Hungry (38 page)

She scowls. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, where did you live before you came to the Farm? Are you from the Inner Loop or Outer Loop?”

She focuses on stuffing more vines into her basket. “Gaia says, ‘Leave the past in the past.’”

“We can’t totally leave our past behind, though,” I say for arguments sake. “We’re the sum of our experiences, don’t you think? Like my Grandma Apple, she was a farmer so…”

“Brining up the past creates a false hierarchy,” Wren huffs at me. “Privies and workers. Firstborns and seconds. And it’s obvious what you were.” She frowns at me. “We left those divisions behind when we came here.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I tell them apologetically. “I was just curious.…”

“Well, there are better things to talk about,” Shiloh snaps.

“Sorry,” I mutter. They both pick up their baskets and move away, leaving me to work alone.

*   *   *

When Reba shouts that it’s break time, I leave my basket and follow the others to a small clearing with a hand pump. As we’re taking turns getting drinks, we hear a man yell, “Hey ho, the vessels beat us here!”

A group of guys crash through the kudzu on the opposite side of the clearing. Most of them are bare-chested, their shirts tossed over their shoulders or wrapped around their waists. Their skin glistens with sweat.

“Shut up, Carrick,” Reba tells the tallest boy who swaggers toward the pump. He is lean and muscular and walks with an athlete’s loose-limbed stroll.

“You got a gift for me, Miss Reba?” he teases.

“You wish,” she says, eyes narrow, but she doesn’t really look mad. Shiloh stands beside her laughing.

“Who’s this?” Carrick asks, looking me up and down.

“I’m Thalia.”

“Fresh eggs!” he announces, which makes the other guys laugh.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

Carrick leans in close and takes a hold of the pump handle. His eyes are dark and I can smell the musk of sweat coming off him. “You hatching, girl?”

I step away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Leave her alone.” Reba grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to her side. “She just got here, for god’s sake.”

“Oh, you’re the one.” Carrick glances over his shoulder. “Came with that boy? So your eggs are taken.”

I ignore the last remark and ask, “Are you talking about Basil? Do you know where I can find him?”

“They put him in the machine shop,” Carrick says. “He didn’t even have to start in the fields. He some kind of mechanical genius or something?”

“Yes, he is,” I say, proud of Basil, but wondering why I’m in the fields and not doing a more specialized job. “But I don’t remember seeing a machine shop. Where is it?” I ask, but no one answers me.

Carrick pumps murky brown water over his head. When he comes up, he flings droplets all over everybody.

“Farm boys,” Wren snorts to Shiloh.

“They’re all idiots,” Reba says, rolling her eyes to the sky, but I see a faint smile cross her lips, so I’m not sure she means it.

I follow the others into the shade. No sooner than we have sat down, Carrick plops beside Reba. He leans back on his elbows. “Why don’t you come in the weeds with me, huh?”

Reba hugs her knees and pretends to ignore him.

He plucks a leaf from a vine and trails it gently from her ear to her chin. She swats at him but laughs. “We can plant some seeds,” he tells her.

“Shut up.” She bumps him with her shoulder.

“Ain’t nobody plows a garden like Carrick,” he coos.

Reba looks straight at him. “You’re full of it.”

“But you like it.” He grins and wiggles his eyebrows. “Come on now. Help a farm boy out.” Reba shakes her head laughing, but she relents and allows him to pull her to stand. He leads her out of the clearing and into the kudzu.

I turn to Wren, but she’s deep in a conversation with a shirtless guy named Billet, who must be ten years older than she is. Within a few minutes both she and Shiloh have left the clearing with farm boys, too. I look around and realize that the only people still here are a scrawny guy named Noam, who’s busy whittling a piece of wood with his kudzu knife, and Enid, who’s snoring in the sun.

“Hey,” I call to Noam. “Where did everybody go?”

Instead of answering me, he says, “You from the Inner Loop, too?”

I nod, surprised that he’s willing to mention a place of origin. “How long have you been here?”

“About three years,” he tells me.

“Really?” I ask. “Do you like it?”

He considers this for a moment. “I didn’t at first, even though it was better than the alternatives facing me back at home.”

“Rehab?”

He nods. “And probably jail the way things were going.” He looks down at the stick in his hands, which has the vague shape of an airplane. “But, I’m pretty happy now.”

“Why?” I ask.

He cocks his head to the side and smiles. “Family.”

Ugh, I can barely control my distaste. How can all these people think of one another as brothers and sisters and Gaia as their mother? “So it gets better?”

“I didn’t say that,” he says, then goes back to working on his stick as if he doesn’t care to discuss it any further.

*   *   *

For two days, I haven’t had a chance to speak with Gaia about calling home. The only time I see her is when she’s on the dais in the dining hall, giving her daily address. And I’ve only caught sight of Basil twice, when his work squad was on their way out of the dining hall door and mine was going in on the opposite side. Both times, I caught his eye and started a crazy pantomime about us finding each other later so we could talk. He smiled and shook his head in confusion then mouthed words to me that I couldn’t understand. I don’t even know where his bunkhouse is, and I haven’t had time to look for the machine shop. We’re kept busy from morning to night, and by the time we’re done with chores, I barely have enough energy to crawl into my bed, where I immediately pass out.

On the third day, I can’t wait any longer. I must contact my parents and track down Basil. After I finish my morning shift with Bex and Leeda at the lab, I ditch Shiloh by going out the back door of the hospital and cutting through the kudzu toward Gaia’s house.

My heart races as I climb onto the porch and knock. I hear quick footsteps inside, then the door swings open and Ella stares at me. “What are you doing?” she hisses.

“I’d like to see Gaia,” I say. Ella blinks and blinks but doesn’t say anything. “Is she here?”

“Ella?” Gaia calls from inside. “What’s going on down there?”

“Hello, Gaia,” I call, my voice shaky. “Do you have a moment? I’d like to speak to you.”

Gaia hurries downstairs from the second floor, fastening a green belt around her white jumpsuit. “Who’s in my house?” She stops in the middle of the staircase and squints at me as if she can’t believe some person in a dirty brown dress has barged into her lovely living room. “Well?” she demands. “What is it?”

Something in the way she stares at me makes me shrink. Suddenly I don’t feel like that girl who stood up on a Dumpster and admonished a mob to loot a Synthamil distribution center. Instead I’ve become a nervous, sweating ninny who feels out of place among the woven rugs, light fixtures, and upholstered furniture, too afraid to speak her mind. I gather my courage, take a breath, and say, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I really need to contact my parents. I mentioned this to you when I arrived, and now I feel it’s imperative. I need to let them know that I’m okay and…” I stop because Gaia crosses her arms and stares down at me indifferently.

Then she snorts as if she cannot believe what I’m requesting. “Clearly there’s something you don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.” I wish I could shrink behind the plush red couch. “I know you’d like me to think of this as my new family, and it’s so kind of you to take me in, but…”

“But what?” she demands. “You’d be happy to jeopardize everyone’s safety just to have a word with Mommy and Daddy back in the Loops? Did you ever stop to wonder why we have no screens here? No network connection? No phone line straight to One World Headquarters? Why don’t we just paint a big red
X
across the farm and wait for One World to send in the spies or start dropping bombs?” She pauses while I shift from foot to foot, trying to find a way to defend myself.

She grabs the railing and leans over so half her body casts a shadow over me. “Don’t you know that they’d do anything to get their hands on me? Anything to denigrate me in the public eye? If they find us, they’ll obliterate everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve. And then what would become of all these people?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say, taking a step backward and nearly tripping on an ottoman. Part of me wants to reassure her that neither Basil nor I had ever heard of her before we stumbled into the Farm, but somehow I don’t think that’s what she wants to hear.

“Of course you didn’t,” she scolds with her hands on her hips. “Because you didn’t think about anyone but yourself! Just marched right in here without so much as an invitation and started demanding special treatment.”

My face burns and I feel sick to my stomach. I gaze at my feet in shame. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I know my parents must be worried, and if there’s any way…”

Gaia’s face twists as if she’s looking at something repugnant. “You
should
be sorry,” she tells me hotly. “I’m deeply disappointed. After all I’ve done for you, Twyla!”

I realize that she means me, but I don’t bother to correct my name.

“You’ve completely wasted my time.” She stands up tall and narrows her eyes. “Don’t you have someplace you’re supposed to be?”

I hurry out the front door before she has a chance to yell any more then hobble down the path toward the clearing as I fight back tears and berate myself for being such an idiot. How could I not have seen what a dangerous thing I was proposing! What did I expect? That the Farm would have some underground network that would help me contact my parents without jeopardizing everyone’s safety? Wait. That thought stops me in my tracks. That’s exactly what I imagined. I walk slowly, trying to reason through this. Gaia makes it sounds as if the Farm has no real-time or virtual connections to anyone. No screens. No ties to other corporate resisters. Could we really be that isolated out here? A sickening chill runs down my spine. I look all around me. The green kudzu that seemed so protective before suddenly seems more menacing, as if it could swallow me up, like it did my Gizmo, and I’d never be heard from again.

*   *   *

I don’t meet up with my work squad as I’m supposed to. Instead, I wander the paths around the Farm, looking for the machine shop. After half an hour, I’ve come nearly full circle and am just about to give up when I find a building I’ve never seen. It’s tucked way back in the kudzu behind the hospital. If I’d gone a little farther into the woods when I was dumping the pee bucket, I would have seen it. It’s also made of metal, and judging by the loud banging and clanging coming from inside, I’m pretty sure I’ve found what I’m looking for. I stand staring at it shining in the sun, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation. All this time, Basil was right behind me, but I didn’t even notice.

I march up to the door and tug, but it won’t budge. This is strange since I’ve only encountered one lock in this whole place. Even the latrine doors swing freely. I try pounding with my fist, but the noises are so loud inside that I’m not surprised when no one answers. I walk around the building, looking for another way in. In the back, I see large windows two feet above my head. Discarded crates are stacked at the side of the building. I grab a couple and carry them to the rear, where I stack them up and climb on top so I can see inside.

Across one end of the large open workroom, guys in welding masks solder handles onto long metal tubes about the circumference of my thigh and the length of my body. On the other end is a table where workers fit together small, slender objects. One is pointy and the other flared like the spigot on a sprinkler. It looks like they’re building showers. I scan all of the guys, sure that I can find Basil just by the shape of his shoulders and the length of his legs, but it’s hard to distinguish one person from another when half of them are wearing masks and they’re all dressed alike. (If Yaz were here, I would point and say,
Hey look, a guy in a brown shirt
, and she would laugh. God, I miss her.) I look and look, but I can’t tell which one he is. My heart sinks.

I wait and watch as welders lift their masks to get a better look at their work before hiding behind the faceplates and firing up their torches again. Dark hair, balding, reddish brown, then finally, the fading blond curls of Basil. He steps back and wipes the sweat from his eyes. I’m so excited that I bang on the window and wave until he looks my way. Startled, he jumps, which makes me smile, but he is clearly not amused. He waves furiously for me to move away from the window.

“Fine!” I say, even though he can’t hear me, and I stick out my tongue. I haven’t seen him in days and this is how he greets me! As I’m hopping off the crates, a side door flies open and Basil stomps out.

“Apple! What the hell are you doing sneaking around back here?”

“I wasn’t sneaking around,” I tell him, annoyed. “I knocked on the door and nobody answered. I saw windows so I climbed up to look.”

“You’re not supposed to be here!”

“Nice to see you, too, jerk!” I cross my arms and glare at him, hurt and furious that he’s not excited to see me.

“Don’t get mad at me.…”

“I didn’t come here to get mad at you!” I snap. “I was upset and wanted to talk to you, and then you act like I’m committing a crime. Forget it.” I turn and stomp toward the path. “Just forget it!”

“Apple, wait!” He jogs after me and catches my wrist, but I wriggle away from his grip. “Please,” he says. “I’m sorry. You just surprised me, that’s all. Don’t go.”

I look over my shoulder and feel myself split in two. Half of me wants to throw my arms around his neck. The other half wants to punch him.

“What happened? Why did you come? Who upset you?”

When he asks me this, my anger melts a little, and the half that wants to hug him wins. “Oh Basil,” I whine, trudging toward him with my arms outstretched. “I went to talk to Gaia about contacting my parents and…”