a door open—the only time she remembered them ever being sloppy—she and Matthew had bolted. Flew the coop, as Matthew said, hollered and whooped, actually.
Max tucked her knees up under her chin. She admired how her legs looked in the black stretch pants Frannie had given her. She also liked the big blue shirt Kit was letting her wear. “FBI” was printed on it.
She had a suspicious thought. The blue shirt covered her wings so that she couldn’t fly.
But it was clean and smelled nice and she didn’t want to fly, anyway. Not right now. She wanted to sit in the creaky old rocking chair and listen to rock and roll and eat chocolate-chip cookies until they came out of her nose. God—unlimited cookies. What an idea.
The rock music played and she liked the rhythm. It kind of matched up with her heartbeat. That was the trick of it, wasn’t it?
She was thinking that if Frannie’s “surprise” was good, maybe she’d tell her one of the secrets about the School.
Just one secret, though.
Maybe about Matthew.
Or maybe she’d tell about Adam? Or start with