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ookie grumbled

“It’s not far,” Lana said

“How do you know? I couldn’t find ht”

She didn’t answer

Quinn glanced down at the road, then back into the rearview ht came from the dashboard, so he could see only the faintest outline of her face She was looking out of the , not the direction they were traveling but northeast

He couldn’t read her expression But he got a feeling off her It was in the occasional sigh In the absent way she stroked Patrick’s ruff The distant tone of her voice when she spoke

“You okay?” Quinn asked

She didn’t answer Not for a while Too long Then, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” he said

Lana said nothing

Albert, by contrast, was easy to read Albert—when he aze straight ahead So to hiue

Quinn was envious of Albert He seemed to be so sure of hio, who he wanted to be

For his part, Cookie had his own goal: to serve Lana The big ex-bully would do anything Lana told him to do

There were two kinds of kids in the FAYZ, Quinn reflected, and the types were not “freak” and “nored for the worse, and the kids who had been changed for the better The FAYZ had changed them all But some kids had become more than they were Albert was one of those Cookie, in a very different as another

Quinn knew himself to be the first type He was one of the kids who had never recovered from the FAYZ The loss of his parents was like a wound that had never healed Never stopped hurting How could it?