Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix Read Free Book Online Page A

reached the sign with the arrow and followed the arrow down a short hall. There were two doors. Looking up, Jessie could see the word LADIES on one, with a small silhouette of a woman in a bonnet and long dress, like Ma or any of the other women in Clifton might wear. The sight comforted Jessie. The silhouette was etched in a strange hard substance, but Jessie didn’t take the time to marvel at it.
    She pushed open the door and went to sit on an odd white chair that matched her mother’s description of a “toilet.” It would not be a comfortable place to sleep, but Ma had insisted.
    Jessie crossed her legs up on the toilet, as Ma had directed, and leaned her head against the smooth metal wall around the toilet. She had made it safely. The guards hadn’t caught her. Her terror slipped away, and she fell asleep wondering how this indoor outhouse could be used more than once, since the toilet was so shallow.

SEVEN
    W hoosh!
    Jessie woke to an awful sound of rushing water. She remembered learning about the Niagara Falls in geography—was this what they sounded like?
    Confused by the noise, at first Jessie couldn’t remember where she was and why she wasn’t sleeping cozily in the bed she shared with Hannah. Her whole body ached from trying to balance on the white porcelain chair—the toilet—all night. She wondered if it was safe to move yet. The room was as bright as midday, but Jessie couldn’t see any windows. So it was those globe things again, putting out more light than Jessie had ever seen from a candle or a lamp. Even though the lights had almost led to her capture the night before, now that she was safe, she decided once again that they were incredible.
    â€œHeather, is that the ring Jason gave you?”
    â€œYeah. Like it?”
    The voices came from in front of Jessie’s little metal stall. She was so eager to see what real 1996 girls looked like that she knocked her elbow against the back of her toilet getting up.
    Whoosh!
    This time the sound came from her toilet. The water swirled powerfully, then disappeared. In a few moments, more came pouring in from the back. Jessie watched it in amazement and felt the pipes that led to the wall. So that was why the toilet hole wasn’t very deep. But where did the water go?
    Jessie decided it was too much of a mystery. She went to the door she’d fastened so carefully the night before. Through a crack, she could see three girls standing before a mirror. One had her hand held out for the other two to see. All three girls had hair as wild as Jessie’s, and Jessie grinned. Her hair fit in without her having to do a thing with it! For the first time she could remember, she could get up in the morning without trying to braid her hair.
    Jessie tried to see what the girls were wearing, to compare with her own clothes. But it was hard to tell through the narrow crack. And while Jessie was peering out, the girls finished admiring Heather’s ring and left.
    Jessie wanted to follow them, but first she wanted to find an outhouse. She started to unfasten her door, then remembered she didn’t have to. Minutes later, she pushed the whoosh lever and felt quite proud that she’d figured out 1996.
    Finally stepping out of her stall, Jessie faced the mirror. It was enormous, stretching the entire length of the wall. And unlike all the mirrors in Clifton, it was clear and undistorted.For the first time in her life, Jessie saw herself without waves and lines and blotches.
    Half fearing this might be another mirror people watched through, Jessie still stared in fascination. Her dark hair, unbraided, swirled around her head like a cloud. Digging through the bag Ma had given her, Jessie pulled out a wooden comb and began yanking it through her tangles. She went slowly, preoccupied with gazing in the mirror. Her eyes, she saw for the first time, were exactly the same color as Pa’s in sunlight: greenish with flecks of