comfortable in the chewed-out tunnel, but it proved nearly impossible. We had to lie directly on the rough wood— the tarps were too slick, causing us to slide toward our feet as we tried to drift off. Eventually, we moved back to the soft moss by the fire, enjoying the warmth from the glowing embers.
But then it started raining. Heavy, like the day we were born. We returned to the tree and spent the rest of the night trying to get comfortable without ever truly succeeding. There was a lot of talk about how the boys must be faring and how it made no sense to be out exploring the unknown when we should be working to sustain ourselves for the future.
Despite the discomfort and a night of tossing, turning, whispering, and complaining—I found myself waking up the next morning, the light of day making the leftover rain sparkle in the moss. The waking meant I must have slept. And the rain meant we had fresh water to go with our breakfast.
I exited the tunnel and stretched my aching back. Britny was already up and filling water pouches from the collection tarps we’d left out, their centers in shallow depressions we’d dug by hand, the edges raised with piles of moss.
“Morning,” I said, grabbing my tarp thermos with its melted-together edges and filling it up with a single scoop.
“Did you sleep?” Britny asked.
“For the last hour or so. You?”
She shook her head. I turned around and looked up the wall of corrugated bark, wondering how far the boys had gotten up and if they were already on their way back down.
“Did you hear the horn go off last night?” Britny asked.
“The klaxon? From the base?”
She nodded. “Just before sunup. Only sounded for fifteen minutes or so.”
“I must’ve been asleep,” I said. I took a sip of the water and held it in my mouth while I allowed it to be absorbed. Swallowing what remained, I wiped my mouth with my sleeve and looked toward the distant and fuzzy line of black, the tall perimeter fence barely discernable. “Should we sneak closer and investigate?” I asked.
Britny shrugged. “Been wondering the same thing.” She pouted her lower lip and wrinkled her forehead. With her olive skin and jet-black hair, it made her look lovely and menacing at the same time. I found myself liking her even though I didn’t know her as well as some of the others.
After a moment of seemingly intense concentration, she shook her head and reached for another water pouch to fill.
“What?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“What were you thinking just now?”
“Oh, just whether or not we should go back. See if someone else left. Then I was wondering why someone would make their break early in the morning. And would they find us here? Will Hickson send people out to look for us? Then I…”
I walked around the collection tarp and took the water sack from her, folding the flap over and tying off the neck. “You what?” I asked.
“I wonder if it was wrong to leave,” she said. “If maybe I was being impulsive. Maybe I just needed a day off, and then I would’ve been fine. It—I know it sounds weird, but I did enjoy the work at times. And I wanted to see the rocket go up, you know? I just didn’t want to live in fear, and now I wonder if we’ll be living in a different kind of fear. What will it be like if we do set up something permanent, and then the people at the base manage to do well? How long before there’s some sort of conflict?”
I put my arm around her. We remained on our knees in front of the collection tarp, her head leaning to the side and resting on my shoulder.
“When you have doubts, remember the things that made you want to flee,” I told her. “That’s what I do. There were good times, but they were only good because everything to either side was absolute shit.”
Britny laughed and wiped at her cheeks. “You’re right,” she said. “Maybe we need some really bad stuff to happen out here so we can appreciate the less crappy stuff.”
“Don’t jinx us,” I said, looking over the tarp and back at the tree. Through a gap in the bark, I could see a few sleeping forms stirring. And Tarsi—I could see her sitting up—she was looking out at the two of us and smiling.
Of all the brutal days endured thus far on our strange planet—the cleanup following our birth, the eighteen- hour work shifts for the rocket project, the restless nights of exhaustion—none was ever so long as that day of waiting for the boys to return. And waiting. And doing nothing.
Several times, we lamented the fact that a scouting party, just two or three of us, could have gone to the breach in the fence and returned already, determining the reason for the horn sounding. After lunch—during which there was another round of distant target practice—the concern was raised that the boys wouldn’t be back before nightfall. By dinner, it was all we spoke of. As it grew dark, we stretched out by the fire, lying across the sumptuous moss, resting on one another, and sleeping as poorly as we had the night before, but for different reasons.
Tarsi and I lay with our heads together—hers on my arm—as we tried to convince one another Kelvin was okay. Most of the night was like that, whispers and fidgeting and people sneaking off to pee. Even the faint glimmer of stars through the new clearing in the distance did nothing to soothe my mind. Once again, I feared I would never sleep only to wake up to another missed dawn.
Gruff voices and laughter wormed their way into my dreams. I snapped up, waking Tarsi, who had fallen asleep on my stomach. We both turned to the sounds. Some small part of me feared it was a group from base coming to force us home, but the voices seemed to be leaking out of the tree.
Leaning forward, I smoothed Tarsi’s hair, kissed her forehead, and told her I’d be right back. I ran for the tree. Several of the girls stirred as I left the group, the voices from the tree becoming clearer. I jumped into the sloping tunnel and hurried up, my feet gripping the rough, exposed wood—the soreness in my hamstring forgotten.
Because of the slope of the tunnel and the wide tree’s nearly nonexistent curvature, I saw their feet and generic pants first, so I couldn’t tell each owner’s identity. I thought I heard Kelvin’s voice in the crowd and tried my best to tease his tenor out from the rest as I hurried along.
I came to Vincent first. When he saw me running to greet them, he smiled and shook his head from side to side as if to chastise me for all the fun I’d missed. I squeezed past him, patted him on the back warmly, and came next to Kelvin, who beamed at seeing me.
“What took so long?” I asked. I turned and walked down alongside him, the round tunnel plenty wide enough as long as we each walked up the curving floor a little.
“We got so close to the top on that first day,” Kelvin said. “In the morning we decided to keep heading up instead of going down. Wait ’til you see what we found.”
“Mica and Peter?”
“Not exactly,” he said, reaching over and squeezing my shoulder. “They definitely came this way, though.”
“So what is it?” I asked.
“The critters that made this.” He slapped the tunnel with his hand.
We heard screaming ahead of us as the girls encountered Vincent. Kelvin and I hurried forward, jumping out when the gap in the spiral became low enough off the ground. Tarsi leaped up and hugged Kelvin’s neck, her feet swinging away from him as he spun her around. As soon as he let her go, she slapped him on the arm for worrying us, and Kelvin laughed out of habit.
“We need to get a fire going,” he said.
I noticed—now that we were out of the tunnel and in the wan light of dawn—that his face had turned bright pink, especially his nose. Behind him, Samson jumped down from the tree, and hugs were exchanged in every permutation possible.
I set to work on the fire, building a nice vertical pyramid of fruit husk and shaved wood. While I flicked the back of the machete against the magnesium block, I listened to snippets of three different conversations at once, each boy trying to answer a half-dozen simultaneous queries.
