Chapter 37 Ghosts In The Walls

• The produce aisle of *Green Valley Grocers* was the last place I wanted to be. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too *normal*, as I stared at a pyramid of apples, their waxy skins gleaming under a sign that read *LOCAL & ORGANIC!* I dropped two into a plastic bag, wondering if Sentinel’s “rehab facility” fed their prisoners fruit. If they even fed them at all.
• Adam would’ve hated this—the mundanity, the risk of being spotted. But after weeks of canned beans and protein bars, the craving for something fresh had overruled caution. I lingered by the dairy section, memorizing faces: a mom wrangling a toddler, an elderly man squinting at yogurt expiration dates, a teenager stacking avocados. No one looked like a Sentinel thug. No one but me.
• The cashier, a girl with blue streaks in her hair, hummed along to the store’s pop playlist as she scanned my apples. “Paper or plastic?”