overtook her.
The ambush came without warning in the middle of the night.
Nick and Allie opened their eyes to four stern, glowing faces looking down on them. In an instant they were grabbed and hauled to their feet, roughed up and manhandled. Allie tried to scream, but a large hand covered her mouth. A hand like that of a monster. Only these weren’t monsters; these were boys no older than she.
“Nick!” she called. But Nick was too busy fighting off two boys who were struggling to hold him as well.
“What’s your problem?” Nick shouted. “Who are you? What do you want? “
“We ask the questions,” said the boy who was apparently in charge. He was smaller than the rest, but clearly the toughest of the lot. He wore baggy knickerbockers, not much different from Lief’s, and from h. is lip dangled a cigarette that never got smaller and never went out. But by far the strangest thing about him was his hands. They were the size of a man’s hands, big and knobby, and when he curled them into fists, they seemed as large as boxing gloves.
“I think they’re Greensouls, Johnnie-O,” said one kid with a weird mop of candy-apple-red hair that made him look like a Raggedy Andy doll. “A week old, maybe less.”
“I can see that,” Johnnie-O said. “I’m not stupid, I know a Greensoul when I see one.”
“We’re Afterlights,” Nick shouted out, “just like you, so leave us alone.”
Johnnie-O laughed. “Of course you’re Afterlights, idiot. What we’re saying is that you’re new arrivals. Greensouls. Get it?”
“They might still got stuff,” said Raggedy Andy. “Greensouls always got stuff.”
“Welcome to Everlost,” Johnme-O said in a voice that wasn’t welcoming at all.
“This here’s my territory, and you gots to pay me for passage.”
Allie gave the boy holding her a punch in the face to get him to let go. “Is this how you always greet visitors?” Allie said.
Johnnie-O took a suck on his cig. “Visitors ain’t always friendly.”
Nick shrugged off the two boys who were holding him. “We don’t have anything to pay you with.”
“Yeah, so I guess you’ll just have to kill us,” Allie said snidely, and added, “Oh, sorry, guess you can’t.”
“Turn their pockets,” Johnnie-O ordered, and his goons reached into Nick and Allie’s pants pockets and turned them inside out. Mostly they got lint, but Nick had a couple of things he had forgotten were in there. There was that old coin, which must have been a nickel, although the face had worn off. The tough kids weren’t interested in it, and flicked it back at him. He caught it and returned it to his pocket.
It was the other object in Nick’s pocket that got their attention.
“Look at this,” said a funny-looking kid with dark purple lips, like he had died while sucking on a grape jawbreaker. He held up a hard little object that had fallen out of Nick’s pocket, which Nick quickly recognized as a piece of what is commonly referred to as “ABC” gum, wrapped up in its original wrapper. His mother always complained that he left his chewed gum in his pockets and it got all over the clothes in the wash.
The purple-mouthed kid held the hard, cold wad of gum and looked over at Johnnie-O, hesitating.
“Hand it over,” said Johnnie-O. His voice was commanding for a boy of his size.
He opened up his huge, beefy hand.
Still Purple-puss hesitated. “We can cut it into pieces,” he suggested.
“I said hand it over.” Johnnie-O held his upturned palm right before the boy.
You didn’t say no to a palm that big. Purple-puss gingerly put the small, round wad into Johnnie-O’s hand.
“Next time I have to ask you twice,” Johnnie-O said, “you’re going down.”
Purple-puss’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously, like a walnut in his throat. Or a jawbreaker.
Then Allie and Nick watched in utter disbelief as Johnnie-O peeled the paper from the sticky piece of gum and popped it in his mouth.
“Oh, gross,” said Nick.
In response, Raggedy Andy punched him in the stomach. Nick doubled over out of reflex, only realizing a second later that it didn’t hurt. How annoying it must be for bullies, he thought, to not be able to inflict pain. This place must be a bully’s version of hell.
Johnnie-O worked the gum until it was soft again. He closed his eyes for a moment as he chewed. “A lot of flavor still left in this one,” he said.
“Cinnamon.” Then he looked at Nick. “You always waste your gum like that?” he said. “I mean, when you were living?”
Nick only shrugged. “I chew until I can’t taste it anymore.”
Johnnie-O just kept on chewing. “You ain’t got no tastebuds.”
“Can I have it next?” said Purple-puss.
“Don’t be gross,” Johnme-O said.
Allie laughed at that, and Johnnie-O threw her a sharp gaze, followed by a second gaze that was more calculated.
“You’re not the prettiest thing, are you?” he said.
Her lips pulled tightly together in anger, and she knew that made her less attractive, which only made her angrier. “I’m pretty enough,” she said. “I’m pretty in my own way.” Which was true. No one had ever called Allie a ravishing beauty, but she knew very well that she wasn’t unattractive, either. What made her madder still was that she had to justify herself and the way she looked to this big-handed creep, who chewed other people’s used gum. “On a scale of one to ten,” Allie said, “I suppose I’m a seven. But you, on the other hand, I estimate you to be about a three.” She could tell that it stung, mainly because it was true.
“Seven’s not worth lookin’ at,” he said. “And the way I see it, we’re not going to have to look at each other much longer, are we?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Nick, who did not like the sound of it any more than Allie did.
Johnnie-O crossed his arms, making his oversized hands seem even larger compared to his small chest. “A single piece of gum don’t buy you passage over my territory,” he said. He turned to Nick. “Which means you gots to be my servant now.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” said Allie.
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you. We don’t need the likes of you around here.”
“Well,” said Allie, “I’m not going without him.”
And the others laughed.
“Oh,” said Raggedy Andy, “I don’t think he’ll want to go where you’re going.”
Allie didn’t quite know what that meant, but even so, she started to panic.
“Grab her,” Johnnie-O ordered his comrades.
Allie knew she had to think of something quick, and so she said the first thing that came to mind. “Stay away from me or I’ll call the McGill!”
That stopped them dead in their tracks.
“What are you talkin’ about?” said Johnnie-O, not as sure of himself as he was a second ago.
“You heard me!” Allie yelled. “The McGill and I have a special arrangement. It comes when I call it. And I feed it bad little thieves whose hands are bigger than their brains.”
“She’s lying,” said another kid, who hadn’t spoken until now, probably because he had such a nasty, squeaky voice.
Johnnie-O looked all irritated. “Of course she’s lying.” He looked at Allie and then back at the quiet kid. “So how do you know she’s lying?”
“She’s a Greensoul-probably just crossed over,” the squeaky kid said, “which means she hasn’t even seen the McGill.”
“Besides,” said Purple-puss, “no one sees the McGill and lives.”
“Except for her,” said Nick, figuring out his own angle on the situation.
“That’s why I stay with her. As long as I’m with her, the McGill protects me, too.”
“So, what’s it look like?” Johnnie-O said, looking closely at Allie, trying to read the bluff in her face.
“Well, I could tell you,” she said, using one of her father’s favorite lines.
“But then I’d have to kill you.”
The others laughed at that, and so Johnnie-O curled his heavy hand into a fist and smashed the closest kid
