I’d never seen the wall in person and probably never would. It had been constructed all the way around the country, separating the states that had survived the attack from those that had been lost. What had once been fifty states was now only twenty-three states, plus Alaska and Hawaii. Parts of Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas were on our side of the wall, with the rest of the surviving outer states, but the interior states had all been lost to the war and bombs.
I’d heard the swirling questions as to why the invaders had attacked the middle of the country and not New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, or Atlanta. Why hadn’t they gone for more populated and political areas of power when they’d attacked us? But then, they had also taken out the main source of our food supply with the attack.
They hadn’t wiped out our government and military in one swoop, but they had taken a good chunk of our population and many had starved to death in the chaotic months following the bombs. Some probably still did starve to death in some areas. In some ways, their attack on the Midwest states had been the cruelest option.
Gage walked in from the kitchen. His dark blond hair stood up in tussled disarray, and his brown eyes were focused on me. The bottom of the linen pants he wore, which I’d purchased only three months ago, hung to the midpoint of his shin. I’d made the right choice going for pants for him instead of a new pair of shoes for me.
He grinned as he nodded toward the fish slung over my shoulder. “Good catch, Pittah.”
I smiled at the name he’d called me ever since he’d learned how to speak and hadn’t been able to pronounce my name correctly. “Thanks.”
I walked past him and into the kitchen. Opening up the small ice chest, I dumped the fish inside. Like Mrs. Loud, we had extra ice in there in preparation for the blackouts, but sometimes the blackouts lasted days and nothing helped to ward off spoiling then. Gage would have this fish filleted and ready to cook before it could spoil and the other one would be going to Volunteer Day with us.
Gage had once insisted he should be the one doing the fishing and me the cooking. He’d given up after two days when the only fish he could catch, I burned to a crisp, and not on purpose.
“Did she eat?” I asked him and waved my hand at the living room.
“Naw, she’s been watching that TV like a zombie.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled the tin of ointment from the pouch of my faded green windbreaker. My finger got caught in one of the holes on the outside of my pouch. I’d have to take the time to stitch it again tonight, before the hole became too big. I placed the tin on the counter.
“Mrs. Loud is going to make you some new pants,” I told him.
Gage glanced at the bottom of his pants. “They’re fine. You need new shoes.”
“They’re not fine. You look like you’re going wading, and I can make it a couple more weeks with the shoes I’ve got. Where’s Bailey?”
I’d just gotten his name out when I heard a giggle from one of the kitchen cabinets. I glanced at Gage who smiled back at me. “I have no idea where he is,” Gage said.
Another giggle followed his statement. “I wonder where he could be,” I said, playing along with Gage.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s run away,” Gage replied.
“I hope not. I sure would miss him.”
Bailey’s laughter grew louder before becoming muffled. The image of him with his pudgy hands over his mouth, trying to stifle his laughter, burst into my mind. Taking a deep breath, I rested my hands on the counter as the clear picture of Bailey hiding beneath the sink in only his diaper grew stronger in my mind before fading away.
Gage rested his hand on my shoulder, drawing me back to the “real world.” His mouth compressed as his eyes surveyed me. “You okay?” he demanded.
“Fine,” I croaked out.
“Vision?”
“Sort of,” I murmured and opened the cabinet next to the sink to remove a glass.
Turning the water on, Gage took the glass from me and filled it before handing it back. “What did you see?”
“Where Bailey is hiding.”
“Not much of a secret,” he replied flippantly, but I heard the undercurrent of tension in his tone.
He hated it when the “weird occurrences,” as he liked to call them, took me over.Ihated it when they took me over, but I tried not to let him see that. The older Gage got though, the more he saw through my ‘it doesn’t bother me’ façade. Neither of us knew what caused the strange happenings or why.
For the most part, they were innocuous, but once, when I’d been exceptionally pissed off at my mother, the curtains in my room had caught on fire. To this day, I still wasn’tsureit was me who had started it, but I couldn’t rid myself of the sinking suspicion it had been my fault. I was touching them at the time after all.
Gage had helped me douse the flames and dispose of the curtains, but we’d both been rattled by what had happened and never spoke of it again.
I also didn’t know why a couple of times golden-white sparks had danced across my fingertips and hands. I repeatedly told myself it had only been static electricity. I may be the queen of denial, but I had no idea what else it could have been, and trying to figure it out only made my head hurt. Besides, that had only happened a few times, and there was no reason why it couldn’t have been some strange electrical phenomenon. Thankfully, it had never drawn the attention of anyone else when it happened, so I’d somehow managed to keep one oddity to myself.
