“HOO, BOY,” I SAID, LOOKING around. “Where should we begin? Where did she get this stuff?”
“It’s a mystery, all right,” Tim said glumly.
An old-fashioned computer sat on one table, its light blinking. I opened it and clicked on the spreadsheet program, making a new template. I made columns for what each item was, what year it was from, and a space for a brief description of its contents. I’d used this program when I worked at the All-Ways Grocery Co-op, back home. But instead of tracking carrots, feed sacks, and five-pound bags of flour, I was tracking… history? Truth? Crap?
Turning the computer to face him, I explained, “We can fill this in as we go, and send it to Ms. Strepp at the end of every day.”
He nodded, looking unimpressed.
“Should we each start on a pile and log it in ourselves, or maybe one of us go through stuff and one of us logs?”
He shrugged and I felt a hot stab of irritation. I mean, I didn’t want to be here, either! I would rather be with Becca, too!
Sighing, he stood, keeping his six-foot-three height hunched beneath the six-foot ceiling. “How about I move stuff for you?” he said. “Stack things up better? Bring boxes to you or whatever?”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, glad that I, at least, could stand up straight. “You don’t get out of the shit work! If I have to slog through this horrible haystack looking for one stupid needle, you do, too!”
“I don’t know what to look for,” he said, sounding bored.
“Neither do I! I guess Ms. Strepp thinks we’ll know it when we see it.” I pointed to a stack of magazines, most of them missing their covers. “You start there! Find out what cell those are from and what year. See if they’re farming manuals or something else.”
He frowned. “You’re not the boss. You don’t tell me what to do.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You don’t get to do nothing! I can tell you that right now!”
“I just don’t want to go through all this dumb shit!” He waved his hands to encompass the entire enormous space, the tons of who knew what.
“Here’s a thought,” I said acidly. “I don’t want to, either! But this is what we’ve been assigned! And we might find out something, something important that will help the Resistance!”
He looked mulish, and I was ready to punch him. Knowing that he had eight inches and more than fifty pounds on me wasn’t a deterrent. Finally I realized that this was weird, that Tim wasn’t acting like himself.
“Tim. What’s going on?” I asked more calmly. “What’re you doing?”
He looked away. “My cell made things,” he said. “Like out of wood. Furniture and windows and houses.”
“So?”
“So… I don’t know how to read,” he said.
25
I KNEW I SHOULDN’T STARE at him or gape like a fish. But I was shocked. I mean, education, at least to a point, is mandatory in the United.
“Oh,” I said carefully, making my voice casual.
“Like, I can read a blueprint,” he clarified. “I can recognize some words. But not actually read them, you know?”
“Ah,” I said, nodding as my mind raced. “Okay, well—time to learn.”
“Nah,” he said, still looking embarrassed. “It’s too late to bother now.”
Maybe he was afraid he wasn’t smart enough? Maybe he was just lazy. Either way, I wasn’t buying it.
“Tim,” I said, gesturing to this hockey field of an attic, “we might be up here for a decade. I will not be doing all the work by myself.”
“I can move things for you.”
“You will be moving your eyeballs across all the words,” I said firmly, and picked up a pen. On a stack of four cardboard boxes I wrote the alphabet, capitals and lowercases. “Okay, this is how everyone learns.” Pointing to each letter, I sang him the alphabet song.