Free In Time by Alexandra Bracken Page A

the boy’s gone and wet himself like the baby he really is. He’s shaking, screaming something at her around his gag. I let Zu take the keys and undo the handcuffs around his wrists and ankles herself.
    I see it out of the corner of my eye, resting on the front passenger seat next to a small handgun—a shiny black tablet, the kind they only give to registered skip tracers.
    “Oh my God,” the boy cries when she’s able to untie the gag. His chest is heaving with every breath he takes, and he’s crying the way I used to when I was a kid and I came home with a bad grade or after a lost soccer match and my mom would tell me not to be so goddamn pathetic about such stupid things. He’s sobbing the way I did the night I found my dad’s body.
    “Thank you, thankyouthankyou,” he sobs, clinging to me.
    The boy’s legs don’t seem to be working, so I lift him into my arms and carry him to my truck. I already know it’s not going to be this one, either.
    I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore.
    I hit the I-10 and all of a sudden I’m just driving, going as fast as I can without catching any attention I don’t want. Every time I look up into the rearview mirror, I expect to see some kind of military SUV gaining on me, streaking down the freeway with guns blazing. Or at least a white van with a frizzy-haired woman sporting a new shiner leaning out her window to fire at me mid-chase.
    I’ve seen too many action movies.
    Zu calmly holds the boy’s hand, and he actually lets her. I guess that’s the difference between kids these days and the kinds of kids I grew up with. They don’t have much pride—at least not enough pride to act like a punk and be rude because he’s secretly humiliated about having pissed himself and cried in front of a girl. I guess they can overlook these things, given their circumstances. It’s kind of sweet, in a way…like normal puppy love, only with the addition of freak superpowers and hormones.
    I have to hand it to him, too. Now that he’s calmed down, I think he might be trying to flirt with her. He keeps asking her questions, but she only nods or shakes her head.
    “She doesn’t talk,” I explain finally. “But she understands what you’re saying.”
    “Oh.”
    I look at him out of the corner of my eye—ginger, an explosion of freckles across his face, dressed in nice enough clothes to tell me someone out there cares enough to know he’s missing. He fidgets and shrinks back against the torn leather seat.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Are you like the woman?” he asks instead of answering. “A skip tracer?”
    At this point, I am the exact opposite of whatever a skip tracer is supposed to be. Zu points at me and gives a big thumbs-up, and I feel like she’s just singlehandedly elected me the next president of the United States.
    “Oh,” he says again. “Okay. My name’s Bryson.”
    “Nice,” I say. “I’m Gabe. This is Dorothy.”
    She reaches around Bryson and punches me in the arm again. “Ow. Fine. Zu.”
    “Zu?” Bryson grins. “That’s cool.”
    Okay. It is a little cool. Better than, like, Pauline, I guess.
    “How’d you get picked up?” I ask. After two days of talking to myself, it feels weird to be having a conversation.
    He sighs, banging his head back against the seat again. “It was really stupid. Della’s gonna kill me.”
    “Della being your mom?” I didn’t start calling my mother by her first name until I turned twenty and was embarrassed to have the word associated with her.
    “No, she’s…she’s watching me and my brother and a couple other kids. She and her husband are really nice and they’re taking care of us until things get better.”
    “She’s hiding you?” I ask. Wow. The lady must have balls of steel. I should know. Terror’s got mine in a viselike grip. “Then yeah, I’d say Della is probably going to kill you.”
    The whole setup is really fascinating. This woman, Della, and her husband, Jim, had recently