in the time I’d known them. They moved away a few months before I realized I’d already been affected by…the virus, the disease, whatever it was. Their parents had both lost their jobs and headed a ways north to try to find work in a bigger city.
Bedford was a small town made even smaller by the economic crash and the bottomed-out markets that the people on TV couldn’t shut up about. My parents hadn’t let me say good-bye to the Orfeos—they’d never liked their “influence.” They’d whisper that word like it was the devil’s own name. Influence. They didn’t like how I acted when I finally came home, zipping through the rooms, trying to recreate the carefree way we’d run around their house and outside in Greenwood, smacking each other with plastic swords. They didn’t like it when I told them about Mrs. Orfeo giving us snacks, or when I repeated something she had said. It took me a while to understand that when you don’t like someone, nothing they can say or do will ever seem right. Something as harmless as giving a kid a cookie becomes something aggressive, a challenge to their authority.
So I’d watched them drive off from my bedroom window, crying my stupid eyes out, hating everyone and everything. I didn’t stop until I found the bundle of sparklers he’d left for me in the tree fort. The notebook of stories he’d spent three years writing. I kept them there so my parents wouldn’t find them and take them away. I wonder all the time if they’re still there. If Greenwood exists anywhere outside of my head.
My family only got to stay because we lived off the charity of the Church. I don’t know if my parents are in the old house, or if they picked up and moved as far from the memories of their unblessed freak child as they could. I wish I didn’t care.
Lucas and one other Red, a girl with cropped blond hair, served as our escorts. I had to force myself to stare at the back of Ashley’s head to keep from looking at him when he suddenly matched my pace. I swear, he was warm enough that the snow melted before it touched him—that he kept me warm that whole miserable trek through the mud and sleet. But that would have been crazy.
Where had he been sent, if it hadn’t been to Thurmond? Where was Mia? Was she like him, or me, or was she one of the other colors?
The metal Factory doors always sound like they are belching as they are dragged open by the PSFs waiting inside. My hands are useless, cramped and stiff from the cold, but I try squeezing the water from my hair and sweatshirt anyway. We leave a trail of smeared mud and water behind us that the Green cabins on cleanup rotation are going to have to mop up after last meal.
Ice still clouds the skylights—not that there’s any real sun to filter through the clouds of dirt this morning. Winters stretch on forever in this place, dragging out each dark hour until it becomes almost unbearable. There’s one thing I can’t remember: what it feels like to be truly warm.
The building is large enough to swallow several hundred kids whole. The main level is nothing but stretches of work tables and plastic bins. The metal rafters above are usually crowded with figures in black uniforms clutching their large guns, but today there’s only a dozen, maybe less. About that many on the ground, too. A thought begins to solidify at the back of my mind, but I push it away before it can take shape. I need to focus. I need to get through today, and maybe tomorrow will feel easier. It always gets easier as you get used to it.
I see one of the PSFs throw an arm out, pointing to where Lucas needs to stand against the far wall. When he stares at him blankly, the black uniform lets out an explosive cuss and maneuvers him there by force. We see, at the same exact moment the PSFs do, that the Reds need to be shown exactly what to do. And somehow, this scares me more than thinking that these kids have been turned against us, that they might want to voluntarily hurt us. It means that they are nothing more than weapons. Guns. Point, ready. Point, aim. Point, fire. They are like the old metal toy soldiers Lucas was