The Farm by EMILY MCKAY Read Free Book Online

up.
    “Hey, Lil,” he said.
    I blew out a breath. If he was going to kill me or even take me to the Dean’s office, would he be offering me a hand up and using that nickname I’d disliked even back then?
    I took the hand he was still holding out and let him help me into a sitting position, aches already cramping the muscles of my back. Cringing, I scooched away from him, giving an experimental little twist. A little gasp of pain escaped.
    “You alright?”
    “I’ll live,” I quipped, but then cringed a little inside and sent up a silent prayer,
I hope.
    “Sorry about that.” He gave a little nod to indicate the brawl. Then he reached out a hand and ran his thumb along the spot on my neck where he’d held the shiv against my skin.
    He hadn’t broken the skin, but the scratch he’d left burned like hell. Still, there was something disconcerting about his touch and I twitched back from him, not liking the way his gaze went from my neck back to my eyes.
    “Hey, nice apology.” I aimed for sarcasm, but didn’t quite hit it, since I was still winded. “Considering you just beat the crap out of me and all.”
    “Hey, you’re the one who jumped me,” he said. He scooted back to lean against the nearest lab table, stretching a leg out between us.
    Good point.
    “And you’re the one still holding the weapon,” I countered.
    He looked down as if surprised to see the shiv still in his hand. With a shrug, he reached up and set it onto one of the lab tables, then casually draped his arm across his raised knee. “Feel better now?”
    Not by a long shot. On the bright side, Carter was definitely the Green from the quad who’d picked up the pills. The fact that he was here now meant he wasn’t off turning me in to the Dean’s office. Also, a moment ago, I’d been at his mercy. He could have killed me and he hadn’t.
    On the not-so-bright side, I still didn’t know why he’d followed me. Had he recognized the pills? Did he know what they were?
    I wrapped my arms around my knees, hoping to hide the trembling in my muscles. My tears were still crawling up my throat and the only way I could keep them down was by talking. Like if I stopped to think about things too long, something inside of me would crack open and the jagged pieces would shred me from the inside out.
    So I just kept talking. Like this was all perfectly normal. Like I hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago. “You could have, you know, said hello or something. I didn’t know it was you.”
    “Hey, when you attacked me, I didn’t know it was you, either.” He stood slowly, smiling as if completely unperturbed by my belligerence. He ran a hand pointedly across his windpipe, which looked red. Then he held out a hand to help me stand. “Besides, I couldn’t exactly talk. You were choking me, after all.”
    Hmm. ’Nother good point.
    I gave him a suspicious once-over, but I couldn’t ignore his hand, so I took it and let him help me to my feet, even though I dropped it just as quickly.
    The way he ran his hand over his throat drew my attention to his jawline. It was too scruffy and unkempt to be a full beard. Still, on Carter, it looked less ridiculous than it would have on a lot of other guys.
    When I’d known him back in the Before, Carter had been maybe three or four inches taller than I was. Sometime in the past year or so, he’d shot up a good half foot. Now he towered over me. He used to have a sort of whippetlike leanness to him. That was gone.
    Because we gave donations every week, none of us Greens looked really healthy. We ate a lot, but we never seemed to be fed. Not Carter. Whatever he’d been doing, he’d put on muscles that even the benign, genderless hoodie couldn’t hide.
    Of course, whatever he’d been doing since the Before, he hadn’t been doing it here. Not on this Farm. If he’d been here, I would have known about it.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why were you following me?”
    “I just got here two