“How are things?” I ask him. I know it’s a loaded question.
“Good,” Kelton says. “I’m breathing. That’s a thing. And it’s good.” There’s a silence that lingers between us, but it means something now. What, I’m not sure.
Kelton’s parents are splitting up. He says it was inevitable. He almost seems relieved. His mom already moved out and took an apartment a few miles away.
“My mom wants me to live with her,” Kelton tells me.
“Do you want to?”
“Well, it’s either that or go with my dad to live with his sister in Idaho.”
“The one with all the cats?”
“Yeah.” He looks off toward his house. I can’t imagine what it must be like staying there now. How could you cook in that kitchen with the memory of what happened there? How could you sit at that table? It makes sense that they’re selling—although I don’t know how much luck they’ll have. Too many homes have FOR SALE signs now.
“My dad got rid of all the guns,” Kelton tells me. “He didn’t sell them—he destroyed them. Every last one. Part of his way of mourning Brady, I guess. I don’t think he’ll touch one for the rest of his life.”
I think to my own brief ballistic history, right after those men attacked us in the woods—how I took Kelton’s pistol, and how I was fully prepared to use it. How I almost did use it to end our lives. I don’t even know what happened to the gun after that. I hope it was destroyed, too.
“Anyway, I’ll stay with my dad until he heads to Idaho,” Kelton tells me. “He kind of needs me more than my mom does right now. It might not look it, but my mom’s the strong one.”
I nod. “I get that.”
We sit down on my lawn, looking across the street at the Kiblers, who are “supervising” their kids as they play maim-the-sibling or some similar game in the street. Kelton and I will be leaving in about twenty minutes, when my dad gets back, because he’s driving us—but knowing him, he’ll be late, what with all the new business. Before the Tap-Out, he was struggling, but now the insurance biz has seen a fresh surge. Suddenly everyone wants disaster insurance. Go figure.
“We’re not making money off of people’s misfortunes,” my father is constantly reminding himself, and us. “We’re protecting people from future misfortunes.”
As we wait on my lawn—which is still brown, and will never be spray-painted green—Kelton turns to me and asks me a question.
“So, like, what are we?” he asks.
I shrug. “Survivors,” I tell him.
“No, I mean what are we to each other?”
“Oh, that.”
This feels like it should be an awkward conversation, and yet it’s not awkward at all—which makes me realize exactly what we are to each other.
“We’re old friends who’ve known each other for, like, a hundred years,” I tell him. “It’s just that ninety-five of them happened in one week.”
Kelton smiles. “I like that.”
But then his smile fades. His eyes seem to be looking far off, past the Kiblers’ feral children. Past our neighborhood entirely. His eyes become moist.
“I killed people, Alyssa. . . .”
I’ve been waiting for him to say something about that. Waiting for two weeks. I’m glad he finally said it, so I can tell him what I’ve wanted to all this time. “You did what you had to do, and that’s all. We all did what we had to do, and that’s the end of it. Besides, the forest burned, Kelton. There’s nothing left, so no one’s ever going to know.”
“But I know.”
“So do I . . . and you know what? I forgive you.” Then I add, “I forgive you for that more than I forgive you for the thing with the drone.”
That makes him smile again. “Your priorities are way out of whack, Miss Morrow.”
I lean over sideways and bump his shoulder. He bumps me back. Then he looks at me for a moment, pondering. Considering.
“Three years from now,” he says, “when you break up with your first college boyfriend, you’ll call me and I’ll stay up all night talking you through it.”
“Possibly,” I admit. And then I say, “Seven years from now, when your first computer start-up company goes belly up, we’ll go out that night. I’ll make you laugh, and keep you from getting too drunk, and convince you to get to work on your second tech start-up.”
“Possibly,” he admits. “And twelve years from now, you’ll call to tell me that you want me to be the godfather to your first kid.”
“Possibly,” I concede. “And twenty years from now, we’ll all go on vacation together, and our spouses, or whatever, will get jealous that we’re spending too much time talking to each other, and they’ll run off together.”
“Possibly,” he concludes. “And thirty years from now, when you’re running for reelection, and I’ve made my third fortune, I’ll take you dancing, and it’ll be all over the tabloids.” And then he adds, “Of course, they’ll be holographic by then.”
I have to laugh. “Of course they will.”
He smiles at me. “And then maybe we can ask again, what we are to each other?”
I hold out my hand to shake. “It’s a date.”
But instead of shaking it, he takes my hand and kisses it, like someone who is actually charming. And I think, Yeah, he might get to charming one of these days.
“Wow,” he says. “I finally have a date with Alyssa Morrow. I can die happy.”
We both laugh, and it feels comfortable. It feels real. And it makes me feel a little sad that we might not get to dance together for thirty years.
Dad pulls up, amazingly, on time.
“You both ready to go?” he asks.
“Never been more ready,” I tell him.
You see, just yesterday when I got home from school, my mom looked at me strangely—which she’s been doing a lot of lately—but this time there was a clear reason. “I just got the oddest call,” Mom said. “There’s this girl at a burn unit way out at Foothill Hospital . . . and the weird thing is . . . she gave your name as her emergency contact. I think they might have the wrong Alyssa Morrow.”
I know for a fact that there are five Alyssa Morrows in California. I know for a fact that they found the right one. And it doesn’t surprise me that Jacqui kicked the fire’s ass.
Kelton opens the car door for me, but trips on the curb as he does—which is perfect. In fact, I’d have it no other way. We get in and set out on our familiar, unfamiliar street and head off into a world where fresh roots are already growing deep in the fertile ruins of what used to be.
Wasn’t it Jacqui who told us the human body is sixty percent water? Well, now I know what the rest is. The rest is dust, the rest is ash, it’s sorrow and it’s grief. . . . But above all that, in spite of all that, binding us together . . . is hope. And joy. And a wellspring of all the things that still might be.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NEAL SHUSTERMAN is the New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty award-winning books for children, teens, and adults, including the Unwind dystology, the Skinjacker trilogy, Downsiders, and Challenger Deep, which won the National Book Award. Scythe, the first book in his Arc of a Scythe series, is a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. He also writes screenplays for motion pictures and television shows. The father of four children, Neal lives in California. Visit him at storyman.com and Facebook.com/NealShusterman.
JARROD SHUSTERMAN is the author of the short story “UnDevoured” in the bestselling UnBound. He writes for film and TV, and recently sold an original TV series to NBC/Universal. His talents extend to directing films and commercials, and he was the story producer on the MTV movie Zedd—Moment of Clarity. Jarrod lives in Los Angeles with his pet wolf, and can be found on Instagram @JarrodShusterman.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Neal-Shusterman
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Jarrod-Shusterman
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New
York
Also by Neal Shusterman
Novels
Bruiser
Challenger Deep
Chasing Forgiveness
The Dark Side of Nowhere
Dissidents
Downsiders
The Eyes of Kid Midas
Full Tilt
The Shadow Club
The Shadow Club Rising
Speeding Bullet
The Arc of a Scythe Trilogy
Scythe
Thunderhead
The Accelerati Series
(with Eric Elfman)
Tesla’s Attic
Edison’s Alley
Hawking’s Hallway
The Antsy Bonano Series
The Schwa Was Here
Antsy Does Time
Ship Out of Luck
The Unwind Dystology
Unwind
UnWholly
UnSouled
UnDivided
UnBound
The Skinjacker Trilogy
Everlost
Everwild
Everfound
The Star Shards Chronicles
Scorpion Shards
Thief of Souls
Shattered Sky
The Dark Fusion Series
Dreadlocks
Red Rider’s Hood
Duckling Ugly
Story Collections
Darkness Creeping
Kid Heroes
MindQuakes
MindStorms
MindTwisters
MindBenders
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Jay Shaw
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Jacket design by Chloë Foglia
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shusterman, Neal, author. | Shusterman, Jarrod, author.
Title: Dry / Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman.
Description: First edition. | New York, New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2018. | Summary: A lengthy California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, turning Alyssa’s quiet suburban street into a war zone, and she is forced to make impossible choices if she and her brother are to survive.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018008928| ISBN 9781481481960 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481481984 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Droughts—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | California—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S55987 Ds 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008928
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