“Everything okay?” Ilana asked. Her face was wide and open, with crinkles around her eyes from her smile.
I didn’t know what I would do if Ilana thought the woods were dumb or boring—definitely not cool. I took a deep breath. “Yep. This way.”
The woods weren’t strictly off-limits, but not many people ventured into them. We didn’t have to go very far before it felt like a new world. The sounds of Firefly Lane faded, and soon it was just our feet cracking twigs, birds calling to one another, and the occasional squirrel trilling out a warning to his family. “Did you have forests in Calliope?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not like this.”
“It’s my favorite place. No one else really understands. They think it’s just dark and damp. But—”
“It’s like we went through an invisible door to another realm. Like in a dream, you know? I had a dream once where I was in these deep dark woods, and it was foggy, but then I broke out into a sunny clearing. There were all these little animals and I could talk to them—you probably think this is really silly.”
“No!” I said. “It’s not silly at all. I have dreams like that, too.”
“I thought you might.”
A smile spread over my face, and I felt as warm as a rock in the sun. “I’m documenting it,” I told her. “I have—well, it’s not done yet, but I’m putting together a book. I draw all the plants and animals I see, and then I write their scientific name and their common name and where I saw it and how much of it there is. That sort of thing.”
“That’s a really great idea,” she said. “You can’t truly understand a place until you study it.”
“I’m not a very good artist, though.”
I bent over and picked up a pinecone, its edges white with sap. Pinecones are a perfect example of the patterns of nature. The spirals of the scales work according to the Fibonacci sequence to create the golden ratio. My mom explained it to me once, carefully numbering all of the scales of a pinecone we’d found. Nature has all these patterns and internal logic. It doesn’t make mistakes.
I tossed the pinecone to her and she caught it. “Smell it,” I said. “I bet you didn’t have that in Calliope.”
“Only from a spray can.” She laughed. “But you know, it still feels familiar. Like I’ve smelled it before. For real.”
“I have a theory about that,” I said. “You know, when something feels familiar even though it’s new to you. I think that means it was meant to be a part of you. Like you and the pinecones—you were meant to be in this part of the world.”
“I like that.”
I showed her all of my favorite places in the forest before leading her to the oak tree that had split and grown so there was a perfect crook for sitting—big enough for both of us, it turned out. “We could have a picnic in this tree,” she said, leaning back and looking up at the sky through the breaks in the leaves. “We could live here.”
“Sometimes,” I confessed, “I come out here and pretend this is a totally separate world. My world. And I think about how I would build a shelter and gather food and all of that. I’ve even thought about building a tree house out here. It wouldn’t just be in the nook of the tree, but around the split trunk so the tree was a part of the house. We could have two little beds and windows all around.”
“Does your world have a name?”
I shook my head.
“Well, if we’re going to build our own realm out here, we should name it,” she said.
“Biologists always use Latin names—like the scientific name is in Latin.”
“Do you know the Latin name for the woods?”
I shook my head. “My name means ‘forest’ in Japanese. But I don’t want to name this place after me.”
“Why not?”
A gray squirrel tossed down a nut, then scampered down the tree trunk. “It just doesn’t seem right to name a place after yourself. That’s what conquerors do. We’re just borrowing this spot for a bit.”
“Okay then, how about this: What kind of a tree is this?” she asked.
“An oak,” I told her.
“And we’re at the edge of the oak, so Oakedge.”
“That’s perfect!” I said, then repeated the name. “Oakedge.”
“Welcome to the Village of Oakedge,” Ilana said. “So, if we are going to move out here, we are going to need a source of food.”
I didn’t know if we were playing a game or if Ilana really wanted to move out into the woods with me, but I didn’t especially care. Just thinking about it made me giddy, and even if it couldn’t really happen, it was nice to imagine a place that grew up out of the natural world, where you wouldn’t need something like a latency because everything and everyone would be perfect just the way it was.
“You want to taste something great?” I hopped down and led her a bit farther into the woods, to a patch of low plants with deep green leaves. “Chew,” I said as I handed her a leaf.
“Mint!” she replied.
I chewed my own leaf, then paused. Normally I was by myself and just spit it out when I was through, but I wasn’t sure I could do that in front of her. But then she spit hers out and said, “What else can we eat?”
So I spit mine out and said, “Sometimes I bring a field guide, but I don’t quite trust myself with the mushrooms or berries.”
“That’s smart,” she said.
Which was nice, instead of being told it was too dangerous to be out here alone or that I was being foolish for even thinking of foraging in the woods for food.
My vision blurred, and I took my glasses off and wiped them.
“Those are some fancy glasses,” she said.
“It’s for an artificial retina. I was born without one, so I’ve got this chip—anyway, they keep getting dirty and blurry.”
“In Oakedge your vision is perfect,” she said. “It’s our world, so we get to make the rules.”
“Yes. Out here my vision is perfect. And I am strong and I can scramble up the trees.”
“And we can fly from limb to limb like flying squirrels.”
“Or swing like monkeys!” I agreed. “Hey, how much of your thirty percent have you used?”
She turned back to me. “Thirty percent of what?”
“Your enhancements?”
Ilana’s gaze shifted away from me to something off in the distance that seemed to be nothing at all. I heard a chipmunk a short distance away, clicking and squeaking about his nuts. A woodpecker drilled into a tree.
“Six percent,” she finally said.
“Lucky,” I told her. “I’m already at twenty-seven. What about your latency? Do you know what you want to do for yours?”
“I haven’t really thought about it yet.”
“Really? I think about it all the time. My mom really wants me to do visual memory, and I will probably do something memory related, just not visual, because, you know.” I tapped my glasses. “But I sometimes like to think I have a musician or an artist hiding inside of me. And other times . . .”
“Yeah?” she prompted.
“Sometimes I think about not getting a latency done at all.” I tasted the words as I tested them out, paid attention to how they sounded and also how they felt. I wasn’t sure I really meant what I said, but it gave me a little rush to say it. Like I really did have a choice in the matter. “What do you think about that?”
“I’m sure my parents will come up with the best choice for me.”
Her voice sounded far away, like she was slip, slip, slipping down a cliff and away from me. I didn’t want that to happen.
“Come on,” I said. She followed right behind me as we made our way up an embankment and through to the oldest part of the forest, where the trees were tall, with thick trunks, and the ground was laden with leaves, pine needles, and broken-off branches. “Here.” We were at the fence. A vine of some sort started at our feet and laced its way up between the chain links.
“What is it?”
“It�
�s our fence. The outside barrier of Old Harmonie.” I’d never brought anyone else out here. Julia would come if I asked her, but she had no interest in the fence or what was beyond. Theo would say I was being dopey again. Benji would only wonder if he could design a better fence, one that changed colors or played music—or turned into a skate ramp.
“What’s out there?” she asked.
“The rest of the world. That way is Boston.”
“Have you ever been?”
“To Boston? No, of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it’s just, you know, it’s so crowded and it floods all the time and so many people are sick. They don’t really take care of themselves so much out there. I mean, I’m sure some of them want to, but they don’t have a lot of resources.”
She stared east. “What do you mean?”
“Well, like they don’t have as much stuff to help with problems or the people who know how to fix things out there.” I actually wasn’t sure what I meant. That’s just one of the things we’d always been told.
She looped her fingers through the fence. “It’s a pretty weak fence,” she said, shaking it back and forth.
“It’s all we need,” I told her. “We all work together here, and keep our eyes open. We keep each other safe.” I wondered if I shouldn’t have brought her out here after all. Maybe she didn’t really understand the strange feeling that came over me when I looked out at the outside world.
“Thanks, Mori,” she said. “Thanks for showing me the woods and the fence. Thanks for letting me into Oakedge.”
“You’re welcome.”
Our hips bumped together as we walked back toward the tree. We climbed up into it, the space just right for the two of us, and we surveyed the world in front of us. All of the smells of the forest came up to meet us, the smells of things growing and alive. I could forget about Theo and his latency and his strange mood swings. I could forget about the choice I would have to make about my own latency. I’d always felt calm out here. Now, standing next to Ilana in the tree, it felt like home.
10
In the morning, I rode toward Julia’s house like I did most summer mornings. She was already over at Theo’s, though. Theo’s house was at the top of the circle of the cul-de-sac, right where the straight road split into two to make the circle, giving him an ever-so-slightly-bigger lot, which afforded an ever-so-slightly-larger driveway. He’d put up two basketball hoops there and called it his mini-court. They were playing one-on-one, and I slowed down to watch Julia sink what, on the small court, was a three-point shot, nothing but net. She saw me and waved. I waved back but didn’t stop riding by on my banana-seat bike.
As if she had expected me, Ilana stepped out her front door as I coasted onto her driveway. “Come on,” I said. “I want you to meet everyone.”
I hadn’t realized that Julia and Theo had followed me, and were waiting out in the middle of Firefly Lane with Benji, who rocked his skateboard back and forth under one foot. For Christmas Benji had received a brand-new skateboard, along with a helmet and pads for his knees, elbows, and wrists. He’d carried that skateboard around all winter and started peppering his speech with old-school skater slang. “That pizza looks totally gnarly, bro.” Julia doubted that anyone, anywhere, ever had spoken like that, and our parents could neither confirm nor deny it.
It took about a million years to walk down her driveway and over to my gang of friends. I pushed my bike between us as we walked. “Are they nice?” she whispered to me.
“Very,” I said. “Most of the time, anyway.”
“Will we let them see Oakedge?”
I peeked at her from the corner of my eyes. “Maybe.”
When we finally came up to them, I said, “Everyone, this is Ilana. Ilana, this is Theo, Benji, and Julia.”
“Wanna play?” It was Theo who asked, his voice lower and more gravelly than usual, as if he had swallowed a handful of pebbles. For a second I thought maybe it was another remnant of his latency, but then he held the basketball on the palms of his hands, offering it to her as a tribute, and I realized it was just Ilana affecting him the way she affected me.
She nodded her head and her dark corkscrew curls shimmered like a waterfall over her shoulders. I twisted my own plain hair around my fingers. When I’d first met her, her hair looked chestnut brown, but now I could see hints of red. Each strand was a different, perfect shade: natural.
My parents said they didn’t like that word, that all children were special whether they were conceived naturally or designed in a lab or some combination, like Theo, but what other word could describe Ilana?
“Welcome,” Benji said. “Firefly Lane is the most fun cul-de-sac in Nashoba. You’re lucky. Cul-de-sac. That’s a funny word, isn’t it? I’ve never really thought about it, but it is a funny word. Three words, actually, I guess.”
Julia pressed her foot on top of his like it was a button to turn him off.
“Like the dog?” Ilana asked.
“What dog?” Benji replied.
“The one on TV,” she said matter-of-factly.
I glanced over at Julia, and she just shrugged.
Ilana smiled. “I think that’s a great name, and I bet you’re right that this is a fantastic cul-de-sac to live on.”
Benji beamed.
“Anyway, I would love to play basketball. I’m pretty decent.”
I thought I saw Julia smirk.
“Well, then,” Theo said. “Why don’t you take Benji and Mori on your side, and Julia and I will team up.”
We started walking back toward Theo’s house. “Ilana moved here from California,” I told them. It felt good to be the one who actually knew Ilana, knew what was going on before everyone else for once. I could even feel my chest puffing up and myself walking taller.
“Right,” she said. “My folks worked at the office out there.”
“How’d you even get here?” Julia asked.
“Plane,” she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if air travel weren’t highly restricted—only people with lots of money and lots of influence could afford it. Her parents must have been way up the ladder at Krita, then—higher, even, than Theo’s mom.
“Right,” I said. “I’ve never been on a plane. Is it nice?”
“I guess,” she said. Then she turned and flashed her smile at me. I would practice and practice for weeks and still couldn’t get my whole face to shine like hers did when she smiled. “They gave me dinner on a tray with a different section for each kind of food. Chicken, potatoes, and carrots. Real carrots. And for dessert there was ice cream with whipped cream, and they put a little toy plane in it so it was like the whipped cream was the fluffy clouds and the plane was us.”
“Big whoop,” Julia said.
“I think it sounds amazing,” Benji said. He was positively beside himself. “You’re really from California? Were there palm trees?”
“A few,” Ilana said.
Benji sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to see a palm tree.”
“You have a palm tree in your living room,” Theo told him.
“A real palm tree,” Benji replied. “One planted and growing in the ground, not a pot.”
“What’s it like there?” I asked. “Is it set up the same way, with villages and a center and everything?” I had heard that the other Kritopias were set up differently.
She hesitated. “Yes.” Another pause. “Sort of. The coastal landscape of California is beautiful, but more wide open than the Eastern Utopia. The villages are situated like links on a chain, divided by walls.”
“Walls?”
“There’s no forest to separate the neighborhoods, so we have walls.”
I looked out over the lush green trees that formed a barrier between Nashoba and the villages on either side. A wall would be so much sadder. “But it’s not the fences that keep us safe. It’s us. Their planners mustn’t have been as good,” I said. “Our planners were the originals, you know?
The ones from Harvard and MIT and all the tech companies around Boston.”
Ilana smiled. “Northern California wasn’t exactly lacking in the brain trust.”
“I would have at least covered the walls in vines. Bamboo, maybe. Then you could cultivate it for fibers.”
“They could have used you out there,” Ilana said.
I grinned.
“Mori’s going to make the world a more beautiful place,” Julia said, looping her arm through mine.
“Oh, yes,” Theo said. “One tree at a time. Did you meet Elma yet?”
“Elma?”
“That’s one of Mori’s trees,” Theo said. He grinned over at me. “She names them.”
Ilana turned to me. “I think that’s lovely.”
I turned to Theo and stuck my tongue out at him.
“Sappy,” he said back.
“Thorny,” I said to him. He pushed his bangs out of his eyes, and it felt like nothing at all had changed in him.
It was a lot of information to take in. Whenever I’d thought about any of our sister Kritopias—Calliope in California, Citroen in Florida, and Wrightsville near Chicago—I’d figured they were maybe a little different, but still beautiful. But here was Ilana telling us the world there was quite different from our own.
Theo still had the basketball, and he started dribbling it as soon as he got onto the court. “We’ll take this side, you guys get that net. No body fouls, have to pass at least once before each basket, no cherry picking—the usual.”
“Got it,” Ilana said. She bent over and tugged up her socks so they reached straight up to her knees. It didn’t make her legs look any less long. I wanted to do something to prepare, too, so I bent over and retied my shoe. When I stood up, the ball was flying at me. I caught it, and immediately stepped forward once, then again.
“Traveling!” Julia yelled.
“I didn’t know we’d started,” I said.
“No worries,” Ilana said. “We’ll get them.”
I threw the ball to Julia, who dribbled to the left, then faked around Benji. Theo was running up the court. She passed to him and he sunk the shot. “Two to nothing,” Julia called out. She passed the ball to Ilana.
The Firefly Code Page 6