Kingston didn’t answer, except to raise one shoulder as if to say maybe.
“I can’t believe he didn’t budge an inch,” West said after they’d left the campus and made their way down Virginia Street and up California Avenue back home on their bicycles. “Not a damn inch.”
“Did you really expect him to?”
Maybe he shouldn’t have, but he did. In what world did it make sense that Clover was pulled out of school and dumped into the Mariner track before she was even old enough to feed herself? “We’ll appeal.”
“I’ll be as old as you before it’s even looked at,” Clover said.
God, he hated that she was right. “Maybe Bennett can help.”
“He seemed pretty excited to have me at the Company. He’s the one who kept telling me I was drafted.”
“This doesn’t make sense. Mariners are trained at the Academy. If they wanted you there, why would they take you right out of primary school?”
“I don’t know,” Clover said. “Kingston was going to put me in research, anyway. He said so, before he decided I didn’t belong at the Academy at all. I wasn’t headed for the Mariners.”
West sat quietly for a minute while Clover ate salad greens and tomatoes from their garden, tossed in a little of their precious oil and some vinegar she had made herself from a recipe she’d found at the library and juice pressed from Mrs. Finch’s apples. “So, I’ll cancel my training.”
“You can’t.” She didn’t even pause as she brought her fork to her mouth. They couldn’t afford to lose their appetites just because they were upset.
“Yes, I can. It’s only two more years. No, less than that. Once you’re eighteen, you won’t need a guardian.”
“You’ve wanted this your whole life.”
“What am I supposed to do, Clover? Do you want to go to Foster City?”
“We’ll find Dad,” she said. “He’ll know what to do.”
Sure he would. “He’d have you in Foster City before you even knew what hit you.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. I have to go to the Waverly-Stead building tomorrow for a driving lesson,” Clover said. “I’ll try to find out what happens in situations like this. They can’t really have employees living in Foster City.”
They were going to teach her to drive? West heard Bridget’s voice telling him to be careful. He needed to find a way to talk to her. Clover took another bite and chewed slowly. West could practically see her wheels turning.
chapter 7
Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.
—GEORGE W. BUSH, SPEECH, OCTOBER 18, 2000
“Turn the wheel the way you want the van to go. That’s it. Now, sharper.”
Clover pulled the steering wheel harder to the left and the van made a tight turn.
“You’re a natural,” Leanne said. “It took me forever to learn.”
Clover’s cheeks actually ached from smiling so hard. She turned the wheel to the right and the van followed in a wider, spiraling turn. “It’s pretty fun.”
Two deep dimples formed when Leanne smiled back at Clover. “Ready to try the street?”
The van’s engine rumbled under Clover when she gave it a little gas. She loved how she could hold a picture in her head of the way the wheel turned the axis, which turned the tires. She didn’t fully understand how stepping on the gas pedal or brake worked, but she would find out. She could hardly wait to get to the library on Wednesday.
Driving was like running, only more. More free. More fast. More everything.
Clover turned onto the street and then sped down back roads, staying away from the main avenue with all its bicycles. Leanne lowered the passenger window and wind blew through Clover’s hair and over her face. She didn’t dare look away from the road to see whether Mango, who was sitting in the space between the front seats, was enjoying himself. She bet he was.
“You really like this, don’t you?” Leanne asked.
“I love it. Who wouldn’t?”
“I remember when people still drove personal cars. Can you imagine hundreds of other cars all flying around you?”
“I’ve seen it in movies.”
“Not the same at all.”
Clover had spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to ask Leanne about kids working for the Company. Finally, she blurted it out. “What happens to kids who get drafted but don’t have a guardian at home?”
Leanne shot her a look. “The Company doesn’t draft kids. Who wouldn’t want on the Mariner track?”
Clover imagined that some people might not, but for some reason it seemed best not to say so. Instead, she filed away Leanne’s insistence that what had happened to Clover didn’t happen to anyone and said, “I wish we could pick up my brother.”
Leanne shook her head. “Bennett would kill us both.”
The rule was no unauthorized passengers. Still, West would love this. She tried to remember every detail to tell him later.
He’d like Leanne, too, she thought. Clover wondered how long it would take to grow her hair out long enough to put it in two pigtails like her trainer’s. She couldn’t wait to get home and tell West everything.
Only, when she and Mango met West later at the suppressant bar, he didn’t even ask about driving or Leanne.
“Don’t you want to know?” she finally asked him.
“Know what?”
“About driving! About what Leanne said. What’s wrong with you?”
“How was it?” West asked.
“The driving was amazing.” She still felt the miles racing under her. They’d stayed inside the city walls, but after a few hours, Clover could drive forward and backward, make turns, and park. “I wish you could have been there.”
“Yeah.”
West didn’t even look at her. Maybe she’d said something wrong. It was hard to tell, sometimes. “I didn’t even get sick this time,” she said.
“That’s great, Clover.”
The suppressant bar was about a half mile from their house. West and Clover went there at five o’clock every afternoon, without exception. It didn’t matter if she had the flu, or homework, or if it was five degrees outside with two feet of snow on the ground.
The room had two long, waist-high counters that divided it into thirds. A tall, bald man with skin the color of the caramel candies Mrs. Finch sometimes made them stood at the registration station just inside the door.
Years ago, the word caramel had crossed with camel in her head and Clover imagined the thick muscle at the back of the man’s neck growing into a water-filled camel hump.
West elbowed her, and she pulled her ID card from her pocket and handed it over. The caramel-camel man looked at it, then at her and back at the card. Without a word, he found her name on the computer in front of him and checked it off.
Being dosed was clinical and very impersonal. Despite seeing him nearly every day for as long as she could remember, Clover didn’t know Caramel-Camel Man’s name. He had never spoken to her.
Their doser tonight was a woman with a riot of dark curly hair held back from her face with a wide pink headband. A couple dozen other people sat at stools along either counter. Some of them talked to each other while they waited for their doses.
This was the worst part of Clover’s day, but she’d been doing it since she was an infant, and if she’d ever complained, she couldn’t remember it. The suppressant kept her healthy. It saved her brother and kept him alive. It kept the virus from coming back and killing them all. The suppressant was their miracle.
Her upper thighs still had a faint collection of scars from the first year, when they gave the suppressant with hypodermic needles. West had faint pockmarks on his upper arms as well. The suppressant was thick and delivered cold. The needle they had to use back then to push it was as thick as a spaghetti noodle. Clover was glad she didn’t remember the old days.
For as long as her memory stretched, she, West, and the rest of Reno had small
ports implanted at the back of their necks. The medicine was still as congealed as jelly and stung like fire ants eating toward your brain, but at least the long, thick needles were a thing of the past.
Clover rubbed around her port after the doser was done, helping the medication move through so it would stop stinging. “I wish I could take you driving,” she said to West as they started back to their house.
He walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets, deep in thought. “Me, too.”
“Leanne said that kids aren’t drafted into the Mariner track.”
West stopped walking and turned to look at her. She waited for him to respond to that. When she said it out loud to him, it sounded a whole lot more ominous than it had just in her head.
“Can you make it home on your own?” he asked.
“Of course, I can practically see the house from here,” she said. “Why, where are you going?”
“I won’t be long.”
“West.”
“I promise. Go on.”
He waited until she started walking toward home. In fact, he stood there longer than that. She looked over her shoulder twice and saw him still rooted to his spot on the sidewalk, watching until she walked the last few hundred yards home and went inside.
As soon as Clover and Mango were inside the house, West turned and walked toward Bridget’s house. It was iffy, showing up so close to dinnertime. Kingston could be home, or he could still be at the Academy getting ready for the next semester to start. Maybe West should have waited until the next day, but he really didn’t want to. Bridget had something to tell him, and after hearing that Clover’s trainer didn’t know that kids were being drafted by Bennett, it suddenly seemed vital that he find out what it was. The sooner, the better.
Be careful, she’d told him. He needed to find out what exactly he needed to be careful of.
He was afraid he’d have to knock, so as he walked he tried to come up with some story in case Kingston answered the door. All he could come up with was an apology for his response to Clover’s being sent to the Company. It was weak, because he wasn’t really sorry at all, but nothing better came to him. He had no legitimate reason to knock on the headmaster’s door.
He didn’t need an excuse in the end. When he reached the Kingston Estate, Bridget was in the front pasture, working with her horses. Jesus, she took his breath away. Corny, but true.
“What do we need to talk about?” he asked when she saw him and came close enough that he didn’t have to shout.
“Not here.” She leaned over the fence and looked both ways down the road that ran in front of her house. Then she opened the gate for him. “Come with me.”
She led him through the pasture, which was planted with alfalfa. The sweet scent of the grass wafted up into West’s nose as he crushed it under his feet. She looked back again, then took his hand and pulled him into the stables.
West wanted to trust her. He had once; when they were in primary school, they were friends. Maybe more than friends. But then her father was promoted and she moved out of West’s orbit. He didn’t know how to trust her now, no matter how badly he wanted to. “What do I need to be careful of, Bridget?”
She let go of his hand and, despite his reservations, West had to fight to keep from taking hers back. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I—” She stopped and took a breath. “I overheard something I shouldn’t have.”
“Something about Clover?” What could she have possibly overheard about his little sister? The Donovans didn’t matter to anyone, except that they were as much a part of keeping the mechanics of the city running as any other citizens.
“Not her specifically. But they look at the test scores to find them.”
“Who does? Them who?”
“My dad and Langston Bennett. They look for kids with certain test scores.” She looked at the dirt at her feet. “Kids like Clover, you know?”
Langston Bennett was the man to whom Kingston had sent Clover. The director of the Mariner program. “Why do they want them?”
Before she could answer, her father’s small white Academy car pulled into the driveway a few feet from where they hid.
“Oh, no,” Bridget said. “Oh, God. Stay here until we’re inside.”
She started to leave the stables, but West caught her arm. “Why do they want them?”
Bridget looked over her shoulder. “He can’t find you here.”
“When can we talk again?”
“Soon,” she said. “I promise.”
It was two more days before Clover had another mission. She hadn’t been able to get any information from Leanne about underage Messengers and where they lived. Despite thinking and talking about little else, she and West weren’t able to come up with any plan other than for her to show up and keep her eyes and ears open.
“Be careful, Clover,” West said, before he left for the farm that morning.
Clover took a bite of her oatmeal. “If you knew how easy the job was, you wouldn’t be worried.”
“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
There was something odd in his tone that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “I promise.”
After he left, she filled her pack with a water bowl for Mango, a couple of books, a pair of pajamas, and a change of clothes before heading out herself with Mango’s lead in her hand.
“They might let us move into the barracks,” Clover said to her dog as they walked, the sun warming his pale fur and her upturned face. “West isn’t always right, even if he thinks he is.”
Mango made a small sound and Clover picked up her pace to a gentle jog. Maybe Leanne would let her drive to the launch site. The idea of driving outside the city walls sent a small shiver of anticipation down Clover’s back, and goose bumps covered her arms as she moved into a run.
Mango ran beside her, his wide, strong body easily keeping up. After a few minutes she made herself slow down. Arriving at the Waverly-Stead building sweaty and pulsing with adrenaline was a bad idea.
“Your mission is canceled,” Bennett said when she saw him half an hour later. His eyes darted to Mango and then back to Clover’s face. “I’m sorry you came all this way.”
“It’s not that far.”
He nodded slowly. “Well, that’s good, then.”
They stood and looked at each other for a few awkward seconds before Clover asked, “Should I go home?”
Bennett cleared his throat. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Clover turned to go back upstairs to change, but stopped when she realized she’d responded to the wrong part of Bennett’s statement. She came back and asked, “Why is the mission canceled?”
Bennett looked relieved that she’d put them both back on the same page. “Leanne was in an accident and broke her good leg. We’re going to have to get another team to make the run tomorrow. We’ll have to find you another trainer, since you don’t know how to drive.”
“I know how to drive.”
“You said you didn’t.”
“Leanne taught me.”
“In two days?”
“I don’t want another trainer,” Clover said. “Can’t I go alone and meet the future Leanne on the other side?”
“That’s where she broke her leg.” Bennett ran his palm over his mouth and down his chin. He looked at Clover for a long moment. Clover was about to ask why Leanne couldn’t drive with her on this side and another trainer meet her on the other side, but Bennett kept talking. “Show me you can drive. Take me to the launch site.”
Bennett made her skin crawl and she didn’t like the idea of being trapped in the van with just him. But she was sure driving would make it worth it. Besides, maybe he’d drop his guard and she’d be able to get some information from him.
Clover and Bennett walked together to the van. When she got behind the wheel, her black boots under the rolled cuffs of her brown uniform hung inches from the pedals. She reached be
tween her legs and pulled on the lever to slide her seat forward.
“She taught you that, at least,” Bennett said.
“She’s a great teacher. She’s been doing it for ten years, right? She must have taught a lot of kids to drive.”
Clover looked sideways at Bennett, but he didn’t take the bait. Yet.
Cerebral things came naturally to Clover. Math, science, reading. Except for running, most physical things did not. She was clumsy and awkward and often felt out of place in her own body. For some reason, being behind the wheel of the van, feeling the engine roar to life, then purr as it waited for her to put it in gear, felt as normal as breathing to her.
She put the van into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, onto the avenue toward the wall gate. Bennett watched silently as she passed through it and started toward the mountain. He seemed relaxed when she sneaked a glance at him.
“You’re doing well, Clover,” he said.
“I told you, it’s not that hard.” She turned away from the road for just a second, a few miles after the highway turned into a winding road. A heartbeat. Instead of a nod of approval or some other sign that she was doing all right, Bennett stiffened, both hands white-knuckled on the dashboard, and the color drained from his face. Clover looked back to the road and screamed.
A black bear, hulking and unruffled, reared up on his hind legs, twenty-five feet in front of the van, and froze there staring at them as they barreled toward him.
“Oh, God. Oh, God!” Clover put her weight on the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the left. The van skidded past the bear so close Bennett could have petted its coarse dark fur through the window. On the driver’s side, they nearly scraped the sheer cliff side. Clover overcorrected and the tires ground in the rocks inches from the dropoff on Bennett’s side. The brakes locked and they skidded to a stop in the center of the narrow mountain road.
Clover gasped as she yanked at the belt that had tightened across her chest, then fought panic when it wouldn’t loosen at first. Finally it did, and at least she could breathe again. Shaking, she watched through the rearview mirror as the bear climbed into the trees at the top of the ravine.
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