Beyond the Night (The Darkest Minds, Book 3.5) by Alexandra Bracken

Author:Alexandra Bracken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

MIA

THE HOUSE SITS LIKE AN ABANDONED CASTLE AT THE end of Greenwood Lane, slowly drooping into mulch and mud. The early morning light casts it in a soft glow of colors, but I’m too tired and cranky to appreciate the effect. The others took turns driving and napping, but Sam and I didn’t sleep at all. I’m too anxious about running out of time—I don’t know how long this will take, only that Ruby is risking her freedom for us. She says we have until noon, five hours, but what if this takes longer? What if she has to leave before the job is finished?

What if she can’t come back because she’s displeased the government?

One side of the house is covered in the overgrown vines that Dad spent years heroically trying to cut down and rip out, only to have them return each spring with a vengeance. The trees have grown so close together that their limbs seem locked in an embrace, and what’s left of Mom’s carefully—meticulously—cultivated flowerbeds have scattered into the lawn, mingling with the bright heads of wild milkweed and thistle, the white, frothy patches of Queen Anne’s lace.

If the missing strips of wood siding and the busted-in door aren’t enough of a sign that the place is empty—vacant—the fact that the sign, the one I hated so much, is still there at the end of the driveway is proof enough for me: FORECLOSURE: FOR SALE BY BANK.

Sam’s memory is perfect. She knew exactly which streets to take to find our old neighborhood, and then our street. I let all of that information bleed out of my head when we drove away that last time because I never thought we’d come back.

I never told Lucas that. He believed Mom when she promised we would; he was still crying a little about having to leave Sam behind. Luc could be blind to things, and I think he honestly thought he could will that happy ending into existence, if he only wished hard enough.

Here we are, though, at a house that isn’t a home. The upstairs windows are broken, the garage door is half-collapsed, and the old red mailbox has disappeared completely. I used to lie in my bunk and close my eyes, strain to remember exactly what this place looked like, try to catch that last image I had of it looking back through the rear window as we drove away. It’s been frozen in time inside of my head, like the cursed sleeping kingdom in Lucas’s story about Greenwood. Seeing it now in this state pries my chest open. We have aged, and so has the house. We grew up without each other.

“How are we looking, Vi?” Liam asks, killing the car’s engine.

“All clear, as far as I can tell,” she says. “I’m going to take a few laps around the block, just to be sure.”

“I know it’s pointless to say this to you,” Charlie says as she opens her door, “but if you see trouble, at least entertain the thought of running away from it.

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