Hungry

by H. A. Swain

  She grabs the railing and leans over so half her body casts a shadow over me. “Don’t you know that they’d do anything to get their hands on me? Anything to denigrate me in the public eye? If they find us, they’ll obliterate everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve. And then what would become of all these people?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I say, taking a step backward and nearly tripping on an ottoman. Part of me wants to reassure her that neither Basil nor I had ever heard of her before we stumbled into the Farm, but somehow I don’t think that’s what she wants to hear.

  “Of course you didn’t,” she scolds with her hands on her hips. “Because you didn’t think about anyone but yourself! Just marched right in here without so much as an invitation and started demanding special treatment.”

  My face burns and I feel sick to my stomach. I gaze at my feet in shame. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I know my parents must be worried, and if there’s any way…”

  Gaia’s face twists as if she’s looking at something repugnant. “You should be sorry,” she tells me hotly. “I’m deeply disappointed. After all I’ve done for you, Twyla!”

  I realize that she means me, but I don’t bother to correct my name.

  “You’ve completely wasted my time.” She stands up tall and narrows her eyes. “Don’t you have someplace you’re supposed to be?”

  I hurry out the front door before she has a chance to yell any more then hobble down the path toward the clearing as I fight back tears and berate myself for being such an idiot. How could I not have seen what a dangerous thing I was proposing! What did I expect? That the Farm would have some underground network that would help me contact my parents without jeopardizing everyone’s safety? Wait. That thought stops me in my tracks. That’s exactly what I imagined. I walk slowly, trying to reason through this. Gaia makes it sounds as if the Farm has no real-time or virtual connections to anyone. No screens. No ties to other corporate resisters. Could we really be that isolated out here? A sickening chill runs down my spine. I look all around me. The green kudzu that seemed so protective before suddenly seems more menacing, as if it could swallow me up, like it did my Gizmo, and I’d never be heard from again.

  * * *

  I don’t meet up with my work squad as I’m supposed to. Instead, I wander the paths around the Farm, looking for the machine shop. After half an hour, I’ve come nearly full circle and am just about to give up when I find a building I’ve never seen. It’s tucked way back in the kudzu behind the hospital. If I’d gone a little farther into the woods when I was dumping the pee bucket, I would have seen it. It’s also made of metal, and judging by the loud banging and clanging coming from inside, I’m pretty sure I’ve found what I’m looking for. I stand staring at it shining in the sun, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation. All this time, Basil was right behind me, but I didn’t even notice.

  I march up to the door and tug, but it won’t budge. This is strange since I’ve only encountered one lock in this whole place. Even the latrine doors swing freely. I try pounding with my fist, but the noises are so loud inside that I’m not surprised when no one answers. I walk around the building, looking for another way in. In the back, I see large windows two feet above my head. Discarded crates are stacked at the side of the building. I grab a couple and carry them to the rear, where I stack them up and climb on top so I can see inside.

  Across one end of the large open workroom, guys in welding masks solder handles onto long metal tubes about the circumference of my thigh and the length of my body. On the other end is a table where workers fit together small, slender objects. One is pointy and the other flared like the spigot on a sprinkler. It looks like they’re building showers. I scan all of the guys, sure that I can find Basil just by the shape of his shoulders and the length of his legs, but it’s hard to distinguish one person from another when half of them are wearing masks and they’re all dressed alike. (If Yaz were here, I would point and say, Hey look, a guy in a brown shirt, and she would laugh. God, I miss her.) I look and look, but I can’t tell which one he is. My heart sinks.

  I wait and watch as welders lift their masks to get a better look at their work before hiding behind the faceplates and firing up their torches again. Dark hair, balding, reddish brown, then finally, the fading blond curls of Basil. He steps back and wipes the sweat from his eyes. I’m so excited that I bang on the window and wave until he looks my way. Startled, he jumps, which makes me smile, but he is clearly not amused. He waves furiously for me to move away from the window.

  “Fine!” I say, even though he can’t hear me, and I stick out my tongue. I haven’t seen him in days and this is how he greets me! As I’m hopping off the crates, a side door flies open and Basil stomps out.

  “Apple! What the hell are you doing sneaking around back here?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking around,” I tell him, annoyed. “I knocked on the door and nobody answered. I saw windows so I climbed up to look.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here!”

  “Nice to see you, too, jerk!” I cross my arms and glare at him, hurt and furious that he’s not excited to see me.

  “Don’t get mad at me.…”

  “I didn’t come here to get mad at you!” I snap. “I was upset and wanted to talk to you, and then you act like I’m committing a crime. Forget it.” I turn and stomp toward the path. “Just forget it!”

  “Apple, wait!” He jogs after me and catches my wrist, but I wriggle away from his grip. “Please,” he says. “I’m sorry. You just surprised me, that’s all. Don’t go.”

  I look over my shoulder and feel myself split in two. Half of me wants to throw my arms around his neck. The other half wants to punch him.

  “What happened? Why did you come? Who upset you?”

  When he asks me this, my anger melts a little, and the half that wants to hug him wins. “Oh Basil,” I whine, trudging toward him with my arms outstretched. “I went to talk to Gaia about contacting my parents and…”

  “What?” He steps away from me. “Why would you do that?”

  My arms fall to my sides. “Because they need to know I’m okay.”

  Basil shakes his head and walks slowly toward a large flat rock beneath a tree as if he’s exhausted. “What did she say?” he asks as he slumps down.

  “She wasn’t happy with me, I can tell you that much.”

  “Not surprising,” he mumbles.

  “That’s not why I’m upset, though.” I perch on the edge of the rock, leaving space between our bodies. “She said there’s no way to contact the outside world from here.”

  Instead of looking appalled like I expected, Basil just shrugs. “Of course not. Think about all Gaia’s done. What she’s built. One World would destroy this place in an instant if they could find it.”

  “It’s not like I asked her to call OW headquarters to speak with Ahimsa. I thought she would have some kind of underground network with the other resistance movements, who could get a message through to my family.”

  “What resistance?” Basil scoffs. “The Dynasuars? The Analogs?”

  “Yeah, remember them?” I say. “Remember what they started in the Loops with our help?”

  He shakes his head. “They don’t have the answer, Apple. Gaia does.”

  “What do you mean, Gaia has the answer? To what?” He looks at me and shakes his head as if I just don’t get it. But I’m not the one in the dark. “Maybe because you’re stuck in this building all day, you don’t see everything that’s going on around here, but I see stuff every day that’s really messed up.” I pop up and begin pacing in front of him. “This dress!” I grab at the fabric and tug. “Is messed up. What’s going on in that hospital”—I motion to the building behind us—“is messed up. The topless women in the pump house are super messed up! In fact, this place is so messed up that I feel like I’m going insane! Cut the vine, collect the vine, haul the vine, process the vine. We eat kudzu. We wear kudzu. We wash with kudzu. I f
reakin’ dream of freakin’ kudzu. A few days of the exact same routine, and I’m ready to run screaming for the Inner Loop again.”

  “Apple…” Basil says with disappointment.

  “Well, it’s true!” I slump down beside him. “Plus, no one is willing to speak up when something bonkers happens. And we’re completely isolated. I can’t reach my family. And I stink!” I pull my dress away from my body and get a whiff of something foul. “But at least you’re building showers in there, right?” I point to the machine shop, trying to lighten the mood, but of course, I’m not even joking.

  “Building what?” He looks bewildered.

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing with the pipes and the spigots? Building showers?”

  “Oh,” he says. “That.”

  We’re both quiet for a moment. The silence between us feels awkward, so I reach out to touch his knee. “I came here to talk to you about us, about our future. My god, I’ve barely even laid eyes on you in days! I’ve missed you so much.”

  I study his face. The work Fiyo did a week ago is beginning to fade slightly. Basil’s eyes are a bit less icy and his skin has grown a shade warmer. His hair isn’t quite as white blond as it was and more of the natural curl is coming back. Plus he’s beginning to sprout a beard like the other men here. I reach out and push his hair away from his eyes. “You’re starting to look more like yourself again.”

  “I feel like this place brings out the real me,” he says proudly.

  I withdraw my hand. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He sighs. “I’m sorry you feel this way, Apple, but think of all the people Gaia’s taken in so they can live freely as humans are supposed to. Don’t you see? It’s a new social order. And we’re lucky to be a part of it.”

  I search his face, looking for the Basil I came here with. “Are you telling me that you’re happy here?”

  “Of course.” He places a hand on mine. “And you should be, too. We’re together.”

  “Hardly,” I sniff. “I never see you.”

  “But nobody’s trying to throw us in jail.”

  “I feel like I’m already in it,” I mutter.

  “Apple,” he admonishes. “How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. The only thing I’m rewarded for is blind obedience to routine, and I don’t get to make any choices for myself. This is not how I want to live.”

  “Apple, please.” He begs me with his eyes. “Please try. I mean it when I say that I’m happy, and the only thing that could make me happier is if you were as content as I am.”

  My shoulders slump beneath the weight of his request. I feel like I’m back in the river flailing around, trying to find Basil, only this time he’s sitting on the shore watching me drown. My chest aches at the thought of losing him to this place. This awful stupid place where somehow he feels at home and I feel imprisoned. “Basil, I…” I start to say, searching for a way to make him understand how I feel. Before I can find the words, the back door of the machine shop opens and a guy sticks his head out.

  “You about done out here?” he calls. “We need your help.”

  “Sorry,” Basil says to me. “I have to go back.”

  “Wait!” I reach for him.

  “It’s going to be okay, Apple.” He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. “You just have to give it some time.”

  * * *

  Two more days and we follow the exact same routine. Girls pee in cups, we have our morning meal, I help with the jabbing parade in the lab, then it’s out to the kudzu for collections. Every day, the farm boys meet up with my squad at the pump. And every day, the girls pair off with them, Enid passes out, and Noam whittles away at the branch that he’s transformed into a little wooden airplane. The hardest part has been not seeing Basil. Reba warned me that she won’t cover for me again if I shirk my shift, and I don’t want any trouble with Gaia.

  Sometimes during the break, I daydream that Basil comes to find me and we go off like the others. Other times I fall asleep in the clearing and dream that we’re back where we found the berries, rolling across the ground, our lips pressed together, our limbs tangled up. Mostly I sit alone, annoyed and frustrated over the predicament I’ve gotten myself into, but today I decide I’m not going to sit here like an idiot anymore. If they’re all sneaking into the woods with boys, so can I. The machine shop can’t be that far. I’ll just pop over, see Basil, and be back before they start working again.

  The fundamental freedom of walking away from my work squad when I feel like it makes me so giddy that I scamper along the path like a naughty kid running away from her parents in a busy EA. Maybe this kind of liberty from routine is why the others head out into the woods every day. That and whatever sexcapades they’re having. I’m not stupid. I know that’s what they mean when they talk about plowing gardens and spreading seeds. But there’s a lot I still don’t understand. Like why they call some girls hatchers and other vessels and what the gifts are that they all go on about.

  As I jog along, looking for a path that will lead me to Basil, I see something flutter a few inches from my head. At first I think it’s just a dry leaf, floating on the breeze, but then it changes direction and glides. Instinctively, I throw my hand up to protect my face, but when the thing zips in front of me, I stop and stare, dumbfounded. A small creature with yellow and white stripes across brown wings lands on a vine curling around an old tree trunk. The flier dances from one cone-shaped purple bud to another. I try to remember from my grandmother’s books what the little flier is called.

  “Hello, flutterby,” I whisper as I slowly and quietly move closer, trying hard to control my breath that has become shaky with excitement. The flier is so intent on the blossom that it doesn’t seem to mind my giant peering eyes.

  I watch it balance on wispy little legs, hinged with knees facing the wrong way. Two long flexible antennae sprout from its head above big black eye patches. Without thinking I reach out to pet its furry body, which scares the thing away. I don’t want to let it go, so I follow it through the kudzu, calling, “Come back! I promise I won’t hurt you!” Maybe this is why everyone puts up with the nonsense of this place. Maybe the privilege of seeing an actual nonhuman creature coexisting in this world is enough to cancel out the drudgery of the Farm. Basil asked me to give this life a chance, but I haven’t really. I’ve been too resentful of the people to truly appreciate the place. I resolve to try harder to like it here because who knows what other wonders I might encounter, but then I trip and land face-first in the kudzu with a loud “Oooooph!”

  “Who’s that!” someone calls.

  I scramble to my feet and see that I’ve fallen over a rock. Ahead of me is a tiny house almost entirely covered in kudzu vines. The only clear spot is the front porch, where an old man sits in a rocking chair. His face is obscured by a great cloud of bristly white hair, bushy eyebrows, and a long unkempt beard.

  “Ella?” the man says, peering at me as I slowly climb to my feet. He closes the book on his lap and scoots to the edge of his chair then pushes himself to stand on creaky knees. “Ella, that you?”

  “Sorry, no, it’s not Ella,” I call out. “I didn’t realize anyone was out here.”

  He glowers at me. “What are you doing on my property? You from the damn farm? That damn woman send you here?”

  “No, well, yes, well, sort of, but no.” I walk slowly toward him. “I mean, I’ve been staying on the Farm, but no one sent me. I saw a flutterby and I was running after it and…”

  “Flutterby?”

  “Yeah, a bug with beautiful wings!” I flap my arms to demonstrate. “It landed on a flower.”

  The man gives a gravelly chuckle. “You mean a butterfly?”

  “Right,” I say, embarrassed. “That’s what it’s called.” Timidly, I climb the steps of his porch and hold out my hand. “My name is Thalia. Thalia Apple.”

  He studies my hand for a second then reaches for me. “Well, at least you have some manners. Not like most
of the cretins who find their way out here.” He gives me a firm shake then says, “My name is Ezra Clemens.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Clemens.”

  He settles himself into his chair again. “So you’re staying over at the damned-fool Farm are you?”

  I bark a loud, unexpected laugh. “Unfortunately, yes, I am.”

  That elicits a half smile from him. “Not so sure the Farm is all it’s cracked up to be, huh?”

  I lean against the porch railing, happy to be talking to someone who seems to share my opinion. “Exactly.”

  He snorts and reaches toward the table beside him for a pipe and a little red pouch with a long gray string wrapped tightly around it. “Hey,” I say. My heart speeds up and my palms get prickly when I point at the pouch. “Where did you get that?”

  “This?” he asks with a shrug and taps the pipe upside down on his thigh. “Someone gave it to me.”

  “But … it’s…” I start to say, then I feel shame creeping over me. It seems so petty and privylike to claim ownership of something out here. Still my face burns because that pouch is mine, and I want it back.

  “What brought you out here then?” Mr. Clemens asks. “Runaway? Sick of the corporate world? Looking for utopia? In trouble with the law?” My mouth drops open at how easily he’s figured me out. He takes a pinch of shriveled brown leaves from the pouch, then packs it in his pipe with his thumb. “I heard it all before.”

  “I didn’t really mean to get this far,” I tell him, watching as he wraps the gray string around the red fabric my grandmother knit. “Now I’m kind of stuck. You don’t happen to have a screen or a network connection do you?”

  He squints at me. “Do I look like I have any of that?”