Thrive - Mary Borsellino

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get back at the end of all this is going to be even more disappointing than she already was, even uglier and stranger.

      It's nearly dawn before she manages to drift off, exhausted from her tears.

      3

      'Your reader's full of shit,' Hannah announces instead of saying hello the next morning. Olivia didn't notice that it was missing from her stuff. Hannah's waving the thin slate in one hand. 'There's nothing on here but schoolbooks and assigned novels. Nothing.'

      'So?'

      'Ugh.' Hannah shakes her head in despair. 'You don't even know how great books are, do you? You're as empty and full of shit as your reader.'

      'Hey, fuck you too,' Olivia scowls. 'What am I supposed to have on my reader, then? A reader that the government can look through any time they feel like it, might I add. Sure, I'll fill that up with illegal shit right now, what a great idea!'

      'Lame. There's some okay stuff on the permit list, if you bother to look, which I bet you never have. And jailbreaking readers so they can't be scanned by wifi is kid's stuff, come on. I had to hack part of it before I even turned it on so the GPS wouldn't kick in.'

      'Don't jailbreak my reader, asshole! People get in trouble for that.'

      'People get in trouble for that,' Hannah mimics in a sarcastic baby-talk voice.

      'Cut it out. Just because I don't care about your dumb books doesn't mean you get to be a humourless asshole. Even straight mathematics is about a thousand percent less stupid than reading.'

      'I can see your natural aptitude for it, with terms like 'a thousand percent',' snarks Hannah. Olivia rolls her eyes. 'You've been locked up your whole life,' Hannah goes on, 'In a cell so much tinier than this room right here. You don't know... you haven't got any idea how great words and stories can be.'

      'And you don't know how beautiful numbers are. Patterns, puzzles, interconnected systems. The whole universe is made of that stuff!'

      'Whatever, you stubborn lunatic.' Hannah's voice is breezy. 'I'm gonna bring you some of my paperbacks, and give you pop quizzes on them in exchange for your meals. If you don't read them, you don't eat.'

      Olivia splutters in futile outrage. 'You can't give me homework! You're my kidnapper!'

      'I'm pretty sure that means I get to do what I want,' comes the retort. Sure enough, when Olivia next sees Hannah, the rabbit-masked girl is carrying a pile of battered books with softened corners.

      She puts them down beside Olivia and gives the uppermost cover a fond pat. 'There. Pick whichever you like; I've read them all often enough to think up quiz questions on the fly. Just let me know which one you've read when I come in later.'

      Olivia can't imagine being thrilled about reading a book once, let alone liking the experience enough to do it multiple times. She's got no real say in the matter, though, so she picks up the top book — The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham — and opens it to the first page.

      4

      For the rest of her life, no matter how often she's read it or where she is at the time, The Day of the Triffids always takes her back to that little cement room, to the changing shape of the square of light on the floor as the sun moves across the sky outside the window.

      The fear and boredom of her own captive life falls away as she follows Josella and Bill on their desperate escape from apocalyptic London, out into the countryside. She's afraid when they are, she cries when they cry, she hears the plaintive notes of a song across the darkened ruins right along with them.

      When it seems for a while that maybe they can build a new life on the farm they've filled with other misfits they've found along the way, protect its perimeter from danger and be happy, Olivia's heart sings for them.

      When, at the very end, they have to run away again because the greedy tyrants they've fled in London have found them once more, Olivia's heart is so full of so many different things that it's going to explode for sure.

      As soon as Hannah opens the door that night, Olivia's on her feet, meeting Hannah and taking the tray from her excitedly.

      'I read Day of the Triffids. It was amazing.'

      'Am I allowed to say "I told you so"?' Hannah asks, following her deeper into the room. 'Because I did.'

      'You didn't tell me anything. You threatened to withhold my food,' Olivia corrects her without malice. It's hard to be angry at Hannah for giving Olivia something so precious. She sits and begins to eat.

      'Semantics.' Hannah brushes away the accusation with a wave. 'If you liked that, I think I put my copy of The Midw—'

      Bang!

      The end of her sentence is drowned out by a nearby door being kicked open; and then, much louder — so shatteringly loud that Olivia can feel it in every tooth and bone in her body — the sound of a gunshot.

      She's on her feet before her brain has registered that she's going to move. Hannah's frozen on the spot but remembers how to move at the same moment Olivia does. They draw closer to one another by instinct, their movements matched as they both start in fright at the noise of a second gunshot rapidly followed by a third.

      There are seconds — less than seconds — of time, but it's enough for Olivia to act. She grabs one of the long ears of Hannah's red rabbit mask and pulls up, wrenching the whole thing away from the other girl's face in one sharp motion that sends it flying into the corner of the room, among the pile of stuff from Olivia's schoolbag.

      Hannah's hair is cropped short; not as short as Olivia's own hacked-off locks but nearly so. She's younger than Olivia had guessed. They might be the same age. Hannah looks even more frightened than Olivia feels.

      Olivia grabs Hannah in a hug and clings on, pressing Hannah's face down against her own shoulder as the door bangs open.

      The guy standing there is so broad and tall that he fills the whole space of the doorframe, barring any chance of freedom as effectively as the door had.

      'She was here when I got here,' Olivia says, clinging tight to Hannah, praying that Hannah will go along with this flimsy excuse for a plan. 'She doesn't speak. I don't know how long she's been a hostage here.'

      The gun in his hands is huge. Horrifying. Olivia knows with a sick rush of cold through her limbs that she'll see that gun in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

      He gives Hannah the barest of glances, his concentration on Olivia. 'Your father sent us,' he tells her. 'Come on.'

      They follow him out the door, Hannah clutching as tightly to Olivia's hand as Olivia is to hers. Two dirty, frightened girls, led together through the remains of a masker hideout.

      In the main room, the other three kidnappers are lying where they fell. One, the fox, has a bullet hole through the forehead of his mask, and the blood looks almost fake, too red, where it's pooled under him. The mouse and the cat were trying to get away when they died and so their wounds are on their backs, their bodies face-down on the concrete floor.

      Hannah chokes on a sob. Olivia squeezes her hand tighter.

      Two other men, broad and tall as the first, are checking each room with their guns at the ready. As she follows the first man through the space, towards the entrance, Olivia clears her throat and addresses all three of them.

      'That's all. It was only three: mouse, cat, and fox.' She hopes it'll be a long, long time before anyone discovers that there was a red rabbit as well.

      It doesn't surprise her when they all ignore her.

      Outside, the air is colder than it was in the building but there are no smells of gunpowder, shit or blood, so Olivia takes a deep breath despite the chill.

      'Here.' The man points to a van. The symmetry of her arrival to this place and her departure strikes Olivia as weirdly funny. She wants

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