Abandon by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page A

looked like me? I imagined I looked totally pathetic, in my soaking-wet clothes. My hair was probably hanging in rat’s tails. Was that what he meant? “But that’s not what I wanted to —”
    The other line — the rowdy one — was growing closer. I didn’t like the look of it one bit. There weren’t any sweet old ladies in that line. No one there was trying to get their cell phone to work.
    Instead, people were throwing punches and pulling hair, trying to break past the guards to get into the other line.
    Things got even worse when, a second later, a horn sounded. A ferry — as big as the one my parents and I had taken to Martha’s Vineyard one summer, huge enough to fit hundreds of people and their cars — was chugging through the water towards the dock closest to the line in which I used to be standing.
    A ripple of anticipation spread across the cavern. The din grew almost unbearable. Someone from the rowdy line managed to break free, then darted directly across our path, causing me to lose my already unsteady balance. My captor had to throw a protective arm around me to keep me from falling.
    “I’ll take her place,” the man from the line was yelling, “if she’s coming over here!”
    One of the guards caught him before he got very far and dragged him, screaming, back.
    “But it’s not fair,” he shouted. “Why can’t I take her spot?”
    The stranger from the cemetery, having watched all this, looked down at me.
    “Where did you come from?” he asked suspiciously.
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Don’t you remember me?”
    He shook his head. But his grip on me had begun to loosen.
    “It’s me,” I said. I hated the fact that every time we met, I was crying. Still, maybe it would help jog his memory. “From the cemetery on Isla Huesos, the day of my grandfather’s funeral. You made a dead bird come back to life —”
    His entire demeanor changed. The hardened glint disappeared from those gray eyes. Suddenly, they were as gentle as they’d seemed the first time I met him.
    “That was
you?”
Even his voice had changed. It sounded almost human.
    “Yes,” I said, smiling despite my tears. I could see I’d gotten through to him at last. Maybe — just maybe — everything was going to be all right after all. “That was me.”
    “Pierce,” he said. I could practically see the memory flooding back. “Your name was…Pierce.”
    I nodded, the tears coming so fast I had to reach up and wipe them away. “Pierce Oliviera.”
    My name on his lips sounded so nice in that horrible place. The fact anything at all seemed familiar when around me, everything was so awful, was more wonderful than I could describe. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms around him. After all, I wasn’t seven anymore.
    And he was no longer the kindly uncle he’d once seemed, doing magic tricks with doves.
    Which was why I was keeping my distance.
    “I think there’s been a mistake,” I said when he let go of me to reach into his coat pocket and pull out one of the palm tablets all the guards had. He was looking up my name, I could tell. “That’s why I’m so glad I found you. I really don’t think I’m supposed to be here. No offense, but this place…” — the words tumbled out before I could stop them — “whatever it is, it’s
horrible.
Do you run it or something?”
    I had the feeling he did, but that didn’t stop me from insulting his management skills to his face, a bad habit I’d picked up from my dad, who’d never had any compunction about sending back a steak or a bottle of wine he didn’t like.
    “Because it could really use some updating,” I went on while he was still reading whatever it said on his tablet. “There aren’t any signs or anything saying where we are or when the next boat is leaving, and I don’t think all of us are going to fit on that one over there, and it’s
really
cold in here, and no one can get