“This is the plan,” Spencer said. “I think we stockpile bombs and weapons. We prepare as if a war is coming to Whispering Waters. If it becomes clear that Ethan’s people have come back for him, we set up me and Darla as snipers. Joey, Doctor Krause, Ainsley hold back inside the house and wait for the all-clear.”
“Teddy?” Darla asked, confused.
Spencer cocked his head and frowned. He reached over and grabbed a pen off of Scott’s desk and drew a smaller stick figure next to the character that was supposed to be Darla upstairs. “Teddy hides with his mother.”
“A sniper and the five-year-old. Perfect plan,” Darla snorted.
He ignored her and continued. “We are prepared to attack at all times. We do not let our guard down. They can take Ethan, but they don’t get near us.”
Ethan shifted on the couch and leaned forward. “Wait, wait. This is ridiculous.”
“I agree,” said Doctor Krause from the back of the den. “If they are coming back for Ethan, there is a good chance that they are not here with the intent to kill us.”
Spencer slapped his forehead. “If you were students in my history class, I would be failing you for an inability to see the larger picture. What part of they already tried to kill you did you fail to understand?”
“We have no evidence that Ethan’s father was responsible. Only that he knew about it,” Joey said. “Right? Ethan?”
Ethan remained silent.
Spencer ran his laser pen over the whole sheet in wide circles. “I don’t give a shit if this is the plan…we need something though. Because I’m telling you…there’s no way I’m dying for this kid. You hear me, Ethan?”
“You’re paranoid,” Darla mumbled. “You’re crazy and paranoid.”
With a smirk, Spencer flipped to the last sheet of paper in his presentation. It read in large letters: I AM NOT PARANOID.
“Bravo,” Ainsley said and couldn’t help but smile. “But I think the principal doth protest too much.”
From the dining room, Teddy meandered back into the group. He held a candy-bar in his hand and munched happily on the melting chocolate; it covered his face with smears of mud-colored brown. Plopping himself down next to Darla, he took another bite, and Darla acknowledged his return without glancing in his direction.
“Look,” Darla said, putting her arm around Teddy, “and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but…I understand the worry. I do. But you’re taking this off the deep end. Setting up snipers? Preparing bombs? Because they’re really going to want to take us back with them when they find out how well we’ve welcomed them to Oregon.”
Darla scooped up Teddy and put him in her lap.
“It’s reactionary,” Ethan added.
Joey opened his mouth to speak and croaked out a few syllables of agreement before Darla interrupted him with a growl.
“Ewww,” she groaned. Darla held her hand out away from her body and looked at Teddy’s face and hands. “What is this?”
“Chocolate,” Teddy replied with his mouth full. He grinned and flashed her blackened teeth.
“You got it all over me!” Darla exclaimed and she set Teddy upright and scrambled to the box of tissues on the bookshelf. “And chocolate?” She paused and then reached down. Grabbing the candy bar wrapper from Teddy’s hand she held it up to the group. “When did we find a collection of chocolate bars?” she asked the room.
The group looked at her.
“Chocolate? News to me,” Joey exclaimed. “I inventoried last night and we definitely didn’t have any candy.”
“Maybe he found it in the kitchen?” Ainsley offered. She yawned and turned her head toward Ethan. He gave a subtle wink and she nodded her head toward Spencer’s display. Ethan shrugged.
Darla, still holding the crinkled wrapper in her hand, leaned down to her son and looked at him. “Teddy,” she said in a slow, firm voice. “Where did you get this chocolate from?”
Teddy shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. He looked to the ground, his lip starting to tremble.
“You’re not in trouble,” Darla added. “But we don’t know where you got it from and we’re just all confused. Can you tell us? Please?”
With everyone waiting for his answer, Teddy leaned in to his mom and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to say,” he mumbled. “Everyone’s looking at me. I’m embarrassed.”
“Teddy—” she continued and she lowered her head and her eyes expectantly.
“The man.”
The room took a collective intake of breath.
Ethan snapped his head back to Ainsley, but her eyes were trained right on Teddy. Joey took a step forward and Doctor Krause sat up straighter. And Spencer’s hand went to the gun he kept perpetually in the waistband of his jeans.
Clearing her throat, Darla tried to steady her voice. “What man, Teddy?”
The child wiped his mouth. “The man in the backyard.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Her mother said to be ready at nine for brunch in the Sky Room. She brought in a sundress and a hot pink cardigan, instructed Lucy to take a shower, and even handed her a steaming mug of green tea. Maxine kissed Lucy’s forehead, paused in the doorway, hesitant and unsure, and then ushered her other children away, leaving Lucy all alone to get ready, without any idea of what the Sky Room was or why she had to wear a dress.
Their underground apartment was tiny compared to their two-story home, three counting the basement, back in Portland. And even though Lucy couldn’t get Grant out of her head—where could he be? Did he think she had abandoned him? Was he hurt? Afraid?—she still managed to fall asleep in the bed assigned to her in a small room designed for her and Harper. Late into the evening, after the lights in their room dimmed and the wall night-lights clicked on a soft glow, Harper left her own bed and crawled under the covers with Lucy. Her body filled the empty spots left by Lucy’s own body with a natural flexibility. Harper tucked a leg under Lucy’s legs, pressed her back against Lucy’s belly, and twisted her hair between her fingers. The six-year-old also sucked with ferocious vigor on her thumb; it was a habit Lucy thought her little sister had outgrown.
Yes, Lucy had slept, but only after she had a chance to talk to her dad.
Hours after he left for work per Huck’s bidding, her father reappeared, shedding his lab coat, kissing Maxine, and absorbing hugs from the twins. He proclaimed he was off to bed, but Lucy quizzed him on the System; she stood between him and his bedroom door, unwavering and unwilling to budge.
She learned that the underground housing was powered by solar energy. Had she and Grant ventured up over a grassy hill to the North of Brixton, they would have seen the expansive solar troughs harnessing high concentrations of power and funneling them to their new home. The EUS, as her dad called it, was a dome shape, with ten floors, and on floors one through eight there were 10 pods. The pods held clusters of 5 apartments each. In the center of each floor there were various rooms: a greenhouse for growing vegetables, the medical center Lucy was taken to, a rec center.
Lucy couldn’t conceptualize where the tanks were located. She supposed, as much as she hated to admit it, that her father could be misleading her on the size and scope of the System. She tried to remember the path to the tanks after she was pulled out of the elevator, but everything was a hazy blur—her already distant memory, slipping away before she could grasp it.
It wasn’t too long before she could tell her father grew restless of her questions. He retreated to his simple bedroom, but only after embracing Lucy wordlessly and holding her close to his chest. She could feel his steady heartbeat through his shirt. A consistent and comforting thud-thud thud-thud. “I’m proud of your bravery, Lucy,” he said. And she initiated the end of the hug, pulling away, and curling up onto the uncomfortable beige couch in the corner of the open room.