by Nick Courage
Tom sighs with annoyance, loud enough for us to hear over the din.
“I’m sure his cooking isn’t that much better than yours,” Conor says distractedly, eyes still hungrily locked on the promise of another, better breakfast. Tom scowls with exasperation, but it’s lost on Conor, who’s already pushing himself to the front of the line. I make to follow, but Tom wraps his arm around my shoulder and surreptitiously leads me to the door.
I look longingly backward as Tom toes open the chipped green screen and nudges me outside, briefly locking eyes with Freckles, who shrugs apologetically and hurries after Conor. We’re out before anyone else realizes we’re gone, Tom gingerly shutting the door behind us and gesturing for me to follow as he slides into a tiny passageway between Food Eats and a tall, overgrown fence.
We work our way down the side of the building without a word, grime from the soft wooden siding rubbing off on our fronts while claws from the vine that’s claimed the fence rake our arms and pull our shirts. I can hear everyone inside, but indistinctly, and the further back we go, the quieter it gets. It’s a tough squeeze, and because the narrow alley is littered with half-bricks and broken glass, I have to concentrate on each careful step.
Combined with tentative birdsong and the reassuring smell of wet soil, it’s strangely calming—meditative, even. I focus on a patch of moss sprinkled with tiny white flowers; a fat snail stuck resolutely to the wall. If it wasn’t for the scent of frying butter seeping cruelly through exhaust panels mounted high on the side of Food Eats, it’d almost be like we were completely alone.
Tom must feel the same way, because he suddenly stops, leaning his back against the fence and wedging his right knee up against Food Eats. We contemplate our dirty, scratched arms for a moment before Tom sighs again, then half-heartedly punches the wall. It’s more of a resigned knock, really, but it must have hurt, because he shakes his fist with a wince almost as soon as he connects.
“What’s up?” I ask, my voice hushed to match our surroundings. “What happened?”
Tom lets himself slide down the fence an inch or so before he turns to face me. He looks tired, like he doesn’t really want to tell me what he brought me out here to tell me. But he does, with effort.
“How well do you know your grandmother?” he asks, not whispering. The question sounds overly loud, and it hangs in the air for a moment before it fully registers.
“Uh,” I stammer, not knowing what to say. “She’s my grandmother.” Tom winces again. “What’s going on, Tom?”
“The meeting last night . . . it was terrible. No solutions. We talked about fortifying, about fighting. But it’s obvious we don’t have an army or anything like that.”
It feels ridiculous to be hearing words like army while we’re wedged in a dirty alley, alone. For the first time since I’ve known him, Tom looks young and scared . . . dwarfed by the towering strangeness of our predicament. It makes me wonder how young and scared I must look; suddenly anxious, I clutch my chest in anticipation of a spike.
Tom, oblivious, goes on. “It was pathetic. She wanted to fight, but most of us . . . We’re all here because we’re running away from something. I can’t afford to get in trouble with the government, Hank. No one can. I think she realized that and . . .” He turns to me and points at my chest. “You okay?”
I nod, half lying. My heart isn’t doing anything weird, but I feel like it should be—and that worries me. It’s hard to put my finger on, but there’s a disconnect. Like I’m watching myself not having a problem in this quiet, non-threatening alleyway . . . and I definitely should be having a problem. Honestly, I should be freaking out. The fact that I’m not makes me feel like I should be freaking out even more.
“Hank,” Tom says, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think she’s going to try to turn everyone in.”
Normally, this would have tipped me over the edge, but—staring past Tom into the jungle of the backyard—I lose my train of thought. The morning cool has given way to the dead heat of the day, but it’s comfortable where we are, enveloped by woody vines and shaded from the unforgiving sun. Still, the silence is oppressive, and I know I should say something, so I do my best to pull myself back into the moment.
“She wants to fight,” I say, knowing as I say it that while Grammy may have wanted us to fight last night, she doesn’t now. Last night she was cornered, but today she seems to have collateral. It sounds awful, but Grammy’s always been a business lady, a mover and a shaker. If it means trading a few outcasts for my parents and for the Green, I know Grammy is fully capable of turning in the Other Siders.
She could probably even do it with a smile.
“She knows they’ll take the deal, too,” Tom says, ignoring my admittedly hollow protest. “She knows it. The feds don’t want wilderness, not really. They want order.” He’s whispering, talking more to himself than to me, but after a moment of reflection he lets loose a bitter, barking laugh.
“They don’t want to wipe us out. They want to lock us up.”
I’d like to say the sun was eclipsed by gathering clouds that cast the eerily quiet Other Side in a grim pallor; that, confronted with Tom’s suspicions about Grammy, I lost my appetite.
But, of course, I can’t.
The alley is thick with the smell of buttermilk and barley flour, and the sun is just as bright as it was before.
Before . . .
My stomach growls, a long, unhappy meow that carries surprisingly well in the stifling heat of the alley. I feel flat, deflated by what Tom said, but he literally shakes the concern from his head and claps me on the shoulder with a smile.
“Breakfast?”
I check his face for remnants of worry: frown lines around an otherwise ever-present smile, or sweaty creases in his grease-streaked brow. But there’s nothing; only kind, tired eyes. Two dancing bees alight on a vine behind him, and I suddenly, guiltily, crave honey.
Grammy, I think, stomach growling again despite my clenching gut. How could you sell these people out?
We trudge back to the front of the restaurant, picking our way around fallen branches and stubborn puddles, reminders of the storm. Food Eats is still in full swing, so boisterous compared to the quiet alley outside that my first instinct is to cover my ears. The scent of fresh pancakes hits me just as hard as the noise, though, and a syrupy wave of wellbeing washes through me, smoothing out the cacophony of the room.
Everyone’s here.
Mrs. Wallace is nodding intently at the skinnier engineer, smiling; Conor’s assiduously working on what must be his third plate of pancakes; and Freckles, bugging her eyes at me, is trying to catch my attention.
I pretend not to notice.
Instead, it’s a throaty, sarcastic laugh that I’m drawn to. I only half recognize it at first. When I finally spot Grammy—shaking her head appreciatively, reddish-brown lipstick lining her white mug of coffee—everything seems to fall away from her.
Or, I wish it would—but Food Eats continues to bustle despite my sudden, unexpected need to be alone with her. Freckles is still staring intently at me, sending all caps communiqués via eyebrows; Conor is still shoveling butter-drowned pancakes into his mouth. And Grammy, finally caffeinated, breaks out into another fit of laughter in the corner. She laughs the same way Mom does, loud and unselfconsciously, with her whole body. I want to run to her, to hug her around the stomach and feel the warmth from her arm as it drapes protectively over me.
It would be so easy to just let her fix everything, to believe that she could get Mom back.
I take a tentative step forward, restrained only by a half-memory of the helpless inchworm she sent down the drain; by growing pains and what they might mean for the Green Zone and everyone on the Other Side. For Mouse. I can’t even imagine what growing pains might mean for her. An errant shiver runs up my spine to the base of my skull, where it ends in an unconscious gag. Grammy owns this place; she made that pretty clear last night. She owns this place, and she’s act
ing like she owns these people. She owns the food they’re eating, and she owns . . .
Grammy notices me, frozen in the doorway, and waves me over, spans of hammered gold bracelets catching the light as she smiles encouragingly before turning back to her conversation, graceful hand still lingering in the air. My heart sinks as I realize, without a doubt, that Tom is right about her. She’s too calm and too self-assured for someone under siege. For someone bruised, with a daughter under federale lock and key.
Why won’t you fight? I want to yell, to shake her. To convince Grammy that there must be another way to win back the Green. But that’s not her style . . . and I have to grudgingly admit, unclenching my fists, that it’s not my style, either. Instead, I ignore my growling stomach and burst back out into the sunlight, tripping over my still-hesitant feet at first and then picking up my legs and sprinting down the street.
Leaving everyone behind.
My heart’s beating double time in my ears, filling my head, and I don’t want to look over my shoulder to check if anyone’s following me. I take a deep breath, feel my lungs fill and expand, and count halfway to ten before my nerves win out and I sneak a peek behind me.
There’s nothing except blue skies and a dusty, uncomfortable calm. I exhale a grateful, ragged breath. No one is following me. There’s also nobody in front of me; the entire Zone is either holed up at Foods or hiding behind shuttered windows and hastily barricaded doors. Either that, or they’ve escaped the Zone entirely, like Dr. Singh said she wished she could do back at the Library.
Last night. That was just last night . . .
Remembering the terror and tumult of yesterday, I make a quick, nervous turn toward Tom and Rachel’s rickety house, saying a silent thanks for streets devoid of black federale sedans. Wishing hopelessly that I could just hide out in the Library attic until this whole situation just took care of itself. Until it’s over, I think, not wanting to think about what “over” might mean. Better to wait for Tom and Rachel at their house . . . they’ll have a plan. And if they don’t, Mom and Dad will. All we have to do is get them out and they’ll take everything back to the way it was.
Everything will be fine.
I jump up their porch stairs and, breathless, pull open the peeling front door. Unless something happens, something terrible, and Tom and Rachel don’t come home. I shake my head, trying to physically shake off the doubt and negativity that’s set in.
It doesn’t work.
I just feel my brain sloshing from side to side, hear my heartbeat amplified inside my skull, as I shut the door behind me. It’s slightly warped and doesn’t fit the frame, so I jiggle and force it closed. The door remains stubbornly ajar, and I try shaking my head again to calm my nerves.
“Hello?” a female voice calls.
Mid-shake, I don’t hear the voice well enough to recognize it. Flattening myself against their atypically white wall, I quietly curse Tom and Rachel for not having a door that locks.
“Hank?”
It can’t be, but it sounds like . . .
“Mom?” I croak.
The shades are drawn and the hallway is mostly shadows, and I whisper out of deference to the darkness. My voice, small and hopeful, barely makes it through my dry lips. When it does, it sounds as if it’s coming from a distance, like it belongs to someone else. Someone tired and hungry.
Someone alone.
Hot tears roll down my hot cheeks without bidding, and I call out again, louder, but I can barely hear myself over the fuzz that’s filling my head. Frustrated, I call again, even louder. But it’s no use, I realize, collapsing.
It’s happening again.
I wake up disoriented, blinking cool water out of my eyes—registering first a jagged pulsing between my temples and then, uncomfortably, the warmth of a lap beneath my throbbing head. I push down on my eyes with the heels of my palms and, seeing stars, wipe them dry.
Staring down at me, smiling and holding a dripping hand towel, is Rachel. Her hair is pulled back into small, wet fist of a ponytail, and she smells faintly of green tea. I scrunch my nose, squinting, and prop myself up on my elbows.
“You changed,” I say, wincing at the cracks in my voice. Rachel stands up, laughing, and tosses the wet hand towel at me. Instead of the paint-flecked tuxedo dress she’d been living in for the past few days, she’s wearing jeans and a crisp V-neck.
“Yeah,” she says, pointing dismissively to something behind me. “I finished.”
Propped against an unstable pyramid of over-stuffed milk crates is her self-portrait. It’s glossier than it was this morning, and seems to be radiating out beyond the canvas and illuminating the dusty room. If I didn’t already know it was made of a million little dots I never would’ve—
“It’s so different from the others,” I say after a moment, my voice steadier than before. The rest of her paintings look like cartoons next to the new one, afterthoughts. Rachel looks around the room with me, eyes moving from pink-skinned portrait to green-skinned portrait, all bright, unmixed palettes and bugging eyes.
“Last one for a while,” she mumbles, dropping a plate of stiff-looking pita and white cheese in front of me and wiping her hands on her jeans. “We usually eat at Foods,” she shrugs, apologetic. “This is all we got.” The pita is crunchy and the cheese is hard, but it will do. I chew a hunk of it into mush and swallow, then reach for more. After a few helpings, I feel less shaky, and the buzz behind my eyes seems to have receded.
“Mind if I have some?” Rachel asks, reaching for a slice of cheese and popping it into her mouth.
“You don’t change clothes until you finish?”
She smiles, still chewing on the rubbery cheese. After a few long seconds, she spits it into her hand instead of swallowing. “I didn’t realize how bad this was,” she laughs, rubbing her tongue with her shirt sleeve to get the taste out. Unfazed, I reach for another piece. It feels good to finally be eating. I could chew harder bread and more rubbery cheese. Rachel gags and laughs, looking for somewhere to put the cheese she wasn’t able to swallow. She folds it into a page ripped from an old magazine and wipes her hands on her jeans.
“Doesn’t usually take me that long,” she says, nodding back at the painting. “But I wanted to make this one count, you know?”
“Because it’s the last one?”
Rachel shrugs, then heads back into the dusty piles of yellowed books and records from before, clearly looking for something. I reach for another chunk of cheese and cringe as one of the stacks crashes around her legs.
“It’s safe out there,” she says, rooting haphazardly through a mountain of clothes. “You know that, right? All the federales are off at the dam. I rode out there this morning. They have that thing on full blast, just watching it go.”
That explains it, the fainting.
“Everyone’s still holed up,” I say. “Scared.”
“Think fast.”
Rachel tosses something from a clothes pile at me, and a zipper hits me in the side of the head. Laughing, my hands still full of pita and cheese, I let it slide to the floor, where it joins the rest of the clutter.
“If they’re really trying to flood us out, they’re going to figure out that they’re wasting their time pretty soon. Then they’ll be back.”
I inspect the heavy black canvas between my feet, not smiling anymore. It’s a duffel bag, a big one.
“I know,” she says, her voice soft and sympathetic. “I don’t think we have much time.”
Just then the front door blasts open and we both flinch, Rachel dropping to the floor. I’m frozen, my heart plummeting to my ankles. Too late. The sun is behind whoever’s in the doorway, so I can’t make them out. It looks like two, maybe three shadows rimmed in sunlight, inching their way into the room.
Military.
A floorboard creaks, but otherwise the room is silent.
“Hey . . . guys?”
I recognize the voice, but—still stunned by the initial terror at being found—can’t
make myself answer.
“You here?” one of the shadows shouts as another shadow slams the creaky door shut behind them. It bounces back open an inch or two, still too warped to fit the frame, but blocks the sun anyway. Standing nervously in the hallway are Conor and Freckles. Before I’ve had a chance to find my voice, Rachel jumps up from the floor as if nothing happened, wiping the dust from her hands on increasingly dirty jeans.
“Definitely could’ve been them,” she says, even though she just finished telling me that all the federales were down at the dam. That there was nothing to worry about. “Wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“Could’ve been who?” Conor asks as he falls next to me on a pile of clothes, instantly relaxed. Freckles, still standing, helps herself to a hunk of cheese.
“Been looking for you,” she says, slowly chewing and then making a face. “Tom said you might be here.”
Conor, burping, nods toward the duffel. “What’s with that?”
I shrug and look toward Rachel; he and Freckles follow suit. But Rachel, unaware, is back to ripping through piles of clothes, looking for something.
“You guys didn’t see any federale cars or anything on the way over here, did you?” I ask, almost hoping that they had, that they could disprove Rachel’s theory about the dam. But Conor just shakes his head as Freckles squints at me inquisitively.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Me neither.”
Rachel, having found what she was looking for, frantically starts making new piles of clothes. The ordered chaos of the house seems less ordered than before; most of the previously precarious stacks of books and records have collapsed, and she looks like a salvage worker in a disaster area.
“She says they’re all at the dam, the federales, trying to flood the Zone . . . but they’re actually doing the opposite. The engineers bought us some time,” I say, silently thanking Guv while fingering the zipper on the black duffel. “I have a feeling the idea is to get out of here before they get back?”