Daytime was a lot better, especially since Ava came. Jason was their leader because he was the oldest, but the other three could hear the ground and plants and everything. Colin didn’t have to teach Ava how to arrange the noises in rows. She was better at it than he was. She could hear more sounds, too, and she knew what more of them meant. Colin was jealous.
But Ava couldn’t read, not even the few words Luke knew. She was smart, she told the boys, but something was wrong with her brain. Letters and numbers just went “swimming” in front of her eyes and wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to make sense of them.
Colin pictured the alphabet with fins and goggles, swimming all over the page. He could see how that would make reading hard.
Ms. Blake tried. She guided Ava’s hand to draw letters in sand, so that Ava’s muscles would learn the letters even if her brain couldn’t. It didn’t help, and school had finished with Ava throwing sand at everybody and screaming bad words at Ms. Blake.
On a clear, cool day the four children lay on a patch of weedy ground behind a building and a tiny woods. They were pretty near the inside fence, which had barbed wire on it but no electricity like the outside fence, where the guards walked. Colin, Luke, and Ava pressed their ears to the ground while Jason kept watch.
“Hear that sort of thump-thump-whistle-thump?” Ava said.
“Yeah,” Colin said. “That’s the biomass saying that something not-too-big is walking around.”
“Us,” Luke said proudly. A week and a half of comparing what they’d figured out about the plant signals going through the soil, and they all knew more than before. Even Luke, who had much less trouble remembering this than how much was six plus two.
“Duh,” Ava said. “What else?”
Colin said, “That tree over there wants water.”
“Duh again. Everybody knows that. You’re such a baby, Colin.”
“Am not!” Colin said. To prove it, he hit her.
“Stop that!” Ava screamed. “If you don’t, I’ll sneak into your room and dump gasoline on you and set you on fire, so help me Lord!”
Luke shuddered, but Jason just rolled his eyes. Colin was a little scared, but he said, “You can’t.”
“Yes, I can!”
“I’ll… I’ll make a tree fall on you!”
The three of them looked at him. Jason frowned—was he remembering the tree branch that fell on Paul? Colin said desperately, “I’m sorry, Ava. Look—I’ll… I’ll do those alphabet letters Ms. Blake told you to write for homework.”
“She’ll know it were you and not me, dummy.”
“I’ll write them all wobbly so she’ll think it was you.”
“And then when I cain’t write them in school she’ll know it warn’t me.”
Colin didn’t know what to say next. But Luke did. He said, “The sounds can teach Ava her letters.”
“What?” Jason said.
“That’s how I learned. It’s hard, but if you make lines when the sounds come… I can’t say the words.”
“Then show us,” Jason said. He jumped up and found a discarded stick, one of the many splinters of lumber lying all over the camp. He handed it to Luke, who took it helplessly.
Luke said, “Don’t look at me. I don’t like it when people look at me.”
“Okay,” Jason said. He looked at the dirt beneath the stick. Colin and Ava, arms folded scornfully across her chest, did the same.
“Well,” Luke said slowly. “Remember that whistle? From the tree past the fence?”
“Yeah,” Ava said, “it wants water. So what?”
“I think that sound in my mind and I make these lines because Ms. Feldman said that it starts ‘tree.’” Carefully, as if the two lines had no connection with each other, he drew a line and a top: T.
Ava said doubtfully, “But do those lines always start tree? Or do it change?”
“I think always.”
Colin felt a sudden jolt in his head, like his mind sat down too hard. Luke couldn’t sound out words, couldn’t see how letters spelled things. Luke only memorized lines which didn’t mean anything to him, because he’d made letters go in some sort of rows in his head, connected to sounds that weren’t the letters’ sounds. And Ava couldn’t even do that, unless Luke could teach her.
Luke did, with enormous patience. After half an hour, Ava could draw T, V, and A, and write her name. Good thing it was so short! But when Colin, wanting to help, asked her to name things that started with T, she hit him again.
“Ow! Stop that!”
“Then stop trying to teach me! You cain’t! Only Luke can!”
“Someone’s coming,” Jason said. Colin heard it; the subtle change in the background noise of air and ground. Footsteps. Colin even knew whose.
“Well, young’uns, here y’all are. Your grandma and Ms. Blake say to come on in, you’re late for dinner. Having fun out here?”
“Yes, sir,” Jason said.
“Good, good. Come on in now. Don’t want the womenfolk mad, do we?” He lumbered off.
Ava looked after him with eyes sparkling with hatred.
Jason said. “Why don’t you like him?”
“He’s bad. Bad, bad, bad! He don’t love Mama, he don’t even like her, he said he’ll marry her just so’s he can get me. And he don’t like me neither. He just uses me for all those tests while Mama’s gone to the hospital to get her face fixed. I’m sick of tests all the time. Even if Devil Stubbins’s gonna fix my face, too.”
Fix her face? And her mother’s face? Could Mr. Stubbins do that? Colin thought Mr. Stubbins could only build spaceships. And he’d never seen Mr. Stubbins do anything bad.
She said, “Just ’cause my mama’s crazy don’t mean he should treat her like he do.”
“What does he—”
“Oh, shut up, Colin, you’re such a baby.” She stalked off. Colin didn’t understand any of it. It was the first thing he didn’t even want to understand.
Ms. Blake was sick with something. She was in the infirmary, which was a little hospital in camp, littler than the one Daddy was in or the one where Ava’s mama was away getting her face fixed. Colin liked Ms. Blake and hoped she got better, but the great thing was that Grandma didn’t know yet that the teacher was sick. So after some grown-up came to their classroom to tell them that and then left again, nobody told them where they were supposed to be.
“We should go find Grandma,” Jason said.
“No!” Colin said. He was mad at Grandma today. She’d found them all playing Ataka! and asked them where they got it. When Jason said “From Mr. Stubbins,” Grandma’s mouth got all pressed together and she made them show her how to play it. Then she said it was too violent and deleted it off the player, and it was Colin’s best game. He was almost to the third level.
Jason nodded. He was mad at Grandma, too. He said, “Then let’s go on a hike. We’ll take provisions.”
Colin didn’t know what “provisions” were but they turned out just to be food: apples and water bottles and some stolen cookies. The children slipped between buildings, trying to not be seen, until they were at the edge of camp. Then they crawled across a place with deep grass, pretending that bad guys were after them. Then they ran into the tiny woods and collapsed, laughing. Jason tossed everybody an apple.
Ava let hers roll away. She said, “There’s people down there.”
Colin, still holding his apple, tipped himself over and pressed his ear to the ground. Ava was right.