Wanted! by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9536-6
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-12-05T21:49:00+00:00

Chapter 8

ALICE FLUNG HERSELF AROUND Bagel Deluxe and across the six lanes of traffic. Cars would brake in time, or they wouldn’t.

Paul Chem would be blocked by the concrete curbs, the raised gardens, parked cars, and a complex series of traffic lights. Would he abandon his precious Jeep and come after her on foot? Alice bet that he would not.

Cars honked as if they were in a marching band. Alice made it across and darted down a side street.

She was on the edge of the city. Low buildings were like foothills before the mountains of downtown. The side streets were all one-way. Alice doubled over a block until she was running the wrong way on a one-way street; the Jeep could not follow her here.

In the distance, a city bus belched smoke as it slowed for a stop. Alice had never been on a bus. Her neighborhood had no public transportation. Was that bus her answer, or was it a fifty-seat trap, and if she got on, strange faces would glint with the thrill of capture, shouting, “You! You’re the one!”

She was shocked to hear an engine behind her. This was a one-way street! Cars could only come toward her! She flung a look over her shoulder.

Paul Chem was so eager to capture her that he had taken his precious Jeep and was actually driving against traffic to pursue Alice.

Alice was furious. She fled down an alley. Would this be like television? Trapped at a dead end by ten-foot-high chain link and topped with rolls of slicing wire?

A garbage truck was backing up as it picked up trash, its automatic horn beeping steadily. Alice squeezed by. The Jeep could not follow. Alice burst out of the alley.

Like pus from a blister, she thought. There was something putrid and stinking about being chased.

Paul’s friends would have vaulted out of the Jeep so they could run wherever she ran. Their legs were longer, stronger, and not yet tired. She had no hope.

How would they stop her? A flying tackle? Shove her up against a wall? Grab her wrists and pinion them behind her back?

She raced across another main thoroughfare, fled the wrong way up another street, and through another service alley.

It seemed to her that every face she saw was familiar. She tried to stay sane; she knew she was making this up; these dozens of cars, these hundred faces—they were strangers to her, and she to them.

But one glimpse of a blonde ponytail, and she thought it must be Kelsey.

One glimpse of a crewcut and she thought it must be Michael, who sat next to her in homeroom.

Alice’s legs were trembling. She wanted to stop and lean over, brace herself against her own knees. She had fire in her muscles, cramps in her lungs.

What I need, Alice thought, is a car.

She was afraid to look at cars and afraid not to look at them. What if she saw Kelsey? She wanted to believe that Kelsey had said: Oh no, not me, I’m not going to hunt Alice.

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