Chapter 22: The Empty Chair

Lucy's POV

Four hundred people were holding their breath, and for the first time in my life I was the quiet one.

I stood in the middle of the cafeteria with a cup of cocoa going cold and no words anywhere.

I had a hundred answers.

I had a funny one and a smart one, and one about how his father would need a bigger laminator.

None of them would come.

"Say something, Lucy," a boy shouted from the back. "We're begging you."

The whole room laughed, and I laughed, and then I walked straight through the middle of it to the gray closet behind the program director's office.

Marlene held the door open with her whistle in her teeth.

Reed was standing next to a microphone the size of my thumb.

He had a laminated card in his fist, his jaw rigid.

I leaned over his shoulder and pressed the button.

"Yes," I said.

The speaker in the ceiling said it back, a half-second late, to the entire cafeteria.

The room made a sound.

Reed turned his face into my hair in front of everyone, and I felt him shaking.

"That was one word," he said into my ear.

"I'm saving the rest."

Then the walkie-talkie on his belt hissed again.

"Kids?" Gus said. "Your father's car just pulled out of my gate. They'll be at your front gate in two minutes. I'd hurry."

The Lindholm sedan was parked at the front gate of Northridge, next to the cart, with all four doors open.

The hot dog man stood beside it with a pair of tongs in his hand.

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