FIFTY-SEVEN

You know what I miss about Appalachia?” Theo whispered to Billy.

“Nothing?” Billy asked. He set aside a carrot he’d been eating as slowly as possible, deciding to save what remained for a day or two later. Carrots were a luxury, but Billy hated going a week without some kind of vegetable.

“Almost.” Theo was sitting up in the dark in the soovie. “I miss the quiet. Before our family was sent to the Factory, we’d sit outside. Just listening. All we heard were crickets and frogs. I liked that. And once in a while, something in the night would scare them all. And then we’d hear nothing. I liked that.”

Billy knew Theo’s story, how he’d escaped the Factory. His parents and sister dead. Theo didn’t talk much about those days, so he guessed Theo had a reason for it now.

“Out west,” Theo said, bringing his knees toward his chest and holding them with both arms, “think it will be quiet?”

“Not many people out there from what I hear,” Billy said. “It’s people noise that seems loud.”

“She’s going with us, right? She hasn’t changed her mind.”

“She wants freedom too,” Billy answered.

“What if she finds a way to get it without our help?”

“Then we should be happy for her.”

Theo hummed for a few minutes. That told Billy that Theo was thinking.

“You would think people could be happy living in cages,” Theo finally said. “That all we would need is to eat and sleep and be safe. But I remember the Factory. If you did your work and obeyed the rules, they took care of you. A person should be happy with that. Should. But it’s not like that. You can only keep people in captivity so long. Then they’ll fight until they are free. Or dead. It’s like humans would rather be dead if they can’t be free.”

“God made us that way?”

“Maybe. But I don’t like that answer,” Theo said. “That can be the answer for anything. It doesn’t explain it.”

“I know,” Billy said. “Remember the rich man who asked Jesus how to get to heaven? When Jesus told him, the rich man walked away. I think about that a lot. Why didn’t Jesus run after him and stop him? He could have done a miracle or something to change the guy’s mind. But Jesus let him walk away.”

“He didn’t want to force him.”

“Right,” Billy said. “Like in the garden, when God let Adam and Eve choose. He could have forced them to stay away from the forbidden fruit. But he didn’t. He wanted us free, like that’s just as important as air and food and water.”

“If Caitlyn doesn’t show up, will you and me go west without her?”

Now it was Billy’s turn for silence. This was his biggest worry. How long to wait until they gave up. Caitlyn had said she was going to get surgery so that she would be normal and it would be easier to go out west. They couldn’t know if something had gone wrong or if she had changed her mind. All they could do was wait.

“Theo,” Billy said, “here’s something you need to think about. The government is still trying to track us. That’s because they don’t have Caitlyn yet. We have to make sure we survive because, someday, she’s going to need us.”