Free Can't Get There from Here by Todd Strasser

else.”
    “I think I’ll go. Thanks for the doughnuts.” I got upand started to take off the brown sweater.
    “No, I want you to keep it,” he said.
    “Okay, thanks.” I took my sweatshirt from the radiator. The cuffs were frayed and it had holes in it, but it was only damp now and even the dampness felt warm. I pulled it over my head. The library man looked outside at the falling snow. The lines in his blotchy freckled forehead deepened slightly. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
    “Sure,” I said, and started toward the doors. He walked with me. I pulled the doors open. The air smelled cold and fresh.
    “Wait,” he said. “My name is Anthony. Come back here any time you want. If you don’t see me by the computer tables you can go to the front desk and ask for me. They’ll get me, okay?”
    “Okay.” I left.

THIRTEEN
    By the time I got to the empty building, I was wet and shivering again. Pest barked when I came up the steps, but everyone else was asleep on the mattress or the floor, covered with blankets, discarded clothes, and rags. I looked around for Rainbow, but she wasn’t there. I pulled together a bunch of clothes—pants, shirts, sweatshirts—and made a nest on the mattress and crawled into it. I’d been up most of the night looking for Rainbow. Now that I had those doughnuts in my stomach, it was easy to fall asleep.
    “Maybe, wake up.” Someone touched my shoulder. I opened my eyes. I was lying on the mattress, trembling from the cold. My breath was a white cloud in the dim room. I couldn’t stop shaking and had to clench my teeth to stop them from chattering.
    It was Tears who woke me. “2Moro got us free passes to The Cradle tonight.”
    “How?” I yawned. The Cradle was the hottest club in the world and impossible to get into.
    Tears looked over at 2Moro, who was kneeling in front of the broken mirror, putting makeup on Jewel, who was wearing a pink wig. “How’d you get the passes?”
    “The bartender likes me,” 2Moro said.
    I sat up. My head was spinning and I felt dizzy. My ankles started to itch something fierce and I had to scratch them hard. It was the bedbugs. Even the frigid cold didn’t stop them.
    “I’m not going to some club,” I said.
    Maggot was reading a newspaper. “Here’s something that might change your mind. The weather forecast is for record lows tonight. Like in the teens.”
    “You sure that’s today’s paper?” OG asked.
    Maggot turned it around and looked at the front page. “Yeah. And with the wind chill it’s supposed to feel even colder.”
    “What’s wind chill?” Tears asked.
    “You know how the wind makes it feel colder than it really is?” Maggot said. “That’s wind chill.”
    I scratched my ankles so hard my fingernails broke the skin and my fingertips became damp and sticky with blood. But the pain made the horrible itching easier to take. The thin shafts of light squeezing past the window frames cut through the dim room like sabers. Dust floated in the shafts and shimmered. All the different tiny shapes caught the sunlight and turned white like snowflakes. When I breathed out, the cloud of my breath mixed with them and made them swirl and dance.
    “Now do you want to go?” Tears asked me.
    “Are you going?” I asked Maggot.
    “Oh, yeah.” He grinned devilishly.
    “I sold all those roofies there. They all think I’ve got good stuff. Thistime I’ll sell a couple of spoonfuls of baking soda for hundreds of bucks.”
    “Can I go?” Tears asked.
    OG was feeding Pest leftover ramen noodles. “Hell, yes. They like ‘em young in the clubs. Younger the better.”
    Tears bit her lip nervously.
    “Not to worry, sweetheart,” Jewel told her. “We’ll make you look twenty-one.”
    “What’ll we wear?” I asked. All I had was my sweatshirt and the white T-shirt and brown button-down sweater the library man, Anthony, gave me. Tears was wearing a furry black and orange sweater that made her look like one of those