00 nodded. “Lots of ‘em.”
Joan took a long drink of her tea and tossed the machete up in the air with her off hand, catching it by the back of the blade without looking up from her mug. She lowered her cup with a cocky grin and then held the handle of the machete out toward 62. “You’ll need this out there.”
62 nodded and clasped his fingers around the handle. It was warm where Joan’s palm had been. “Thank you.”
Joan looked north, toward the distant hills. “It’s a long walk.”
“You’re the one sending us on it.”
“Yes, I am.” With that, Joan walked back toward the waiting group who cheered when she crossed the gate’s threshold alone.
Little rivers of tears cut across Mattie’s cheeks. “I should come with you,” she cried.
Blue hugged her one last time. He whispered something in her ear. The many colors of her mask flashed over his shoulder when she put it on to hide her teary face. He pulled his bright blue mask on and pressed it against her cheek in the motion of a quick kiss. They stood together for a moment before they let go. She walked slowly back to the gate where the others were already dispersing back toward town.
“What did you tell her?” 00 asked.
Blue pushed his weight into the wheelbarrow and turned it northward. “That she could come and get us when it was safe for us to come back.”
62 pulled at the wagon’s handle. His shoulder ached with the weight of it. It got stuck in a rut and he had to pull even harder. When it broke free, he stumbled forward. 00 wobbled close and grabbed his shoulder, keeping him from falling. “Thanks.”
The three outcasts headed into the dry scrub toward the hills. They were determined to make it to the closest mound, the one that 62 and Blue had sunbathed on in the fall. They hoped to get out of sight of Hanford as quickly as possible. As much as they didn’t want to leave the security of the town, the feeling of eyes staring at their retreating backs made them uncomfortable.
62 swiped at a pile of brush with the machete. The brittle branches snapped on impact, sending shards of sticks raining out in all directions. The blade would be useful, as she’d said. But it wasn’t a gift that brought him any feelings of warmth or care. It was simply another reminder that no matter how much 62 had grown, he still didn’t belong.
END OF BOOK THREE
Author’s Note
HANFORD IS LOCATED on the Columbia River in Washington State. In 1943, General Groves selected Hanford as one of the sites for the top-secret Manhattan Project.
The site spans more than 580 square miles of shrub-steppe desert. The reactors built there were in use from 1943 to 1987, and as many as 50,000 people lived and worked there in the height of the site’s plutonium production. During this time, solid and liquid waste was dumped, leaked or buried in the landscape. Contractors, state and national agencies along with Native tribes have been attempting to clean the Hanford site ever since.
Anna Joliot-Curie is a fictitious character created for the telling of this story, but the lineage I placed her in was quite real. Anna is the imagined daughter of Irène Curie, and granddaughter of the famed Marie Curie. Irène worked closely with her mother, Marie, as a lab assistant. The lab is where Irène met her husband, Frédéric Joliot, who worked as a chemical engineer. Together, Irène and Frédéric won the 1935 Nobel prize for discovering a procedure to produce artificial radioactivity, adding to the Curie legacy so entwined with radiation.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, or “Oppie” as Anna refers to him, was not a central figure at Hanford, aside from working closely with General Groves. He was stationed at the Los Alamos, New Mexico site, but his name has become so entangled with the Manhattan Project and the success of the atomic bomb that to leave him out of this story seemed a shame. With his quirky personality and passion for the impossible, I believe he would have fully supported the idea of the Adaline and Curie sites had they existed.
Please consider leaving a review of this box set wherever you purchased it.
Then, continue to explore the radioactive desert in Division, book 4 of the Adaline series.
Adaline series reading order:
Adaline
Biocide
Curie
Division
Equals
About the Author
AT SIXTEEN, DENISE Kawaii decided that being an author was a terrible idea. Instead of living a leisurely life of chai teas and fuzzy sweaters, at seventeen, she graduated and got a “real job”.
It turns out, real jobs aren’t all that fun.
In fact, they’re nearly always awful.
Now, Denise writes constantly, speaks publicly about the value of chasing impossible dreams occasionally, and worries about what other people think about her weirdness as little as possible. When the weather is nice, she works on her small farm in southwest Washington State. When the weather is awful, she works on books.
It’s a rather nice life.
If you’d like to contact Denise, you can join her Reading List at KawaiiTimes.com/denise-kawaii (just scroll to the bottom of the webpage for details), and she’ll send you updates on upcoming books, events, and give you a small window to her life from time to time.
The Adaline Series Bundle 1 Page 62