“French?”

“This one’s gonna be a problem,” the new escort said. Then he bent down and grabbed my legs in one arm, effortlessly throwing me over his shoulder like a folded tarp. “Easier this way. Get the doors,” he told the first man.

His shoulder jostling under my guts cut the air out of my body. My head was already spinning, but now it was also heavy, too heavy to lift. I had no more voice to call out to my brother, the brother I hadn’t seen since he’d sacrificed himself so I could get away so many years ago. The brother I last saw being dragged off into a Recruiter van destined for one of these schools while I hid in the trees. How? Why?

By the time we hit the first set of stairs, I was quiet and still. I might have even blacked out for a moment. Small mercies, I guess.

Everything was a blur of turning and climbing and muffled conversation between the two men and then with the security guards. Could this all be a dream? Another nightmare, maybe? First I heard my mother through the walls, and then I saw Mitch?

“Easy there, little guy. You gotta walk.” My feet touched the floor, and four hands were standing me upright, leaning me against a cold wall.

“Whew, those stairs are a bitch.” He stood upright and stretched out his back. “Wish they’d let us use the elevators all the time.”

“Oh, c’mon, Franklin, you gonna let a little cardio with a bone bag get you all winded?” The second man slapped the first on the shoulder and chuckled.

I pulled myself together while they bantered. We were just past the final staircase, inside the hallway on the third floor, my floor. I was minutes away from being back in that room. In the dark. Alone.

But what if I wasn’t alone? If Mitch was actually here, then maybe—just maybe—so was my mother.

They say adrenaline floods into your body. But a flood is gradual and rising. Adrenaline is more like electricity, sharp and sudden and random with its placement. It stabs into your muscles and needles you behind the eyes. It sets your lower guts quivering and makes your breath fast and shallow so that you have to pant.

I knew the way. I knew the door. And I had to know if she was here. So I did what I did best: I ran.

I pushed off the wall and easily darted past the men, who were tired and distracted and absolutely not expecting the skinny kid with the banged-up head to go all-out down the hall.

“Hey!”

I ran straight and fast, all my senses narrowing in on the task. I streaked through the big room, barely seeing the bodies that filled the corners, slumped on the couches, staring out the windows, all in similar muted clothes. I did hear one yell as I passed, “Yeah, niijii! Give’r!”

A right turn. Then a left. I could hear the men behind me, shouts and heavy footfalls, but it was all shades of an echo mixed in with the ringing in my ears. The edges of my vision blurred, my throat closed up. I couldn’t go much farther. I hadn’t eaten in days, and adrenaline will only take you so far. But I was in the hall with my room, the hall where my mother had spoken to me. And now I knew which room it had been coming from, to the left of my door, right before the hallway split off in either direction. That’s where the voice was coming from, that’s where she was.