Pighearted by Alex Perry

Author:Alex Perry [PERRY, ALEX]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BOY

I needed to find J6. He’s the only one that could help me with my plan. I couldn’t tell my best friends what was going on. They’d snitch. Paloma worries too much, and Adnan always calls me out when he says I’m “doing something stupid.” I guess that’s because they’re real friends.

I went into the living room and asked Justus where J6 went. She shrugged. Then I saw the front door wide open. Did I shut it on my way in or just kind of swat at it?

I poked my head out and heard a loud “Oink!”

J6 screamed somewhere up the street, but I couldn’t see him.

He wasn’t anywhere. I waited for the green van inching its way across the road to move so I could see behind it. It eased forward slowly like it was just rolling down the gentle slope that ended in the bayou. It crossed into the wrong lane.

HONK! HONK! HONK!

Who was driving? I ran to the edge of my yard and saw through the windshield. A pig was driving that van toward my neighbor’s house.

“OINK! OINK!” J6 screamed even though the van couldn’t have been going any faster than five miles per hour. He panicked and honked the horn, and the wheel jerked to the side. The van turned toward my house.

It inched its way toward me and hit the curb. It rocked to a stop. J6 stumbled out. He was shaking like he’d just been in a real car crash.

“J6, get back inside the house.”

He looked up the street and back at me.

“Don’t run off. I almost have a plan. First, get your butt to our room,” I said.

We ran inside while Jazmine ran outside to deal with the owner of the van.

We should have driven away together. Our house didn’t feel like home. J6 was the only one who hadn’t been lying to me for three months. The van might as well have crashed into this place. I couldn’t live here. Dr. Willis’s betrayal was bad, but her whole job was to lie and kill. It infected my universe. Of course, my family didn’t want J6 to have a name or get out of the crate.

When we got into my room and shut the door, I pushed my chair under the doorknob to keep Jazmine out. Then I dropped to a knee and hugged J6. He nuzzled his forehead into my shoulder.

I heard a door slam, then Jazmine’s phone rang.

“It’s Paloma,” she announced.

I pushed the chair away and opened the door. She tossed her phone to me.

“Hi! I messaged you yesterday and I haven’t heard back,” said Paloma.

I had been too busy trying to figure out what to do about J6.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you still planning to go to the Dynamo game Friday?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

J6 headbutted me and twitched his ears. I think he could hear what she was saying.

“I was wondering if you were being careful and evacuating,” she said.

“No, the storm’s not supposed to be bad. And there’s no school.”

“Yeah, you were right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.