Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver Page A

woken up an hour earlier, stiff and sore and hungry. His fingers ached with cold and his stomach was growling. But at least the little shed by the underpass had kept him relatively warm, and protected him from the rain and sleet and damp.
    When he had arrived the night before, numb with exhaustion, he had seen no sign of Crazy Carl. The shed was swept clean and smelled strongly of wood planks and, strangely, like boiled meat—not altogether an unpleasant combination. He had curled up in a ball in the most deeply shadowed corner and immediately fallen asleep.
    All in all, he had slept surprisingly well. The floor was not much harder than his cot at the alchemist’s, and there had been no alarm clocks screaming shrilly and dragging him into consciousness, or nightmares of bulging fish with glassy eyes and disapproving voices calling him useless.
    Will had started off for the train station in a very good mood, considering the fact that he was homeless, poor, hungry, and, he figured, a kind of outlaw. His mood improved tenfold when, just before arriving at the station, a carriage spun by him in the street and he was nearly clobbered in the head by a baked potato, which came flying out the window, wrapped neatly in wax paper, still warm and oozing with butter, with only a single bite removed from one of its sides.
    Will almost cried as he sank his teeth into its soft, pillowed, buttery flesh. The people in the carriage must have been very rich. No one threw out food anymore.
    He arrived at the train station full, and warm from his walk. He would go west, he thought. That’s what people seemed to do. He saw on the departures board a train that was due to leave in an hour and a half. In the meantime he wandered through the train station, enjoying the echo and clatter of so many feet on the tiled floor, and the vast, cavernous ceiling looming far above him, and the flat gray light coming through the windows, and smells of coffee and sweat and perfume and wool and winter, and women sweeping by in elegant coats, and men striding past looking serious and important.
    And the trains! The chugging, heaving, huffing, puffing trains, coming in and out of the station, shooting off to places unknown. Will had always loved trains. He felt he could stand there and watch them all day.
    One of the trains, a northbound one, was getting ready to take off from platform 22, so Will made his way there to watch it depart. He noticed with pleasure the bitter stink of fire and coal, and the great bellowing of its horn, and the voice of the conductor calling, “All aboard! All aboard!”
    Dimly, Will was aware of another voice shouting. This voice said, “You! Hullo! Hi! You there! With the ears!” But he was admiring the train’s shiny red exterior, and handsome polished rails, and did not listen too closely to the other voice.
    Then a hand came down heavily on his shoulder, and Will almost jumped out of his skin.
    “There—you—are.” Mo was panting heavily. The exertion of running to catch up with Will from the other side of the station had been particularly unpleasant because (1) Mo had not been required to move quickly in a very long time, and (2) Lefty, who was getting jostled by the movement, kept clawing him in dissatisfaction.
    Will was struck head to toe by an icy-cold terror. He recognized the guard immediately; it was the man who had been outside the Lady Premiere’s house. Of course he had been sent by her orders. Now Will would be arrested and brought back to the alchemist, to be tortured and killed.
    The terror was blackness; and hatred, too. The guard had promised to keep Will’s secret safe. He had seemed like a friend. Now the crushing weight of his hand made Will’s shoulder ache. Will knew he could not hope to fight the guard and win. He was enormous; his forearm was the size of a normal neck.
    Mo continued struggling and gasping for breath. Perhaps, he thought, he should lay off the hot chocolate. Or cut down—maybe to