Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

By the time we got back to the Cheese Factory it was dark. We thought we’d be in trouble for being so late – Lucerne was always warning us about the dangers of the street – but it turned out that Zeb was back, and already they were having a fight. So we went into the hall to wait it out, because their fights took up all the room in our place.

This fight was louder than usual. A piece of furniture toppled over, or was thrown: Lucerne, it must have been, because Zeb wasn’t a thrower.

“What’s it about?” I said to Amanda. She had her ear against the door. She was shameless about eavesdropping.

“I dunno,” she said. “She’s yelling too loud. Oh wait – she says he’s having sex with Nuala.”

“Not Nuala,” I said. “He wouldn’t!” Now I knew how Bernice must have felt when we’d said all that about her father.

“Men’ll have sex with anything, given the chance,” said Amanda. “Now she’s saying he’s a pimp at heart. And he despises her and treats her like shit. I think she’s crying.”

“Maybe we should stop listening,” I said.

“Okay,” said Amanda. We stayed with our backs against the wall, waiting until Lucerne would start wailing. As she always did. Then Zeb would stomp out and slam the door, and we might not see him for days.

Zeb came out. “See you around, Queens of the Night,” he said. “Watch your backs.” He was joking with us the way he liked to do, but there wasn’t any fun behind it. He looked grim.

Usually after their fights Lucerne would go to bed and cry, but this night she started packing a bag. The bag was a pink backpack Amanda and I had gleaned. There wasn’t much for Lucerne put into it, so quite soon she finished her packing and came into our cubicle.

Amanda and I were pretending to be asleep, on our husk-filled futons, under our blue-jean quilts. “Get up, Ren,” Lucerne said to me. “We’re going.”

“Where?” I said.

“Back,” she said. “To the HelthWyzer Compound.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. Why are you looking like that? It’s what you’ve always wanted.” It’s true that I’d longed for the HelthWyzer Compound, once. I’d been homesick for it. But ever since Amanda’d moved in, I hadn’t been thinking about it too much.

“Amanda’s coming too?” I said.

“Amanda’s staying here.”

I felt very cold. “I want Amanda to come,” I said.

“Out of the question,” said Lucerne. Something else had now happened, it seemed: Lucerne had cast off her paralyzing spell, the spell of Zeb. She’d stepped out of sex as if out of a loose dress. Now she was brisk, decisive, no nonsense. Had she been like that before, long ago? I could scarcely remember.

“Why?” I said. “Why can’t Amanda come?”

“Because they won’t let her in at HelthWyzer. We can get our identities back there, but she doesn’t have one, and I certainly don’t have the money to buy her one. They’ll take care of her here,” she added, as if Amanda was a kitten I was being forced to abandon.

“No way,” I said. “If she’s not coming, I’m not!”

“And where would you live, here?” said Lucerne with contempt.

“We’ll stay with Zeb,” I said.

“He’s never home,” said Lucerne. “You don’t think they’d let two young girls camp out by themselves!”

“Then we can live with Adam One,” I said. “Or Nuala. Or maybe Katuro.”

“Or Stuart the Screw,” said Amanda hopefully. This was desperate – Stuart was dour and a loner – but I grabbed the idea.

“We can help him make furniture,” I said. I imagined the whole scenario – Amanda and me collecting pieces of junk for Stuart, sawing and hammering and singing as we worked, making herbal tea…

“You won’t be welcome,” said Lucerne. “Stuart is a misanthrope. He only tolerates you kids because of Zeb, and it’s the same with all the others.”

“We’ll stay with Toby,” I said.

“Toby has other things to do. Now that’s enough. If Amanda can’t find someone who’ll take her in, she can always go back to the pleebrats. She belongs with them, anyway. You don’t. Now, hurry up.”

“I need to put on my clothes,” I said.

“Fine,” said Lucerne. “Ten minutes.” She left the cubicle.

“What’ll we do?” I whispered to Amanda as I started to dress.

“I don’t know,” Amanda whispered back. “Once you’re in there she’ll never let you out. Those Compounds are like castles, they’re like jails. She won’t ever let you see me. She hates me.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” I whispered. “I’ll get out somehow.”

“My phone,” Amanda whispered. “Take it with you. You can phone me.”

“I’ll get you in somehow,” I said. By this time I was crying silently. I slipped her purple phone into my pocket.

“Hurry up, Ren,” said Lucerne.

“I’ll call you!” I whispered. “My dad will buy you an identity!”

“Sure he will,” said Amanda softly. “Don’t take shit, okay?”

In the main room, Lucerne was moving fast. She dumped out the sickly looking tomato plant she’d been growing on the windowsill. Underneath the soil there was a plastic bag full of money. She must’ve been ripping it off, from selling stuff at the Tree of Life – the soap, the vinegar, the macramé, the quilts. Money was old-fashioned, but people still used it for small things and the Gardeners wouldn’t take virtual money because they didn’t allow computers. So she’d been stashing away her escape money. She hadn’t been such a doormat as I’d thought.

Then she took the kitchen shears and cut off her long hair, straight across at neck level. The cutting made a Velcro sound – scratchy and dry. She left the pile of hair in the middle of the dining-room table.

Then she took me by the arm and hauled me out of our place and down the stairs. She never went out at night because of the drunks and druggies on the street corners, and the pleebrat gangs and muggers. But right then she was white-hot with anger and filled with crackling energy: people on the street cleared out of our path as if we were contagious, and even the Asian Fusions and the Blackened Redfish left us alone.

It took us hours to get through the Sinkhole and the Sewage Lagoon, and then the richer pleebs. As we went along, the houses and buildings and hotels got newer looking, and the streets emptier of people. In Big Box we got a solarcab: we drove through Golfgreens and then past a big open space, and finally right up to the gates of the HelthWyzer Compound. It was so long since I’d seen that place it was like one of those dreams, where you don’t recognize anything, yet also you do. I felt a little sick, but that might have been excitement.

Before we got into the cab, Lucerne had mussed up my hair and smeared dirt on her own face, and torn part of her dress. “Why’d you do that?” I said. But she didn’t answer.

There were two guards at the HelthWyzer gateway, behind the little window. “Identities?” they said.

“We don’t have any,” said Lucerne. “They were stolen. We were forcibly abducted.” She looked behind her, as if she was afraid someone was following us. “Please – you have to let us in, right away! My husband – he’s in Nanobioforms. He’ll tell you who I am.” She started to cry.

One of them reached for the phone, pushed a button. “Frank,” he said. “Main gate. Lady here says she’s your wife.”

“We’ll need some cheek swabs, ma’am, for the communicables,” said the second one. “Then you can wait in the holding room, pending bioform clearance and verification. Someone will be with you soon.”

In the holding room we sat on a black vinyl sofa. It was five in the morning. Lucerne picked up a magazine – NooSkins, it said on the cover. Why Live With Imperfection? She riffled through it.