Hunted (Parallel Series, Book 3) (Parallel Trilogy)

by Christine Kersey

  When I entered the bathroom there were two other girls getting ready, so I was able to go right into a shower. After I got dressed I took a step toward the scale in the corner, then hesitated. I glanced at the girls who were doing their hair in front of the mirror, but they ignored me as they chatted with each other. I took a deep breath and slowly released it, gathering my courage.

  I tried to push away an image of a dozen Enforcers bursting into the bathroom and taking me in to custody, and instead stepped on the scale. I lifted the retinal scanner so that it was at eye-height and forced myself to stand still as the red light scanned my eyes.

  Unlike the scale at home, this one didn’t announce the name of the person on the scale, so I had no idea if my contact lenses were working correctly. A digital readout of my weight appeared and I stepped off the scale. I lifted my towel from the counter and paused a second, listening for the sound of a dozen pair of men’s boots in the hallway, but all I heard was the chatter of the two girls in the room.

  Chapter Twenty

  I left the bathroom and went back to my room where Lori was just getting up, then filled out my food journal and worked a little more on the essay that Mrs. Needham had demanded I write. My shoulders were tense as I continued worrying about the retinal scan, but after fifteen minutes I began to convince myself that the contact lenses had worked and I was in the clear.

  A little while later Lori and I headed down to the cafeteria. I’d considered going without her, but decided I should at least pretend she was my friend.

  “Aren’t you just hating your job, Hannah?” she asked as we waited in line in the cafeteria.

  “It’s not my favorite, that’s for sure.” I paused. “What do you do for your job?”

  “I work in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, I used to—” I clamped my mouth shut. I’d almost told her that I used to work in the kitchen too.

  “What?” she asked.

  I put my food journal in the slot, then got my tray. “Uh, I think I’d like to work there too. Can you help me get a job there?”

  She laughed. “I doubt it. You have to talk to Kyle about switching. Then it’s up to your caseworker.” She paused as she took the food handed to her. “Who’s your caseworker anyway?”

  I grimaced and it wasn’t forced. “Mrs. Reynolds.”

  “Oh. That sucks.”

  “Do you know her?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Is she your caseworker too?” I slid my tray along the rails and took the bowl of fruit the worker gave me.

  “No. She’s in charge of the re-education class I go to at night.”

  I laughed. “Now, that really sucks. You have to see her every night.” Despite myself, I felt a small bit of camaraderie with Lori. I knew exactly what it was like to have to see Mrs. Reynolds each night.

  She laughed with me and my feelings of hatred diminished ever so slightly. I wondered if this could be an opening for her to tell me why she was at Camp Willowmoss. “Why do you go to the re-education class? What do you do there?”

  She glanced at me. “It’s just a different class I go to.” She smirked at me. “It’s certainly more interesting than the boring nutritional counseling class you and the other fatties have to go to.”

  Any good feelings I’d had towards her vanished. I pretended like her insult didn’t bother me. “So, you don’t talk about nutrition. What do you talk about? Why do you need to be re-educated? I thought you believed in the pledge.”

  She huffed, seemingly irritated with the mere suggestion that she believed anything other than the words of the pledge. “Of course I believe in the pledge.” She pursed her lips. “I shouldn’t even be here, if you want to know the truth.”

  Bingo. “Then why are you here?”

  She grabbed a drink and turned to face the room full of kids. “It was just a big misunderstanding. But my dad is working it out.” Then she walked toward our table.

  That line of questioning over—for now—I followed her to the table. As I walked I looked at the table where Amy had sat the previous day and saw she was sitting with the same two girls as before, which made me happy. I sat at our table with Lori and the rest of our group.

  “Hi, Hannah,” Emily said. “I can’t believe what you did last night. With Beth.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Taylor said, clearly impressed. “But Emily told me what happened. That was really brave.”

  “Or stupid,” Lori said, obviously not liking someone else being admired.

  Although I didn’t like the way Lori said it, I had to admit she was probably right. It was kind of stupid to make myself a target for Beth. “I just don’t like bullies.”

  “Yeah, me either,” Emily said. Her eyes flicked to Lori before she looked back at me. Lori was focused on her meal and didn’t seem to notice.

  I looked down and grinned, liking Emily more and more.

  Halfway through the meal I opened one of the power bars and broke off a piece, then placed it in my mouth. I did that a few more times, then I broke off two pieces, palming one and putting the other in my mouth. Making sure not to look down, I slipped the extra piece into my pocket. I didn’t know how much Jack and Dani needed to do their testing, but hoped if I could smuggle a few pieces in my pocket each day, they would have enough to get what they needed. I would just have to find a good place to hide the pieces.

  When I saw Amy walk away from her table, I got up, wanting to talk to her.

  “Done already?” Lori asked.

  “Yep. I’ve gotta get to my job.”

  “You really scarfed that food down.” Lori smiled in a mocking way.

  “I was really hungry.” Which was true. In the few weeks I’d stayed at Jack’s place I’d eaten more than normal—how else to put on weight—and now I found I was more famished than ever.

  “It must be hard to have to cut back on your food.” Lori made sure to say it loud enough for the others at our table to hear.

  Her attitude about overweight people seemed exactly the same as when I’d known her outside of Camp Willowmoss. Truthfully, I was a little surprised. After being here herself and seeing what everyone had to go through, I sort of expected her to have empathy for them. The fact that she didn’t made me wonder if the videos I was recording would have any effect on the hearts and minds of the people outside of this F.A.T. center. “Yeah,” I said. “It really is.” I looked at Emily and she nodded in agreement.

  “I think it’s good for us,” Taylor said, ever the brown-noser.

  “Me, too,” Madison chimed in. “How else are we going to get healthy?”

  Lori raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side. See?

  I looked at Brittany, who had seemed to feel uncomfortable the day before when Lori had attacked Emily for saying the cookie rule was dumb. She stared at her plate, evidently not wanting to take sides.

  I glanced toward Amy, who had just dropped off her tray. “Well, I’d better get going.”

  “See you at lunch,” Emily said, smiling.

  I nodded, then hurried to throw away my trash and drop off my tray before walking quickly toward Amy. I caught up with her before she got on the elevator. “Hi, Amy.” I made sure to disguise my voice.

  She barely looked at me, instead keeping her eyes forward. “Hi. What did you say your name is?”

  I hesitated, desperately wanting my sister to know it was me, but terrified to reveal my true identity for fear of the Enforcers finding out. “Hannah,” I said after a moment.

  “Thanks again for last night.”

  “Does that happen often?” We shuffled forward, waiting our turn to get on an elevator.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye—something I noticed she did a lot. “Why?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for her. I knew there was nothing anyone would do about it—I’d experienced Beth’s bullying myself—so I let the matter drop. “What’s your job here?”

  “I work in the laundry.”

&n
bsp; We moved to the front of the line and an elevator door opened. She got on and I made sure to get on as well, even though several other kids were pushing their way in.

  “What’s your job?” Amy asked, bringing me back to the present.

  “Cleaning the bathrooms on my floor.”

  “I had to do that when I first got here too.”

  “Oh.” I paused. “I’m on the eighth floor. What about you?”

  “Really?” I heard the smile in her voice. “Me, too.”

  This time when I looked at her, she looked at me full-on. Our eyes met and after just a second her brows pulled together. Did she recognize me? Then she bit her lip and looked down. After stopping a few times we arrived at our floor and got off together. She was very quiet as we walked down the hallway and I wondered what she was thinking.

  She stopped next to a door. “This is my room.” She looked at me again, and a look of hurt crossed her face.

  I had to know. “Is everything okay?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, of course.” She hesitated. “It’s just that you remind me of someone.”

  “Oh.” Obviously thinking of me pained her. That made me feel terrible. But at least she didn’t recognize me. Not yet.

  “I’ve gotta go. See you later.”

  “Bye, Amy.” She went into her room and I went to the supply closet/office and got the cart, then started cleaning the bathrooms. I pushed the cart down the hall and saw Jessica, the other girl who cleaned the bathrooms on our floor, coming towards me.

  “Hey,” she said, stopping next to me.

  “Hi.”

  “I have extra homework I need to do. Can you cover for me?”

  “What?” I’d been there less than twenty-four hours and already she wanted favors from me?

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s cool.”

  Maybe for you, I wanted to say. She wouldn’t be the one doing extra work. “What about Kyle?”

  She laughed. “He won’t care.”

  “How do you know? Have you done this before?”

  She hesitated. “Once or twice. But he’s cool. As long as the work gets done, he doesn’t care who does it.”

  But I’ll be the one doing it, I wanted to shout, thinking how tired I’d be by the time the morning shift ended.

  “Thanks.” She smiled and walked away, clearly taking my silence for agreement.

  I watched her go, anger simmering inside me. For just a second I considered talking to Kyle about her, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble it might cause me. Instead I pushed my cart to the first bathroom and got to work. As I scrubbed, I wondered how long I should wait to ask Kyle for a transfer to the laundry area. If I could work with Amy, maybe I could protect her from bullies and help her to not feel so alone. She seemed depressed—who in her situation wouldn’t be—and I knew I was totally and completely responsible.

  After the morning shift ended I went to my room to hide the piece of power bar I’d taken at breakfast. I immediately remembered the clever hiding place Piper had come up with when I’d been here before—on top of a slat in the box spring.

  I tucked the piece inside the box spring, then lay on my bed. After spending the last three and half hours scrubbing the bathroom—without any help—I was tired. I’d gotten out of shape in the last few weeks and all this activity had taken its toll. I thought about the escape plan Jack and Dani had come up with and could hardly wait until the day it took place. They had promised they would get me out of here within two weeks, which would cut it close to my deadline, but would give me enough time to get to the tunnel by November tenth. That was less than two weeks away.

  As I imagined walking into my house in my home world, an overwhelming feeling of joy cascaded over me. Then I pictured Billy by my side as I entered that world and my joy exploded into exhilaration. But the chances of that seemed somewhere between slim and none since I had no idea where Billy was. He had been so angry with me for deciding to come back to Camp Willowmoss, and I was still deeply hurt that he had left without saying good-bye. Especially after we’d seemed to get along so well the day before he left. I still had a hard time understanding what he’d been thinking.

  As I let my thoughts wander, I found myself drifting off to sleep, but woke to someone shaking me. My eyes were heavy with sleep and it took a moment to force my eyes open and for my vision to clear.

  Lori stood over me, an angry look on her face. “Wake up, you lazy pig,” she yelled in my face.

  I let her rudeness roll off my back—a difficult feat when I wanted to slap her—and pushed myself to a sitting position. “What’s wrong?”

  “I told you this would happen.”

  I’d never seen her so angry and warning bells rang in the back of my mind. “What? What happened?”

  “Your new enemy? Beth?”

  I nodded and held back the urge to tell her that Beth was actually an old enemy, although not as old an enemy as Lori herself.

  “Well, she works in the kitchen too. And she knows you’re my roommate. She gave me a message for you.”

  “What?”

  “Stand up.”

  This can’t be good, I thought, but did as she asked. Before I had a chance to react, she punched me in the gut. Hard. I doubled over, the wind knocked out of me. “Why’d you do that?” I gasped.

  Her eyes narrowed. “It’s exactly what she did to me.” Then she spun on her heel and left the room.

  I sank onto the bed, my arms wrapped around my middle, and tried to breathe. Beth had never hit me before, so her response surprised me. I wondered if her extreme reaction was due to the way her body reacted to the drugs or if she just hated Amy so much that she wanted to take her hatred out on whomever got in her way.

  I thought about the drug angle. When I’d been here before I’d seen Piper become super compliant and I’d wondered if the drug just magnified a person’s normal personality traits. So for Beth—and to some extent, Lori—it made them meaner. But for other kids it made them more mild. Was the government using us as guinea pigs to see how we’d react to the drugs? It certainly seemed that way. And I could only guess that they would work to fine tune the drugs to get the desired effect of compliance from everyone.

  Then I thought about the Amy angle. Why did Beth hate her so much? Was it because she hated me and just needed a target? That seemed the most reasonable explanation, although I didn’t know why she would hate me so much. We’d worked out a deal and I’d mostly kept up my side—to get her extra power bars. Maybe she was mad at me because I’d managed to escape. Maybe she wished she could have escaped instead.

  My breathing normalized and I rubbed my stomach, trying to work out the ache that had started. I shook my head as I thought about Beth. Did it really matter why she was a bully? No. I just needed to worry about Amy and protecting her. If Lori got stuck in the middle, that was too bad. Collateral damage and all that.

  I checked my watch and saw it was time to go to lunch. My stomach rumbled at the thought and I headed to the cafeteria. I just hoped Lori wouldn’t banish me from the table. That was all I needed—to be a nomad on my second day. Why did all of my roommates have to be queen bees?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I arrived in the cafeteria I got in line and looked over the room. Lori was already sitting at the table with Taylor and Madison—her two most ardent followers. I’d found out they were roommates, and Emily and Brittany were roommates. At least they all seemed well-matched. Brittany and Emily seemed less enthusiastic about the whole F.A.T. center concept. Of course I didn’t know if Taylor and Madison really felt the way they claimed or if they were just sucking up to Lori.

  And what had Lori meant when she’d said her dad was trying to work everything out? If he had so much pull, how did she end up here in the first place?

  I gathered my food and started walking toward my table—I didn’t see Amy at her table yet. After a few steps I saw Jessica sitting with a group of kids and stopped next to her. “Did you get your homework do
ne?”

  She gave me a look of fake apology. “Oh sorry, Hannah. But no. Not quite yet. But thanks so much for covering for me. I truly appreciate it.”

  I’ll bet you do. I wanted to tell her that getting her homework done was not my problem and that she’d better show up to clean after lunch or else, but I noticed all of her friends staring at me, so instead I smiled and silently seethed. The last thing I needed was to make more enemies. I was supposed to fly under the radar, not create a growing list of People Who Hate Morgan/Hannah.

  I walked away without comment and when I got to my table, Lori glared at me.

  “There she is now,” she said, like she’d been talking about me.

  I added her to the aforementioned list, along with Beth, Hansen, and all the other Enforcers. And possibly Amy. Maybe even Billy. A feeling of self-pity that no one liked me swept over me as I sat in the chair furthest from Lori and picked up my spork. Taylor and Madison ignored me, probably on orders from Lori, so I just began eating, and wondered who in this world cared about me, or even liked me—I would even settle for someone who didn’t recoil at the site of me. Then I thought of Jessica and was sure she wasn’t mad at me, but that was only because I was doing her work for her—and not by choice.

  Emily and Brittany appeared, smiling and talking, and I thought at least Emily seemed to be a candidate for a friend. They sat next to each other, Emily next to me.

  “Hey,” she said to the group.

  “Hey,” Taylor said.

  “What’s going on?” Emily asked.

  “Ask Hannah,” Lori sneered.

  All eyes shifted to me. This was getting ridiculous. How did I even know Lori was telling the truth about Beth? Maybe Lori was making it all up—I knew how she liked to lie to make herself look better—to have an excuse to punch me. “Lori hit me,” I stated, then took a bite of my food and sat back to watch the chaos erupt.