“Stop talking,” Mum said.
“I’m not saying—they’re just teenagers, it’s not like they deserve what’s gonna happen, but we should be realistic—”
“No,” Dad said. “Stop. Talking.”
Mum gripped my shoulder tight. I wanted to listen to her for once. Hide, not get involved, and not replay those words over and over.
Instead, I shoved past her until I could look the woman in the eye.
She froze.
“We’re doing another show tomorrow. You should come. We all deserve some music before we die.” I snapped my fingers. “Wait, you’ll be with that surviving one percent, right? So sorry, your highness, truly. Didn’t mean to lump you in with food hogs like me. Really, I ought to be lying down and dying for your convenience.”
“I wasn’t—” She seemed torn between apologising and digging in further. “I’m just pragmatic.”
“And that makes it okay. I completely understand.” I offered her a spiteful-sweet smile. “I’m gonna enjoy wasting this meal on my crippled ass so bad.”
That night, Mum and I bowed over my bare legs, holding a candle close.
I always had to check for injuries I might not feel, but normally, I did it in the privacy of my shower seat. Perhaps I should’ve cared that a hundred people could turn to see me half-nude on the bed; once, I would have. I’d have felt insecure over skinny, ghost-pale legs, over my KAFOs’ imprints, over being unable to stand.
Now, I stared across the hall and idly thought, I wonder where they got the supplies for that mural. All across one wall stretched wild blotches of deep green forest. The rays of a setting sun cut between the trees, lighting up rough earth. Still-wet paint glistened in the candlelight.
“There’s a cut here.” Mum tapped the back of my calf.
I ran my fingers over it. A faint feeling of pain registered, almost like a bruise.
“You should get that doctor girl to disinfect it.”
We finished checking the rest—nothing—then Mum grabbed the KAFOs again. With one of them in hand, she paused. She turned it over, fiddled with the knee joint. “What that woman said… in line for dinner.”
I was still studying the mural. “She was charming, right?”
“You’ll have it harder than most people once we leave, yes, but… it doesn’t mean that…” Mum chewed her lip, for once at a loss for words.
“I know you won’t make promises you can’t keep.” I finally tore my eyes away, taking the KAFO from Mum. “Thanks.”
“I just hate…”
I’d had a lifetime of people looking at me in horror or pity or with too-friendly smiles, or trying hard to not look at me at all. Only the occasional person would lean in and confide: I couldn’t deal. I’d kill myself if I were you. How do you do it?
That meant only the occasional person was misguided enough to say it to my face. Didn’t mean no one else had that same thought, talking with their friends over dinner: You know, if it were me…
The woman’s words weren’t news to either of us. She was just the only person in the shelter to say it out loud.
I looked past Mum at a dozen whispering families clustered together in their beds.
“I know,” I told her.
“You’re doing what?”
“Shh, shh!” Samira looked into the main med bay to see if I’d woken anyone. “You’ll be fine without me. Dr Kring is still weak, but he’s sharp enough to give advice.”
“Go back to the part where you’re leaving the shelter tonight. I thought outside was—”
“Parts of the shelter—like the air vents—reach above the water level. We can exit safely.”
“Safely! Nothing about that is safe!”
“The shelter has an inflatable raft. Ahmed has a hunch where we can find even better transport. If we reach other shelters, we can trade for food, flashlights—”
“They might’ve been badly shielded too. And they’d be just as stuck. Why would they have food left?”
“They could have working radios,” Samira insisted.
“Radios.” I blinked. Damn it—she was right. “Why you?”
“Because I won’t let my fiancé go alone. And because we need to be able to trade something—like medical assistance.”
“Well… you’ll miss our next show.”
Samira laughed and held up a medical spray. “Haul up your pant leg.”
Word spread quickly.
By mid-afternoon the next day, everyone knew the following things:
Three people had killed themselves.
The med bay had been raided by someone convinced they had a food stash.
A young couple had left the shelter to seek help.
Those Latvian girls had another performance at five o’clock, in the sitting hall behind the kitchen.
“I don’t know about this,” Ginta said. “Maybe they’re right. Is it in poor taste?”
Vera shook her head. “You kidding? Look, people are already staking out spots. It might be their last chance to see a show. Besides, we’re not the only ones performing. I saw these fifteen-year-old twins doing magic tricks for the kids, and a woman in the hall across sang opera this morning.”
“Was it any good?” I asked.
“Awful,” Vera said. “Just awful.”
I smiled.
“Why the smile? Less competition?”
“It’s… just nice to picture.”
“Maybe we inspired her.” Vera beamed. “See. Helping.”
“You just want applause.” Ginta sounded quietly annoyed.
“If I do,” Vera said, “it’s ’cause applause is a good indication that people are happy.”
“It’s fine if you just like applause, too,” I said. “Any reason is fine.”
“I don’t even know mine.” Ginta played with her empty sleeve. “I didn’t have anything else to do. Is that awful? I enjoyed it, really, I just—”
“You’re good,” Vera said. “You really are.”
I nodded. “You are. But if you weren’t…”
Ginta glanced over.
“That opera singer didn’t let it stop her, either.”
Ten minutes before the show, Ahmed pulled me aside to speak with the woman from management.
“You can’t cancel us,” I said. “People are excited. We prepared a whole new song—”
Ahmed shook his head. “No, no. We need your help. You heard about what happened last night?”
“The med bay break-in?”
“Among other things. We were supposed to have left days ago. We’re stretching food we barely have. We thought… you mentioned public speaking. You could help with an announcement about the rations. We won’t last the way we’ve been going.”
Eyes ceilingwards, the woman said, “We’re not lasting anyway unless your brother finds help.” She looked back at me. “An announcement would look better coming from—”
Ahmed cut her off with a glare.
“You could help,” she amended.
I frowned. “I’m supposed to tell everyone they’ll be even hungrier… so they won’t get pissed at you?”
“That’s not it.” She hesitated. “People are agitated. There are fights, break-ins. The meal lines take forever. We’re not simply cutting back, we’re streamlining: everyone will get the same.”
“What?”
“You wanted to keep people calm, right? Making exceptions doesn’t help. It’s not fair to everyone else. These shelters were built on a principle of equality—”
I laughed, short and high-pitched. The shelters’ very existence proved the opposite. “I’m sorry. Okay, let’s ignore anyone who’s already underfed, ill, or injured, has diabetes or anaemia… I’m with you.”