Children of the Uprising by Trevor Shane Page A

asked.
    â€œWe think we can clean you. We think that we can keep you safe.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œWe think we can keep you hidden from all the people chasing you.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    Max didn’t have to answer. Christopher knew what Max’s silence meant. He’d read the journals. “So I run and hide for the rest of my life?” he asked.
    Max put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder. It was a brotherly gesture. “That’s true whether you come with me or not,” Max replied. “That’s true for all of us. You don’t get to pick between running and not running. Your only choice is between running with us and running alone.”
    Christopher slipped his phone out of his pocket and looked down at it. He was up to fourteen unanswered texts from Evan. The last one read, “i talked to your parents. now I’m worried too.”
    â€œOkay,” Christopher said to Max. “Let’s go to Florida.”

    The rain splattered on their windshield. Their headlights reflected off the wet asphalt on the highway. The drive from Montreal to Florida would take more than twenty-four hours, but Max didn’t plan on stopping. Somewhere in upstate New York, Christopher woke up for a second. “Do you know what happened to Maria?” he asked, almost certain that he already knew the answer.
    â€œYou mean your mother?” Max asked.
    â€œYou know who I mean,” Christopher said.
    â€œShe went to prison in Ohio for killing some kid. I heard that she turned herself in after giving you away.” Max squinted, peering through the rain pelting the front windshield.
    â€œAnd then?”
    Max looked over at Christopher, trying to make a judgment call about how much the boy could take. “They killed her the day she was released. They couldn’t let her live,” Max said. “She meant too much to too many people. She was too big a liability.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œIt’s what she represented. To a lot of people out there, your mother was more than merely the girlfriend of a martyr and the friend of a traitor. She’s a legend in her own right and the mother of a hero.”
    â€œI’m no hero,” Christopher said to Max.
    â€œI know. That’s why I’m taking you to Florida.”
    Max believed that he was telling Christopher the truth when he told Christopher that his mother was dead. He had no reason to think that Reggie would have lied to him. Christopher had no reason to believe he was being told lies either. He put his head back against the passenger-side window and slowly went back to sleep.
    Max kept driving through the rain.

Five
    Addy felt the buzz in the compound before she had any idea what was going on. All she knew was that something was happening. As usual, she felt out of the loop. Everyone else seemed to be talking to each other in quick glances and secret whispers. Even though Addy couldn’t make out the words being whispered, she could hear the excitement in the voices of the whisperers. She thought that maybe the excitement had something to do with Max’s return. Before he left, Max had told Addy that he was going on an important job, but she thought that he was teasing her. That was what Max did. Addy never minded being teased by Max. It reminded her of her older brother before her older brother was killed.
    Addy walked down the hall toward her desk. She eyed the others as they spoke under their breath. About thirty people total worked at the compound. She counted more than twenty of them there today. She’d never seen the compound so crowded before. Addy looked for someone, anyone, that she might have the courage to ask what was going on. If Max had been there, she would have asked him. She thought about asking Reggie but didn’t have the courage. Whenever she thought about going to Reggie recently, she worried that he would somehow sense that she’d been