Ghost Boy by Iain Lawrence

face blank, her eyes empty, as though she wasn’t there.
    â€œI don’t have all day,” said the cook.
    â€œDenvers,” said Samuel, his eyes still on Tina. “We’ll have denvers.”
    â€œAnd you?” asked the cook. “You. Whitey.”
    Harold winced. He saw then that no matter how far he went from Liberty, it would never be far enough.
    â€œWhat do you want?”
    Harold straightened his shoulders and looked directly at the man, though all he saw was a blur. He said, “I want to be bigger, sir. I want to be darker.”
    The cook snorted. “You’re a wise guy, huh? Well, I guess you’re a pretty hungry little wise guy. Now get out of here. All of you. And I’ll bring you
three
sandwiches.”
    â€œTwo,” said the Gypsy Magda.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œJust two.” She stood up, stiff and proud. Although she was shorter than the man by a third of his height, she was full of a great dignity that made her seem larger. “I want nothing from you,” she said, and went past him, down the worn tiles, in a beautiful tingling of bells. And then Samuel got up from his bench, and then Tina. They waited for Harold.
    He wished he was stronger, as big as the Cannibal King. He would bellow and stomp; he would flatten the cook who stood there, openmouthed, in his stained and dirty shirt. But he wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong, and he went without a word. Samuel’s hand settled on his shoulder, and they went together to the door.
    â€œGood riddance!” the cook called after them. “Get out of here, Whitey. You spook. Yeah, all of you go, you bunch of freaks. Bunch of goddamn freaks.”
    The gas pump hummed and whirred, a little red-and-yellow ball spinning in the fuel line. The man tending to it was just as nervous as before. In his overalls and floppy boots, he leaned against the Gypsy Magda’s truck, holding the nozzle in place.
    Samuel stood beside him. “That’s good,” he said. “It’s full enough.”
    The nozzle clattered as the man pulled it out. He watched warily under his cap as the Gypsy Magda and Harold and Tina crowded around him. “You’re not eating?” he asked.
    â€œNo.” Samuel took a roll of money from his pocket. It was thick, green, bound by an old rubber band. They were one-dollar bills, and he peeled off a few; he paid for the gas, and for the Cannibal King’s as well.
    When the man reached out for his money, the Gypsy Magda took his hand. “Your wife,” she said. “She has rambling blood. Ask her this: Where does she go in her prettiest clothes?”
    The man looked at her, then up at the windows where the cook stood. He shoved the money in his pocket and went off like a crab, scuttling sideways.
    The Gypsy Magda smiled at Harold. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
    â€œYeah,” said Tina. “That was great, what you said in there. I thought he’d have a fit. ‘I want to be bigger,’ you told him. Say, wasn’t that swell, Samuel?”
    â€œIt was.” The little eyes shone in that monsterlike face. “You’re one of us now. For good or bad, thick or thin. Forever and ever, you’re one of us.”
    Harold glowed.
    â€œJolly jam!” said Samuel suddenly, and they crowded around him in a mass of claws and little hands and cold, metallic bracelets. They tilted and swayed.
    â€œWhere does she go?” asked Harold. “In her prettiest clothes, where does she go?”
    The Gypsy Magda laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just make the trouble, I think.” Then she climbed up into her truck. “The boy will come with me.”

Chapter
    15
    T he headlights cast their yellow cones into an empty land beyond the limits of the filling station. Windshield wipers flailed and squeaked, sweeping dust and bugs away. Then Samuel, like a gruesome pilot, raised his thumb and started