Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

wait for years, watching as you gorge yourself, and then I hit you where you love. What am I?

I scramble in and practically fall onto the corpse. And it is a corpse, already cold from the night air.

‘Kyle!’ I shake him. Slap his face. ‘Kyle!’

No response. My vision is blurry, but I can tell that his flesh is pale.

‘Help me!’ I shout, like the Guards don’t know what’s happening. ‘Kyle’s dying!’ I can’t say the word dead. Can’t even think it.

The others ignore me, hustling into the van and buckling their seatbelts. Fred is in the driver’s seat. He releases the handbrake and starts us rolling down the gravel driveway.

I put my ear to Kyle’s lips. Not breathing. A finger under his jaw. No pulse. I plant my hand on Kyle’s ribs. I’ve seen enough open chest cavities to know where his heart is. I push down, over and over.

‘Lux.’ Cedric touches my arm gently. His eyes look hollow in the fluorescent light from the bulb overhead.

I shake him off. Keep pumping Kyle’s chest, using every bit of my strength. Hitting him so hard that I might give myself a heart attack.

‘He’s dead,’ Cedric says.

I keep pumping. These days they teach chest compressions only, not mouth to mouth. But Thistle kept me alive with CPR one time, and she used mouth to mouth. I put my lips over Kyle’s and huff into him.

His chest rises partway, like a half-inflated bouncy castle, then sags immediately. I try again. The air won’t stay in his lungs.

‘Look.’ Zara rolls Kyle’s head sideways, so I can see the back of it. It’s smashed in—a mess of blood and brain matter. As though someone clubbed him with a bowling ball.

‘No!’ I keep pumping, because I once met a woman who had survived a gunshot wound to the head. Impossible things happen. I can barely breathe. I’m choking. The son I only just met can’t be gone already.

‘There’s no coming back from that,’ Zara says.

I thump Kyle’s chest over and over, tears and snot streaming down my face. Not just from the pepper spray anymore. I love him. I don’t know why, but I do.

The van bounces as we reach the turn-off to the dirt road. My hand slips off Kyle’s chest and I hit the floor. I try to get back onto my knees, but it’s like my arm is made of rubber.

My airway is tight. ‘Someone help him!’

No one does.

‘Jesus, Lux. I’m sorry.’ Donnie is hazy, but he sounds moved. He doesn’t think I’m a cop anymore. A cop wouldn’t care about a dead criminal. I’ve convinced them that I’m on their side—but too late. I lie next to Kyle and put my hand on his arm. Close my stinging eyes, like I can imagine him back to life.

You never told him, says the cruel voice in my head.

Shut up.

He died not knowing.

Shut up!

It’s not just that he died not knowing who I was; it’s that he died not knowing who he was. This boy from Ackerly never got the chance to become someone good.

Someone squeezes my shoulder as I cry.

Hours pass. Eventually streetlights start sweeping past the windows. Other cars cruise by. Sirens on the wind. We must be approaching Houston.

Lying on the cold floor, I don’t intend to speak, or do anything, ever again. But eventually I hear my own voice: ‘What happened? To Kyle?’

‘He fucked up,’ Fred says flatly from the driver’s seat. If he has any feelings about leaving his mother behind, he’s keeping them buried deep.

My voice cracks. ‘What do you mean?’

‘He left the slaughterhouse door unlocked. I’ve told him a million times to be careful about things like that.’

Fred’s eyes must have been on the road this whole time. He hasn’t sensed the mood shifting in the rest of the van. The others might not have cared about Kyle’s death before—none of them seemed to like him while he was alive—but they care now. My grief is contagious. Plus, Donnie and Cedric don’t think I’m a cop anymore, which might make them feel guilty about putting me through the grinder.

Guilt and grief are inward emotions. They make you ask uncomfortable questions of yourself. The easiest way to deal with those feelings is to turn them outwards. Transmute them into rage.

‘The prisoners got out,’ Fred continues, oblivious. ‘I hit him. He tripped, bumped his head on a rock.’ He sighs. ‘Poor kid.’

I heard that punch. I was right there. I didn’t even go back to check if Kyle was okay.

‘Poor kid?’ There’s a dangerous tone in my voice. The others hear it and tense up.

Fred doesn’t. ‘It’s a shame. He would have been willing to take the heat off us, as you know.’

A second ago I was burned out: physically, emotionally and intellectually exhausted. I haven’t slept or eaten. But anger is an inexhaustible fuel source. It’s like nuclear power—every time you think it’s died away, it comes back to kill somebody.

I sit up.

‘Lux,’ Donnie warns.

‘You killed him.’ The words burn on the way up my throat, like vomit.

Fred glances at me in the rear-view mirror, eyes narrowing.

I launch myself at him, teeth bared. Donnie lunges at the same moment, trying to stop me. I claw at Fred’s face, but he leans away and I miss, my hand digging into the headrest of his seat.

‘Christ, fuck!’ Fred yells.

Donnie grabs me before I can try again. Pins me to the wall by my neck. ‘Cool it, Lux.’

‘You killed him!’ I scream at Fred. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘I just explained that,’ Fred says, looking annoyed. ‘I—hey, what the hell?’

He stops the van. There’s some kind of parade in front of us. No, not a parade. A protest. People are carrying tiki torches, waving