Right then he was just Caleb. I smiled and he smiled, our arms forming a circle in the stillness of the water.
WE STAYED OUT UNTIL THE SKY DIMMED. I PRACTICED holding my breath, dunking under repeatedly until I didn’t flinch when the lake swallowed me. Caleb taught me how to tread water and kick forward beneath the surface. He showed me how to float, his fingers resting on the small of my back as I filled my stomach with air. I closed my eyes, trying to pretend that my pale legs weren’t exposed, that the wet jumper wasn’t clinging to the curves of my body.
The sky was turning from purple to gray as we walked back through the woods, the dried pine needles breaking beneath our feet. I wrapped the towel around my shoulders, but I couldn’t stop shivering. Caleb took off his sweatshirt and offered it to me, rolling up the sleeves for me to stick my hands through.
“I finished the book. I stayed up all night reading it,” I said as I pulled the thick, soft material down around me. It still held some of his body heat and I felt warmer already. “You were right. It’s not quite the story I was told.”
“I thought it might be better a second time.” Water dripped from his dreadlocks down his back, winding around the ropy muscles of his shoulders.
“I’ve been wondering . . .” I started. “How did you learn so much about the world outside the labor camps?” I asked. “How did you get here? How did you know where to go? Tell me everything.”
Caleb waited for me to catch up. We started through a narrow path, ducking under low tree limbs. He walked in front of me, pushing branches up so I could slip beneath them, then getting ahead of me so he could do it again.
“Those weeks after Asher died were strange,” he said, keeping his eyes on the trail. “Leif refused to work, and was in solitary confinement most nights. All the other boys were scared to do anything that would anger the guards. The one thing we were allowed at the labor camps were these black metal radios, and the boys would all lay out on their bunks listening to the broadcast from the City of Sand.”
“I’ve heard some of those broadcasts, too, at School,” I said, ringing water out of my long hair. Once a month we would sit in the auditorium and listen to the stories of what was happening in the City. The King would tell of the giant skyscrapers that were being built or the new Schools that were opening up for children inside the City’s walls. He was building in the desert—something from nothing, as he said—and the City would be surrounded by walls so high everyone would be protected. From rebels, from disease, from the dangers of the world. At the time, I’d found comfort in his words. “The King made it sound so noble, so exciting.”
Caleb kicked a pebble with his bare feet. “I remember that voice. I’ll remember it forever.” Caleb punted the rock into the woods, his expression turning darker. His skin flushed red. “He never mentioned the orphans who worked in the City. How boys as young as seven were disassembling buildings for fourteen hours a day in one hundred and ten degree heat. How some were crushed by collapsing walls or fell from the skyscrapers. Or the girls who were being used as broodmares. He made it sound like The New America was for everyone, that we would all be included, but it was built on the backs of the orphans. The only place for us was under their feet.”
As we walked I let my hands graze the tall grass that grew alongside the trail. “So who is raising the children? The survivors in the City?”
“Right now they’re sitting in their new houses that overlook the canals that fourteen-year-old boys dredged up, and they’re feeding their babies that eighteen-year-old girls gave birth to, or they’re skiing on their indoor ski slopes and eating at the restaurants at the tops of skyscrapers where orphans work for free. It’s disgusting.” He grimaced.