Don’t sort, I tell myself. See.
They have very few notches carved in their soles. They aren’t apathetic yet. They still want things. They are new. They likely haven’t been here long enough to know Ky.
You’re still sorting. See.
One has burned hands and black powder all over his boots, clear up to his knees; he stands at the back of the group. He sees me looking at his hands and locks eyes with me, makes a gesture I do not like. But I hold his gaze. I try to see.
“You know him,” I say to the boy. “You know who I’m talking about. ”
I don’t expect him to admit it, but he nods.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Dead,” the boy says.
“You lie,” I say, pushing down the rush of tears and the worry inside. “But I’ll listen to you when you want to tell the truth. ”
“What makes you think I’d tell you anything?” he asks.
“You don’t have much time left to talk,” I say. “None of us do. ”
Indie stands next to me, her eyes on the horizon. She looks for what might come our way. Others gather near us, listening.
For a moment, it seems that the boy might speak, but then he laughs and turns away.
But I’m not worried. I know he’ll be back—I saw it in his eyes. And I’ll be ready.
The day passes long and short at the same time. Everyone waits. The pack of boys returns, but something keeps them at a distance from our group. Perhaps it is the threat of the old leader, who stays near us, miniport at hand to report anything untoward. Do they fear the consequences if they injure us and the Official comes back?
I’m eating my foilware dinner with the other girls when I
see the burned-hand boy coming back toward me. I stand up and hold out the last of my food. The portions are so small here; anyone who’s been out here for long must be starving.
“Stupid,” Indie mutters next to me, but she stands up, too. After helping each other on the air ship we seem to have become allied somehow.
“You bribing me?” the boy asks, venom in his voice, as he gets closer and sees my outstretched offering of meat-and-carb casserole.
“Of course,” I say. “You’re the only one who was there. You’re the only one who knows. ”
“I could just take it,” he says. “I could take anything I wanted from you. ”
“You could,” I say. “But it wouldn’t be smart. ”
“Why not?” he says.
“Because no one else will listen the way I will,” I say. “No one else wants to know. But I do. I want to know what you saw. ”
He hesitates.
“The others don’t want to hear about it, do they?” I ask.
He leans back and brushes a hand through his hair, a gesture left over from another time, I think, because it is short now, like all the other boys’. “All right,” he says. “But it was in a different camp. The one I was in before I came here. It might not be the same person. The Ky I know had words, like you said. ”
“What words did he have?” I ask.
The boy shrugs. “Ones to say over the dead. ”
“What did they sound like?” I ask.
“I don’t remember much,” he says. “Something about a Pilot. ”
I blink in surprise. Ky knew the words of the Tennyson poem, too. How? Then I remember that day in the woods when I first opened the compact. Ky told me later that he saw me. Perhaps he saw that poem too, over my shoulder, or perhaps I whispered it aloud as I read it again and again there in the woods. I smile. So we share the second poem, too.
Indie looks back and forth between the boy and me, her eyes curious. “What did he mean about the Pilot?” she asks.
The boy shrugs. “I don’t know. It was something he said whenever people died. That’s all. ” Then the boy begins to laugh, a sound without any humor in it. “But he must have been saying those words for hours that last night. ”
“What happened the last night?”
“There was a firing,” he says, no more laughter. “The worst one of all. ”
“When was it?”
He looks down at his boot. “Two nights ago,” he says, as if he can hardly believe it. “Feels like it’s been longer than that. ”
“You saw him that night?” I say, my heart racing. If this boy is to be believed, Ky was alive and near two nights ago. “Are you sure? You saw his face?”
“Not his face,” the boy says, “his back. He and his friend Vick ran off and left us for dead. They left us to die so they could save themselves. Only six of us survived. I don’t know where the Officers took the other five after they brought me here. I’m the only one in this camp. ”
Indie glances at me, her eyes questioning, asking Is it him? It doesn’t seem like Ky, to leave people behind, and yet it does seem like Ky to find the one chance in a hopeless situation and take it. “So he took off the night of the firing. And left you—” I can’t finish the sentence.