BOOK PROMOTION
Book Information supplied by Bewitching Blog Tours
Title: The
Plague Legacy: Acquisitions
Author: Christine
Haggerty
Print Length:
229 pages
Publisher: Fox
Hollow Publications
ASIN: B00H15COZQ
BLURB supplied by Bewitching Blog Tours
Half a century
after the world was decimated by a bio-engineered plague, military scouts are
acquisitioning a new supply of exports—slaves.
With his family
dead, sixteen-year-old Cameron Landry is a reluctant survivor, haunted by
nightmares and bound by promises. When he and his worst enemy, Devon, are both
selected for shipment to a civilization called Salvation, Cam suddenly has
nowhere to run. Devon is a mutant, stronger and faster, and his hatred for Cam
grows with each passing day. As Cam makes friends, and finds a surprising ally
in Devon’s twin sister, Tara, he learns a secret that could change everything.
But Devon is on
the hunt, and Cam is running out of places to hide.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christine
Nielson Haggerty grew up in rural Utah with three brothers, a sister, several
chickens, a goat, and an outhouse. She always loved the escape of science
fiction and fantasy and the art of writing, and her passion is to craft stories
of strength and survival.
Christine taught
high school language arts for several years, encouraging perfection of the
language in her young adult students. Now she appreciates her background in
classic literature and history as she draws on the past to write about the
present and the future.
Her favorite
genres to write are young adult dystopian fiction and young adult urban
fantasy.
You can follow
her news and mental wanderings at www.christinehaggertyauthor.com
Twitter:
@chaggerty99
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Did you always want to be a writer? If
not, what did you want to be?
I’ve wanted to be a few different
things. In high school, my list included being a photojournalist for National
Geographic, FBI agent, veterinarian, or professional soccer player. I was
actually offered a scholarship to Westpoint, but my mom told me I’d probably
just get kicked out, so I stayed near home, got married, and became an English
teacher. Teaching writing developed my passion for the
craft, and now I’ve published my first novel, The Plague Legacy: Acquisitions.
What can we expect from you in the future?
I am currently writing the two other
books in The Plague Legacy series, Assets and Liabilities, to be published late fall 2014 and 2015. I also have a
novella in the revision stage that is a rewrite of the Grimm brothers’ “The
Robber Bridegroom.” My long term plans? To keep writing and writing and
writing…..
If you had to choose to be one of your
characters in your book The Plague
Legacy: Acquisitions, which would you be? And why?
If I had to choose, I would be Myla.
She’s a teenage girl (not the main character) whose DNA has bonded with a
bio-engineered plague and mutated her into a superstrong human being. Since
others are mutants as well, that’s not what makes her special. She’s full of
spunk and spit and fights for her friends.
Where do you get your book plot ideas
from? What/Who is your inspiration?
Book ideas come from as many places as
there are places. The idea for The Plague
Legacy came from events in history. I have a sci-fi brewing that was
inspired by an episode on the Discovery Channel, and my kids are each an
inspiration all their own.
Do you decide on character traits before
writing the whole book or as you go along?
Since I don’t decide on all of the
characters before writing the book, it’s hard to decide on their traits! I do
plan out all of the major characters, though, but they still surprise me with
the little quirks in their personalities.
What do you think makes a book a really
good/bestseller?
I think that the readers have a lot do
with whether a book is a bestseller. The label of bestseller has more to do
with advertising and promotion sometimes than the book, so I consider a book
with true fans to be a good book. I know I have my preferences. When I read, I
pay attention to the construction of the book as well as the story.
Have you ever suffered from a ‘writer’s
block’? What did you do to get past the ‘block’?
I joke around that my five-year-old
daughter is the poster child for ‘writer’s block,’ but really she’s just a cute
distraction. The most struggle I’ve had with my writing flow was after I
finished Acquisitions and tried to
get started on Assets. I had a hard
time shifting from the revision process back into the creative process, but I’m
on a roll now.
What do you do to unwind and relax? Do
you have a hobby?
My best chance for relaxation is when I
make sure I get a hard workout. I’m a black belt in Shotokan karate and I hope
to earn enough money in book sales to pay for dojo fees in my new hometown. I
also spin fire (poi) and, of course, love to read.
What is your favourite book and why?
Have you read it more than once?
My favorite book is Illusions by Richard Bach. I haven’t lived my life the same since I
read it, and I’ve read it a few times. The single book I’ve read the most, at
least thirteen times since I was twelve years old, is Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
Do you have a favourite genre of book?
I’ve always loved fantasy, particularly
dystopian. I also like sci-fi and some horror.
What piece of advice would you give to a
new writer?
It’s all just practice.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1: The
Stalls
“Put him down, Devon!” Cam spit out dirt.
“Or what, Pig Boy?” Devon sneered and shook Cam’s new
stallmate like a rag doll. A small boy, Peter hung by his coat, his collar
riding up against his throat as he kicked his legs in the air. With his eyes
pinched shut and his hands balled into fists, Peter twisted and swung his arms,
trying to reach the blond mutant who held him at least three feet off the
ground.
Cam’s stomach clenched as Peter’s face
turned colors. Why didn’t he just
run? I told him to run. He’s small. He could’ve hid with the pigs and this
idiot would’ve walked on by.
“He’s just a little kid, Devon,” Cam tried reasoning with
the mutant. “You’re choking him.”
Devon grinned wickedly and shook Peter
again. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”
Grinding his teeth, Cam reached behind
him, searching for a rock or stick. The ground was cold, not fully thawed, and
Cam’s fingertips found only a few small rocks through the thin layer of
topsoil. I’m gonna smash in your
empty mutant head. But Cam didn’t say it out loud. Devon had a
mutant-strength temper to match his mutant-strength arms.
Peter squeaked and clutched at his
throat, freckles speckling the tops of his cheeks like pepper flakes as his
face turned white and then red.
A few feet away, a blond girl shifted
her weight and rubbed her arm nervously. “Devon, I think you’re actually
hurting him.”
“Good, then maybe the Pig Boy will do something about it,”
he shook Peter again and looked at Cam. “You gonna tell the Regulators? You
gonna tell them to bring their tasers and stop the big mean mutant so he don’t
hurt the little boy?”
Cam’s fingers curled around a rock
half the size of his fist and he glared at Devon.
Devon laughed. “No, you aren’t gonna
tell the Regulators. You’re gonna tell Mama Lucy, aren’t you? You’re gonna run
and tell her poor little Peter’s in trouble.” He smirked, “I bet she don’t even
know his name. I bet she tells me to chop him up and throw him in the soup. She
hates the little ones cuz they ain’t worth feeding. Not when she’s got mutants
like me.”
“Devon, just let him go,” the blond girl pleaded.
“Shut up, Tara,” Devon growled at her, keeping his eyes on
Cam. The muscles in Devon’s bare arm bunched and flexed with the weight of the
boy in his hand, but Cam had too much experience to hope that Devon was getting
tired. He also had too much experience to think that he could make Devon let go
by getting up and fighting him. “So what’s it gonna be, Cam? You gonna save
your little friend?”
“Let him go,” Cam warned again.
“Piggy boy, piggy boy, piggy boy,” Devon danced while
Peter’s face went dark purple and his eyes rolled up in his head.
“Let him go!” Jumping to his feet, Cam stepped to charge
Devon, but Tara pushed between them. She pulled Peter’s coat out of Devon’s
grip and the small boy flopped onto the ground next to Cam, his breath coming
in a rush as he rolled onto his back and coughed.
A look of pure hatred twisted through
Devon’s face as he wrapped his fingers around Tara’s slender neck and pushed
her up against the weathered wall of the horse stalls. “Why are you
interfering?”
She clutched at his fingers and met
his eyes in silence.
Cam’s breath rushed in and pressed
against his ribs as he watched Devon squeeze the girl’s throat. The strawberry
colored mark that identified her as a mutant was mirrored in the face of her
brother, along with her hazel eyes and blond hair.
Twins.
Lifting her up, Devon stretched Tara’s
chin so far it looked like her neck would snap, then let out a growl and
snatched his hand back. “Stay out of my way.”
She rubbed her throat and watched
Devon stalk off to the pavilion where Mama Lucy was calling the orphans in for
dinner.
“Tara,” Cam reached for her to ask if she was okay, but she
just glanced at him with pain and sadness and followed her brother to the
tables.
On the ground next to Cam’s feet,
Peter wheezed on all fours. Cam pulled the boy back to a sitting position and
unzipped his coat. A dark purple line had formed where the blood rushed to the
surface of his throat, but he was breathing.
“I told you to hide!” Cam grabbed Peter’s shoulders and made
the boy look him in the eyes. “Why didn’t you run? You can’t win if he catches
you, but if you hide with the pigs, he’ll never go in there for you. Devon
hates the pigs.”
“Sorry,” Peter croaked out in a small voice. “Sorry, I
wanted to warn you.” He curled up and coughed into his knees, a faint scar on
the back of his neck peeking above his shirt collar. “I heard Devon saying that
he was going to find you with the horses,” he looked up with tears in his eyes.
“I didn’t want him to hurt you again.”
Relieved to see Peter’s freckles
return to their normal shade of brown, Cam pulled him up by the arm. “C’mon,
let’s go get you some dinner before it’s all gone,” he tucked a pair of silver
tags inside the boy’s shirt, “and next time, at least unzip your coat so that
he has to pick you up by your overall straps. That will keep him from choking
you with your own clothes.”
Peter nodded and sniffed, wiping a
tear from his cheek as he jogged to keep up. They walked around the south run
of horse stalls and passed by the pig yard that sat on the east end.
The pigs were out sniffing at the sun,
three big ones and five sucklings, shuffling around their pit of half-frozen
mud. It had been a litter of twelve; the squealing mess born only a month ago,
but the orphanage was so desperate for food this time of year that seven of the
piglets had already been chopped up for stew.
A mixture of girls and boys swarmed
under the pavilion, half of them slopping sludge into their mouths and the
other half jostling for a place in line. Devon already sat at a table near the
orchard with his bowl and a withered apple, his feet bare on the cold, packed
dirt.
While
he’s loading up on sludge, maybe he could also load up on some brains. Cam glared at the mutant for a
moment as he and Peter tacked themselves on to the end of the line. Peter
zipped up his coat and winced.
“Hey, little man, don’t do that if it hurts.” Cam tugged
down the zipper to ease the pressure on the bruised flesh and crouched down to
meet Peter’s big, brown eyes. “Mama Lucy won’t care if you have a few bruises,
won’t even wonder why, so don’t suffer for her sake.”
Peter frowned. “I don’t care about
Mama Lucy.” He nodded up at the ragged orphans bent over their bowls. “But they
call me names when they see what Devon does.”
“What kind of names?” Cam swallowed. Devon only picks on Peter because he shares
a stall with me.
Peter tugged on his ear and looked
down at his sloppy boots. “‘Stew Meat,’ ‘Sty Fly,’ ‘Sludge Face,’ stuff like
that.”
Cam shot a warning look at the grungy
smattering of kids even though all of them hovered over their bowls, eating as
quickly as they could. They reminded him of the wild dogs who sniffed around
the pavilion at night, looking for scraps of food.
He patted Peter on the back. “Stick by
me, little man, and they’ll leave you alone.”
“I know,” Peter shrugged, “but then I never get to play with
anybody.”
“I’ll fix it,” Cam promised. “I have a plan.”
Peter smiled at him. “You do?”
“You bet,” Cam’s stomach tightened, “but you can’t say
anything to anybody, okay?”
Peter nodded, serious.
The Stalls had just fewer than thirty
orphans, ages spanning from seven, like Peter, to sixteen, like Cam and the
mutant twins. Peter’s group had arrived from a daycare somewhere on the other
side of the mountains three days ago. Many of them were undersized and
underfed, soulless children who cried for their dead parents as they dug
themselves into the straw at night.
He reached the pot, last in line with
Peter behind him. The girl serving looked at him with hollow brown eyes, her
hair a rat’s nest with straw sticking out of it. Cam watched her hands, which
were at least cleaner than her face, as she handed him a bowl and scooped the
bottom of the pot with a bent ladle.
“Almost gone,” she wheezed out as she turned the ladle over.
His dinner oozed into the bowl in clumps of oat sludge, making a sucking sound
as it separated from the spoon. “That’s all you get. Next!”
Cam shuffled forward and waited for
Peter, whose bowl was only half full when the girl handed it to him. The small
boy pouted and followed Cam to a table on the far side of the pavilion from
Devon. A skinny boy with spiky black hair and narrow eyes looked up when they
sat down by him.
“Hey, Cam,” Jake smiled and scraped up the last of his mush.
“Wondered where you were, then I saw Devon come across the field. What’s he
been up to this afternoon? Tormenting your horses?”
“What he’s always up to,” Cam sat down and winced, his butt
tender from landing on the packed dirt behind the old horse stalls where Devon
had shoved him.
“You mean skinning live rodents, wringing chickens’ necks,
threatening small children? Or just generally making our life the hell it is
today?”
Cam didn’t answer as he helped Peter
climb onto the tall bench that ran the length of the table.
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “None of
those?” His eyes narrowed. “Has he expanded his repertoire?”
Shaking his head, Cam glanced over at
Devon, hoping the blond boy would leave before Jake said something stupid and
loud enough for the mutant to hear, which happened often enough. Jake had the
bruises to prove it. “Shut up!” Cam elbowed Jake’s arm. “When will you learn to
control the things that come out of your mouth? Do you have any sense of
self-preservation?”
Twirling his spoon, Jake answered in a
low voice. “He’s a mutant, Cam, he can hear everything. He’s like the official
Emperor of Evil. There’s no getting away.”
Unless
you run away. Cam
dropped his eyes to his bowl and scooped a bite of tasteless oats as Devon looked
over at them. Peter’s dinner was already nearly gone, the small boy swinging
his feet as he chewed.
Jake pushed his bowl away and leaned
his elbows on the table, his hands squishing his cheeks up into narrow black
eyes as he rested his chin on his palms. “I swear sometimes he can hear what
I’m thinking. He’s even
worse than Mama Lucy.”
Once a mutant slave across the ocean
in Salvation, Mama Lucy was now the domineering matron of the Stalls. She
watched her orphans from a rocking chair only a few yards away from the
pavilion, swinging herself back and forth as her boots dangled in the air. She
was a round woman who looked like she was made of dough, with a House mark
branded on the right half of her face. The two concentric circles puckered in
the fat of her cheek, like someone had punched a permanent dent in her face.
Both short and short tempered, Mama
Lucy had beady eyes that stared straight ahead. Cam couldn’t tell if she was
looking at them because her eyes never seemed to move, but he figured she knew
what they were saying. He had the feeling she could see and hear everything as
she sat tearing the meat off a greasy chicken leg with her teeth and smacking a
broken porch spindle against the leg of the rocking chair.
She had a mean swing with that spindle,
and she never missed.
Devon dropped his empty bowl on one of
the tables and snatched a spoon out of another kid’s hand. The boy, probably
about ten or eleven, wrapped his body around his bowl of sludge and tried to
escape under the table. Devon caught the boy’s coat and hung him on an old iron
hook that bent up out of a pavilion post.
“I’m still hungry,” Devon grabbed the sludge, leaving the
boy to hang, and snatched another bowl from a girl at the same table.
We’re
all still hungry you mutant bastard, a mouthful of food caught in
Cam's throat and he fought it down. Beside him, Peter circled his arms around
his own bowl.
The boy hanging from the post
whimpered and squirmed out of his coat, and the girl cried quietly at the
table, her long hair caught under the chain of her tags.
“Shut up!” Mama Lucy waddled between the tables and smacked
the girl on the knuckles. “Quit your whining!”
The boy scooted back and hid behind
the post as the girl sniffled in an effort to smother her sobs.
The grease on Mama Lucy’s chin caught
the light as she shook her spindle at the orphans’ haggard faces. “All of you,
quit your complaining! I hear you cry for your mamas at night, you bunch of
babies. Don’t you know that the dead can’t hear you?”
Nobody dared meet her beady eyes except
Cam. She was the authority, the gateway to their meager food and supplies, and
her temper left many of them out in the cold or without meals as punishment for
no more reason than that she hated them.
Her smile hung crooked in her sagging
cheeks. “You look like you got something to say, Mr. Landry,” she stretched the
spindle across the table and dug the broken end into Cam’s shoulder. “Well,
spit it out, boy, or would you rather I beat it out of you?”
Why
does someone as stupid as you get to be in charge? Cam glanced behind Mama Lucy to
where Devon grinned through a mouthful of stolen sludge and answered her. “I
don’t think Devon should take food from the little ones. It’s not fair.”
Mama Lucy licked the grease from her
lips, then shoved him back with her spindle and laughed. “You want things to be
fair, huh? Stupid boy, nothing’s fair, nothing’s equal. Devon’s a mutant. When
the Scouts come, I’m gonna trade the boy and his sister for something good,
something fat. They’ll be here soon, in their fancy uniforms, and I might even
get enough for the blondies to get me out of this pig pit. You immunes,” she
spun and waved the stick at the kids cowering at the tables, “you ain’t worth
the slop in them bowls. Worthless, squealing rats. Salvation only wants the
strong ones for the arena, the fighters, the mutants. Theirentertainment.” she emphasized the last word, a drop of spittle
clinging to the corner of her mouth.
“We deserve just as much as the mutants,” Cam ignored Jake,
who was pulling on his sleeve, and instead gave Mama Lucy a stern glare. “We’re
worth something, too.”
The black eyes twitched and Mama Lucy
dug the end of the spindle deeper into the center of Cam’s chest with each
word, “No. You. Ain’t,” she leaned over the table. “You’re a worthless stray,
and I know you’ve been stealing out of my cellar, boy. I could kill you for it,
and nobody would come looking.”
Cam held her eyes, determined not to
even flinch, but Peter climbed off the bench and hugged Cam’s knees, hiding,
Mama Lucy grinned, showing gaps in her
yellow teeth as her eyes shot a glance down at Peter. “Got yourself a little
rat to protect now, huh? Knew I was smart when I stuck him with you and those
pigs.” She backed away slowly, the grin like a scarecrow’s in the early spring
twilight. “Didn’t learn your lesson when your brother burned, did you? Still
stupid enough to go on and care.”
The pavilion was silent as Mama Lucy
waddled up the porch steps and into the house, chuckling to herself. When the
door banged shut behind her, the orphans quietly left the tables and dropped
their bowls in a tub next to the sludge pot. The girl with the hollow eyes
watched the dishes pile up.
“Hey little man,” Cam untangled Peter’s arms from his legs.
“You alright?”
Peter nodded. “She scares me.”
Jake huffed at Cam. “And you scold me
for saying stupid things? It’s one thing to piss Devon off, but Mama Lucy’s on
a whole other level. What were you thinking?”
“I’m not scared of her. Besides,” Cam shrugged as he watched
Devon throw his bowl in the dish tub and walk off toward the horse stalls where
the orphans slept, “it’s our job to stand up for the smaller ones.”
“Says who?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know,” Cam handed his bowl of sludge to Peter.
“We’re all they got. They’re so small they don’t have a chance, Jake.”
Jake pressed his fingers to the sides
of his head. “There is so much wrong with what you’re saying right now, I don’t
even know where to begin. First, you should be
afraid of Mama Lucy. That one should be self-explanatory. Second, protecting
the little ones is pretty much suicide since it just gets you the attention of
the aforementioned Mama Lucy, and even worse, Devon. Third—“
“I get it, Jake,” Cam put his hands on Jake’s shoulders and
held the boy still, “I get that mutants are stronger and faster. I get that we
aren’t worth as much to Salvation because we can still get hurt and die while
the mutants can nearly get cut in half and still swing a sword. I get all that.
What I don’t get is who decides that it has to be that way? Who’s making the
rules?”
“Right here, right now, it’s Mama Lucy who gets to make the
rules. And mutants like Devon. And the Regulators who’ve hauled you back here
both times you’ve run away. That’s who gets to make the rules.” Jake pushed
Cam’s hands off of his shoulders.
“Yeah, well, I’m getting smarter. I’m making plans this
time,” Cam looked around at the empty pavilion, then sat down next to Peter
while the small boy scraped the last of the sludge from the bowl Cam had given
him.
Jake huffed. “If you were smart, you’d
stay out of their way, be invisible like you say your brother always told you.
What was it Devon did to you yesterday after you called him a cow’s butt? Um,
let me see if I can remember…” Jake rolled his eyes up at the pavilion rafters,
then pinned Cam with a hard look. “Oh, yeah, he tried to drown you in the river.”
“Mama Lucy wouldn’t have let him go that far,” Cam said, but
he wasn’t sure. “Besides,” he shrugged, “I got away.”
“No, Tara saved your freezing ass. You couldn’t hear what
she said because your head was under water, but she’s the only reason her
psycho brother pulled you out.” Jake nodded toward the far corner of the main
house, where Tara sat alone on the cold ground.
“Maybe I should go and thank her,” Cam watched the blond
girl dig a toe into a patch of dead grass.
“You’re going to just walk up and talk to her? Do you want
her brother to have more reason to hurt you? If he saw you talking to her, he’d
do more than just try to
drown you.” Jake pushed past Cam and Peter, then paused a few steps away. He
turned around and pointed at Cam, “You’re the one who seriously lacks a sense
of self-preservation.”
Now
you’ve gone and started to care. Cam thought of Mama Lucy’s taunt as he let Jake go
and looked at Tara. She hugged her knees, her arms long and golden out of the
short sleeves of her thin, white tee shirt. The deepening twilight made her
blond braid turn copper over her shoulder, long lashes touching her mismatched
cheeks.
Beautiful. Cam remembered what he had
thought the first time he saw her seven months ago when the Regulators first
dragged him to the Stalls. Beautiful
and unpredictable. Cam wondered what she would do if he did talk to
her. Probably tell me I’m just an
immune, tell me to go away, punch me like her brother. Or worse, a
thin shudder snaked along his spine,tell
her brother.
Peter tugged on Cam’s sleeve. “I’m
tired.”
“Full?” Cam picked up the bowls, both of them licked clean.
Shrugging, Peter picked at the
tabletop. “Sort of.”
“Enough to sleep?”
Peter nodded, the bruise like a dark
red noose on his throat.
“Alright then, little man, let’s get you to bed. It’s
getting dark. Stay by me.” Cam wound his way to the dirty dish tub. Bowls
leaned in a haphazard tower, spoon handles sticking out of the apocalyptic
sculpture like branches of a dead tree. The girl who had served the sludge was
gone, along with the cooking pot. He dumped the bowls in the corner of the tub
and reached down to steer Peter toward the pigsty.
He was gone.
Dammit. Heart pounding, Cam scanned the
garden and the yard, then caught a glimpse of Peter’s head peeking out from
behind the house, his reddish hair sticking up in chunks.
Peter. Cam headed toward him, then
stopped.
Tara walked out from behind the house,
watching her bare feet trace a path on the frozen ground until she reached the
dish tub. Looking up, she caught Cam’s eyes and scowled. “What did you see?”
She closed the distance and grabbed his arm.
“Nothing,” Cam said, pulling away.
Her grip tightened. “What did you
see?”
“Nothing!” Cam wrenched his arm away.
Tara couldn’t get a good grip on him
through the fabric of his sleeve, so she curled her fingers around the skin of
his wrist and pulled him toward her.
“I was looking for Peter,” Cam stammered, his breathing
shallow. “Did you do anything to him?”
“Let’s stick with the ‘nothing,’ shall we? You saw nothing, I did nothing. Got it?” Her breath was
hot on his neck, and she smelled like frost and sweat and girl.
Cam met her eyes. “Got it.”
Tara nodded and dropped his wrist,
pushing past him toward the horse stalls. Cam watched her go, then caught up to
Peter coming around the corner of the house.
“Are you okay?” Cam asked.
Peter nodded but hung his head.
Taking the small boy’s thin wrist, Cam
tugged him toward the lean-to where they slept with the pigs. He was mad, mad
that Peter had gotten hurt, mad that Tara had acted even a little bit like
Devon, mad that his brother had died and left him alone.
Mad that he had let Peter out of his
sight again. Mad that he cared.
The sty smelled like moldy straw and
frost, the cold seeping up through the frozen ground now that the sun was gone.
The pigs curled up in one heap, the bigger ones snoring over the soft squeals
of the nursing piglets. Cam lay with his hands behind his head, watching what
stars he could through the open front of the makeshift shelter. One bright spot
peeked out and then disappeared behind a cloud.
Peter squirmed restlessly, trying to
wrap himself up in the wool blanket that Cam let him use, but he couldn’t seem
to get both elbows inside it at the same time.
“Here,” Cam tightened the blanket around the small boy like
a cocoon, then pulled him up farther on the straw and built a nest around him.
“That should be better. Can you go to sleep now?”
He heard the straw rustle, then Peter
murmured, “Uh-huh.”
Lying on his back again, Cam shifted
around until he caught a glimpse of the star as the cloud passed.
“Hey, Peter?”
“Yeah?” The boy yawned.
“What was Tara doing to you behind the house?”
“Oh,” more rustling, “I’m not supposed to tell.”
Cam swallowed. “Did she hurt you?”
“No.”
“Peter,” Cam bit his lip, not sure how to convince the boy
that he had to tell or whatever it was could get worse. “You can tell me. Tara
already knows I saw something.”
“She does?”
“She does?”
“Yeah. But I couldn’t see you very well, and she wouldn’t
tell me.” Cam swore he heard Peter thinking, the boy’s breath speeding up in
the darkness. “Did she hurt you?”
“Well,” Peter stalled. “Do you promise not to tell her I
said anything? Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Pinky promise?”
Cam rolled his eyes. Little kids. “Pinky promise.”
“You know if you break a pinky promise you’ll die, right?”
“Peter, I pinky promise. What did she do?”
The cloud passed over the star again.
“She gave me her apple.”
Swallowing, Cam stared as the star
winked on. She wasn’t angry, he
realized as he recalled her scowl, the darkness in her eyes, she was afraid.
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