Free Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig Page A

dusted, no computer. An academic's nocturnal emission: Egyptian artifacts and books of poetry and a glass case featuring some old illuminated manuscript.
      Nurse Caldecott reaches for Miriam, but she dances away.
      "Miss Black. You should see a doctor."
      Miriam says nothing. Just pushes her way out, flanked by the two guards.
      She winds her way through the school and all its Victorian trappings: flower-pattern rugs and tea tables and school desks that seat two children each. It smells of dust and books and the faintest hint of strawberry lip gloss.
      She passes by classroom after classroom, all filled with girls, some bright-eyed and ready to escape the sucking mud of their own pasts, others glowering and glaring as though to say, This will do nothing for me.
      As they walk, Roidhead keeps coming up behind her and bumping her. Then laughing. Like it's an accident but it's not. He's fucking with her.
      All she can do is point to him, give him a scathing Iwill-stuff-your-balls-up-your-ass look. Anything past that right now would require energy she doesn't have. That vision didn't just take the wind out of her sails: It tore the sail to ragged ribbons so that the wind whistles through the tattered vents.
      He doesn't care. Mario, on the other hand, watches. Cagey. Like she's a snake who might bite. Good boy.
      And then, just like that, she's out. The day is bright. Noon-time sun at the tippy-top of its totem pole. The day is warm. But it doesn't matter. She still feels cold. A chill, down into her marrow.
       Mask. Song. Axe.
      They stuff her into a security guard car – a crappy four-door Ford sedan from the early Oughts, painted to look like an almost-cop-car. On the way, despite the heat, she catches early whiffs of autumn's approach: Somewhere, someone is burning leaves.
      Rose. Carnation. Orange oil.
      Chemical stink, piss, fear.
      The guards ditch her at the gate. Homer's still there and he tries some more witty banter, but it doesn't take.
      She can't even hear it.
      The gate opens. She takes her chance and escapes this awful place.

SEVENTEEN
    Crapplebee's
     
    "Todd," Miriam says, tap-tap-tapping on the edge of her glass. "You're going to need to put another Long Island Iced Tea in this motherfucker, and this time, you're going to need to crank it up a notch. Don't gyp me on this. Did you know that 'gyp' is a racist term? It's totally a racist term. Short for 'gypsy', because apparently the gypsies were always dicking people over. Stealing babies and shit. Whatever. What was I saying? Long Island. Iced tea. In my glass. Pretty please, Todd."
      Todd's the bartender here at Applebee's. He's got a black polo on, and he's about as well put-together as a bundle of dry branches. He's probably twenty-one but he looks eighteen. His face has such a crass topography of zits it made Miriam set aside her mozzarella sticks.
      "Sure thing," he says, his voice an uneven pubescent croak. He sets to making her a new drink.
      It's dead in here. Might as well set up headstones at each booth and table, cover the whole place in cobwebs and grave moss.
      She's not sure if it's the only bar in town. But it was the one she found first when walking away from that God-fucked girls' school. And at the time she figured booze was booze, greasy food was greasy food, and that was that.
      Since that time, she's revised her opinion. All the bullshit tacked up on the walls is getting to her. Kitschy nonsense, street signs, faux-retro stylings, a fucking boat oar. A boat oar . What a boar oar has to do with anything, she doesn't know. Maybe it's to bludgeon unpleasant customers.
      She wonders how long it'll be before Todd bludgeons her.
      He seems too sweet to do that. Or dumb.
      Maybe he'll take an axe and chop off your head, Wicked Polly.
      No. No! She wasn't going to think about that. That's not why she came here. She's not here to stew. She's here to drink. And eat. And