Free Hurricane Power by Sigmund Brouwer Page B

wasn’t in pain.
    I reached out for the water, scrubbing my hands together, cleaning them as quickly as I could.
    I looked back but saw no signs of anyone. I hoped they had given up, but I wasn’t going to take a chance.
    I put my thumb over the end of the hose to shoot water at the front of my shirt. The water was cold and made me gasp. But I kept spraying, trying to drive off as much of the stuff as I could. I was sure I’d have to throw the shirt away, like I had the other one. But at least I wouldn’t have the stuff clinging to me as I went home.
    Still no sign of anyone. I began jogging again, slipping out the back of the yard and onto a different street.
    As I ran, I passed an old rusting Cadillac parked by the curb. The back window was smashed out. The rear bumper was totally crunched. I remembered it from the night before, when Dad and I had gone to Carlos’s house.
    I had found Carlos’s neighborhood again.
    Still running hard, I looked more closely at the houses on each side of the street. With the sun shining bright in a cloudless sky, thestreet looked very different from the way it had the night before. I recognized some of the houses. A half block later, I stood in front of the big old house where Carlos and his family lived.
    I stared at the huge house with its broken windows. Clothes hung from balconies to dry in the breeze.
    I told myself this had all started with Carlos. If he was the problem, then he might also be the solution.
    I ran up the front walk. I pushed the door open, smelling the same scent of garlic and grease from the night before, hearing the same loud television from somewhere on the main floor. As I walked up the stairs, I heard babies crying somewhere above me. I walked down the hallway and passed the same doors with the same chipped and peeling paint.
    I stopped in front of the door that led to Carlos’s family’s two-room apartment.
    I knocked and waited.

chapter twenty-three
    Carlos opened the door. He didn’t say a thing.
    He looked up and down the hallway. Ignoring my soaking-wet T-shirt, he pulled me inside and bolted the door behind me.
    â€œYou must be crazy,” he said. “What you doing here? Man, people see us together, I’m dead.”
    His brothers and sisters wandered out of the small bedroom at the back of the apartment. They stared at me. They spoke to oneanother in Spanish. Probably talking about my wet T-shirt.
    His father and mother weren’t here. Or if they were, they stayed in the other room.
    â€œI’m here because I don’t want to have to worry about getting knifed at school,” I said. “The people you hang with aren’t too nice. And for some reason, they don’t like me.”
    â€œThey don’t like you because you put your nose where it don’t belong. Just like now.” He sniffed the air. “Man, speaking about noses...”
    He sniffed again. “Is that what I think it is?”
    â€œHow’s your little sister?” I asked. I didn’t want to answer his question.
    â€œBetter,” he said. He sniffed again. “What do you do? Look for that stuff and roll in it? Are you some kind of sick?”
    â€œSome kind of unlucky. And again, it’s your fault.”
    â€œMe? I don’t push you into it. I don’t—”
    â€œYou looked me up in the school computer, didn’t you?” I looked squarely into his face. “When you saw my dad was a doctor,you decided to visit because Juanita was sick.”
    â€œIt wasn’t me,” he said. “It was them. I just overheard them talking about you and your family and where you lived.”
    â€œâ€˜Them’?” I asked. “Who is ‘them’?”
    He didn’t answer.
    â€œThey changed my grades too, didn’t they? Who are they? And how do they get into the system?”
    â€œNo,” he said, shaking his head, “I can’t tell you