“Hey, Junior,” says Steve, a fortysomething burnout with a ponytail. “What’s up with the uniform?”
I look down at the regulation company yellow short-sleeved shirt that I’m wearing over a pair of jeans and shrug.
“I gave you blue slacks,” he says. “You’re supposed to wear them.”
“Yeah, but you see, Steve, there’s this thing called a washing machine. And sometimes you’re supposed to put your clothes in there so you don’t smell bad. Since you only gave me one pair of ‘slacks’”—I can’t even say that word without flinching—“I don’t have a spare.”
“Dude, that’s what weekends are for. I wear my uniform during the week, and then wash it on the weekend.”
From the permanent sweat marks under his pits, I have my doubts as to the frequency of his laundry habits. But I just stand there and stare at him, unblinking, until he looks away and starts fiddling with the radio dial. “Your dad said I’m supposed to treat you like everyone else,” he says, not looking at me, “and that means wearing your uniform.”
“Yes, sir,” I say, avoiding sarcasm in my tone but meaning it with all my heart.
I should be in school getting ready for graduation. Partying my ass off like the rest of my classmates. If it weren’t for Ms. Cochran, I would be coasting through the last six weeks of high school and easily into my spot at Yale.
And if it weren’t for my dad, I’d be at home watching Comedy Central. “Working in the mail room, you’ll be getting to know the business from the ground up,” he said. “Prove you’re responsible and I’ll make sure they let you into Yale for second semester. But until then, you work forty hours a week, minimum wage, no screwing around.”
His motivation is as transparent as glass. He wants me to see what life will look like if I don’t “shape up.” That, unless I change, I will be doomed to become Steve, spending my days sorting envelopes and wallowing in self-importance from bossing around lowly mail-room staff.
There’s got to be another way to prove myself to Dad instead of being stuck here for the next nine months. Even a few more weeks in this hellhole and my brain will explode. Or I’ll kill Steve. I imagine wrapping his hair around his neck and pulling hard. Death by ponytail. It could happen.
5
JUNEAU
THE DOGS ARE HOWLING. I STUMBLE OUT OF OUR yurt and toward their sound. They are in Nome’s yurt, standing above a mass of fur and blood. Her huskies. They’ve been shot. I choke back tears: I knew these dogs as well as I know my own.
We have one rifle among the clan, and it is only used in the very rare occasion of a bear attack. Our few bullets are dispensed sparingly. But the casings scattered on the floor around me are not from our gun. Flying machines? Guns? These brigands are terrifyingly well-equipped.
I run out of Nome’s yurt and into Kenai’s. Empty. There is another heap of bloody fur behind that yurt, and at the mouth of the woods I see more dead huskies. But no people. I check all twenty yurts, saving Whit’s for last.
Our Sage’s fire is out, his hearth cold. I stand there, confused, until I remember that he left yesterday for his retreat. The cave on the far side of Denali where he goes a few times a year to “refresh his brain,” as he calls it. He has never taken me, but I know where it is. With all the exploring that Nome, Kenai, and I have done, there isn’t an inch of our territory that I haven’t seen.
My heart pinches as I think of my best friends and where they might be right now. What unknown danger are they, my father, and the rest of my clan facing? If they’re even still alive. I shake my head and refuse to allow that thought to fix itself in my mind.
I’ve got to get to Whit. Even though he didn’t foresee this attack, maybe he’ll know what happened. I take my big pack from my shelf in the back of Whit’s yurt. The one I use on our daylong lessons, when we travel into the woods to search for the plants and minerals used for the Rite.
Juneau, run! My father’s words shake me back into action, and I sweep bags of dried herbs, vials of plant extracts, powders, and precious stones off Whit’s shelves into my pack. I don’t know what he will need, so I take a bit of everything. I grab a stack of his treasured books off his desk and shove them in with the rest.
I whistle and the dogs come running. “Good boys,” I say as they sit in front of the sled, waiting for me to clip them on. I secure the pack to the sled, and then, glancing back at my home, I tell the dogs to wait and push my way through the flaps.
I see the fire and am tempted to Read it. But I can’t ignore the words on the ground and choose to wait until I reach Whit. And although I know that the fire will burn itself out, I take the pail of melted snow water and throw it onto the embers.
I pick up the framed photograph of my parents that sits on my nightstand. It was taken the month before our clan’s emigration. A month before the war. My mother and father stand in front of their house in Seattle. Mother’s head rests on my father’s shoulder, and he has both arms around her.
In the picture she looks just like me. Long, straight black hair, courtesy of her Chinese mother, wide-set full-moon eyes and high cheekbones from her American dad. Dad said that if she hadn’t drowned when I was still a young child, we would look like twins now.
In this old photo, my father looks exactly the same as today, except for one difference: He is happier. More carefree. “The calm before the storm,” Father says when he refers to those days.
I slip the picture out of its frame and carefully slide it into my coat pocket. And before I leave the yurt, I bend down and brush out my father’s message, erasing everything but the letter “J.” If he comes back, he will know I have seen it.
I steer the dogs toward the woods. The moment we hit the trees, I hear the flying machine again. The chopping winglike noise coming from far away, barely audible but getting louder by the second. The brigands are returning, I realize with terror.
It takes great effort to push my fear aside. Stay calm, I think, and bring the huskies to a stop. I glance back at our camp and hesitate a second before leaping off the sled and running back toward the clearing. Breaking a low branch off a tree, I use it as a broom to sweep away the sled’s tracks, following my own footsteps well back into the trees. I look back at my handiwork—no one could see that we had been there or how we had left.
“Hike!” I yell, and we are off, streaking across the wooded path as fast as a hawk at hunt. And just in time. The noise is almost on top of us. Although I’m grateful for the thick tree cover, it prevents me from seeing what is flying overhead. All I get is a glimpse of metal shining through the branches.
We cover a distance that should have taken an hour in almost half the time. I don’t even have to tell the dogs how fast to go. They feel my fear and fly.