07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

got a sugarplum.”
“I don’t know about that. I was trying to run away, but they finally caught me.” The girl
slammed one fist into an open hand. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted that litter carrier. Carried me
right to the authorities and me blind and without a clue.”
“You mean you had the litter curtains down—?” Bonnie was asking, when a shrill
whistle interrupted her. The blond girl took hold of her arm and began dragging her away from the
fence. “That’s the second service dinnertime whistle—we don’t want to miss that, because after that
they shut us up for the night. I’m Eren. Who’re you?”
“Bonnie.”
Eren snorted and grinned. “All right by me.”
Bonnie allowed herself to be led up a dirty stairway and into a dirty cafeteria. The blond
girl, who seemed to regard herself as Bonnie’s keeper, handed her a tray, and pushed her along.
Bonnie didn’t get any choice in what she was to have, not even to veto the noodles that were
squirming slightly, but she did manage to snatch an extra bread roll in the end.
Damon! Nobody was telling her not to send a message, so she kept on doing it. If she
was going to be punished, she thought defiantly, she was going to be punished for trying to get out of
here. Damon, I’m in a slave warehouse! Help me!
Blond Eren grabbed a spork, so Bonnie did too. There were no knives. There were thin
napkins, which relieved Bonnie, because that was where the Squirmy Noodles were going to end up.
Without Eren, Bonnie would never have found a place at the tables, which were
crammed with young girls eating. “Shove over, shove over,” Eren kept saying, until there was room
for Bonnie and her.
Dinner was a test of Bonnie’s courage—and also of how loud she could scream. “Why
are you doing all this for me?” she shouted into Eren’s ear, when a lull in the deafening conversation
gave her a chance.
“Oh, well, you being a redhead and all—it put me in mind of Aliana’s message, you
know. To the real Bonny.” She pronounced it oddly, sort of swallowing the y, but at least it wasn’t
Bonna.
“Which of them? Which message, I mean?” Bonnie screamed.
Eren gave her an are you kidding look. “Help when you can, shelter when you have
room, guide when you know where to go,” she said in a sort of impatient chant, then looked chagrined
and added, “And be patient with the slow.” She attacked her food with an air of having said
everything there was to say.
Oh, boy, Bonnie thought. Somebody had really taken the ball and run with it. Elena had
never said any of those things.
Yeah, but—but maybe she’d lived them, Bonnie thought, a tingling breaking out all over
her body. And maybe somebody had seen her and made up the words. For instance, that crazy-looking
guy she’d given her ring or bracelet or something to. She’d given her earrings away to people with
signs, too. Signs that said: POETRY FOR FOOD.
The rest of dinner was a matter of picking up food with the spork and not looking at it,
crunching it once, and then deciding whether to spit into her still-writhing napkin, or to try to swallow
without tasting.
Afterward the girls were marched into another building, this one filled with pallets,
smaller and not so comfortable-looking as Bonnie’s at the inn. She was now horrified at herself for
leaving that room. There she had had safety, she had had food that she could actually eat, she had had