UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,81

family resemblance—it’s in the name. Hayden sincerely doubts that Argent Skinner has anything to do with the Stark Green Inn . . . but Saltries is most definitely an anagram of Lassiter.

UnTithed

Co-authored with Michelle Knowlden

1 • Miracolina

Daytime smothers her in vibrant colors. The sun illuminates secrets she holds close. Night is better. It flows in hues of gray and black and streetlights that don’t disturb the shadows. She slips through darkness like vapor.

Sometimes Miracolina is uncomfortable in her evolving relationship with her mother and father. Her parents chose her embryo self to save her brother. Then chose her to be a tithe to save dozens of people. Then they didn’t sign the unwind order when she turned thirteen. She knows they did it out of love. She is learning to be grateful.

Most times she’s glad to be around her folks. But if she doesn’t act like an ordinary fourteen-year-old girl, her father turns moody and her mother cries. She spent her entire life preparing her body to be divided. She needs time to reboot for this unexpected future.

She once read that sometimes you have to act like you believe until you can believe. In pretending to be ordinary and pretending to be glad she has this long, unpredictable future, maybe she’s learning how to live like a normal girl.

After she was brought home from her “adventure” as they call it—the adventure that brought her all the way to Tucson, Arizona, with a notorious tithe-turned-clapper-turned-rebel—nothing was the same. Her parents thought it would be uncomfortable for her at their old church, so now they go to a new one. Now they attend a larger Roman Catholic church in an older suburb of Chicago that reminds her of the formality, ceremony, and beauty of the cathedrals of Rome. And because her parents wanted to give her a fresh start, she now goes to the parochial school near the church. Whatever.

You’ll make new friends, her parents told her. And no one has to know what happened.

But her only real friends at her old school were tithes. She doesn’t know how to make regular friends.

Most days at school aren’t so bad. They wear uniforms. Even though the skirt is a bright plaid of red and navy blue, the blouse is white, like the clothes she wore when she was a tithe. White is either the absence of color or the presence of all colors, depending on how you look at it. The whiteness of the blouse feels familiar, but on the other hand it tethers her too uncomfortably to her abandoned purpose—so now, when she isn’t wearing the school uniform, she wears black. Like the nuns. Besides, black blends better into the night.

Miracolina still has dreams of the time she escaped the Cavenaugh mansion with Lev, only to be taken by the parts pirate. The nightmare always comes in the early morning hours. And in her waking hours, she thinks too much about Lev as well. She’s not sure what that means.

She’s pretty sure he’s dead. He must be. When she last saw him, the Juvey-cops were rounding up the kids at the airplane graveyard for unwinding. Then she was tranq’d. Then she was in a police car, being spirited back to her new old life.

But what if he’s alive? Is he still an AWOL? If she saw him again, would she slap him silly or throw her arms around him? And if he is alive, does he think about her as much as she thinks about him?

With a long future stretching before her, she knows she shouldn’t waste time thinking about someone who is probably dead. Better to focus on church, on saving lives, and on other matters of eternity.

• • •

“Not cheese puffs, please,” says one of the guests at the soup kitchen. “If I have to eat another cheese puff, I’ll barf.” Even though it’s warm inside the community center, he wears a long, woolen coat. “Do you have potato chips?”

The best thing about the new church is the soup kitchen and thrift store in their community center. They give bags of groceries to the needy. They serve dinner during the week and a special supper after mass on Sundays. Clothing is distributed in the evenings and on Saturday mornings with coffee and cookies. They even have beds for those who want them. There are lots of opportunities for a girl like Miracolina to help out. She works in the community center every chance she gets. It’s not exactly donating a