Humanity Read Online Free Page B

goodbye?”
He was still staring at the canopy.
    “No.”
    “Then it doesn’t matter. I told you, I
ain’t sharing my agenda with you. You’ll just have to wait till tomorrow and
see. Or you can run off and do something else. Let me go. Live your life.”
    “I don’t have a life. My parents were my
life.”
    “That’s sad. But, you know what? Life is
about exploration. You could always move on, explore other towns, visit a few
shopping malls, try to skip the border. You don’t have to focus on this
vendetta you have against your parents’ killer.” He didn’t look away from the
canopy.
    “Is that what you’re going to do?” I
asked, jumping on the suggestions.
    “Maybe. It’s none of your business,
remember?”
    I paused, still watching him. “What do
you think about when you do all that staring?” I asked.
    “Well, what do you think about when you do all your staring?”
    He’d noticed me watching him. Good. “I
think about how satisfying it’ll be to kill you.”
    “Really. Huh.”
    “Are you going to answer my question?”
    “I think about the world. About how
Mexico won’t help us, and how China is still trying to suck away all our
resources without involving us. I think about God, and about my family, and
about all the different places I’ve been.”
    “You had a family?”
    “None of your business. But, mostly, I
think about nothing.”
    “How can you possibly think about
nothing?”
    He lifted his head from the tree base to
look at me; he smiled. “With practice.”
    ~ * ~
    After a while, I fell asleep sitting up
against the tree and, when I woke, it was the pale dark of dawn. I gave my eyes
a moment to adjust.
    There he was, lying against a trunk on
the other side of the clearing, arm thrown over his eyes. It was the same spot
he had been sitting when I’d fallen asleep last night.
    I quietly groaned as I realized my
stupidity in this situation. Had I really allowed myself to fall asleep first?
He could have been waiting for that, and simply walked away from me. I never
would have seen him again, and I would never have achieved my revenge.
    Maybe I was just as stupid as he said I
was.
    I watched him some more, studying the way
he lay on his back, only slightly tilted to the side. A finger twitched. The
rest of his body lay perfectly straight, boots parted by half a foot. His knife
glinted from his pocket.
    My heart sped as I considered the knife.
It was in the perfect position for me to slide it out without him noticing. And
then I could slit his throat.
    I crept to my feet and edged closer to
him, carefully placing my shoes along the leaf-strewn ground. I moved as little
as possible, only as much as I needed to crouch down beside him.
    My heart pounded. His chest moved up and
down in deep, rhythmic movements. My fingers encircled the handle of his knife,
and I slowly pulled it out. I shifted it in my grip, and my heart sped even
further. Then, I plunged it at his throat.
    A hand snatched my wrist, even as I was
centimeters away from breaking skin.
    My heart burst.
    I yanked at my hand, trying to free it,
but he wouldn’t let go, arm still over his eyes. His fingers were cool and
rough against my skin.
    “How’d you know I was here?” I couldn’t
help demanding, though I wasn’t pleased at the whine that crept into my voice.
    “You’re breathing loudly. I told you I
was a light sleeper.”
    His words filled me with anger, and that
anger boiled over as he pulled his arm from his face and grinned at me
mockingly.
    His hand was still clamped onto my wrist,
but I stood and kicked my shoe into his ribs as hard as I could.
    “Ouch!” he screeched, releasing my wrist
and jumping to his feet.
    I still held the knife, and immediately
lunged at his gut. His hand interfered, and the blade scraped into flesh right
before he secured his grip around my knuckles. He squeezed until I dropped the
knife to the ground.
    He picked it up, regarding me. “You’re
deadlier than I thought,” he