Scorpion Shards by Neal Shusterman Page A

looking miserably down at the brain-burger in his hand.
    â€œBesides that, what do you know?”
    Michael shrugged. “The Cardinals,” he said. “That’s about it . . . .” And then he stopped dead—and started to breathe rapidly. Michael turned to Lourdes and grabbed her heavy arm, trying to speak but unable to catch his breath.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” she asked.
    â€œLourdes . . . there’s one more thing I know about St. Louis . . . something that never occurred to me until now!”
    â€œSo, tell me.”
    â€œI think maybe you should look for yourself.”
    Lourdes followed Michael’s gaze to the south. Lourdes wiped the fog from the windshield, and her eyes traced the path of the riverbank, until she saw it, too. It was about a mile away, curving hundreds of feet into the sky—thousands of tons of gray steel, shaped and curved into the magnificent arch that graced the city of St. Louis. The sleek steel wonder stretched deep into the clouds, and back down to earth again, and the very sight of it gave Michael and Lourdes the eerie shivers—because more than anything else, the arch looked like a ghostly gray rainbow.
    T ORY AND W INSTON HAD already been at the arch for twenty minutes. They had stood with die-hard tourists in a line that wound through the underground museum, waiting to board the tiny car that would take them to the peak of the arch.
    The logic made perfect sense. If you were supposed to meet someone in St. Louis, but didn’t know where, there were certainplaces one ought to try: airports, bus stations, train stations, landmarks—and they knew St. Louis had to be the place. They could sense something here they felt nowhere else they had been—the westward current suddenly seemed caught in a swirling eddy.
    They had been to all the other places, and now they searched the city’s best-known landmark—their last hope—before continuing west. To Omaha, if Tory got her way.
    Once at the top of the arch, the view was spectacular, for the very tip of the arch pierced the dense, low-hanging storm clouds. It was like a view from heaven.
    Tory wore her scarf over most of her face like an Arabian veil. “I’ve never been this high,” she said. “I guess this is what it must look like from a plane.” The clouds beneath the observation window were slow-moving billows; huge cotton snails sliding over one another.
    The car brought them back down to the underground museum, and still there was no sign of anyone on the lookout for them. It was worse than the old needle in a haystack. At least then you knew it was a needle you were looking for.
    â€œThere’s nothing here,” Tory finally had to admit. Then Tory and Winston heard a voice deep in the crowd.
    â€œThis is a waste of time,” the voice said. Tory and Winston quickly turned and saw a boy through the crowds. He had a thin, scraggly body and thin, scraggly hair. He seemed flushed and sweaty. Next to him stood a girl so immense there was no way she’d fit in the tiny car that rode to the top of the arch.
    But it was the scraggly boy that caught Winston’s attention—not his face, but his eyes. Even from a distance, Winston could see the color of his eyes.
    â€œI know him!” said Winston. “Don’t I know him?”
    Winston and Tory pushed through the crowd, and as theydid, the sounds around them seemed to become distant. The people milling about and waiting in line seemed like mere shadows of people. The guard mouthed the words “Move along,” but his voice sounded as if it were coming from miles away. The only sights clear and in focus were the fat girl and scraggly boy, who were now staring at them with the same troubled wonder.
    Winston approached the scraggly boy, pulling his torn satin cloth out of his pocket. One glance at the cloth, and then at the boy’s eyes proved to Winston