“No one’s opened it yet?” she demanded.
“I was more interested in Nurse Temple’s laptop,” Caine said. “Why?”
“Be useful, Drake,” Diana ordered. “Break this lock.”
Drake grabbed a letter opener, inserted the blade in the cheap lock, and twisted. The lock broke.
Diana opened the box. “This looks like a will. And, ah, this is interesting, a newspaper clipping about the school bus thing we’ve all heard about. And…here it is.”
She held up a plastic folder protecting an elaborately printed birth certificate. She stared at it and started laughing.
“That’s enough, Diana,” Caine warned. He jumped up and yanked the birth certificate from her hand. He stared, frowning. Then he sat down hard, like he was a marionette and someone had cut his strings.
“November twenty-second,” Diana said, grinning spitefully.
“Coincidence,” Caine said.
“He’s three minutes older than you.”
“It’s a coincidence. We don’t look alike.”
“What’s the word for twins who aren’t identical?” Diana put her finger to her mouth, a parody of deep thought. “Oh yeah, fraternal twins. Same womb, same parents, different eggs.”
Caine looked like he might faint. Drake had never seen him like that. “It’s impossible.”
“Neither of you knows your real father,” Diana said. Now she was playing nice, as close to sympathetic as she ever managed to be. “And how many times have you told me you don’t seem to be anything like your parents, Caine?”
“It makes no sense,” Caine breathed. He reached for Diana’s hand and after a hesitation, she let him take it.
“What are you two talking about?” Drake demanded. He didn’t enjoy being the one person not in on the joke. But they both ignored him.
“It’s in the diary, too,” Diana said. “Nurse Temple. She knew you were a mutant. She suspected you had some kind of impossible power, and she was obviously onto some of the others, as well. She suspected you of causing half a dozen injuries where no one could ever figure out a cause.”
Drake barked a laugh, catching on. “Are you saying Nurse Temple was Caine’s mother?”
Caine’s face blazed in sudden rage. “Shut up, Drake.”
“Two little boys born on November twenty-second,” Diana said. “One stays with his mother. One is taken away, adopted by another family.”
“She was your mother and she gave you up and kept Sam?” Drake said, laughing in his enjoyment of Caine’s humiliation.
Caine swiveled away from Diana and extended his hands, palms out, toward Drake.
“Mistake,” Diana said, though whether she was talking to Drake or Caine wasn’t clear.
Something slammed Drake’s chest. It was like being hit by a truck. He was lifted off his feet and thrown against the wall. He smashed a pair of framed prints and fell in a heap.
He made himself shake it off. He wanted to jump up and go for Caine, finish him quick before the freak could hit him again. But Caine was there, looming over him, face red, teeth bared, looking like a mad dog.
“Remember who’s the boss, Drake,” Caine said, his voice low, guttural, like it was coming from an animal.
Drake nodded, beaten. For now.
“Get up,” Caine ordered. “We have work to do.”
Astrid was on the front porch with Little Pete. It was the best place to get some sun. She sat in the big white wicker rocker with her feet propped up on the railing. Her bare legs were blazing white in the sunshine. She had always been pale and was never the kind of person who obsessed over a tan, but she was feeling the need for sunlight today. Days with Little Pete tended to be spent indoors. And after a couple of days of that, the house was turning into a prison.
She wondered if this was how her mother had felt. Did it explain why her mother had gone from spending her every day and every night devoting herself to Little Pete to finding any excuse she could to dump him on anyone who would take him?
The street Astrid lived on had changed in small ways since the FAYZ. Cars sat and never moved. There was never any traffic. The lawns were all getting shaggy. The flowers that Mr. Massilio two doors down always kept so beautiful were fading, limp from lack of care. Flags were up on a couple of mailboxes, waiting for a mailman who was never coming. There was an open umbrella blowing listlessly down the street, moving an inch or two at a time. A couple of houses away some wild animal, or maybe just a hungry pet, had overturned the garbage can and spilled blackened banana peels and sodden newspapers and chicken bones down the driveway.
Astrid spotted Sam pedaling furiously on his bike. He’d said he would come by to take her to the grocery store and she had been waiting for him with an uncomfortable mix of emotions. She wanted to see him. And she was nervous about it.
The kiss had definitely been a mistake.
Unless it wasn’t.
Sam threw his bike on the lawn and climbed the steps.
“Hi, Sam.” It was clear that he was upset. She lowered her legs and sat forward.
“Anna and Emma just poofed.”
“What?”
“I was standing there. I was watching them. I was holding Anna’s hand when it happened.”
Astrid rose and without really thinking about it wrapped her arms around Sam like she did when she was trying to comfort Little Pete.
But unlike Little Pete, Sam responded to her touch by awkwardly hugging her back. For a moment his face was in her hair and she heard his ragged breathing close to her ear. And it seemed like they might do it again, the kissing thing, but then, both at once, they pushed away.
“She was scared,” Sam said. “Anna, I mean. She saw Emma disappear. They were born just six minutes apart. So, first Emma. Then Anna, waiting for it. Knowing it was coming.”
“How horrible. Sam, come inside.” She glanced at her brother. He was playing his game, as usual.
Astrid led Sam to the kitchen and poured him a glass of water. He drank half of it in a single gulp.
“I have five days,” Sam fretted. “Five. Days. Not even a week.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Don’t, okay? Just don’t. Don’t tell me some story about how it’s all going to be fine. It’s not going to be fine.”
“Okay,” Astrid said. “You’re right. Somehow, age fifteen is this line, and when you reach it, you poof out.”
That confirmation seemed to calm him down. He had just needed to have the truth set out clearly without evasions. It occurred to Astrid that this was a way she could help Sam, not just now, but in the future. If they had a future.
“I was avoiding it. Not thinking about it. I’d kind of convinced myself it wasn’t going to happen.” He managed a wry grin, mostly, it seemed, for her benefit. He could see his own fear reflected in her and now he was trying to tamp it down. “On the plus side, it means I don’t have to worry about how depressing it’s going to be having Thanksgiving here in the FAYZ.”
“There may be a way to beat it,” Astrid said cautiously.
He looked at her hopefully, like maybe she had an answer. She shook her head, so he said, “No one’s even looking for a way out of the FAYZ. There may be a way to escape. For all we know, there’s a big, wide-open gate in the barrier. Maybe out to sea. Maybe out in the desert or up in the national park. No one has even looked.”
Astrid resisted the urge to label that sentiment as “grasping at straws.”
Instead, she said, “If there was a way out there would be a way in. And the whole world must know what’s happened. Perdido Beach, the power plant, the highway suddenly blocked—it’s not like the world hasn’t noticed. And they have more people and more resources than we do. They must have half the scientists in the world working on it. But here we are still.”
“I know. I know all that.” He was calmer now and sat on one of the barstools that lined the kitchen counter. He ran one hand over the smooth granite surface as if appreciating the
coolness of the stone. “I’ve been thinking, Astrid. What about an egg?”
“Um. I’m out of eggs.”
“No, I mean, think about an egg. The baby chicken pokes his way out of the egg, right? But if you try to break into the egg, it all comes apart.” He did a crumbling thing with his fingertips to illustrate. When she didn’t respond, he slumped and said, “It made perfect sense when I was thinking about it.”
“Actually, it does make a certain amount of sense,” she said.
He was clearly taken aback. His eyes twinkled in a way she liked, and he smiled lopsidedly. “You sound surprised,” he said.
“I am, a little. It may turn out to be an apt analogy.”
“You’re only saying ‘apt analogy’ to remind me you’re smarter than I am,” he teased.
Their eyes locked. Then both looked away, both smiling with embarrassment.
“I’m not sorry, you know,” he said. “I mean, wrong time, wrong place, and all, but I’m still not sorry.”
“You mean…”
“Yeah.”
“No, me neither,” Astrid said. “Um, it was my first time. You know, if you don’t count when I kissed Alfredo Slavin in first grade.”
“First time?”
“Well. Yeah. You?”
He shook his head and winced regretfully. Then he said, “But it was the first time I meant it.”
A comfortable silence fell between them.
Then Astrid said, “Sam, the eggshell thing: what you’re saying is that if people outside try to penetrate the barrier wall, it might be dangerous to us. And the people outside might have figured that out. It may be that only we can safely break the barrier and emerge. Maybe the whole world is waiting, watching, hoping we’ll figure out how to hatch.” She opened the cabinet above her and produced a half-empty bag of cookies. She put them on the counter and took one for herself. “It’s a good theory, but you realize it’s still not likely.”
“I know. But I don’t want to just sit here and wait for the clock to tick down if there’s a way out of the FAYZ.”
“What is it you want to do?”
He shrugged. He had a way of doing that in a way that didn’t express doubt or uncertainty but was more like a person sloughing off a heavy burden, freeing himself up to act. “I want to start by following the barrier and seeing if there just happens to be some big gate. Maybe you walk through that gate and everyone’s there, you know? My mom, your parents. Anna and Emma.”
“Teachers,” Astrid supplied.
“Don’t ruin a happy picture,” Sam said.
“What happens if you do find a gate, Sam? You go through it? What happens to all the kids still in the FAYZ?”
“They get out, too.”
“You won’t know for sure it’s a gate unless you go through it. And once you do, there may not be a way back in.”
“Astrid, in five days I vacate. I poof. I dig a hole.”
“You have to think about yourself,” Astrid said without inflection.
Sam looked stricken. “I don’t think it’s fair to—”
Whatever he had been about to say was lost because at that moment there were two noises in rapid succession. The first was a thump coming from outside. The second was Little Pete’s screech.
Astrid ran for the door, burst through, and found Little Pete curled into a ball, shivering, howling, ready to launch a full-scale breakdown.
There was a rock on the plank floor beside him.
And standing on the sidewalk, laughing, were Panda, a Coates kid named Chris, and Quinn. Panda and Chris held baseball bats. Chris was also carrying a white trash bag. Inside the bag, just visible, was the logo of a new model game player.
“Did you throw a rock at my brother?” Astrid yelled, fearless in her outrage. She dropped to her knees beside Little Pete.
Sam was halfway across the lawn, moving with a purposeful stride.
“What did you do, Panda?”
“He was ignoring me,” Panda said.
“Panda was just goofing, Sam,” Quinn said. He stepped between Sam and Panda.
“Throwing a rock at a defenseless little kid is just goofing?” Sam demanded. “And what are you doing hanging with this creep, anyway?”
“Who you calling a creep?” Panda demanded. He took a tighter grip on his baseball bat, but not really like he meant to start swinging.
“Who do I call a creep? Anyone who throws a rock at a little kid,” Sam said, not backing down.
Quinn raised his hands, playing the peacemaker. “Look, take a breath, brah. We were just on a little mission for Mother Mary. She drafted Panda and sent him to look for some little kid’s stuffed bear, okay? We were doing a good thing.”
“Doing good and stealing someone’s stuff?” Sam pointed at the trash bag in Chris’s grip. “And on the way back, you figured you’d throw a rock and hit an autistic kid?”
“Hey, step off,” Quinn said. “We’re bringing the game to Mary so she has something for the kids to do.”
Little Pete was screaming in Astrid’s ear now, so she couldn’t hear everything that was said, just snatches of angry words between an increasingly huffy Quinn and a coldly furious Sam.
Then Sam spun on his heel and stalked back toward her and Quinn gave him the finger behind his back and sauntered off down the street with Panda and the Coates kid.
Sam threw himself violently into a porch chair. For the ten minutes it took Astrid to soothe her little brother and redirect him to his video game, Sam just seethed.
“He’s becoming useless. Worse than useless,” Sam said. Then, relenting, he said, “We’ll get past it.”
“You mean you and Quinn?”
“Yeah.”
Astrid considered just keeping her mouth shut, not pushing it. But this was a talk she needed to have with Sam sooner or later. “I don’t think he’s going to get over it.”
“You don’t know him that well.”
“He’s jealous of you.”
“Well, of course I am so terribly handsome,” Sam said, straining to make a joke of it.
“He’s one kind of person, you’re another. When life is going along normally, you’re sort of the same. But when life turns strange and scary, when there’s a crisis, suddenly you’re completely different people. It’s not Quinn’s fault, really, but he’s not brave. He’s not strong. You are.”
“You still want me to be the big hero.”
“I want you to be who you are.” She remained beside Little Pete but reached out to take Sam’s hand. “Sam, things are going to get worse. Right now everyone is kind of in a state of shock. They’re scared. But they haven’t even realized how scared they should be. Sooner or later the food supply runs out. Sooner or later the power plant fails. When we’re sitting in the dark, hungry, despairing, who’s going to be in charge? Caine? Orc? Drake?”
“Well,” he said dryly, “you make it all sound like a lot of fun.”
“Okay, I’ll stop nagging you,” Astrid said, sensing that she needed to back off. She was asking the impossible of this boy she barely knew. But she knew it was the right thing to do.
She believed in him. She knew he had a destiny.
She wondered why. It wasn’t logical, really. She didn’t believe in destiny. All her life Astrid had relied on her brain, on her grasp of facts. Now some part of her she barely knew existed, some buried, neglected part of her mind was urging her on—no good reasons, just an instinct that kept pushing her to push him.
But she was sure.
Sure.
Astrid turned her face toward Little Pete so that Sam wouldn’t see the frown of worry on her face, but she didn’t release his hand.
She was sure. Like she was answering two plus two. That sure.
She let go of his hand. She took a deep, shaky breath. And now she was not sure at all. Her frown deepened. “Let’s go get the groceries,” Astrid said.
He was elsewhere, preoccupied, so he didn’t notice the way Astrid stared at her own hands, f
ace screwed up in concentration. She wiped her palms on her shorts.
“Yeah,” he said. “Better go while we still can.”
TWENTY-ONE
129 HOURS, 34 MINUTES
“SHOW ME YOUR list,” Howard demanded. He was outside the front door of Ralph’s grocery, seated in a lawn chair, with his feet propped up on a second chair. He had a small combo TV/DVD playing Spider-Man 3. He barely looked up as they approached.
“I don’t have a list,” Astrid said.
Howard shrugged. “You need a list. No one goes in without a list.”
Sam said, “Okay, do you have a piece of paper and a pencil?”
“It just so happens I do, Sam,” Howard said. He fished a small spiral notebook from the pocket of an ill-fitting leather jacket and handed it to Astrid.
She wrote and handed it to Howard.
“You can have all the fresh stuff, like produce, that you want. It’s all going to go bad. Ice cream is mostly gone, but there might be some Popsicles.” He glanced at Little Pete. “You like the Popsicles, Pe-tard?”
“Get on with it,” Sam said.
“If you want canned stuff or, like, pasta or whatever, you have to get special permission from Caine or one of the sheriffs.”
“What are you talking about?” Astrid demanded.
“I’m talking about you can have lettuce and eggs and deli and milk because that’s all going to expire soon, but we’re saving up the stuff like canned soup or whatever that won’t spoil.”
Astrid admitted, “Okay, that makes sense, I guess.”
“Likewise paper products. Everyone gets one roll of toilet paper. So make it last.” He glanced at the list again. “Tampons? What size?”
“Shut up,” Sam said.
Howard laughed. “Go ahead on in. But I’ll check everything on the way out, and if it’s not okay, I’ll make you put it back.”
The store was a mess. Before Caine had posted a guard, it had been looted of almost all the snack foods. And the kids who had looted had not been neat or careful. There were broken jars of mayonnaise, displays turned over, shattered glass from smashed freezer doors.
There were flies everywhere. The place had begun to smell like garbage. Some of the overhead lights had burned out, leaving pockets of gloom. Brightly colored posters still hung over their heads touting specials and price reductions.