Another day I said, “I wish we could take a boat down that river.”
And Kai said, “It’s not a river for boating.”
So we knew the river would be shallow and fast.
In this way we learned things without Kai even knowing. We learned, for example, that the river traversed the border with the Republic of Minnesota—territory thick with pirates. We learned that men had tried to find the river for years but had given up, because they thought it was a myth. We learned that water from the river began in secret places where no man could reach, in high mountain crags and deep valleys protected by violent winds.
But we could not convince Kai to tell us the location.
A month passed. Our mother got no better. Our father seemed more tired and haggard than before. The days got shorter but no cooler. Merchants draped yellow, gold, and red banners across their windows to remind us of autumn, but they couldn’t disguise the monochromatic sameness of the earth and sky. The wind blew harder, and no dry shower could remove the grit permanently embedded beneath our nails and stuck in our skin itself.
Each morning I saw Kai at the bus stop when I went to school, and he was waiting there when Will and I returned. He seemed bored and restless but refused to go to school, because he didn’t have to. “They don’t teach you anything there,” he said. “Nothing worth knowing.”
I disagreed. I had learned a lot in school—about butterflies and sand worms; about drainage and absorption; about how water is made of gases that float in the air.
“If you don’t go to school, they’ll send you straight to the army,” I said.
“Will’s going to the army,” Kai countered.
At least Will’s service was only for twelve months. The kids who dropped out of school ended up in the army for years—or worse. Without a job on the outside, or a sponsor, they had nothing to leave for and few reasons for the army to release them.
“Anyway, I have a job. I work for my father,” Kai reminded me.
It had been two months since I met him, and I still hadn’t seen Kai do any work for his father. But he insisted he was there when his father needed him, and I didn’t know enough about the drilling business to recognize if that was just an excuse.
We were walking in the direction of my building, the only ones on the road for miles. In the distance we could see the collapsed facade of a shopping mall: gaping bricks and metal rebar. There weren’t enough people to keep buying things, and most businesses had been shuttered or moved back to the central core. Scavengers had picked over the most valuable materials, and the rest of the building was slowly falling into a heap. That was what it looked like all across Arch—and across the entire republic, as far as I could tell. People gathered in close proximity to one another, and anything unprotected was left to criminals and the elements.
Everything fell apart. That was the only constant.
In nine months I would lose my brother to the army. I couldn’t bear thinking about what would happen once he left home. He promised he would be fine, but I knew boys left all the time and were scarred forever. If anything happened to Will, I didn’t know if I could go on.
And what of Kai?
When I thought of him, I felt a sudden flush creep up my neck. I cast a sidelong glance at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t look anything like the dark and muscular heroes in the romance screens I sometimes read. Besides, I was too young for a boyfriend—that’s what my parents had said—even though plenty of girls my age were pairing up. There was one boy last year who had followed me around, but he was creepy and left me alone when Will threatened to beat him up. With Kai, however, I grew more flustered as we walked farther and didn’t hear when he asked if he could come over.
“If you’d like,” I said after he repeated his question. “My father should be home,” I added, in case he got the wrong idea.
We entered the grounds of our complex, passing the empty guard station and the useless and crumbling concrete barriers. Long ago these buildings had been built for retirees who needed security and extra care. But these days few people lived long enough to retire, and there was no money for their care anyway. The guards disappeared first, followed by the upkeep and maintenance. Now we patched our own walls and prayed that the electric wiring would not fail.