Read The Hunt for Free Online Page B

stil.

    Because of the darkly tinted windows, it’s unnerving how pitch-black it is inside. I restrain the urge to stretch out my arms or to widen my eyes. Head bent down, I slide my body forward slowly until my knees hit the soft front of the leather seat. I hear more bodies folowing me in, feel the seat sag under the weight of their bodies.
    “Is this your fi rst time inside a stretch?” a voice next to me asks.
    “Yes.”
    Nobody says anything.
    Then another voice: “We wil wait for the other winner to get here.”
    “Another student?” I ask.
    A pause. “Yes. Shouldn’t be long now.”
    I stare out the tinted window, trying not to give away the fact that I can’t see a thing in here.
    “Some papers to sign,” says yet another voice. A faint rustle of papers, the unmistakable snap of a clipboard. “Here you go.”
    My eyes stil trained outside, I swing my right arm in a wide arc until I hit the board. “Ooops, I’m such a klutz sometimes.”

    “Please sign here and here and here. Where the Xs are.”
    I stare down. I can’t see a thing.
    “Right where the Xs are,” yet another voice chimes in.
    “Can we just wait a bit? I’m kind of caught up in the moment—”
    THE HUNT 35
    “Now, please.” There is a fi rmness in that voice. I sense eyes turning to look at me.
    But just then, the limo door opens. “The other lottery winner,”
    someone whispers. A faint gray light from the outside spils inside.
    Not a moment to lose. I whip my eyes down, barely catch sight of the Xs, scribble my name down. The carriage tilts with the added weight. Then, before I can see who entered, the door swings shut and the interior is plunged into blackness again.
    An ankle jams into my shin.
    “Would you watch where you put your legs!” a voice snaps at me.
    It’s a girl’s voice, somewhat familiar.
    I stare out the window, not even trying to meet her eyes.

    “Do you two know each other?” a voice asks.
    I decide the safest action is to shrug and scratch my wrist.
    Something ambiguous that could be interpreted a number of ways.
    The sound of wrists scratching in response. I’m safe for now.
    “Please sign these papers. Here, here, and here.”
    There is a momentary pause. Then she speaks with command.
    “My friends are outside. The whole school is outside. This is the best moment of my life. Can you please rol down these windows so they can see me? It’d be good for the school, for the community, to join us in this wonderful time.”
    For a long time, there is no response. Then the window rols down and the gray outside light ambles in.
    Sitting across from me is Ashley June.
    We ride in silence and darkness, the offi cials dispensing with smal talk. The stalions stop at a stoplight; the click- clock of their hooves comes to a momentary cease. The muffl ed, rumbling sounds of the 36 ANDREW FUKUDA
    crowd outside fi lters through: bone snaps, teeth grinding, the crowd outside fi lters through: bone snaps, teeth grinding, the crackle of joints and ankles. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people line the streets, watching our passage.
    Ashley June is silent but excited. I can tel. Snaps of her neck crack out in the darkness in front of me. I throw in a few snaps of my own, cracking my knuckles once or twice.
    This is not the fi rst time Ashley June and I have been in the dark in close quarters. It was a year or two ago, before I became the re-cluse I am today and just as Ashley June was beginning her mete-oric rise in the ranks to the Desirable club. It was raining that night and the class was cloistered inside the school gym. Our gym teacher never showed, and nobody bothered to let the offi ce know.
    Somehow— these things just have a way of happening— everyone started playing spin the bottle. The whole class, al twenty or so of us. The class divided into two circles by gender. The words—
    This is so lame, I’m outta here — were on my lips when the guys suddenly spun the bottle and got things going.
    It whirled