“You’re such a ChumHead.” Talan shoves my shoulder. “If you’re going to visit a prostitute, then I should get to be one.”
“No deal. No deal at all.”
We step over a man sleeping in the street, and Talan steals the hat right off his head. “Still thinking about that kid, huh?”
She knows me too well.
Not a boy I murdered. Not a victim.
But just a Ward, and a new one, at that.
Eight years old. Missing a tooth, with deep brown hair the same color as mine. He showed up last week with a Leech officer, a fresh X tattooed on the back of his neck. The boy’s face was stained with tears, and I don’t know if he’s stopped crying since.
“It’s like watching my life on replay,” I say to Talan. She looks good in the ball cap, but it’ll only make her a target for someone else. Everyone wants what isn’t theirs to have. I take it from her head and toss it into the gutter. She groans, but this is a game we play often. Soon she’ll steal something else.
Eventually, she might get caught doing it, and then she’ll be another person for the Leeches to shoot in the head. Live target practice. “What’s that word they use? Kleptomaniac?”
“It’s called borrowing,” Talan corrects me. “Not stealing.”
If a Sellout saw Talan stealing, they’d take her right to the Leeches for a nice payday. When Sellouts catch Wards breaking a Commandment, they earn out big, because the Leeches can’t see everything that goes on. Most of it. But they don’t always see all of it.
“Actually, I do feel like cleaning out that building.”
“Hell, no,” Talan says. She grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop. Turns to face me, her blue eyes set in a cold glare. “I’m not doing a job so you can give your Creds to some random orphan.” She puts her hand on her hip. Something that Arden used to do. “If that boy’s father hadn’t died, his son wouldn’t be in the Reserve right now. It’s not up to you to fix this problem.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“You don’t have to take care of everyone,” Talan says. “People die. Kids become Wards, and the world’s a big pile of skitz, but so what? There’s nothing you can do about it.”
She puts her arm around my waist and tows me along. The train rattles past, shaking the ground beneath our feet. We go by the Graveyard, where the loony-headed citizens all go, the ones driven crazy by the Shallows. There’s a couple of towers between the trash mountains that are constantly spilling out steam, so the whole thing looks like some creepy ghost hangout.
“Maybe you’re right about helping people,” I say, stepping over a plastic bag that dances away with the wind, “but if it makes me feel better . . . why does it matter?”
I feel her sigh. “Because there will always be new Wards. There will always be people to take care of,” she says.
“But if I can help just one—” She cuts me off.
“Stop being a saint. And anyways, you’re busy taking care of me, ChumHead. And lucky for you, I’m a full-time job.”
She puts her head on my shoulder and we walk the rest of the way to the Reserve in silence.
CHAPTER 13
MEADOW
The first time I went to the Rations Hall, my mother was still alive.
Peri was just a tiny being in her stomach then, growing bigger every day. We lived in an apartment on the edge of the city, and even though the murders hadn’t started yet, the world was still far from safe.
“I don’t want to go,” I begged my mother. I wanted to stay home and feel Peri kick, and listen to my mother tell us both stories. Instead, she kissed my forehead and told me to follow my father outside. “Be safe,” she warned me. “Listen to your father,” she told Koi.
I still remember the sound of the three locks clicking the second we left the apartment.
Koi’s hand was clenched tightly over my own so I wouldn’t get lost. His palm was drenched in sweat, wet, like he’d just come right out of the ocean, and he kept looking down at me, as if I’d simply disappear and never come back.
My father kept his eyes on the road the entire time, never checking on us, never slowing when we had trouble pushing through the crowds.
The second we walked inside the Rations Hall, I realized why my father wanted us to come.
Food.
There was food displayed behind one wall made of glass so we could see it. Koi let go of my hand. He rushed toward the wall and grabbed a bag of rations, so proud to have food for our family.
I cried out. I wanted to follow him, as I always did, but my father silenced me.
“You can both learn from this, Meadow,” he said. I watched from behind my father’s back as an Initiative soldier held a gun to Koi’s head, finger poised to squeeze the trigger.
In exchange for Koi’s life, we left with my father’s eye swollen shut and not a single ration for the week. We were lucky the Initiative did not kill us all.
That night, my father chained Koi to the kitchen table and made him sleep standing up. “You must work for what you deserve,” he told him. “Nothing the Initiative offers us is free.”
There is a line of people standing in front of the Rations Hall, trailing all the way down the street and along the train tracks. A dead body lies near the doorway, flies swarming around the gaping eye sockets that have been picked clean by the gulls.
I’m not sure where to go in, where to start, so I just stand there for a while, counting the number of people.