Free Vivian Divine Is Dead by Lauren Sabel Page A

every sound for miles around. And then I hear something that makes my skin crawl:
    The crunch of footsteps behind me.
     
    I’m too terrified to look back, so I make myself a deal: count to ten, and then do it. By the time I get to five, all I can imagine is someone blowing my head off from behind, so I do it: I look back.
    It’s not a killer.
    It’s the boy.
     
    Under the curved brim of his cowboy hat, he’s staring into the woods, focused on the place where Nick walked into the trees. The boy says something then, his voice anxious. I can’t understand anything, but he repeats the same word as before: White Devil.
    I’m starting to get insulted. Why did he chase me down if he thinks I’m the White Devil? “Speak English?” I ask.
    The boy shakes his head, and then starts speaking rapidly in his language. I can’t understand a word of it. It doesn’t sound like Spanish, not that I’d understand that either. He crouches down, smoothes out the ground in front of us, and draws something in the dirt with his index finger.
    “A stick?” I say as a long, wavy rectangle finds its way out of the dirt. He shakes his head and draws a line coming out of it.
    “A lizard?” He shakes his head again, his black cowboy hat falling over his eyes.
    I hear Nick’s footsteps crunching on the dirt behind us. The little boy pushes his shaking finger into the ground again. He draws a circle coming out of the rectangle and looks at me, willing me to get it. It must have worked, because suddenly, I do:
    A gun. He’s drawing a gun.
     
    Panic surges through me. Why would he draw a gun? Did he see that man following us from the house? I squint into the thick green forest, and a shudder cycles through my body. I feel enemies hiding behind every tree, but besides the squirrel racing across a branch with a nut in his teeth, and Nick walking toward us empty-handed, there’s no one out here. Nobody’s following us.
    “What’s the kid doing here?” Nick asks.
    “I don’t know. He followed me.”
    “He must be hungry.”
    Facing the little boy, I point to myself, shake my head, and then stuff an imaginary burger into my mouth. “We don’t have any food.”
    The boy looks at Nick, then back at me. He repeats that word again, the one that means I’m the White Devil, and then he jumps up and sprints full speed down the road. We both watch him go, dust spitting up beneath his bare feet.
    “Poor kid,” I say. “I can’t imagine being that hungry.”
    “I can.”
    I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. I just stand up and dust off the back of my jeans, hoping Nick notices the effects of my weekly abs and butt workouts. He doesn’t. He just points to the boy’s drawing in the dirt.
    “What’s that?”
    Since when has a kid’s stick drawing been more interesting than my butt?
    “I think it’s a gun,” I say, “but I don’t know why he drew it.”
    “Probably because of this,” Nick says, pulling a small black revolver out of the side pocket of his cargo pants.

Chapter Ten
    O UR EYES LOCK, AND MY chest burns with fear as if I’ve just pressed it against a hot stove. Is Nick going to kill me? Sweat pops up across my forehead, dripping off my eyebrows and stinging my eyes. Was he just being nice to lure me into the woods and shoot me?
    “Why do you have a gun?” My voice is quaking so much, I can hardly make out the words. How could I be foolish enough to trust him? It all seems so absurd now: coincidently meeting on the bus, following him through the woods, him being so protective of me.
    “How’d you think I was going to get us food?” Nick asks. “Beat it with a stick?”
    The burn in my chest lets up a little, and I wipe the sweat off my forehead and rub my wet hands on my jeans. “You use it to hunt?”
    “And for protection. What else would I use it for?” he asks.
    Relief floods through my body, relaxing my muscles and soothing my burning chest. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a