Martha's eyes widened. Dad looked right back at her, calm as calm. Mom was in bed when she should have been helping Martha get ready for school. Mom, who had never let her be alone with her birth mother for one minute in her whole entire life (not even when Martha was being born), was suddenly sending her off on her own and not even coming downstairs to tell her about it. And no one was asking Martha what she wanted. They obviously didn't care. Neither of them.
I couldn't swallow. I couldn't talk. When I got scared like this, a hand came up from inside and grabbed all the words out of my mouth. My dad started coming toward me and everything went into slow motion. I tried to run into the kitchen, but every step seemed to take five minutes. So I grabbed a chair and pulled it in front of me. My dad picked it up and threw it across the room. Then he grabbed my arm.
"Stupid," he hissed. "No good. Nothing."
Why did I think this would work? I can't just approach a total stranger and ask him for a kidney. It's insane.
At last it stopped. Everything stopped. No movement. No sound. Only smell. The truck cab filled with the dry smell of dust and the stomach-churning stench of gas.
Everything was hazy, seen through a blanket of dust and smoke. "Rusty?" Katie said, "You okay?"
"Uh, yeah, I think so. We gotta get out of here."
Katie undid her seatbelt. "Emily?"
There was no answer.
