“Off changing,” Jessie murmured with a slow smile. “Wants to make sure he’s irresistible tonight.”
I kept my gaze on the hall’s main entrance, watching as the final arrivals trickled in. Sure enough, barely three minutes later, Robert entered the room, looking rather suave in a crisp pair of brown pants and a fresh shirt.
His elder sisters and their partners followed behind him, along with his wiry, six-foot-tall father, who was, in almost all respects, the opposite of his wife: introverted, quiet, and thoughtful. The couple almost reminded me of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, characters from a classic novel by an author whose name I’d forgotten. The book was one among the many our founders had fortunately managed to archive.
Robert walked over to us and cast a look in Rosalie’s direction. I was about to assure him that we had his back despite his stinginess, when one of the senior-most members of our community took to the small, raised platform in one corner of the room.
“Are we all present?” Mr. Sturridge spoke through abanana-leaf amplifier, looking around the room with his warm, white-bearded smile.
“I confirm. I did a count,” Jessie’s father, Evan, spoke up.
“Excellent.” Mr. Sturridge beamed. “Then how about we batten this place down. Volunteers, please?”
Ten men from around the border of the crowd immediately began securing the doors, sealing us in from the weather outside.
“Thank you,” Mr. Sturridge said. “Now, let me start by welcoming you all to this celebration! All that wondrous food is waiting for us—” He gestured to the line of serving tables. “—And we must not keep it waiting. But let us first observe three minutes of silence to reflect on why we are all gathered here today, and meditate on one simple thing you are grateful to our founders for this evening.”
A hush fell over the room. Everybody closed their eyes.
Apparently, in the earlier days of our community, Founders’ Day had been more ceremonial, with lots of speeches and formalities honoring our founders, but we had evolved over the years. Now it was more of a casual affair. Aside from the opening three minutes of silence, formalities were kept to a minimum.
I closed my eyes respectfully and considered what I wanted to focus on this year. Last year, I chose our library, with its shelves of preserved books that provided us with a connection to our past, an understanding of where we had come from, as well as a rich education. The year before that, it had been the wealth of medicinal knowledge we had accumulated over the years, since I had come down with a particularly bad fever.
This year, I settled on freedom. The freedom we had to live without dependence on anything or anyone except our immediate surroundings. It was easy to take for granted, and I probably didn’t take enough time to be thankful for it. From what Ihad learned about the time before the End, society had become the opposite: they had weaved such an intricate web of man-made systems that it was rare to even have a piece of food in your home that was grown in the state or country you lived in. And when the web broke… Well, it was a nightmare.
Mr. Sturridge clapped his hands. “Thank you, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, for that beautiful silence. And now, without further ado, let the celebrations begin!”
Everyone made a beeline for the serving tables. Our plates piled high, Jessie, Robert, and I then found a spot to sit and dug in. I ate until I had zero capacity to take even one more bite, not even of Mrs. Barnie’s mango truffles.
Chairs scraped. I looked toward the center of the room to see teenagers already clearing space for a dance floor. Two of my cousins, Myra and Seb, along with the rest of the musical band, set up wind and string instruments in a corner. Myra played the flute, and Seb the guitar. They had spent three weeks practicing for tonight.
The music started and, as if on cue, the thunder grew louder overhead. The rainfall pummeled down in a rolling beat. The natural light had almost completely dissipated from outside, and lanterns were lit, casting a warm, cozy glow about the room.
Grabbing Robert and Jessie by the arms, I headed for the dance floor, which Rosalie and her friends had just stepped onto. The closer we got, the tighter Robert’s posture became. Once we were ten feet away, I left him standing there and tugged at Jessie to follow me toward Rosalie. A group of guys were already gravitating in the same direction, and I’d be damned if I let one of them reach her before we did.
But when I was barely two feet away from my destination, one of the boys reachedme. Specifically, the one male in the room I had been hoping to avoidthis evening.
I groaned. Ryland. A fifteen-year-old who, for some reason, had developed an embarrassing interest in me since we’d been grouped as partners on zip line maintenance last winter. I thought I’d managed to blow him off the last time he approached me for a dance, at a birthday party a month ago.
Jessie shot me a knowing look. “I got this,” she said, her low tone barely suppressing her amusement, before releasing my hand and continuing toward Rosalie without me.
“Uh, wait,” I murmured, moving to sidestep the chubby, ginger-haired boy. But he shifted in front of me again, a wide and hopeful grin plastered across his face.
I exhaled slowly, trying not to glare at him. “Yes, Ryland?”
“That’s a beautiful dress, Tanisha,” he said, his eyes sparkling with admiration.
I grimaced. Nobody called me by my full name.
He held out a hand, his gaze darting toward the dance area. “Care for a?—”
“Thanks, but no,” I said, moving around him.
But once again, he positioned himself in front of me.
This time, I glared at him. “What is your deal?”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been handling things very well,” he said, glancing down at the floor, where his foot traced a slow semi-circle in front of him. “It’s just, you know how they say intense situations can bring people together? Well, I think that’s what happened. I can’t shake what I felt, when we were dangling together… hundreds of feet above the ground… with nothing but?—”
