I made my way to Will. He stopped playing to chat with me. This earned me admiring stares from some of the boys and glares from the girls. Will asked if I wanted to race against him, but I knew better than to compete with him at his best event. Instead I suggested he race Kai.
The boys chose their cars. Kai picked a lime-green electric coupe, while Will chose a velvet-blue hydro racer. The cars were steered by two hand paddles; speed was controlled by a foot pedal. Another pedal shifted gears. The course Will selected was an arctic tundra populated by polar bears and baby seals—animals that had once lived where the ground was still frozen. The gun sounded, and Will flew over the landscape, his racer dodging snowdrifts and navigating sub-zero waterways. Kai slipped and skidded on the curvy road, crashing several times into icy mountainsides. Once he went straight through a colony of seals, losing thousands of points for each seal he hit.
But Will and Kai hooted loudly as if they were engaged in a neck-and-neck race instead of a blowout. Their excitement spread to the small crowd of teens who had gathered around them. The girls, who had figured out Will was my brother, wanted to know where we lived and what classes we took. The boys shouted advice to Kai, giving him tips on how to avoid the treacherous roads and packs of bears who tried to ambush him. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was more fun than we’d had in a long time. It didn’t matter that it was just a game—and not even a very good one. Playing together, being there with Kai and my brother and a group of kids I could imagine were friends, made me forget that our mother lay sick in her bed, dreadfully, inexplicably sick. The narcotic of the game worked its magic, and we were drawn inside.
The cars raced toward the finish line. Over and under, around and through. Will was unbeatable and unstoppable, and I was proud to be his sister.
Then I had an uncomfortable sensation, a prickling at the back of my neck, as if someone were watching me. From the corner of my eye, I saw the two men in the blue shirts staring at us, heads angled low, gazes slanted in our direction. They seemed unnaturally interested, with eyes for no one else in the room.
But when I turned, the men were gone, and I wondered whether I had seen them at all.
CHAPTER 5
The next afternoon Kai wi-texted me to see if I wanted to go scavenging. In the short hills behind his apartment were the remains of an old mill. It had been abandoned in the Great Panic, before we were born. The factory was now a decaying agglomeration of empty buildings, busted silos, and broken-down trucks. Lizards and snakes coiled in the ruins. Our father had warned us never to go there—he claimed there were diseases and dangers—but Kai said it was safe.
It was Sunday, and Will was at water mission class. This summer he would have to spend a month bringing water to less fortunate towns. It didn’t matter that we barely had enough water ourselves; the government ordered public service, and there was little choice but to obey. Will said it was just an excuse to get free labor, but even he didn’t dare risk defiance. There were “education camps” where they took people who objected and taught them social responsibility. The “lessons” left them damaged and disfigured.
I rode my pedicycle to Kai’s complex and locked it outside the front gate. Kai was waiting at the end of the drive. He smiled with one side of his mouth when he saw me and gave a small wave with his hand. Whenever I saw him standing like that, face poised in careful expectation, my heart went out to him. There was something cautious, something held back, in his smile. Drillers trusted no one, and their children learned to be wary and shrewd.
Kai led me through the scraggly cactus-like plants that survived for months without water. He didn’t say much, so I kept all the questions to myself. The hills were gradual and gentle, but I soon tired of walking uphill. We stopped for a few minutes, and he gave me a sealed bottle of water that was sweet and still cold. We sat on the side of a concrete barrier overgrown with a grayish lichen that brushed off on our clothes. I drank, and then Kai drank. Our feet kicked up dust.