The Darkest Minds

The bullet goes straight through the minivan. Liam starts driving fast, and they are chased by both Rob’s SUV as well as a red pickup truck. Liam and Chubs recognize the driver of the pickup truck, a woman. A passenger in the pickup truck is shot by someone in the SUV, and the truck is pushed off the road. Liam asks Ruby to drive, even though she never has before, telling her it’s just like riding a bike. Liam uses his abilities to telepathically send a tree into the SUV. They pull off at the next exit to recover. Chubs is furious, and Ruby punches Liam’s arm: “That was not like riding a bike, you asshole!” (122). This breaks the tension, and they laugh.

Ruby goes through the backpack Rob and Cate gave her and finds new clothes. Before she changes, Liam shows her that the League sewed trackers inside them, and they cut them out and destroy them. Chubs asks Ruby why she was with the Children’s League, and Ruby comes up with a lie: as a Control Tower runner she had memorized important codes with her photographic memory, and the League wanted them. They ask her about Martin, and she says she doesn’t know him. Chubs finds it implausible that she wouldn’t know someone at her camp. Ruby learns that they broke out of their camp, Caledonia, which was in Ohio and much smaller. They’re shocked to learn she was at Thurmond, where there were 3,000 kids, and that she was there for six years. Thurmond has a notorious reputation. Chubs and Liam ask her how old she is, and she is disturbed to realize she isn't sure. When she asks what year it is, they look at her with pity and sympathy. She figures out she is 16. They drive away in Black Betty, listening to the radio. Liam asks Ruby if she has a last name, and she says no.

Ruby is asleep on the seat until Chubs wakes her up, which worries Ruby because she had left herself “wide open in a van of strangers” (135). From Chubs, she learns Liam and Chubs are both Blue, but Zu is Yellow. When Ruby asks Chubs questions about Zu, he becomes angry and suspicious.

They are in East River Camping Grounds, an RV park in West Virginia, and Ruby learns that they came because they thought it could be a different East River, a place run by a leader named the Slip Kid where Psi young people live together in safety and can contact their parents. Liam and Chubs have been looking for East River since they heard information about it from some Blues in Ohio. Ruby is interested, especially when she hears that the Slip Kid is reportedly an Orange like her. Chubs complains about wasted time, and Liam tells Ruby privately that Chubs is only scared and stressed.

They split up to look for supplies, and Ruby follows Zu. In an RV, Ruby sees a camera with a red light recording, which Zu destroys with her Yellow abilities, manipulating electricity. Ruby confirms each RV has a camera, and they find Chubs and Liam, who infer that the park is a trap, and that Black Betty is now on video. Anxious about being chased by skip tracers looking for Psi kids or by PSFs, they leave the park. Ruby reflects that she is the real monster.

As they’re driving away, Liam tells Ruby about Jack, their friend at Caledonia who didn’t survive the breakout. They each wrote letters to their parents if they didn’t make it out, and they want to deliver Jack’s safely, which is one motive for finding the Slip Kid.

Later, they are intercepted by two cars that play the White Noise out the window at them. Ruby tries to drown it out with the radio, but Liam, Chubs, and Zu are mostly incapacitated by it. Ruby sees a PSF badge on one of the men, who succeeds in pulling them out of the minivan. She hears one PSF identify Liam over the radio. There is a flash and crash, and the White Noise stops. Ruby uses her powers to compel a PSF to cancel his call for backup and walk away. She discovers Zu has used her powers to crash the two cars and kill another PSF. Ruby manages to drive them away in Black Betty.

Liam and Chubs wake up after 10 miles of Ruby driving. Zu is still crying, and Ruby tells everyone a half-truth: that Zu’s abilities saved them. Ruby explains what White Noise is, as it apparently wasn’t used at their camp. They pull over at a rest stop to treat injuries. Chubs puts antiseptic on Ruby’s cuts, and he asks her why she lied—why she said Zu only knocked the man out, when really Zu killed him. He assumes she did it to protect Zu, which makes him respect Ruby more. Ruby tells him their attackers were PSFs, which worries him.

Liam calls a “Betty vote” on the question of whether Ruby should be allowed to stay. Zu and Liam vote yes; Chubs votes no. Liam smiles at Ruby, and she is drawn to touch him and find out what he is thinking, which makes her ashamed. She also realizes she wants to protect the group, as she did before. She tells Liam she’s interested in finding her Grams in Virginia Beach.

Ruby and Liam try to make sure they’re headed back to Virginia, and Liam guesses Ruby is from Virginia by her knowledge about towns, but she denies it. Chubs and Liam tell Ruby about the female skip tracer who has been chasing them since they left Caledonia, whom they call Lady Jane because she is British.

They stop at a motel for the night. Chubs and Ruby divide up the food. Chubs tells Ruby that he knows she is hiding something, and he thinks sneaking away in the night would be the right choice for her. After he leaves, she notices the book he has been reading, Watership Down, a book she loved as a child. She reads a passage.