I drop to my knees and begin to wipe up the puddle.
Then, bam, there’s a foot pushing me over.
“I said SCIETTO was supposed to clean it up!” Venger says.
“She’s sorry, she’s sorry!” Mario sputters.
For his sake, I speak. “I’m sorry,” I say.
The dinner bell rings.
“Yeah, you’re sorry,” Venger spits. “Seeing as you’re so eager to clean, I guess you can stay out here and clean it good.”
Venger pushes Aidan and Heather toward Plaza 900.
“Say, Mr. Venger,” Mario stammers. “I’ve been meaning to apologize about that mess at the fence a few days ago—”
“Go on,” Venger says. “Scietto, take your brats and feed them!”
“Josie wanted to apologize, too, didn’t cha, hun?”
Mario is telling me to beg.
He knows Venger’s been waiting for some way to pay me back for my defiance at the gate.
I am not going to beg.
I drop to my hands and knees and start to scrub.
“No, she’s too proud to apologize,” Venger says. “It’s okay, Scietto. I’ll take care of your girl. Go on, now, go have your supper.”
Mario says nothing in reply, and for that I am glad.
He gets the kids out of there, before Venger changes his mind.
CHAPTER NINE
DEAN
DAY 32
Astrid was saying, “Oh my God,” on repeat.
I seemed to be stuck on, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” she finally snapped. “She’s totally going to track me down. With that letter she has my real name, my whole story. She’s going to rat me out!”
Her face was flushed and her breathing shallow. She was going to make herself sick with this, I thought, and then I burst out, “Enough! Stop! We have to think about what she said.”
I held her two arms and got her to look at me.
“She said that most women who hear about the testing refuse at first but then change their minds when they hear about the money.”
Her expression shifted into doubt.
“And she said pregnant women who’ve been exposed need special care, Astrid. I think we should come clean with her and listen to what she has to say. We need to think about the health of the baby.”
“Do you think that I’m not worried about the health of the baby?” She was furious now. “I lie there at night and I feel it moving inside me. And I worry so much about what might be wrong! I just want to get somewhere safe.”
“But it is safe here!”
Astrid looked away from me. I went on. “I just … I can’t think that the US Army would take women away without their consent. It would be totally illegal, Astrid. It would be immoral. Wrong.”
I waited for her to say something like, “It’s illegal for them to keep the Os locked up at Mizzou.” Or, “Wasn’t it immoral when the US government made the compounds in the first place?”
Instead she just looked me in the eye and said, “I want to find Jake.”
* * *
I fumed.
We searched the camp for Jake and I fumed.
Here I was, totally supporting her, trying to help her to calm down and think rationally, and she was going to turn to Jake at the first disagreement.
Maybe Jake was right. Maybe I was whipped. Maybe I gave in to her all the time. Why else would she shut me down when I tried to talk sense to her?
The man of the hour, of course, was nowhere to be found.
Not in the dining hall. (Thankfully they were still serving breakfast. I wolfed down two bacon and egg sandwiches while Astrid stood waiting irritably, almost tapping her foot with impatience. She wouldn’t eat anything but a banana. Said the smell of eggs made her want to puke.)
He was not on the grounds—that we could see.
And not in the rec hall.
We couldn’t find Alex and Sahalia, either, for that matter.
* * *
Finally, we ran into Mrs. McKinley and Mrs. Dominguez, out with the little kids, way, way down on the eleventh green. They were building a playhouse in a thick stand of trees at the edge of the course that bordered the road.
“Astrid! Dean!” All the kids besides Chloe clamored. “Did you see the letter? Isn’t it cool?”
“Yeah,” I told them. “Very cool.”
“Alex says it’s going to help find your parents!” Caroline chirped. “I can’t wait to meet them!”
“Look at our fort!” Max said.
“We building a wall!” Ulysses said, pointing to a wonky construction of sticks leaning against the trunk of a large maple tree.
“Very cool,” I said.
“What’s wrong, Mommy Junior?” Henry asked Astrid.
Either because she was pregnant, or because they had their “big” mom back, they’d taken to calling Astrid Mommy Junior. Usually it got a smile out of her, but not today.
“Have you guys seen Jake?” Astrid asked the moms.
“Yes,” Mrs. McKinley said. “We saw him at breakfast. He said he was going to go with Niko over to the Air Force base.”
Astrid threw up her hands.
“Is everything okay?” Mrs. McKinley asked.
Astrid looked away from her. I knew the expression—if she started to talk about it, she was going to cry.
My heart melted for her. But only a little.
“I just need to talk to him,” Astrid said.
“And I’m helping Astrid find him.” I couldn’t help myself. “See, I take care of Astrid, and I help her get whatever she wants. That’s my job. I do what I’m told.”
Surprise at my sarcastic tone of voice flickered onto Mrs. McKinley’s face.
“Ignore him,” she said. “He’s being a jealous jerk.”
Astrid turned on her heel and headed up to the Clubhouse.
A shuttle for the Air Force base left once an hour.
I followed her.
“You don’t have to come with me,” she said.
“I know that,” I answered.
“So don’t come.”
“I need to talk to Niko anyway,” I said.
It was sort of the truth.
But mostly I went because … because I was a jealous jerk. I was worried about what Jake might do or say without me around.
* * *