Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye

Author:Dale E. Basye
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780375853876
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

23 · UP THE RiVER

MILTON FELT LIKE a salmon swimming upstream, thrashing against a strong current in hopes of returning to—against all odds—the creek in which he was born. Only instead of a desperate run to his ancestral spawning grounds, Milton was just trying to make it to his locker before shop class with Mr. Nelson “Nine Fingers” Cos-grove.

The hallway was teeming with children, each seemingly going in the opposite direction from Milton. But it wasn’t just the physical flow that was wrong. It was everything. Milton’s life seemed to be coursing conversely to everyone around him.

Then, with a sudden slam to the shoulder, Milton and his handful of textbooks tumbled to the concrete floor. As he scooped up his books, a boot stomped hard on his copy of Calculus: Early Transcendentals. Milton’s eyes traveled up a thick denim-clad leg, across an un-tucked flannel shirt, and settled on the peach-fuzz-topped snarl of Tristan Parker.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep in your crypt, freak?” Tristan rumbled.

Milton tried to tug his book free. Just as he nearly had it, Tristan abruptly lifted his foot, sending Milton tumbling backward. He fell onto his back, with his backpack both easing his fall and holding him fast to the cold concrete floor. Tristan laughed, high-fiving several of his fellow ruffians as he walked away down the hall.

Milton felt like a tortoise that had been flipped over onto its shell, left struggling and prone as predator birds crowded around it.

This scene—the aftermath of a humiliating bully episode—was not uncommon to him. Neither was the fact that nobody had tried to help. But the looks in the eyes of the children gawking down on him weren’t filled with the usual detached amusement and relief that it wasn’t them on the cold floor of the hallway. Their eyes were full of fear. The kids looked down at him as if he had a deadly, highly contagious disease, which terrified them.

As Milton struggled to right himself, a dark, bony arm thrust from the crowd and reached out to him. Not having a lot of rescue options at this point, Milton took the hand, which hoisted him up with surprising strength.

“Thank you,” he said as he stood and stared into the grinning, just-shy-of-crazy face of Necia Alvarado.

She kept smiling at him, expectantly. It freaked Milton out. It made him think that they were having a conversation that he wasn’t aware of.

“Well,” Milton said to end the near-painful awkwardness, “I’ve got to get to class. Thanks again.”

He turned toward his locker, which had been only a few yards away all along. It was like someone drowning while a life preserver floated, unnoticed, just out of reach. Milton’s locker was hard to miss, though, considering it was the only one that had the words zombie boy spray-painted on it.

The hairs on the back of Milton’s neck stood on end. He turned. There Necia Alvarado stood, still smiling, still staring, still wanting … something.

“What?” Milton asked.

Necia was wearing her usual black wool overcoat, white stockings, and white leather flats.

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