I was pretty lucky to have her. We’d only gotten closer since Dad died.
Screens bubbled at the top of the subway’s doors. A news reporter sporting a fearsome unibrow flashed across one.
“Good morning,” she said, “I’m Priscilla Gurley and the time is eight o’clock. Today’s top story: LOST BOYS STILL LOST.”
The press got smarter everyday.
Mom might not have been able to come, but she’d sent Charlie with me. That was probably the next best thing. And if I was being honest, it might even have been better. Charlie had also just gotten her vaccination a few months ago.
Charlie pushed a strand of dark brown hair away from my eyes, then crossed and uncrossed her legs. She was antsy. “You nervous?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nah. I’ve made it this far, right? I’m one of the winners. Just a couple hours now.”
She nodded. The odds were good I’d make it, but I could tell she was scared. Our lives were fragile, and we knew it. The Carcinogens could strike a kid down at any time. The Indigo vaccine was the only thing that kept the adults in our world alive.
The Federation must not fall. The Federal government drummed that mantra into our heads as fervently as it pumped the vaccine into our irises when we turned fifteen.
“Plus,” I said, “I’ve got my lucky socks on today.”
I rolled up my jeans to show her. They were Dad’s old pair. Red with pictures of cheeseburgers printed across the sides.
Charlie smiled and rolled her eyes. “I swear, Kai. You and those frickin’ cheeseburger socks.”
I grinned and quoted my father: “If a man’s brave enough to wear cheeseburger socks in public, he’s brave enough to do anything.”
I still missed Dad pretty much every day. His euthanization had been three years ago. I was lucky Mom still had two years left. Both of Charlie’s parents were already gone.
She smiled. “That’s a cheesy line, if I ever heard one.” She paused, then smirked. “Bun intended.”
You have to admire a girl who’s good with puns. I shook my head, feigning embarrassment. “Lord, just stop. Or I’ll quit taking you out in public. The chopsticks are already a bit much. But the puns? Now you’re pushing it…”
Charlie had pinned her blond hair back into a messy bun and secured it in place with a pair of chopsticks. She’d worn it like this every day since I’d met her in the fifth grade. The color of her chopsticks was determined by the day of the week. Mondays were maroon. Tuesdays, teal. Wednesdays, white. Thursdays, blue. And Fridays were whatever she wanted.
Today was a Friday (she’d skipped school to come to the clinic with me), and her chopsticks were lime green with margarita pendants that dangled from the ends. Her mom gave her this pair when she was seven. A souvenir from her work trip to Club 49.
I pulled the chopsticks from Charlie’s bun and shoved them under my lip. “Walruth,” I said.
She snatched them back and shook her head. “So immature, Kai-Guy.” I loved when she called me Kai-Guy.
She put a chopstick to her forehead and grinned.
“Unicorn!” I yelled.
An old woman—probably forty-eight or forty-nine—shushed us from the row behind. Charlie shook her head, holding the chopstick in place. “Not unicorn,” she said. “Narwhal.”
We both burst into laughter. Charlie’s laugh was something between a snicker and a snort. She was really beautiful—the kind of beautiful that made guys like me get sorta sweaty hands—but her laugh didn’t fit her looks. It belonged to an old woman choking on corn on the cob. It was the kind of laugh that made people wipe their brows, thinking: Thank god—she’s like the rest of us.
I wiped one of my sweaty hands against my leg. “Narwhals are extinct,” I said, “like whales. Like seals. Like lots of things.”
“Like your dignity?” she teased and winked. I think she was trying to be seductive—she did that sometimes. But it usually ended up looking like a bug had flown into her eye. Maybe that made it even more seductive. I guess it was just the way Charlie did everything, really. She could’ve burped the alphabet and my hands would’ve gotten sweaty at the letter A.
Sometimes it still felt like we were those same two kids who had just met in the fifth grade. Not much had changed. I liked it that way. In a world where we were constantly told we didn’t have much time, it was nice to sometimes feel like time wasn’t passing.
A picture of a girl with long, dark curls and bright green eyes flashed on the screen.
Green eyes.
It wasn’t often we saw those. Most of us had shades of brown, which turned blue after we’d been vaccinated, a side effect of Indigo.
People born with naturally blue eyes died out soon after the Final World War. Scientists theorized that they were genetically more susceptible to the Carcinogens that filled the air after the bombs went off. They thought the weakness might be carried on the same chromosome as the gene for eye color, but weren’t able to test it since the corpses were all burned at sea.
The green-eyed girl on the screen held her left hand to her head. Her thumb was pressed to her chin, her index finger to the corner of her eye, and her middle finger pointed skyward. The rest of her fingers were pressed to her palm. It was like she was throwing up a gang sign.
The words WANTED: MILA VACHOWSKI were stamped across her face in scarlet letters. It wasn’t often the press showed us pictures like this. The Federation didn’t want to hurt its people—the Carcinogens in the air did enough of that on their own.
I stared at the girl’s mug shot and shook my head. “I hope they get her.”
Charlie nodded. “They’ve been looking long enough.”
“Wouldn’t know.”
She teased me with her elbow. “Maybe if you spent more time out of the water than in it.”
I grinned. Since there wasn’t much to do on Moku Lani, I usually swam. “I held my breath for five minutes and thirty-six seconds yesterday,” I told her. “Even saw a megalodon swimming on the other side of the nets.”
She slapped my arm. “C’mon, Kai. You’ve gotta stop doing that. Free diving isn’t safe. Those nets are about as reliable as Mr. Hoover.”
Mr. Hoover had been our teacher when we were in the sixth grade. He’d had a habit of forgetting what day of the week it was and not showing up to work. Once he came to school in a cape. He thought it was Halloween. It was December.
“Aw, come on, Charlie,” I said.
“I’m serious. One of these days, something’s gonna happen. The nets’ll go down and then it won’t be so funny. You really wanna do that to your mom?”
“She doesn’t mind me free diving. She thinks it’s good for me to get out of my head.”
I’d been free diving since Dad died. It was nice to be deep in the water. There was something about the quiet and the cold, being able to clear your mind of all thoughts but oxygen.
Charlie shoved her chopsticks back in her bun. “The nets aren’t safe, and you know it. The electrical signals go out all the time. I find it hard to believe a boy with a conspiracy theory about the lunch lady would be so trusting.”
Agnes Oldwinski had a lazy eye that spun inward whenever she spoke. She’d be staring you straight in the face—“Peas?” she’d ask—and then her left eye would spin inward. I couldn’t trust that.
Charlie pushed a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “How many copies of your birth certificate did you bring? Just answer me that, and then tell me you’re not paranoid.”