TWENTY-TWO
She’s going to be there next time, right?” Theo asked Billy. “Right?” Billy said, “Maybe we need tattoos.”
“Huh?” Theo asked. He stopped, and his shadow appeared on the ground to his right. Billy was big enough to put Theo in shade. Literally. The sun was to the left of Theo, left of Billy. Theo had been playing a game, concentrating on stepping in concert with Billy, making sure none of his own shadow ever showed. “What are you saying? That she won’t show up? Ever? That we need to become Industrials?”
Billy stopped too. He ran the top of his forearm across his face, wiping away sweat. “It’s not good for you, working the smelter. We could find other things if we were Industrials.”
“So that’s what you’re saying. She won’t show up. Ever.”
“How many times we been to the meeting place?” Billy asked. “Right time. Right place. How many times?”
“I don’t keep track,” Theo said. He’d pulled the bandages from his face. Already, dark bruises had given him raccoon eyes. “Not many. Not enough to give up. She said she didn’t know how long it would take to get to the surgeon. Or how long she needed to heal before she could travel.”
“Theo, tell me how many flies you’ve killed in the last week. Out of how many tries.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Think I don’t notice? A fly lands on you, and you do your best to catch it then throw it down on the ground so that it’s stunned and you can stomp it.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How many steps you manage to stay in my shadow in the last half hour?”
“Huh? You noticed that too?”
“You know numbers and you watch details. Pretending you don’t know how many times we’ve been to the meeting place tells me you know it’s too many but you don’t want to admit it.”
“She’ll be there,” Theo said. “She promised.”
A fly landed on Theo’s right forearm. He studied its position. The trick was to try not to smash it flat. Theo knew that when you did that, the hand also pushed a small wall of air out in front of your open palm. The air helped propel the fly away. So to catch a fly, you needed to cup your palm and draw the fly up into the wall of air. A better trick was to sweep your hand just above the fly. But you needed to sweep toward its eyes. It would have no choice but to fly forward, and that closed the gap to your hand. If you swept about three inches above the fly, it would reach your hand in the span between detecting the threat and zooming straight into it.
“Theo?”
Theo ignored Billy. He swept his hand forward, anticipating the fly’s movement. He caught it in a swift motion. He closed his fist and shook it, feeling it bounce around. He threw it down violently, releasing it only a foot from the ground. The fly hit the ground and spun in a dazed circle.
Theo stepped on it. “Eighty-nine out of one hundred two. Just under ninety percent.”
“Uh-huh,” Billy said. “How many times we been to the meeting place?”
They went every second day.
“Twenty-four,” Theo said, sadly. “She’ll be there. I know it.”
“If we get tattoos, that won’t stop us from going there, same place, same time, every time, until she shows up.”
“If we get tattoos, we’ll be stuck with them forever. Then what about our dream? West. No cities with walls.”
“The smelter is going to kill you, Theo.”
“So will living here with tattoos.”
“She could have changed her mind. Something could have happened to her. Maybe she got surgery and decided to live normal, the way Jordan wants it. Instead of joining us.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Theo said. “She’s going to be there. Someday. And if we never stop going, she’ll never wonder what happened to us.”