Now it's Connor's turn to be unsure. "I guess. Sort of. Wasn't it?"
Risa has to hold back a smile. Suddenly she's feeling strangely at ease with Connor. She marvels at how that could be. If their argument had been entirely real, she'd be on her guard against him. If it had been entirely a show she'd be on guard too, because if he could lie so convincingly, she'd never be able to trust him. But this was a mixture of both. It was real, it was pretend, and that combination made it all right—it made it safe, like performing death-defying acrobatic tricks above a safety net.
She holds on to that unexpected feeling as the two of them catch up with Lev, and move toward the frightening prospect of civilization.
Part Two
Storked
"You can't change laws without first changing human nature."
— NURSE GRETA
"You can't change human nature without first changing the law."
—NURSE YVONNE
9 Mother
The mother is nineteen, but she doesn't feel that old. She feels no wiser, no more capable of dealing with this situation, than a little girl. When, she wonders, did she stop being a child? The law says it was when she turned eighteen, but the law doesn't know her.
Still aching from the trauma of delivery, she holds her newborn close. It's just after dawn on a chilly morning. She moves now through back alleys. Not a soul around. Dumpsters cast angular black shadows. Broken bottles everywhere. This she knows is the perfect time of day to do this. There's less of a chance that coyotes and other scavengers would be out. She couldn't bear the thought of the baby suffering needlessly.
A large green Dumpster looms before her, listing crookedly on the uneven pavement of the alley. She holds the baby tight, as if the Dumpster might grow hands and pull the baby into its filthy depths. Maneuvering around it, she continues down the alley.
There was a time, shortly after the Bill of Life was passed, that Dumpsters such as that would be tempting to girls like her. Desperate girls who would leave unwanted newborns in the trash. It had become so common that it wasn't even deemed newsworthy anymore—it had become just a part of life.
Funny, but the Bill of Life was supposed to protect the sanctity of life. Instead it just made life cheap. Thank goodness for the Storking Initiative, that wonderful law that allows girls like her a far better alternative.
As dawn becomes early morning, she leaves the alleys and enters a neighborhood that gets better with each street she crosses. The homes are large and inviting. This is the right neighborhood for storking.
She chooses the home shrewdly. The house she decides on isn't the largest, but it's not the smallest, either. It has a very short walkway to the street, so she can get away quickly, and it's overgrown with trees, so no one either inside or out will be able to see her as she storks the newborn.
She carefully approaches the front door. No lights are on in the home yet, that's good. There's a car in the driveway— hopefully that means they're home. She gingerly climbs the porch steps, careful not to make a sound, then kneels down, placing the sleeping baby on the welcome mat. There are two blankets wrapped around the baby, and a wool cap covers its head. She makes the blankets nice and tight. It's the only thing she's learned to do as a mother.
She considers ringing the bell and running, but she realizes that would not be a good idea. If they catch her, she's obliged to keep the baby—that's part of the Storking Initiative too—but if they open the door and find nothing but the child, it's "finder's keepers" in the eyes of the law. Whether they want it or not, the baby is legally theirs.
From the time she learned she was pregnant she knew she would end up storking this baby. She had hoped that when she finally saw it, looking up at her so helplessly, she might change her mind—but who was she kidding? With neither the skill nor the desire to be a mother at this point in her life, storking had always been her best option.
She realizes she's lingered longer than is wise. There's an upstairs light on now, so she forces herself to look away from the sleeping newborn, and leaves. With the burden now lifted from her, she has sudden strength. She now has a second chance in life, and this time she'll be smarter—she's sure of it. As she hurries down the street, she thinks how wonderful it is that she can get a second chance. How wonderful it is that she can dismiss her responsibility so easily.
10 Risa
Several streets away from the storked newborn, at the edge of a dense wood, Risa stands at the door of a home. She rings the bell, and a woman answers in her bathrobe.
Risa offers the woman a big smile. "Hi, my name is Didi? And I'm collecting clothes and food for our school? We're, like, giving them to the homeless? And it's like this competition— whoever gets the most wins a trip to Florida or something? So it would be really, really great if you could help out?"
The sleepy woman tries to get her brain up to speed with "Didi," airhead for the homeless. The woman can't get a word in edgewise because Didi talks way too fast. If Risa had had a piece of chewing gum, she would have popped a bubble somewhere in there to add more authenticity.
"Please-please-pretty-please? I'm, like, in second place right now?"
The woman at the door sighs, resigned to the fact that "Didi" isn't going away empty-handed, and sometimes the best way to get rid of girls like this is just to give them something. "I'll be right back," the woman says.
Three minutes later, Risa walks away from the house with a bag full of clothes and canned food.
"That was amazing," says Connor, who had been watching with Lev from the edge of the woods.
"What can 1 say? I'm an artist," she says. "It's like playing the piano; you just have to know which keys to strike in people."