Little Brother

another phone. She turned it on and the glow from its screen filled our little fort. After fiddling for a second, she showed it to me.
    It was the picture she'd snapped of us, just before the bombs blew. It was the picture of Jolu and Van and me and —
    Darryl.
    I was holding in my hand proof that Darryl had been with us minutes before we'd all gone into DHS custody. Proof that he'd been alive and well and in our company.
    "You need to give me a copy of this," I said. "I need it."
    "When we get to LA," she said, snatching the phone back. "Once you've been briefed on how to be a fugitive without getting both our asses caught and shipped to Syria. I don't want you getting rescue ideas about this guy. He's safe enough where he is — for now."
    I thought about trying to take it from her by force, but she'd already demonstrated her physical skill. She must have been a black-belt or something.
    We sat there in the dark, listening to the three guys load the truck with box after box, tying things down, grunting with the effort of it. I tried to sleep, but couldn't. Masha had no such problem. She snored.
    There was still light shining through the narrow, obstructed corridor that led to the fresh air outside. I stared at it, through the gloom, and thought of Ange.
    My Ange. Her hair brushing her shoulders as she turned her head from side to side, laughing at something I'd done. Her face when I'd seen her last, falling down in the crowd at VampMob. All those people at VampMob, like the people in the park, down and writhing, the DHS moving in with truncheons. The ones who disappeared.
    Darryl. Stuck on Treasure Island, his side stitched up, taken out of his cell for endless rounds of questioning about the terrorists.
    Darry's father, ruined and boozy, unshaven. Washed up and in his uniform, "for the photos." Weeping like a little boy.
    My own father, and the way that he had been changed by my disappearance to Treasure Island. He'd been just as broken as Darryl's father, but in his own way. And his face, when I told him where I'd been.
    That was when I knew that I couldn't run.
    That was when I knew that I had to stay and fight.

    Masha's breathing was deep and regular, but when I reached with glacial slowness into her pocket for her phone, she snuffled a little and shifted. I froze and didn't even breathe for a full two minutes, counting one hippopotami, two hippopotami.
    Slowly, her breath deepened again. I tugged the phone free of her jacket-pocket one millimeter at a time, my fingers and arm trembling with the effort of moving so slowly.
    Then I had it, a little candy-bar shaped thing.
    I turned to head for the light, when I had a flash of memory: Charles, holding out his phone, waggling it at us, taunting us. It had been a candy-bar-shaped phone, silver, plastered in the logos of a dozen companies that had subsidized the cost of the handset through the phone company. It was the kind of phone where you had to listen to a commercial every time you made a call.
    It was too dim to see the phone clearly in the truck, but I could feel it. Were those company decals on its sides? Yes? Yes. I had just stolen Charles's phone from Masha.
    I turned back around slowly, slowly, and slowly, slowly, slowly , I reached back into her pocket. Her phone was bigger and bulkier, with a better camera and who knew what else?
    I'd been through this once before — that made it a little easier. Millimeter by millimeter again, I teased it free of her pocket, stopping twice when she snuffled and twitched.
    I had the phone free of her pocket and I was beginning to back away when her hand shot out, fast as a snake, and grabbed my wrist, hard, fingertips grinding away at the small, tender bones below my hand.
    I gasped and stared into Masha's wide-open, staring eyes.
    "You are such an idiot," she said, conversationally, taking the phone from me, punching at its keypad with her other hand. "How did you plan on unlocking this again?"
    I swallowed. I felt bones grind against each other in my wrist. I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
    She continued to punch away with her other hand. "Is this what you thought you'd get away with?" She showed me the picture of all of us, Darryl and Jolu, Van and me. "This picture?"
    I didn't say anything. My wrist felt like it would shatter.
    "Maybe I should just delete it, take temptation out of your way." Her free hand moved some more. Her phone asked her if she was sure and she had to look at it to find the right