CARL PICKED UP A CRACKER from the bowl on the breakfast table and pretended to take a bite before slipping it inside his shirt. Four crackers were already secreted there. He wished there was a way to take some of the soup upstairs to Makey, too. The boy was beginning to look thin and pinched after three days hiding in Harrington’s room, but the soup was impossible to transport easily, and it would look suspicious if he was seen carrying a mug of the slightly salty, mostly tasteless liquid up to his room. No one in their right mind would ask for seconds unless they were starving.
It had taken the boy’s father longer than twenty-four hours to report him missing. Makey had said he was probably waiting for him to make his own way back when he got hungry enough, and he feared the shame Makey’s
