Read Wordless for Free Online Page B

the truck was blocking me from the security camera so they couldn’t see what I was doing.
    A roll of paper towels flew out of the glove box as I ripped into it. I wiped as much blood as I could off my hands and face and the door before I tore four bags off the roll in the back of the truck and quadrupled them into each other. After taking the laminated card from my pocket, I stripped off the not-so-white jacket, leaving myself with an undershirt that was mercifully dark blue. I threw the jacket and the bloodied towels into the beefed-up bag and even ripped open one of the actual trash bags, grabbing a few handfuls of crumpled wrappers and plastic cups and takeout boxes to stuff in there too, filling it about a fourth of the way.
    It occurred to me that I could still drive away from the insanity at this point, throw away the bloody evidence tying me to the scene like any other trash. But it was only a passing thought. I was already dashing back the way I’d come.

five
    When I returned to the Word, she was crouched over her ankle on the lawn, muttering under her breath with her eyes closed, her right hand still held aloft. She looked like a dark goddess in the shining golden grass, a piece of night shoved out of the sky by dawn. Blood continued to flow from the place her thumb had been, but her ankle—she’d straightened the bone. I hadn’t heard her scream or even make a noise. I’d broken my wrist falling off the garbage truck when I was twelve, and when the local doctor straightened my arm, you could have heard me shouting from the other end of Eden City.
    “My ankle isn’t healed yet,” she said, and I realized she was talking to me now, whereas she’d been mumbling words before—had they been Word words? “It’s better, but I’ll be too tired if I go all the way. Lost too much blood. I need to save energy for my thumb.”
    She looked up, blinking at the layered bag slung over my shoulder and the roll of paper towels in my other hand.
    “It already has something in it?” she asked, looking at the bag.
    “My jacket and some … trash.” I wondered if a Word would be offended by the thought of sharing a bag with garbage. “To hide your shape.”
    “Smart.” She sounded surprised by her assessment, and almost sleepy. She stood slowly on one foot. “I’m Khaya,” she said, meeting my eyes in a heavy-lidded way that made my heart lurch in my chest. “The Word of Life.”
    I already knew who she was. What I didn’t know was why the Word of Life would want to escape the Athenaeum. And I didn’t have time to ask, because she fell over.
    I dropped the paper towels and caught her before she hit the ground. She was easy to hoist with even one arm, her head lolling only as high as my shoulder, her frame warm and light and soft against my chest in ways I didn’t want to think about. I didn’t quite know what abilities the Word of Life had—aside from giving life, obviously, and healing, apparently—and I hoped mind-reading wasn’t one of them.
    She smelled good, too, not like the trash bag I shook open with my other hand.
    “You sure you want to do this?” I asked, doubt creeping into my tone—the one sane voice among the decision-making committee in my head. “You’re not doing too well. We can still find a doctor.”
    In response, Khaya half-knelt, half-slid down my side, tipping sideways into the bag. Once in, she curled into a ball, wrapping her left arm around her tucked knees, trying to brace her ankle while still clutching her detached thumb. She held her disfigured hand upright as I ripped a small hole through the four thin layers of plastic: an air hole.
    When she waved her raised arm at me—the arm with the bracelet—I realized she was doing more than trying to slow the bleeding.
    “Do you see that drain next to the flower bed?” she asked, her voice muffled by the plastic but still firm. “Slide the bracelet off my wrist, quickly, then drop it in there as fast as you can. It will be