No Safety in Numbers (9 page)

“We are going for a walk,” Shay said, grabbing her sister by the shirtsleeve.

Preeti tugged the fabric from Shay’s fist. “No way,” she said. “We’re going to ride up to the top and then drop popcorn on the boys when they’re at the bottom.” She pointed to a gang of short, scruffy boys near the front of the line.

“No, you’re not,” Shay said, grabbing Preeti’s arm.

“They did it first!” Preeti cried, wriggling out of Shay’s grasp once again.

Shay ran her fingers through her hair. It felt greasy—she must look disgusting. “Fine,” she said, sighing for emphasis. “You can ride one more time, then I need to go to the pharmacy.”

“So go,” Preeti said. “I’ll stay here.”

“Nani told me to take you with me, so you’re coming.” Shay gave Preeti her best
I’m not negotiating any further
glare.

Preeti rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Shay said, turning. “When I come out, you’d better be ready.”

After one night, the bathrooms adjoining the food court were an unholy mess. Crumpled paper towels overflowed from the garbage bin, and the dispenser was empty. A woman had her shirt off and was splashing water under her arms, then drying her pits with the air dryer. Another woman stepped gingerly out of a stall.

“There’s no TP,” she said. “And I think that one’s broken.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose loudly.

Shay thanked the woman for the tip and splashed water on her face. Looking up, she realized too late how bad
an idea it had been to stand in front of a mirror. Her hair hung limp around her face. Her skin looked dull. She dared not smell her breath.

Preeti burst into the bathroom. “We’re on the news!” she squealed, as if this were a good thing. “Not local, national! Fox has a little screen blurb and everything!” She ran back out.

Shay stared at her reflection for a few more seconds, a haggard face in horrific fluorescent lighting, then wiped her skin with her sleeve and prepared for the hysteria that was about to ensue.

But there was no hysteria. People crowded around the TVs in the window of the Silver Screen store calmly viewing their private nightmare like it was happening to someone else. Fox had no new information, not even news of the bomb. The newscaster just restated what the local stations had said last night. “We’ve learned that a security situation has led the authorities to shut down a mall in Westchester County, New York. The exact nature of the security problem has not been released, but we have learned that services have been provided to people in the mall. We will update you as we receive new information.”

The only change was that Fox had a helicopter and it showed live coverage of the mall as it circled. Shay heard the telltale chopping and looked up to see the thing pass overhead. It was surreal to see your own life on TV. To be a news story. Especially when you had more information than the people on the news.

Once the program broke for commercials, people in the food court huddled around their tables—groups had pushed tables together to form little camps—and whispered.
Some people began to cry. Most looked around, suddenly suspicious again of everyone else.

Shay grabbed Preeti from where she stood with her new friends. “I need contact solution,” she said, dragging her across the food court toward the PhreshPharm.

“Do you think we’ll get to stay here again tonight?” Preeti asked, looking up at Shay with a hopeful smile on her face.

“Get to?”
Shay asked. “Yes, I believe that we shall have the privilege of sleeping on a table once again.”

Preeti tucked her arms in and bounced a few happy steps. “Awesome!” she squealed. “Sahra and Lia wanted to have a sleepover in Hollister. Can we move there?”

“Whatever,” Shay said. She power-walked toward the PhreshPharm, knowing how silly that was, as if they were going to sell their last contact case in the next five minutes, but she couldn’t help herself. Everything felt desperate. Survival depended upon a bottle of contact solution.

It took twenty minutes round trip to get to the PhreshPharm and back, and in that time, the mood had grown worse in the food court. Shay found Nani at her table—still on the same Sudoku puzzle as before lunch—and showed her the meager ration of supplies she’d gotten. For ten bucks, she’d been given a bag containing a toothbrush, tiny tube of toothpaste, travel-sized deodorant, and a bar of soap. For two dollars more, they added the “contact package”—a small bottle of contact solution and case—and told her to use it sparingly. Shay felt lucky she’d gotten there before everything was gone.

“Nani?” Shay asked.

Nani touched her hand to her neck. “My throat feels like paper,” she said, her voice gravelly. “Would you be so sweet as to get me some water?”

If Nani was asking for help, she must have felt truly terrible. Shay ran to the nearest water fountain and filled one of the cups the mall had provided. She brought it to her grandmother, who drank slowly.

“Thank you, sweet girl,” Nani said, handing her back the cup.

“I’ll get more,” Shay said. The cup trembled in her hand.

“No more,” Nani said. “I’ll have to move into the bathroom!” She smiled a weak smile, then returned to staring at the puzzle.

Shay needed to take Nani someplace more comfortable. She slipped her toiletries into her bag and began calculating what was closest. Her first problem, though, was to round up Preeti, who had left Shay’s side when they reached the edge of the food court. She’d run into the crowd of kids as if being away from her precious friends for even twenty minutes was the equivalent of a lifetime. Shay hadn’t seen her friends in months.

As Shay glanced around, she noticed a mall cop speaking to some people at a table. He had a pad of paper in his hands. The people spoke to him, then pointed toward Shay.

Shay’s blood ran cold. Why were they pointing at her?

She looked around and saw another cop at the other end of the food court also talking to some people at a
table. They too pointed at Shay. No, not at Shay. At Nani.

The cops began weaving their way through the tables toward Shay. She froze—there was no way to escape them. The whole cafeteria space was open except for a few potted plants. Why were they coming toward her?

But then the guard stopped at another table and began talking to the people sitting there. Shay strained her ears. She heard the word
sickness
. She heard the words
acting funny
. She didn’t wait to see where these next people would point.

“Nani,” Shay said, grabbing her grandmother’s arm. “We have to go.”

“Why, dear?” Nani said. But when she saw Shay’s face, she nodded and picked up her bag. She closed the Sudoku book and slipped it inside. “Where’s Preeti?”

“Let’s just move away from here.”

When Shay was sure all eyes were elsewhere, she ducked with Nani behind the planter, then wound as casually as she could manage through the tables toward the crowds of children at the Ferris wheel. Shay said a quick prayer of thanks for how short her grandmother was—she was barely taller than the kids and thus blended right in.

Shay spotted Preeti near a vending machine kiosk talking to some girls.

“We’re leaving,” Shay said.

Preeti scrunched up her face like she was going to argue, but then saw Nani and went to grab her purse. Shay scanned the mall directory. Harry’s was at the end of the hall, and there was a Domestic Decor on the first floor.
Then she ran her finger over the word
Grill’n’Shake
.

Marco.

The Grill’n’Shake was just above them and near the elevator. It had padded booths. And if they were changing locations, why not move to a place where she would have someone to talk to about all this?

Preeti trotted over to the kiosk, still struggling to get the strap of her bag over her head.

“Let’s move,” Shay said, striding into the hallway with one arm linked through Nani’s. She walked as fast as she could without dragging her grandmother outright down the tiles.

“Where are we going?” Preeti asked as she shuffled along behind Shay.

“The Grill’n’Shake.”

“Fine,” Preeti said, hugging her arms across her chest. “But I want to sleep in Hollister. And I get my own shake.”

Shay stomped right up to the hostess station. “Table for three.”

The hostess scribbled something on a paper and handed Shay a vibrating, plastic disk with blinking red lights. “When it buzzes again, come up here.”

Shay gritted her teeth. She was so close to seeing Marco.
Only a few more minutes,
she told herself.

Preeti nudged her in the back. “We need to find Nani a seat,” she said in a small voice.

Shay turned. Her grandmother leaned against the railing. She half smiled at Shay and waved. She’d walked too fast.
I’m an idiot!

Taking her grandmother’s arm, Shay led Nani to an empty chair in the waiting area beside the hostess stand. “Just a few minutes, Nani,” she said, squeezing her hand.

“It’s better here than the food court?” Nani asked, brow furrowed.

Shay scanned the crowd. There were no police officers anywhere. No fingers pointing at them. “Much better.”

Preeti slumped on the floor next to Nani. “Can I have the phone?”

“Who are you calling?” Shay kept her eyes on the crowd, watching for any inquisitive officers.

“She can use it if she likes,” Nani said, pulling the phone out of her bag. “The last thing I need is another call from your parents.” She smiled and passed the phone to Preeti.

Preeti flipped it open. “It’s dead,” she said. “Do you have the charger?”

“No wonder your mother has not called since this morning,” Nani said, her voice suddenly sounding concerned. It was one thing to be constantly pestered by Ba and Bapuji, and another entirely to think that they were trying to pester them but couldn’t get through.

“We’ll go to the mobile phone place after dinner,” Shay said.

“Why are you so desperate to eat at the Grill’n’Shake?” Preeti asked, eyes squinting like she knew she was onto something. “You don’t even like their fries.”

Just then, Ryan—of all people, Ryan—came strolling toward the hostess stand from the dining area.

Shay was not angry. She wanted to be angry, demand
her book back and let that be the end of it, but instead all she felt was joy at seeing him again.

“Shay?” Ryan walked up to her, a smile creeping across his face.

“Hi,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ear. “I guess everyone had the same idea.”

He pulled her book out of his back pocket. “I really liked this,” he said, placing it in her hands.

“You read it?” she asked. She hoped he couldn’t see the tremble in her fingers.

He smiled. He was gorgeous. He’d read her book. “I didn’t have much else to do last night,” he said.

“Yo! J. Shrimp!” Some huge guy waved at Ryan from halfway down the hall.

Ryan waved back. “I have to go,” he said. “But I want to talk to you about it. The book. I mean, if you want.”

Her heart began to pound in her chest.
Yes, I want!

“Sure,” she said. “We could meet at Baxter’s Books.”

“I’ll call you,” he said, turning. Then he stopped. “Wait, I lost my phone.”

Shay shrugged. “Mine’s dead anyway.”

“So we’ll meet by the registers. Nine o’clock tomorrow?” He began shuffling away backward toward his friends. He looked hopeful, as if he really did want to meet her. As if this wasn’t all some hallucination on her part.

“Nine on the dot!” she shouted, waving. Like an idiot. She felt ready to float away.

“So
that’s
why we had to come to the Grill’n’Shake,” Preeti said, her lips pursed in a smug smile.

Even Nani had a mischievous look on her face. “I think you owe your grandmother some kind of explanation,”
Nani said. Then she coughed and the sparkle of the healthy grandmother Shay used to have disappeared.

The plastic disk buzzed.

“Let’s get you some more water,” Shay said.

Nani leaned on both Shay and Preeti as they wound their way into the restaurant.

A
fter Mike the Moron left, Marco went back to his stakeout. The government must have thought everyone in the mall was an idiot—of course, they’d been right. No one except Marco seemed to have noticed the plywood walls erected overnight around the former PaperClips. Then again, no one else except the girl from the police cruiser knew about the bomb.

Marco had started his hunt for information as soon as he got a break from the breakfast rush. The plywood wall was a dead giveaway; the only question was how to spy on the place without getting caught. He employed a tried and true method he’d used as a kid to eavesdrop on his sisters. He bought a cheap baby monitor and installed the baby end under a discarded bag at the edge of the plywood wall, mic facing the crack. So far, back in the restaurant, he’d heard very little, but what little he’d heard was fascinating.

“…air samples within the ducts have yielded no information…”

“…if there’s anthrax, I want the cops in gloves…”
The senator.

From this, he gleaned that (a) the government had no idea what they were dealing with and (b) they assumed it was a deadly biotoxin. Meaning everyone located where the contaminated air duct let out was royally screwed. At least anthrax wasn’t contagious.