“Happy birthday,” Thorne mutters into the air.
11.5 MONTHS BEFORE ESCAPE
I LOVE THE AIR IN THE AFTERNOON, when all the placements are finished and everyone has time to do whatever they want. It’s my favorite part of the day because I get to go to Sara’s after lessons. Kai is home before dinner and Thorne laughs and we’re all together. It’s more like before.
I run there, ready to see them and ready to steal kisses from Thorne. But when I get there today, Sara and Kai are sitting together, whispering back and forth. They both look up at me and stop talking. I shift awkwardly. Ever since Thorne and I started dating officially, it’s been a little weird. I’ve always been part of their family, but it was unspoken. I had a place that didn’t need a definition. I was daughter, sister, friend here. Girlfriend is something else.
“Neely, I’m glad you’re here,” Sara says. She pats the seat beside her, and I sit down. Kai and Sara exchange a look.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Kai plays with the necklace around his neck. Ever since he cut his hair short for Healer training, he does that. “Thorne had his test today. He didn’t make it.”
My heart drops. Thorne’s been looking forward to being a Trader since we were children. As far as jobs go, it’s one of the best ones a person can have-sorting through Old World artifacts for new uses. Thorne’s good with people. He’s organized, stable, calming. He’s everything they look for. How could he fail?
Sara looks older today. I can see the lines deepening under her eyes. “I tried to talk to him, but he said he was fine. You know how he can get,” she says. Thorne rarely retreats, rarely hides, so when he does it’s serious. “I wanted to warn you.”
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Kai says.
I meet his gaze. Sara has no idea about our connection, but Kai does. He discovered it when we were ten and Thorne broke his arm. I screamed like I was the one with the broken arm. Kai made us promise not to tell anyone, and we didn’t because, even though he was only three years older, Kai knew more than we did.
“Where is he?”
“He said he was getting some air,” Kai answers.
Thorne is hidden under the docks, exactly where I expected him to be. We discovered this place when we were little, and we used to come here and watch the fisherboats unload. When we were children, he used to tease me about the fish, say he would toss me in with the catches. I poke my head down, and Thorne sends me a weak smile. I take that as an invitation and lower myself next to him. His hand runs circles in the sand, so I reach out and take it in mine.
The connection pulses through us. He’s tense, but more than that, he’s lost. I’ve never experienced Thorne this way-confused and deflated. I take a breath at the sensation, at the weight he’s carrying around now, at the bleakness. Thorne tries to pull his hand away, but I don’t let him. He’s always there for me; I can be there for him. We need to be there for each other if this is going to work. I inhale and connect to his emotions. They hang between us, like a thread, and I pull them in. He exhales as some of his pain, frustration, and sadness seep into me. The sudden addition of them is a little overwhelming, but I won’t tell him that.
“What do I do?” Thorne asks. His voice is heavy, wary.
I kiss the back of his hand. “I’m sure you’ll find something. You’re good at everything.”
He shakes his head. “That’s you. You’re the one good at everything, so determined to do what you want.”
I sigh. I don’t know about that. The one thing I want is to teach, and my father doesn’t know that yet. Pursuing that is walking away from the director role. And I don’t even think the Elders will allow it.
“If you could spend your days doing anything, what would you do?”
Thorne looks at me for the first time, a wicked smile at the corner of his mouth. I feel his excitement right before his lips press against mine one, two, three times. I have to push him away, but I’m laughing. “Besides that.”
“You weren’t specific,” he says with a laugh. I raise an eyebrow, and he looks back out at the water. “I like the ocean.”
I follow his gaze to the gray boats, three of them loaded with fishermen. They haul nets onto the shore, yell undistinguishable words across the deck. “A fisherman?”
“Why not? Those old men tell good stories.”
“You don’t want to do that.” Thorne is more than a fisherman.
“I would do it,” he says, and I believe him. The tone of his voice, so certain and determined. It’s times like this when I’m reminded why I love him. Thorne is special, amazing, smart. I love teaching, but my fate has already been decided. I’m only delaying it, but Thorne can pick. I don’t want him to settle.
“You said anything,” he adds. I stare off into the distance. Maybe I can talk to my father, see why he thinks Thorne was passed up. Being the director of the Compound has to matter somehow.
“I meant it,” I say. Thorne smiles, but it doesn’t reach across his whole face.
I’ll ask my father tomorrow.
DEADLINE: 19D, 16H, 29M
REMNANT CAMP: EL PASO, TEXAS
TOMORROW WE’RE LEAVING WITH some guy named Len, but this morning I get to watch the sun rise. I shouldn’t be aboveground, but I’ve been under it for too many days. Asleep for too long. I had to go outside, to sneak up here just for a second. Colors dance across the sky, over the outline of hollow buildings lined up like disfigured teeth. Alternating shades of red, pink, orange, yellow. It’s a disarray of perfection and melancholy.
“See that over there?” a child’s voice calls from behind me. I look around and tilt my head to listen. “My brother says that’s the real El Paso.”
I shift on my good leg, lean in on the wooden crutch that Doc gave me, and turn to look for Delilah. I have to search for her face in the trees before I see her blonde curls peeking out from behind them. If not for the curls, I wouldn’t notice her at all as she’s completely masked to blend in with the woods.
“This is the fake one?” I ask her. She walks up behind me. It’s only a second before I feel her fingers on the bottom of my neck, reaching toward my branding.
“Did that hurt?” she asks.
“No. I’ve had it my whole life. It’s just there.”
“What does it mean?”
“Everything.” I look back out over the horizon as Delilah stands beside me. “So that’s not real?
She scrunches up her nose and eyes at me. I can see she wants to tell me by the way her face creases and her mouth opens slightly-and then she clamps it shut. “I can’t tell ya. We don’t do somethin’ for nothin’. It’s against the rules.”
Right. Rules. Survival. I need the info, and I make a decision.
“How about I teach you to read? At least the basics. We only have a day, so we can’t do much, but I can at least teach you how to spell your name. And you can help me learn about Old El Paso and the Remnants. Deal?”
Then she nods. “All the camps are fake, and we’re close enough to the real cities so we can ‘member.” Delilah steps out toward me into the sun. Under the golden rays of morning, her hair practically shines. Her clothes are brown, black, and green-the perfect colors to hide in.
“Do they teach you that in school?”
She looks confused. “What’s school?”
“You know, where you go to learn things. Reading and writing, counting.”
She shakes her head and walks around me, bending toward the ground and picking up dirt. “We don’t have that. We has stories that the others tell. I can count though. I learned that ‘fore.”
“How old are you again?”
“Seven.” She digs in the ground quickly, pulls out a worm, and stuffs it into a small jar she has in her pocket. It wriggles around the bottom.
“And you can’t read anything?” Her shoulders move up in a faint shrug as she slides the container away. “Do you know how to spell your name?”
She shakes her head and
wipes her hands off on a leaf. In our silence, she practically fades into the background. I stare out at the real city. The sun’s beams bounce off the remains, and it almost looks like it’s still glistening, still trying to live.
“I can’t wait to learn.”
And I can’t wait to teach her, to feel like life is normal again.
DEADLINE: 19D, 15H, 58M
REMNANT CAMP: EL PASO, TEXAS
WE START AFTER BREAKFAST. I ask Delilah for some paper, but she doesn’t know what that is, so I explain.
“It’s something you can draw on. What do the kids draw on?”
She brings me a piece of a broken wall and shows me how it works. She uses dried berries-or, at least, that’s what they look like-and scribbles brownish-red lines on the slick piece of plastic. Then she wipes it away like a chalkboard.
“Are there a lot of these?” I ask, pointing to the small, round berry. She nods.
I teach her how to spell her name first. She already knows what it sounds like, how the letters go together to make a word, but not what the letters look like written out. Her eyes follow my hand as it moves around the board making letters. She doesn’t look away until I say the sound of each letter and put them together to form her name.
“That’s my name,” she says, smiling.
I nod and talk through the sounds of the letters with her. Once she remembers them, I move the board so it rests in front of her. Her small fingers graze mine when she moves for the berries.
“Can I try?” she asks. She copies the letters I wrote. Her hand is shaky, but she gets it on the first try and squeals with excitement.
For the next two hours, I teach her names, and then we start on letters. She finds something else I can write on, something more permanent, and I write out the whole alphabet on a flat piece of white wood. I even teach her the Old World song Sara taught me, the same tune I know so well and sing to myself all too often. I don’t know all the words, just a melody and a few lines about holding a hand. Delilah sings it back to me as if she’s known it her entire life. The whole day feels simple.
11 MONTHS BEFORE ESCAPE
IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS THAT MATTER, like when my father leaves me a note. Except today there isn’t one. For the last two months, he hasn’t left anything for me, and I think maybe one day I will stop waiting for them to return. But I do, and I wait for him all day to say a word to me or come home and he doesn’t. I never see him. He’s gone before I’m awake and home long after I’m asleep. If he comes home at all.
I keep hoping that I’ll run into him at home, but I haven’t and I want to talk to him about Thorne.
This morning, I’m going to see him.
The Compound is alive with morning errands, with trips to the grocer, with teens going to placement and kids going to school. I have an hour before my class this morning with the ten-year-olds.
On Tuesdays, Father usually spends his morning on the docks with the fishermen. They give him an account of their needs, the time spent on the ocean, and the catches they make. When I get there, he’s just about to leave. The fishermen are all boarding the boats to head out for the day, and a few of them wave when they see me. I’ve been here a lot this month to visit Thorne. That’s how I know my father is here.
He turns when some of the fishermen call my name, then walks toward me.
“Cornelia, why are you here this morning? Come to work with me?”
I shake my head. “To talk with you actually. Do you have a few minutes?”
Father looks at his watch, his eyebrows furrowed. “A few,” he says.
I expect him to say something else, to reach out and touch my arm like he used to do, but he doesn’t. He barely makes eye contact. His gaze explores the horizon of the beach.
“We really need more security out here,” he says stiffly.
I love the beach for that reason exactly. It’s the one place where the Elders don’t watch us. Where would we go for any sort of freedom in this place?
“Father,” I say. He looks down at me, and there’s a coldness in his eyes that I don’t like. It doesn’t fit him. “Are you all right? I haven’t seen you.”
“I’m fine, Cornelia,” he says. “It’s been busy.”
Father starts walking, and I follow after him, rushing so I can keep up. I should just say why I’m here. He doesn’t seem to be in a good mood.
“I wanted to ask if you knew why Thorne was passed up for Trader. He’s been studying for that position for years. You know that and encouraged him, so I’m confused.”
My father stops suddenly and whips around to look at me. “Is Mr. Bishop complaining about his placement? He chose fisherman, did he not?”
“Only once he failed-”
“And you are here to do what? See if I can overturn the Elders’ decision? I do not question them, Cornelia, and neither should you.”
Since when? “That’s not what I meant.”
“You were very clear in what you meant. The Elders have a reason for everything, and it is not up to us to question or seek understanding in their reasons. It’s up to us to accept them.”
I shake my head. “Are you okay?”
“Perfectly,” he says.
I’ve never heard my father talk that way. He’s always been a believer in the Elders, but he’s never spoken this way of them. With such devotion. “Are you sure?”
“Cornelia,” he says sharply. “If that boy is leading you to question the Elders or myself as your leader and guidance, then perhaps you should reconsider your stance next to him. The Elders do not ignore threats to life or livelihood. I’d hate to see you led astray.”
Tears bite at my eyes. What is going on? This is not my father. He would never talk to me this way. What happened to the father who left me notes and told me stories and laughed so brightly it could fill a room? This can’t be just because he’s tired.
“I believe you have placement in a few minutes,” my father adds. “You shouldn’t be late since you only have a little more time left there.”
And with that he leaves me. I watch him walk up over the beach, and this deep concern settles inside me. Something is happening, and with every instant that passes, I feel more unsure.
DEADLINE: 19D, 13H, 22M
REMNANT CAMP: EL PASO, TEXAS
FOR SOMEONE WHO’S ONLY SEVEN, Delilah is more sure about life than most people I know. Probably even more than I know. There’s something about her that I like. She’s got spunk for someone so young, and that seems to be what keeps the Remnants alive out here. She’s mastered A through I already. She knows how to write them and match them with words or people or things I don’t understand.
A low-sounding, guttural hum rings through the room. I jump up quickly and knock the chair to the floor. Is that a warning? Is someone here in danger? Delilah laughs. The sound is high and melodic. “That’s the lunch bell!”
I slowly follow beside her on my crutch through the darkened tunnels that are lit by torches along the walls. My leg feels better, but she insists I use the crutch until she gets to the letter “N.” I told her she had until dinner, and then I was ditching this thing.
“Real El Paso was one of the first cities destroyed,” she says as we walk. “In the story, it smelled like rotten eggs.”
The same way the Burrows smelled before the fire reached us. If the Elders destroyed the city and it had that scent, then they really did start the fire. But how?
“How do you know that?” I ask.
“I’m li’l. People say a lot of things when I’m ‘round,” she says.
We enter a room full of makeshift tables and seats created from half-broken Old World items and tree trunks. It was never like this at home. We ate meals in our own houses, complete with our own real tables and chairs. The Remnants stand in some semi-formed line carrying trays for food, but it’s not straight and it’s more clumped together. We join on at the back. Delilah stands beside me and slides her hand in mine. It’s so small. Hard to believe we were all
this small once and filled with innocence, warmth, and friendliness.
I feel a sudden wave through my stomach and inspect the line. I find Thorne immediately, only a few people in front of us. He smiles at me, and I smile back. He’s been with Doc all morning while I was with Delilah.
“Do you love him?” Delilah asks me.
I look down at her, and then back at Thorne. “Yes,” I say.
Saying it feels right, but once again I wish I knew what the branding was really doing to us. I can’t imagine my life without how I feel about him. If it’s not real, if it’s all manufactured, then what does that mean for me?
“He should sit with us, then,” she says.
She hands me a tray that’s gray and white. There’s a large crack down the center, and it’s missing a corner. I have to let to go of her hand to take it and balance it with my crutch.
“Out huntin’ today, Delilah?” one of the cooks asks her. The woman is thin with bony, pale arms. Her lips are a straight line, and there’s no life in her eyes. Even her hair seems to be falling out. She puts some food on Delilah’s tray.
“I was trackin’ this morning. Found two rabbits,” Delilah answers with a giggle.
The cook laughs. It’s short and forced, but her face changes a bit. Gets a little rounder at her smile. “Two? That’s more than Miles found. You’ll have to tell ‘im. That boy hates when you beat ‘im!”
Delilah smiles at the woman, and then leads me through the line to the end where my plate of food awaits. I carry a plate and balance on my crutch as we walk toward the back corner of the room. There’s a small, lone table here that’s brimming with people. Too many people for such a small table. One of them is an older man with a crooked hat and a bushy black beard.
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