by H. A. Swain
Overjoyed, I grab the Gizmo from him and try to ping my father, my mother, the helicopter screen, but nothing happens. The Gizmo lies dormant in my hands. No signal, no life, no network with which to connect.
“We have to go now,” Basils says, pulling me to my feet. “This may be our only chance.”
I look down at the useless Gizmo in my hand. “But where will we go?” I ask, as my parents’ helicopter disappears into the horizon.
Basil and I look at each other. “We can’t go back to the Loops,” Basil says, as more smoke rises from beyond the trees. “At least, not yet.”
“And we can’t stay here,” I say.
We look out into the endless expanse of kudzu to the north. “Do you think there are others out there?”
“Yes,” says Basil. “There must be.” He climbs onto the vehicle and holds out a hand to me.
“But what if…” I look over my shoulder once more.
“We’ll find them, Apple. We will.”
As the smoke continues to rise and the explosions get louder, I can see no other option. “Are you ready?” he asks.
I gather my courage once more then sling my leg over the vehicle and wrap one arm around his waist. I clutch the Gizmo to my chest and consider the emptiness in my belly, the hunger in my mind, and the defect in my genes that has enabled me to love this boy. I take one more deep breath, searching for that scent from the past that I can’t yet name, but am still hoping to find in my future.
“I’m ready,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”
EPILOGUE
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
—Martin Luther
“Look at that! Double-word score,” Grandma Rebecca says as she lays down an X on the Scrabble board. “That’s twenty-six points for me.”
“Hmph,” says Mr. Clemens, rearranging his tiles with his good arm. “You got lucky.”
“Luck or skill?” she says with a laugh.
The door wheeshes open, and Dad comes in, looking beleaguered as he does every day now. Mom looks up from the screen where she patiently explains the difference between protons and neutrons to Ella, who has long since grown bored. “How did it go?” she asks Dad, who steps over the tower of wooden blocks that the boy has so painstakingly stacked on the floor with Papa Peter and Yaz. He drops onto the couch beside Grace and reaches for the baby that gurgles cheerfully in Noam’s arms.
“Same old, same old,” Dad tells them as he nuzzles the little girl. “They ask me where she is, I tell them I don’t know. Then I point out that they know I don’t know because they’re monitoring everything we do, so they’d be the first to know if she tried to contact us, which they deny. And we go around and around until they finally get tired of it, and they let me go.”
Mom sits on the arm of the couch beside Dad. “I don’t understand what went wrong. Why hasn’t she tried? You blocked the locator right? Set the connection only to your jalopy?”
“Yes,” he sighs as if he’s said it for the thousandth time. “Either there’s no signal where she is or the Gizmo broke or she’s just biding time until it’s safe. We will hear from her, you know. It just may take a while.” He hands Mom the baby and smiles gently. “How was your day?”
She cuddles the girl then shrugs. “I know Mother and I could solve the problem if we had our lab and some funding but until Ahimsa accepts there’s a problem with the Synthamil we don’t have much hope here.”
“We’re thinking of going to Peter’s hospital in the Outer Loop to work there for a while,” Grandma Grace adds.
Dad shakes his head. “That might not be a good idea. I hear it’s still pretty rough out there.”
The door chimes and everyone looks up. “That’s strange,” says Grandma Rebecca, rising from the table. “Are we expecting someone?”
Mom’s face hardens. “Probably security to go through everything again.” She hands the baby back to Noam then holds out her hand for the boy. “Let’s go back to the bedroom and have some tablet time,” she says to him. She knows what people say about her now. About the unorthodox family she’s created. But she doesn’t care. Ella’s and Noam’s educations plus raising the little ones keeps her busy while she waits for news. Except at night. When she can’t sleep and she finds Dad at the screen, scanning chat rooms on his jalopy, looking for any sign of me, but never finding any.
Rebecca opens the front door. The smell of synthetic lilacs seeps into the house.
“It’s too early for lilacs,” Mr. Clemens says. His hands itch to be in the dirt, rooting for the first green shoots of spring. While he sleeps, he still dreams of plowing. As soon as his arm is better, he and Grandma Rebecca will turn the dirt behind the house to see if they can coax anything to grow from the tiny seed packets he brought from his farm.
“Hello?” Grandma calls because no one is there. She scans the driveway, the sidewalk. But she sees no one. She steps out and looks down the street for a Smaurto, but everything is quiet. “That’s odd,” she says, and just as she’s about to go inside, she sees a box on the stoop with her name, REBECCA APPLE, handwritten in neat black letters across the top.
“What is it?” Dad calls.
“A package for me!” Grandma tells them, as she carries it inside.
“Did you order something?” Mom asks.
“Heavens no,” Grandma says and sets it down on the table next to the Scrabble board.
Mr. Clemens pulls out his pocketknife and hands her a blade to slice the tape. Inside the box is a smaller box that looks as if it’s made of rough-hewn wood. She pries off the lid and reaches down inside the packing material, which feels oddly like sawdust.
“Smells nice,” says Yaz, inhaling deeply.
Grandma feels something small and round inside. It’s solid but not hard, and the surface is cool to the touch.
“What is it?” Dad asks.
Grandma pulls the object out into the light. It is red and round with a small brown stem. They all gaze at it.
“What dat?” the boy asks, pointing.
No one knows what to say for a moment, until Grandma finds her voice again. “It’s an apple,” she tells them. “The real thing. A perfect, red, round apple.”
Mom and Dad run for the door, but Grandma knows they won’t find what they’re looking for. There will be no trace of the messenger outside, but still the message is clear.
“They made it,” Mr. Clemens says.
“And they’re fine.” My grandmother brings the apple to her nose. The scent is sweet and I moan.
* * *
“Hey,” someone says, shaking me awake. “You okay?”
I look around, groggy, then remember where I am. It’s the same dream I’ve had nearly every night for weeks. I snuggle closer to Basil and pull the covers up tight beneath my chin.
“You cold?” he asks. “Want me to put another log on the fire?” Snow fell last night. The first real snow of my life. He gets out of bed, cozy in his warm red flannels.
The people up here have been so kind since we arrived. Helped us find a cabin and brought us food and clothes. They love Basil because he can fix all the machinery that’s broken, and they’re teaching me how to farm. Of course the thing I like best is the apple trees. When the snows are gone, they tell me, we’ll be able to walk barefoot in the dirt and plant our own. If we could get a signal up here, life would be much better, but for now, we’re doing okay.
I press myself up on one elbow to watch him in the glow of the embers. “Do you think they’ll get it?” I ask.
“What?” says Basil, stoking the logs that warm our tiny cabin. “The apple?”
I nod.
He adds another log and turns to me. “Yes,” he says. “The messenger will get it through. They assured me. It just takes time.”
“And they’ll know, right?” I ask and lift the covers to welcome him back into my arms. He smells of wood smoke and soap and something deeper that I can’t name but
it soothes me when I worry. Out the window, the stars shine bright above Basil and me and my family far away, even if they can’t see them through the city haze. “They’ll understand?”
He wraps me tight. “Yes,” he says into my ear. “Now go to sleep.”
Before I close my eyes, I look at the stars again. Tell them, I wish upon the brightest one, that we’ll come back for them soon.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank all of the people in my life who helped me create the world in which Thalia and Basil exist: Stephanie Rostan, Monika Verma, and the team at Levine Greenberg for crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s while cheering me along; Lane Shefter Bishop for taking an early interest in this project; Liz Szabla, Jean Feiwel, and the fine folks at Feiwel and Friends for their enthusiasm and incredible attention to detail; and Em—as always.
Special thanks to my parents and my children for their unfailing support. And all my love to the dark-haired boy who first set my heart aflutter and still does. Any world with you is the world for me, Danny V.
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
HUNGRY. Copyright © 2014 by H. A. Swain. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
ISBN: 978-1-250-02829-7 (hardcover) / 978-1-250-06184-3 (ebook)
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
First Edition: 2014
eISBN 9781250061843
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