Hide with Me Read online

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  First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Sorboni Banerjee

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Banerjee, Sorboni, author.

  Title: Hide with me / Sorboni Banerjee.

  Description: [New York] : Razorbill, 2018. | Summary: Cade, seventeen, yearns to leave the border town of Tanner, Texas, and when a mysterious girl appears, broken and bleeding, on his family farm the two begin to plan their escape, unaware that a cartel boss wants the girl back.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018013403 | ISBN 9780451478351 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Runaways—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Foster children—Fiction. | Farm life—Texas—Fiction. | Texas—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B3645 Hid 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013403

  Ebook ISBN: 9780451478368

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To my mother for the love of reading, my father for the art of storytelling, and my little brother for being my first audience.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  THE BOY

  THE GIRL

  THE BOY

  THE GIRL

  THE WOLF CUB

  CADE

  THE GIRL

  CADE

  JANE DOE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  THE WOLF CUB

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  THE WOLF CUB

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  THE WOLF CUB

  JANE

  CADE

  THE WOLF CUB

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE AND CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  THE WOLF CUB

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  LOBENZO

  JANE

  CADE

  JANE

  CADE

  KRISTA

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  THE BOY

  The girl was like a train.

  When I was a kid, trains still ran on the old tracks behind our farm, and when they came by the whole house shook. At first it was a roar so loud it had layers, deep rumble to high-pitched screech, and you couldn’t talk or even really think. Then you got used to it. Maybe I shook with the walls. Maybe my brain was just loud. But the train would pass, and the only sign that it had rattled by was the picture frames on the walls left slightly crooked. And after a while, the slanted lines looked normal.

  The girl was like that. Finding her shook the walls of everything. Rattled, crooked, loud—that’s the world that starts looking normal when a girl derails and takes you and the town with her.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I found the girl, she should have been dead.

  “What the hell?”

  My dog’s left paw was red, and so was his nose. I thought he’d killed a rabbit, which would have been a miracle, because my dog Hunter is not a hunter at all. When rabbits dash out at him in the fields he jumps, four legs off the ground, and then has to run in a circle to calm down.

  But that day he was whining in a real funny way, kind of like when he’s hiding a bone—excited or freaked out, I can never really tell. I touched the fur under his snout, and my fingers came back all sticky red too. Hunter ran a few steps ahead into the rows of corn, then turned around, waiting to see if I was coming.

  It was late evening, after football practice, and I was walking the edges of the farm, like I do. Like it’ll somehow make stuff start growing. And that’ll somehow make my dad forget I’m the only one around to beat on because nothing ever does.

  “What? What is it?” I grumbled at Hunter, and then I saw what.

  In the shadows of the cornstalks was a girl. Her blond hair was streaked with something dark red. Blood. It crusted over her swollen-shut eye. Her other eye, bright blue, was open wide, all scared. Her skin had gone gray, no color in her lips, pale neck quivering with her short breaths.

  I stood there for a minute like she wasn’t real. She looked like a car wreck. A movie. Like someone beat the crap out of her.

  Her hand reached toward me, muddy fingers curled like she wanted to hold on to something. I dropped to my knees beside her.

  “Good lord, what happened to you?” I asked quiet.

  She opened her mouth, but a dry sound came out, air and pain, no words.

  “I’ll run to the house and call an ambulance.”

  The girl grabbed my wrist. No, her open eye screamed at me.

  “I’ll come right back. I don’t have my phone with me.”

  Her fingers dug in. Desperate grip. Te
rrified eye. That’s when I saw it wasn’t only her head all busted. Her shirt was soaked in blood across the middle.

  “Who did this to you?” I asked. People don’t get hurt like that by accident.

  The girl whimpered and tried to bring her knees up to her chest, curl up and hide, kind of. But it hurt her too much, and she gasped and clutched at her stomach.

  “I’m calling 9-1-1,” I told her.

  “No!”

  Her voice was raspy. But even though it was a ragged whisper, it hit me like a scream. She said it in a way that told me she would rather die here in the field than get taken to a hospital.

  “You really need a doctor.”

  She shook her head.

  “How am I supposed to help you then?”

  “Hide me.”

  THE GIRL

  When the boy found me, I thought it was snowing.

  It doesn’t snow really in Texas. But I was cold like it was. And I was thinking about how sometimes when it snowed back north, it was like the flakes were coming from the ground instead of the sky, the icy wind swirling them around so you couldn’t tell which direction it started from.

  It was only light though, little triangles of amber and white filtered through the corn stalks, twinkling like snow, or stars.

  When his dog licked my face I wondered what it must feel like to be a deer, shot and dying and not understanding why or how. One minute the deer is looking for food, breathing warm air, listening to the little noises only animals can hear, and then she is on the ground, panting in time with her heartbeat, fast and panicked, then slower and slower till it’s dark.

  By the time the boy tried to take me to the hospital, I had already decided it was better to die than to be found. But when I said, Please, no, his gray eyes flashed like he saw something he understood.

  “I’ll take you somewhere safe, okay?” he said.

  I shook my head. There was nowhere safe.

  “It’s empty. Nobody even knows it’s still here.”

  His dog had inched closer, and his tail was wagging. He looked at me like he was sorry I was hurting. I like dogs.

  “I’m going to try an’ pick you up,” the boy told me.

  He slid one arm behind my back, the other under my knees, but the second he tried to lift me I made a noise that made him lower me right back down.

  “Sorry! Shoot. Sorry.” He ran his hands through his light brown hair and held on to his forehead because he didn’t know what to do. He had serious eyes, like a soldier, but the light smattering of freckles across his slightly sunburned nose made him look kind of like a little boy at the same time.

  “I’m going to try again,” he said, and that time I held my breath and closed my eyes so tightly I saw colors.

  Every step he took I could feel in the slash across my stomach, where my shoulder hung, the eye that would not open.

  “Faster,” I told him. What if someone saw us?

  “I’m trying to take it easy on you.”

  “Don’t,” I said. No one does.

  THE BOY

  There was only one place to take her. She said she wanted to hide. I knew about hiding. On the farthest edge of the farm, hidden behind a tangle of brush, was a small, old cow barn. There hadn’t been cows in it in forever. Maybe the people way before us had some. We could barely afford to grow corn, let alone buy cattle.

  “We’re here,” I told her.

  I was trying so hard not to hurt her while we walked, and she was trying so hard not to show that I was.

  I kicked the creaky barn door open as gently as I could and laid her down on a mattress in the darkest corner. She looked nervously from side to side.

  “It’s okay. I sleep out here sometimes.”

  Her brow furrowed like she didn’t understand.

  “This is where I come when I want to be by myself,” I told her. “No one knows about it.”

  Her shoulders relaxed a little bit.

  “Can I see how bad you’re hurt?” I asked.

  The girl didn’t nod or say yes, but she didn’t stop me either as I reached for the edge of her shirt. I couldn’t stop the sharp intake of my breath when I saw the cut. It went from her stomach sideways around and up to her ribs.

  “Is that who you’re hiding from?” I asked her. “The person who did this?”

  She didn’t answer, so I knew I was right.

  That’s probably when I should have called the police. If I didn’t hate the police.

  It’s definitely when I should have said this is too big for me.

  But I didn’t.

  Because she looked at me like I was going to save the world. So I wanted to.

  Instead I told her I was going to go and get her some medicine.

  “I know a place I can steal some penicillin or something so you don’t get all infected.”

  I also knew she needed stitches and something for her eye, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  “Water. Medicine. Blankets. All that kind of stuff,” I told her. “That’s what I’m going to get for you. And you need to stay right here.”

  I took another look at the gaping cut before pulling her shirt back down. It peeled open in a crescent, and I could see all these different colors and textures, light pink to white to blood. The part where the knife went in was bruised purplish black, like someone tried to kill her and messed up.

  THE GIRL

  Everything I was carrying, I lost. Maybe I lost it in the fight outside the car or when I was hiding in the storm drain by the highway. It might have been later in the woods, when I was running, running. I thought I would never let go of the bag, that my fist was locked around it. But somehow it was gone, and I didn’t know how. I couldn’t see anything right in my head, after the knife.

  “She’s in here.”

  I heard voices outside the barn. The boy lied. He brought someone. I tried to roll over, get up, get away, but my body was shaking and heavy.

  “Hey.” The boy came in and kneeled next to me. “Don’t be mad. It’s my friend.”

  I tried to throw his hand off my arm. This is what I got for trusting anyone. But instead I threw up, which made me almost pass out from the pain that shot across my abdomen.

  “Whoa.” The boy backed up as it splattered over his shoe. “Did you aim for me on purpose? Look, I know you’re pissed I told someone. But you need help.”

  I glared at him with my one open eye as I tried to catch my breath. I hated that he was right.

  “Okay,” he called out. “I told her you’re with me. Come on in.”

  Another boy hesitantly stepped into the barn. He seemed younger, with round brown cheeks and big dark eyes.

  “I didn’t even know this was out here.” He looked around at the cracked beams and dusty old cow stalls. His eyes landed on me.

  “Hi,” he said softly. “My name’s Mateo. What’s yours?”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “Oh,” said the first boy. “I never said who I was. I’m Cade. Mattey’s dad is a vet. We took a bunch of stuff from his office.”

  Animal medicine? I looked at them like they were crazy.

  “Okay, fine,” the boy—Cade—said. “You don’t like this idea? Hospital then—where you should be anyway.”

  I shook my head violently no.

  “Then it’s either me, some fishing line, and a bottle of bourbon, or him.” Cade laid it out bluntly. “At least he kind of knows what he’s doing.”

  “I help out my father all the time,” Mateo said. I scrutinized his face. He looked trustworthy.

  “We have to clean you up before we start,” he added.

  Cade saw the question form on my face. Start what?

  “Mattey is going to stitch you up,” Cade told me.

  Were they out of their minds? This kid was going to play doctor
?

  “No way,” I choked out.

  “Yeah,” Cade said firmly. “You said no hospital. You think that cut is gonna heal itself? This is your only other option.”

  My face pounded, my heart beat like heavy breaths in my ears.

  “Hey,” Cade said. “You got this far. You clearly don’t want to die.”

  THE WOLF CUB

  I could have died of hunger at certain low points in the beginning. And now those who hunger for revenge, or my place at the top, are dying to kill me. The bullets barely change.

  I’ve only done what had to be done. My father always said, “Quién con lobos anda, a aullar se enseña.” When among wolves, we must howl.

  Survival is an instinct. And I’ve survived like a wolf in the forest since I was a little boy on the streets, taking everything I could when I could. When their hunt is successful, wolves do not eat in moderation. Deer, elk, moose—they devour everything before them. There is no concept of “later,” because in the wild that expectation does not exist.

  I read that a long time ago, in the old city library where I used to hide.

  Many times when I was hiding, I was laughing, because I had run so easily from the sweaty, huffing shopkeepers I would rob or the lazy police pretending to help them.

  But the day I found the wolf book, I was not.

  I was tucked in the dim aisles, waiting out three stone-faced men looking to collect what they said we owed. They had me by the throat in the middle of the crowded market. But I was lucky. A bus hit a taxi. Everyone shouted, pushed, and in the confusion, I slipped away. I took every alley I knew, leaped across dumpsters. I balanced on the very edge of the wall behind a banker’s big house, deftly avoiding the shards of glass they’d imbedded in the cement to prevent thieves. That was the fastest way I’d found to reach the sill across the way and slide through the broken window, my fail-safe secret passage into the library, a belly of safety no one thought to search.

  I hid in the far upstairs corner behind the biggest shelves until my heart stopped pounding and I could breathe in the musty air without gasping. I stayed there until the light changed outside and the whole room turned dusty amber. When I eventually focused on the books in front of me I saw they were all about animals. I pulled down a thick book filled with beautiful photographs of predators. As the sun went down and my stomach growled, I read that a hungry wolf can eat twenty pounds of meat in a single meal. Twenty pounds. That’s like a man eating one hundred plates of carne asada.