Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“Duh,” Ava said. “What else?”

Colin said, “That tree over there wants water.”

“Duh again. Everybody knows that. You’re such a baby, Colin.”

“Am not!” Colin said. To prove it, he hit her.

“Stop that!” Ava screamed. “If you don’t, I’ll sneak into your room and dump gasoline on you and set you on fire, so help me Lord!”

Luke shuddered, but Jason just rolled his eyes. Colin was a little scared, but he said, “You can’t.”

“Yes, I can!”

“I’ll… I’ll make a tree fall on you!”

The three of them looked at him. Jason frowned—was he remembering the tree branch that fell on Paul? Colin said desperately, “I’m sorry, Ava. Look—I’ll… I’ll do those alphabet letters Ms. Blake told you to write for homework.”

“She’ll know it were you and not me, dummy.”

“I’ll write them all wobbly so she’ll think it was you.”

“And then when I cain’t write them in school she’ll know it warn’t me.”

Colin didn’t know what to say next. But Luke did. He said, “The sounds can teach Ava her letters.”

“What?” Jason said.

“That’s how I learned. It’s hard, but if you make lines when the sounds come… I can’t say the words.”

“Then show us,” Jason said. He jumped up and found a discarded stick, one of the many splinters of lumber lying all over the camp. He handed it to Luke, who took it helplessly.

Luke said, “Don’t look at me. I don’t like it when people look at me.”

“Okay,” Jason said. He looked at the dirt beneath the stick. Colin and Ava, arms folded scornfully across her chest, did the same.

“Well,” Luke said slowly. “Remember that whistle? From the tree past the fence?”

“Yeah,” Ava said, “it wants water. So what?”

“I think that sound in my mind and I make these lines because Ms. Feldman said that it starts ‘tree.’” Carefully, as if the two lines had no connection with each other, he drew a line and a top: T.

Ava said doubtfully, “But do those lines always start tree? Or do it change?”

“I think always.”

Colin felt a sudden jolt in his head, like his mind sat down too hard. Luke couldn’t sound out words, couldn’t see how letters spelled things. Luke only memorized lines which didn’t mean anything to him, because he’d made letters go in some sort of rows in his head, connected to sounds that weren’t the letters’ sounds. And Ava couldn’t even do that, unless Luke could teach her.

Luke did, with enormous patience. After half an hour, Ava could draw T, V, and A, and write her name. Good thing it was so short! But when Colin, wanting to help, asked her to name things that started with T, she hit him again.

“Ow! Stop that!”

“Then stop trying to teach me! You cain’t! Only Luke can!”

“Someone’s coming,” Jason said. Colin heard it; the subtle change in the background noise of air and ground. Footsteps. Colin even knew whose.

“Well, young’uns, here y’all are. Your grandma and Ms. Blake say to come on in, you’re late for dinner. Having fun out here?”

“Yes, sir,” Jason said.

“Good, good. Come on in now. Don’t want the womenfolk mad, do we?” He lumbered off.

Ava looked after him with eyes sparkling with hatred.

Jason said. “Why don’t you like him?”

“He’s bad. Bad, bad, bad! He don’t love Mama, he don’t even like her, he said he’ll marry her just so’s he can get me. And he don’t like me neither. He just uses me for all those tests while Mama’s gone to the hospital to get her face fixed. I’m sick of tests all the time. Even if Devil Stubbins’s gonna fix my face, too.”

Fix her face? And her mother’s face? Could Mr. Stubbins do that? Colin thought Mr. Stubbins could only build spaceships. And he’d never seen Mr. Stubbins do anything bad.

She said, “Just ’cause my mama’s crazy don’t mean he should treat her like he do.”

“What does he—”

“Oh, shut up, Colin, you’re such a baby.” She stalked off. Colin didn’t understand any of it. It was the first thing he didn’t even want to understand.

Ms. Blake was sick with something. She was in the infirmary, which was a little hospital in camp, littler than the one Daddy was in or the one where Ava’s mama was away getting her face fixed. Colin liked Ms. Blake and hoped she got better, but the great thing was that Grandma didn’t know yet that the teacher was sick. So after some grown-up came to their classroom to tell them that and then left again, nobody told them where they were supposed to be.

“We should go find Grandma,” Jason said.

“No!” Colin said. He was mad at Grandma today. She’d found them all playing Ataka! and asked them where they got it. When Jason said “From Mr. Stubbins,” Grandma’s mouth got all pressed together and she made them show her how to play it. Then she said it was too violent and deleted it off the player, and it was Colin’s best game. He was almost to the third level.

Jason nodded. He was mad at Grandma, too. He said, “Then let’s go on a hike. We’ll take provisions.”

Colin didn’t know what “provisions” were but they turned out just to be food: apples and water bottles and some stolen cookies. The children slipped between buildings, trying to not be seen, until they were at the edge of camp. Then they crawled across a place with deep grass, pretending that bad guys were after them. Then they ran into the tiny woods and collapsed, laughing. Jason tossed everybody an apple.

Ava let hers roll away. She said, “There’s people down there.”

Colin, still holding his apple, tipped himself over and pressed his ear to the ground. Ava was right.

Jason said, “What do you hear?”

“People,” Ava said. “In a cave.”

Colin nodded. They’d all listened to the underground buildings all over camp, most of which were filled with machinery. They also listened to a few real caves, small spaces that Grandma said were mostly filled with mud. This cave was like the underground bunkers for attacks but bigger. Colin said, “People are down there—and mouses! I mean, mice!”

“Cool!” Jason said. “How many mice?”

“Lots,” Luke said. “I wish we could see them.”

“Well, we can’t,” Jason said. “Because then the people would see us.”

Ava said, her ear pressed to the dirt, “Them people are mad.”

They were; Colin could hear it, too. Not real words, but angry noises. He didn’t like to listen to angry people, so he was glad when Jason said, “You know what—let’s look for mice up here!”

“Yeah!” Luke said.

They walked around under the trees, Colin, Luke, and Ava as carefully and quietly as they could, listening hard. Jason kept lookout. Colin found a mouse first, not underground but scurrying across a little clearing. “Look, there!” But by the time the others turned their heads, the mouse was gone. Still, Colin had seen it clearly: a tiny brown mouse with a black stripe down its back, little ears, and a really long tail.

Ava said, “Over here!”

The boys raced to her. The only thing to see was a small hole in the ground, but when Colin, Ava, and Luke put their ears to the ground, they could hear them clearly.

“Six babies,” Luke said. “They want their mommy.”

“Let’s wait to see her come home,” Jason said.

They settled down around the hole and waited. Colin got thirsty, but he didn’t want to move until Jason said to. Finally Jason said, “She’s not coming home. And we have to go back.”

They got to their feet. The walk back wasn’t as much fun as the hike out. But still, it was a good day. Mice were a lot more interesting than people, even angry people underground. And Jason said they could come back every day to check on the baby mice. Maybe the mother mouse would even come home while they were there. Maybe the babies could be pets. And maybe he’d see that other mouse again, the striped one.