That made him a year older than me. Surprising, how much I liked knowing I wasn’t the only one my age down here. He might understand how alone I felt and how impossible everything seemed. I wanted to chat more, but there was no chance, that day.
“Robin,” my mother said. “Come away. Your father wants to talk to you.”
“Will you call me again?” Austin asked.
“Yes,” I said quickly. I memorized the colors currently lit on the terminal. “Soon, I promise.”
My parents sat me down and explained that it was likely we wouldn’t be going back up. If the world was in such bad shape that the infrastructure had collapsed, they didn’t see us returning. Which meant I had to adjust to the small life we currently knew. Two years ago, I would’ve protested. But I had grown up a bit since then. I understood the limitations, and I only nodded.
Early the next morning while my mom and dad were still asleep, I used the terminal to call Austin. It wasn’t so much that I thought they would mind as the fact that I wanted something of my own. Since we lived in one room, it had gotten harder to remember when I had hours to myself, no one looking at my drawings over my shoulder.
He answered on the first ring, his voice a sleepy whisper. “Robin?”
“You asked me to—”
“I know. Not about anything specific. I’m just tired of talking to my parents. My mother’s trying to pretend this will be over shortly.”
“It might be,” I said. “But probably not in the way she hopes.”
The video aspect of the call stayed dark, as lights and moving images would wake our parents in a way that whispers might not. So his sigh came across with poignant clarity. I imagined his fear echoed my own, but I didn’t mention it. We didn’t know each other well enough to share such things.
“What did you do, before?” It was an open question.
“I was at a charter school, studying art. I’m fourteen,” I added, because he might not have been able to tell from the quick glimpse yesterday.
“My parents called me home from military academy just before they dropped the bomb about the bunker.”
“I don’t know anything about boarding school. Did you like it?”
His hesitation told me the answer was no. “I got used to it.”
At that point, my parents stirred, so I whispered, “Tomorrow?”
“Yes. Please.” It was the tacked-on “please” that made me determined not to miss a day.
I suspected Austin Shelley was lonely like me.
After that, the days fell in to a routine. Austin would have been a year ahead of me in school, for what little such things mattered these days. He had wanted to become an architect—though that seemed unlikely now—and he was fascinated by how things worked. I ticked off the days in my journal, each one bringing a fresh conversation with my new friend.
Thirty-four days after I first called Austin Shelley, my father sat me down. At first, I thought it meant they’d learned my secret and I was about to get a lecture, but instead, my parents wanted to discuss our current living conditions. Apparently, they thought it wasn’t healthy for us to be cooped up like animals in an exhibit.
“We’ve discussed the risks at length,” my father said, “and your mother and I agree that we should get to know the other families down here.”
“Yes. If we’re stuck, we might as well make the best of it,” my mother added with a determinedly cheerful expression.
I’d seen that look many times, just before she offered me the lesser of two evils, but I was tired of our four walls, however expensive they had been. Safety at the cost of new experiences tasted like stale, unleavened bread. So later that day, my father unsealed the door and we stepped into the hallway beyond. Inside our bunker it was easier to pretend, but here, it was definitely grim and institutional, constructed quickly in answer to the growing unease. Other doors opened around us, and in their shhh sounds I heard a tacit acceptance that this was our new reality.
Six families. Six bunkers.
Four of them had children, but most were younger. I might end up watching them to give their parents a break, but they’d never be my friends. Not like Austin. He came toward me with a shy half-smile, like he felt odd about meeting someone with whom he’d been talking in whispers for over a month. I knew exactly how he felt. This was possibly the worst party ever; since we all had the same rations, there was nothing to offer but our company.
I offered my hand, and he shook it, solemn-faced. As far as our parents were concerned, we were strangers, but he had been a lifeline across days that seemed so alike as to have no end. And sometimes I had dark thoughts, like, is survival at this cost even worth it? Most days, the answer was yes, but occasionally it was just because I knew he was waiting to hear from me.
Austin was taller than me by at least four inches. At military school, they probably made him participate in team sports too. I beckoned for him to come into our unit, away from the kids chasing one another up and down the hall. There were five of them, not including us, which meant some families had more than one. I couldn’t imagine how they were coping with the reduced space. Probably, their mothers put them on the exercise machine and made them use it until they exhausted all their energy.
“So this is you,” he said, and then his pale cheeks colored.
I pretended I thought he meant our apartment instead of acknowledging it as a lame version of so we meet at last. “Is it like your place?”
“Pretty much.”
“This is the sketch book I was telling you about. I’m almost out of pages. But I like this one—” I broke off, conscious that he was studying me, not the book. “Do I look…different than you expected?”
It was an issue for some people that my father was a different color than my mother. Fervently I hoped that wouldn’t be the case for Austin; he shook his head quickly, eyes dropping to the floor and then back to mine again.
“It’s just…odd,” he managed finally.
He’s shy, I guessed.
Ordinarily, I could be too, but we’d talked enough in the mornings that he felt like an old friend. So maybe if I treated him that way, he would relax. I hoped so. For me, he offered the bright spot at the start of each day.
“Everything is.”
“I don’t draw people,” he said then. “But I have some designs. Buildings. Would you like to see?” Again, the touch of color.