Rory Power

Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other?

But Taylor held her back, and me and Byatt, we watched Reese fall apart. When she came back together again, there was something gone.

I twist around to peer through the trees, and when I face front again, Reese is swinging her feet. She looks almost shy. But Reese doesn’t do shy. Even when she came out to me, it was like a weapon. “Queer,” she said then, as though she was daring me to disagree.

Reese is trying, but she can’t get it quite right, because nobody’s Byatt but Byatt, not even the girl in these memories. There’s this place in her, somewhere nobody can touch, not me or Reese or anyone. It’s just hers, and I don’t even know what it is, really, just that it’s there, and that she takes it with her when she goes.

“I don’t know, Hetty,” she says. “Is it really friendship with you and Byatt?”

I’ve wondered. Of course I have. And I love Byatt more than anything, more than myself, more than the life I had before Raxter. But I know the warmth in my heart when I look at her. How it burns smooth and even, without a spark.

“Yes,” I say. “She’s my sister, Reese. She’s part of me.”

Reese frowns and sits up, swings her legs over the edge of her bunk. “Look, I get it’s not my business—”

“You apparently feel the need to comment on it anyway.”

“Because it affects me,” she says, and I’m taken aback by the sting in her voice, by the snarl of her lips. “I like Byatt, okay? But I don’t want you to be with me the way you are with her.”

“You don’t want us to be friends?”

Reese sighs like I’ve said something wrong, like there’s something more I’m supposed to understand. “No,” she says plainly, “I don’t.”

I can’t pretend it doesn’t send me reeling. “Well, that’s—” I start, but there’s nothing after, just an emptiness, and not as much surprise as I’d like. “Okay,” I finish at last, and head for the door. I can hear Reese saying my name, but I don’t listen, just yank the door open and hurry out into the hallway.

“I wish I could,” she says, not looking at me. “I wish I could be like you. But I can’t go looking for her if I couldn’t go looking for him. I thought Boat Shift was the only way past the fence, but here you are, ready to tear it down with your bare hands.” She lets out a shaking breath, and then softly, “Why couldn’t I do that for my dad?”

For once I think I know what to say. It’s what people used to tell me when I was small, when my father was deployed. “You’re his daughter,” I say. “You’re not supposed to be the one protecting him.”

She doesn’t answer. Still she has to be listening. “But Byatt’s our girl.” I’m watching Reese’s face, and I have her. I know I do. “We are supposed to protect her. Just like she’d do it for us.” I take a deep breath. “Just like I’d do it for you.”

No, Reese isn’t Byatt, but I like her. I like how she talks without talking. I even like that she doesn’t always like me.

Nobody there will know, I told myself. Nobody will know what you do when you’re bored. What you do just because you can.

I don’t think of them much, my parents. I know I should. I did right after the Tox, for the first month or two. I lined up for my radio call and we had short, stilted conversations. But then they cut off our access, and things got worse, and then it didn’t matter anymore. Because if I see my parents again, they will want to hear how I missed them, how it was the worst thing that ever happened. And I’ll be lying, if I can say it at all.

Part of me really was an idiot.