Andreo's Race Read Online Free Page B

his pocket, shredding it with my gloved hands right in front of his eyes. “Wood-rat nesting material.”
    â€œStop,
mon
.” Raul’s voice is distressed. “It said in the article that the parents who adopted kids from this baby stealer had no idea.”
    I stare at the pieces of paper and feel my shoulders slump. “Even if we
were
adopted illegally, it wouldn’t change anything. Why hurt our parents’ feelings?”
    â€œMy parents don’t have feelings. And yours are way too sensitive. You have to start standing up to them, Andreo. It’s your life—your history—they’re hiding from you. Don’t tell me you aren’t curious. You with all the nightmares.”
    â€œSo what if I’m curious?” I allow, ignoring the rest of his speech. “What about you? You want to find your birth parents if it’s possible? You’re not scared?”
    He hesitates, my friend who’s usually all bluff. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I want to know, I want to meet them, but another part of me doesn’t want to. They could bemonsters, right? Or they could be nice. Or they could be super pissed I chased them down. But this news story, this new information—how can we just ignore it? It’s a sign or something.”
    I lean back into the hard rock wall. “Don’t we have to be, like, eighteen before they let us ask for records?”
    â€œBut that’s just the point. There are no records if we’re black-market babies. And we’re heading to Cochabamba for this race. We could poke into it while we’re there.” His headlamp seems to be searching my face, which has gone taut. “Without your parents knowing.”
    With effort, I unclench my jaw. “Let me think about it, okay? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s find this mystery exit you’re so sure about.” With that, I plunge back into the shoulder-width passage, inching forward, but I’m so distracted that I neglect to put all five senses on the alert.
    Ten minutes after squeezing past the former dead end, it hits me. The air movement, the pinprick of light ahead—and the smell.
    â€œ
Eeeww
, did you just fart?” comes the muffled voice of my caving partner behind me.
    I take a deep breath and have to fight a sudden need to vomit. Dead wood rat? Pile of dead wood rats? Something oily and almost overpoweringly rank, yet not the smell of death. I lift my head the three inches that the space will allow me to, my nose wrinkled to close my nostrils. I hold perfectly still, listening, breathing through my mouth, staring ahead.
    â€œ
Shhhh
,” I caution Raul and reach up to flick off my headlamp. Inky blackness. Had I been imagining the light? No way. And the air movement: gone now, totally gone. Like a boulder might have rolled from somewhere to block the exit while we were talking.
    Slowly, quietly, I bring my right arm up and twist it back and over my shoulder. I feel around for my trekking pole. With difficulty, I unhook it and bring it in front of my face, where I extend it and shove it ahead of me like a prod.
    I move forward again, even though the crawl space is getting more constricted and airless. Anyone else would start backing up. Raul’s tug on my left boot indicates that’s what he thinks we should do. But my curiosity is fully aroused. There’s an opening up there; I can
feel
it, even if I can’t see or smell it anymore. And if it’s just a stone blocking our way, then my pole, my fists and my determination will clear it.
    The farther I advance, the more frantic the tugs on my boot. Raul knows it’s not like me to ignore him. He’s the better caver. But I’m focused on the blockage. I poke it with my pole tip, then wriggle forward to push it with my gloved hands and finally butt it with the front of my helmet. Whatever it is isn’t solid. Whatever I’ve touched is now