I jerked a thumb in the direction of Chubs.

Liam only shook his head. “Are you kidding me? Yesterday he thought a mailbox was a clown.”

I unbuckled my seat belt with a sigh. As I climbed over Chubs’s outstretched legs to the front, I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes going to his too-small glasses. “Is his eyesight really that bad?”

“Worse,” Liam said. “So, right after we got the hell out of Caledonia, we broke into this house to spend the night, right? I woke up in the middle of the night hearing the most awful noise, like a cow dying or something. I followed the wailing, clutching some kid’s baseball bat, thinking I was going to have to beat someone’s head in for us to make a clean getaway. Then I saw what was sitting at the bottom of the drained pool.”

“No way,” I said.

“Way,” he confirmed. “Hawkeye had gone out to relieve himself and had somehow missed the giant gaping hole in the ground. Twisted his ankle and couldn’t climb out of the deep end.”

I tried so hard not to laugh, but it was impossible. The mental image was just too damn good.

Liam reached over and switched on the radio, letting me choose the station. He seemed satisfied with my decision to stay with the Who.

With the window down all the way, I leaned out, resting my chin on my hands. The morning air was warm, licked by the first rays of sunlight. When I looked up past the very tip-top of the wild trees, there was nothing but blue sky.

A small sound, a ghost of a sigh, was released behind us. Both Liam and I turned to look at Zu’s sleeping face.

“Did we wake you up last night?” he asked.

“I caught a little of it,” I said. “Does she have a lot of nightmares?”

“In the few weeks I’ve known her, it’s been an every other night thing. Sometimes she dreams about Caledonia and I can talk her down, but I never know what to say about her family. I swear, if I ever meet her parents, I’m going to…”

His voice trailed off, but the anger coating them had given the air a palpable charge.

“What did they do to her?”

“Gave her away, because they were afraid of her,” he said. “Like, me and Chubs? Our folks tried to keep us hidden, and that’s why we went to the camp late. Zu’s parents actually sent her away when she short-circuited her dad’s car in the middle of a freeway.”

“Oh, God.”

“They sent her during the first official Collection.” He propped an elbow along the door panel and leaned his face against his hand. His Redskins cap hid his eyes from view. “I forgot you missed this.”

I waited for him to explain.

“It was after most people our age had already been taken or were in hiding. The government issued a notice that any parents who didn’t feel safe or capable of taking care of their kiddos could send them to school on a specific morning, and the Psi Special Forces would be there to collect them for rehabilitation. Kept it all very hush-hush to avoid upsetting the children or inciting them to misbehave.”