The question jarred me, but he was right: Randall had not brought any eggs, not even one for Lizzie.
“I forgot all about it until just now. I guess Randall forgot.”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “No one forgot. There aren’t going to be any more eggs for the night shift.” He cocked his head to one side, birdlike, and his eyes searched the shadows again. “It’s the new rule.”
I adjusted my headscarf and set off. I wondered what else the Gatekeeper had learned that made him act so differently today. And was it only yesterday that I had learned so much? Had I changed just as he had? Of course I had. Knowledge changed us all.
The ride home was easier. My leg muscles had already adjusted from walking on the energy board to pedaling an energy bicycle over a rutted path. David stood in the doorway of our space, looking worried. Probably remembering how upset and angry I had been the morning before. To me, it seemed as if a whole year had passed between the two mornings, and far longer than that since David and I had paired.
Seeing him standing in the doorway, the sun on his face and the concern in his eyes, made me want him again—just the tangled two of us. My mind, my body, my spirit needed him. I needed David. I had to somehow make compartments in my head, to lock away all the evil and hateful things I had learned, just for a while. Long enough to catch my breath and gain my balance.
“How was your shift?” he asked. I didn’t answer. Instead I put my fingers on his lips to silence him. He pushed my headscarf back and ran his fingers through my hair, then closed his eyes and leaned against me, passive and still. We went to his sleeping mat, and lay with each other, taking comfort in our nearness. Later we slept deeply, drained of all emotion and energy.
When I opened my eyes, David was sitting cross-legged on the mat, holding our cubes, frowning.
“It’s started already,” he said.
“What? What’s started?”
“The cubes. Look how much smaller they are.”
I took mine from his hand. They had always been exactly three inches on all sides, the width of four of my fingers pressed together. Now they were maybe a half-inch smaller in all directions. They didn’t feel as dense, either—they were already crumbling inside the wrapper.
“They stopped the eggs, too,” he said. “At first I thought it was just a mistake that I didn’t get one. Then I realized they don’t make mistakes.”
“That’s what the day-shift Gatekeeper at the Village said. And he seemed all fidgety.”
David nibbled on his cube and grimaced. “Doesn’t have any flavor at all. They left something out.”
He walked across our space and put his cube on the counter. “We need to talk,” he said. His voice held the dark timbre of faraway thunder. He came and sat next to me on the mat, his arms dangled across his knees and his back curved. I ran my hand down his back and felt the knobby little bumps of his spine.
“I’m listening,” I said, and he glanced sideways at me but didn’t smile. His face looked like stone.
“Something’s going on,” he said, “and I’m not sure exactly what it is. The day-shift Gatekeeper said all the guys in the barracks are wired up. Tense. Nobody’s sharing much information.”
“Tense?”
“You know. Ready to pick a fight. No one knows who’s telling the truth. No one knows who to trust.”
Trust, again.
“Telling the truth about what?”
“That’s just it. Nobody’s talking except a little comment here or there. Nothing makes sense. None of us know anything. And that makes everybody nervous. The cubes are smaller. There are no more eggs for the night shift. There’s less for everybody. Those are facts. There’s not a good explanation for the shortages, just rumors. Facts beat rumors every time.”
“Well at the Social Update Meeting the Authority said—”
“The Authority said. They said what? Armies? Armies tearing up the railroad tracks? Armies interrupting the food supply? I don’t believe them. I don’t believe there are foreign armies out there. Only the Authority has an army. Not a very good one, either. Fewer and fewer strong men.”
“If you don’t believe it’s an army out there, then who are they?”
He looked away and was quiet for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, he answered. “They’re the ones who slipped away.”
“The shadow people?”
“Yes. The ones who slipped away before the relocations. They knew they’d die if they fought. So they slipped away. And they’re out there now, trying to survive. Maybe somehow they’re interrupting the food supply.”
The shadow people. Out there, free, on the other side of the fence.
“Keep talking,” I said.
“All I know for sure is that there are no more eggs and smaller cubes. But I just have a feeling. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s not good. Everyone just seems nervous. Change of shift last night, the day-shift Gatekeeper asked me what I knew.” I’d never seen him look so worried. “I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about and he just clammed up.”
David went into the washing-up area and I could hear him splashing sanitizing solution on his face. I could smell the sweet-sour lemony tang of it. I wondered what a real lemon looked like. I knew what apples looked like. Apple, Apple, A-A-A. Mother would sing to me, pointing to the picture of the apple. There were no pictures of lemons.
He came back to the mat and sat the same way, hunched with his arms dangling over his bent knees.
“Then this morning when he came to relieve me, he asked me if I had heard anything about the Perfection Standards.”
“Oh, wait,” I said, pulling the sheet up over my shoulders and across my chest. The fabric was coarse and rough but had the warm smell of David on it. “Lizzie said Randall was worried about an increase in the Perfection Standards. He needs a special shoe—”
David interrupted me. “Special shoe! When has anybody gotten anything different or better than anyone else?”
“Well, I got you.”
That made him smile, a real smile, and he touched the tip of my nose with his finger. But he quickly became serious again, the smile gone and the two little ridges between his eyebrows back.
“So, your turn,” he said. “How was your shift? What about Randall and his special shoe? Did you talk to my mother?”
“Well, to use your words, everyone was wired up. Tense. Randall looked like his foot hurt when he walked. He talked for a long time to the day-shift Gatekeeper. Whatever he was saying, I don’t know, but the day-shift guy was in a bad mood after that. Lizzie and Randall were, I think, arguing but I couldn’t hear them. They spent a long time outside.”
“And my mother?”
“She seemed, oh, I don’t know. Distracted. The babies aren’t thriving. That bothers her.” I didn’t have the courage to tell him what else she’d said.
“Did you get to hold Elsa?”
“Yes, I did.” My arms came together like a cradle and rocked back and forth. “She liked it. And she took her whole nourishment bottle.”
“So, what aren’t you telling me?” he asked, staring straight at me, not blinking. Somehow he knew it would be something bad. “What aren’t you telling me about my mother?”
And then I realized that I was doing the very thing that had been done to me: withholding information to protect someone. But that only makes them more vulnerable. No matter how terrible the information, I had to share it with David.
“Your mother said . . .” I swallowed hard, then plunged forward. “She said the babies aren’t thriving and the Authority might relocate the Children’s Village to another Community.” I put my hands over my face, pushing away the image of an empty crib and an empty Village.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” David said.
Sweet Jesus? Mother used to say that. Oh, sweet Jesus.
But Father made her stop.
Oh, sweet Jesus.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Gatekeeper was making
rounds. His nightstick rattled as it bumped against the cell strap on his thigh. I knew all the sounds of our community. The irregular flapping of the Compound flag when the wind blew. The rattle of the wooden sides of the bus-box combined with the undercurrent of grunting from the Transport Team as they passed by. The screech of the nourishment box lid when it was opened and the pinging rat-a-tat when rain hit the lid. Bees on the flowers on the other side of the fence. But the best sound, the very best sound, was the twittering of birds.
David moved from his mat to mine when he heard the Gatekeeper coming closer. His eyes grew large when he sat down, and he gave me a puzzled look as he ran his hand along the far corner of the mat. He must have felt one of Mother’s treasures, but now was not a good time to explain. I was trying to keep the sheet over my shoulders and chest, clutching it with my fist, and I put my finger to my lips.
The Gatekeeper tapped at our door. A tentative sound.
I slipped into the washing-up area quickly before David opened the door. I had to get dressed. I wouldn’t be issued a clean uniform for two more days now, since the change. This one was wrinkled but it was full of Elsa’s smell, her white milkiness. I turned my head to my shoulder, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply. Birdsong and baby smells.
The Gatekeeper didn’t seem to notice me when I came out of the washing-up area but just nodded his head sideways at David, a tilt of the head that seemed to be asking David to come outside.
They didn’t talk long, and I couldn’t hear anything but the soft murmurs of their voices. Soon David came back into our space.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
He leaned against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest. “He heard that another rail line was ripped up. Might just be a rumor. He didn’t know where.”
“By the shadow people?”
He nodded.
“How many other communities like ours are out there?”
“Nobody knows for sure. There’s no way to communicate from one community to another. I kind of think they’re all along the coast, from what Dad said.”
I thought for a minute, sorting out what I knew, putting pieces together as best as I could.
“Okay, then. Let me show you something. Something that I have.”
I flipped Mother’s old sleeping mat over, exposing the rip and reaching inside, feeling with my fingers until I found the map. I pulled it out and carefully unfolded it. It had torn a little along the fold lines but, other than that, it was usable. David stood statue-still, staring at the map as though it were a poisonous spider.
“Mother kept this. There are other things in there, too, but first I want to study this. Your dad said our before-time farms were here.” I pointed to Kansas.
“My dad knows about this map?”
“Yes. I showed it to him. Before we were paired. He studied it, then brought it back.”
“You never told me about it.” I could hear the hurt in his voice and I could see it on his face. “You said no secrets, but you kept this a secret.”
“David, we’ve been paired just three days. I wasn’t hiding this from you.” I touched the side of his face. “There’s been a lot of stuff going on. You know that.” Stuff. There had to be a better word than stuff to describe everything I had heard and felt in the last three days, but I just couldn’t think of the right one. “I’m showing you now and there are other things in the mat I’ll show you later. But, right now, let’s look at this.” I ran my finger along the East Coast, with its deep blue border of ocean. “If the Planned Communities are along the coast, and the farm co-op is somewhere over here”—I pointed to a place farther west, right at the edge of a mountain—“well, how do the railroad lines get from there to here?”
He looked closer at the map, studying it. “I know there’s a depot some distance out from our Community. Far enough that we never hear the train. Dad told me that’s where they offload the supplies onto bus-boxes. The Transport Team never actually sees the train. The supplies are just there, waiting. They haul them back to the storage area next to the Gatekeepers’ barracks and unload them. Then it’s up to the Gatekeepers of each Compound to pass them out.”
“So you don’t know if there is a separate track to each community, like this?” I used my finger to indicate straight lines from the middle of the map to different spots along the coast. “Or if somehow there are other tracks that connect one track to another?” I traced more lines, like arcs, that crossed over the straight-line tracks. How much I wanted a crayon and piece of paper like I had as a child. Imaginary lines weren’t enough.
David looked puzzled. I wasn’t explaining this very well.
“Come over here,” I said, and went to the counter. I wet my finger as he had done when he showed me how the Compounds lined up along the fence. I made a wavy line, like the coast. “Here’s the coast.”
Then some wet dots, up and down the coast. “Planned Communities.”
Another dot, bigger, farther away, and to the left. “Farm commune.”
Wetting my finger again, I drew straight track lines spoking out from the farm commune to the communities. “Train tracks.”
Next, some curved lines across all of the straight lines. “Connecting tracks.” I turned to him. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said, still looking puzzled. “Could be either way. What does it matter?”
“It matters,” I said, “because if there are only straight-line tracks to each community, then, well, any community that had its track ripped up would be without food.”
I thought for a minute, picturing what it must look like out there. Out there with the tracks and the shadow people. And I thought of our smaller cubes. The pieces came together in my head.
“We’re missing something here,” I said. “Forget all of this about the tracks.”
“You’re confusing me,” David said.
“If the tracks were destroyed, we’d get no food. Instead, we’re getting less food. Smaller cubes. No eggs. But why are we getting less?”
And then, I knew. The answer was so logical.
I ran my hand over the counter, blurring the dots and lines.
David was frowning, concentrating.
“We are getting less food,” I told him, “because there is less food. Something’s happening to the food or someone is taking the food. The farm co-op is failing. Just like the Children’s Village is failing. Just like the broken wheel on the bus-box that never gets fixed. The Authorities are lying about the tracks.”
He looked at me in a new way, proud but very serious. “Perfect sense. It’s not the tracks. It’s not the tracks at all.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I folded the map more easily this time and slipped it back into Mother’s mat.
“What else is in there?” David asked.
I pulled the mat as far into the corner as I could, where it would be hard to see from the window slit or the doorway if somebody was standing at either of those places. David knelt down beside me as I retrieved Mother’s treasures, one by one.
First the recipe cards. He glanced through them, flipping them from one hand to another, reading them, his lips moving as his eyes scanned the cards.
“I remember some of these foods. Look, this one is in my mother’s handwriting. The bread pudding. With raisins. They must have exchanged recipes. And this one. Pumpkin pie. We always had that at Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving?”
“You don’t remember?”
I shook my head no.
“Thanksgiving. It had a certain smell about it. Mom would start cooking early in the morning. I would wake up and hear her in the kitchen and smell the onions and celery and melted butter for the stuffing. It was incredible.” He had a look of sadness about him. His mind was in a place I had never been.
He looked through the recipe cards one more time, then held his hand out for another item. I gave him the gold thing.
“It’s an old gold
coin. I thought the Authority had confiscated all of these.” He rubbed his thumb over it, then handed it back, and I put it deep into the mat.
Next: The Little Prince. He opened it and the picture I had drawn fell onto his lap. He picked it up and smiled.
“You drew this?”
I nodded.
“I’m glad she saved it.” He touched the drawing to his lips.
Then the New Testament. He held it gently and was quiet for a long minute.
“You Mother took a great risk, saving this.” He handed it back to me. “We have to do everything we can to protect this.”
I slid it back into the far corner of the mat.
Then the picture of Mother and me. He stared at it for the longest time, then looked at me. “I remember that day. At your house. I remember it so well.” Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
I moved closer to him, my shoulder against his. “Why are you crying?”
He brushed his cheeks with his forearm and looked at me.
“Look at you. Look at you in this picture. So happy. And now you don’t even remember Thanksgiving.”
He didn’t have to explain.
“Someday you can tell me more about Thanksgiving.” I took the picture from him and put it back in the mat.
The box of safety matches was next, and then the knife. He paled when he saw it and a little ridge of sweat formed above his lip.
“What was she thinking?” he said, more to himself than me. He opened and closed it easily, as though he had done so many times before. Quickly he shoved it back into the mat, into the deepest corner, glancing at the window slit and doorway as he did.
Then I flipped the mat, torn side down, slid it back where it belonged, and pulled the fabric tight and smooth. No bulges—good enough.
“So,” I said, “why do you think she saved what she did?”
“I guess you save what you think you’re going to lose. I saved salt.”
“You did?” I remembered the little salt packets he used to give me with the eggs.
“I once heard a rumor they were going to outlaw salt. You know how those rumors are. Nine times out of ten, before you know it, it’s a fact. Things can happen so fast. So I saw this little box of salt packets in the storage area. You know, where the Gatekeepers pick up the cubes for their Compounds. I grabbed a handful. Guess where I hid them? In my sleeping mat.” He smiled at me. “You liked it on your eggs, didn’t you?”