Horizon

still until he got the message and went away and then Sage came up and wrapped her arms around Sammi and told her everything that was happening in a soft voice: “They’re paddling upriver…Cass has this one gun where you have to hold it with two hands…damn, she nailed that one…oh shit, there’s-no, she got that one too…”

Sage kept that up until the Beaters retreated and her dad turned the canoe around and only then did Sammi stop shaking and find the courage to look again.

Now she listened to her dad talking and tried to find in his voice the man she most missed. But this was more like the dad he used to be before he moved out. He used to order her mom around, not in an asshole way but in a way like he was just used to being in charge. It wasn’t like her mom put up with it anyway; she always did whatever she wanted. Maybe that was what finally broke them up, they both had “boss” personalities. He used to tell Sammi what to do all the time too, but, back then, she mostly didn’t mind because he liked to spend time with her and they had their own things they did, just the two of them, like watching reality shows together and yelling at the TV, or going out for Gizmos Garlic Fries whenever they got a craving.

“Sure, sure,” he was telling the Patels, one of those rare intact fairy-tale couples from Before who clung all the more firmly to each other in the face of all the dangers around them. “I know you want to take all your family stuff. But you’re really going to have to pare it down. See if you can get it into just this one suitcase here, the one with the wheels, and I’ll be back in a while to see how you’re doing.”

And then he was on to the next group.

Sammi hadn’t seen Cass at all tonight, since she came to get Ruthie. She hadn’t come down to the shore with piles of bags, like almost everyone else on the island. For a second Sammi wondered: the decision she’d made, to tell Mr. Swarmer about her drinking-

All she’d wanted…what had she wanted, anyway? At the time it had seemed pretty clear. Cass was drinking, everyone knew it-well, maybe not everybody, but the other women in the Mothers’ House for sure knew about it because Jasmine had told Roan, and Roan told Kyra, and Kyra told them. In the Mothers’ House they weren’t happy about it, not by a long stretch, and supposedly they’d had a come-to-Jesus meeting where they told Cass if she ever drank while she was watching the kids she was not only out of the babysitting rotation but out of the house too. Somehow they all seemed to believe Cass only drank late at night. But that wasn’t very likely, was it? Addicts were…well, the only ones Sammi knew, maybe they weren’t addicts, technically, meaning by whatever rules or whatever these things were determined, but the girls at school who were stoners and pill poppers and the ones who brought vodka to school in water bottles?-they were for sure doing it during the day, despite Grosbeck Academy’s zero-tolerance policy, and despite those letters they sent home assuring all the parents they had the best record on drug use of any private girls’ school in Central California, which was a blatant lie, but then again that was part of what her parents used to pay Grosbeck twenty-five thousand bucks a year for, was to be lied to and feel good about it. They all wanted to believe it so they wouldn’t have to acknowledge that they were too busy or didn’t care enough to pay attention to their kids themselves.

And that’s what was going on here too, right? The other mothers didn’t want to lose Cass because they needed her to babysit. Jasmine would join in eventually, she was going to have the kid any day now, but she’d been on bed rest for weeks because she was so old and Sun-hi thought she shouldn’t move around much. And after the baby came she’d be too busy to watch all the other kids for a while.

So they didn’t want to lose Cass, so that meant someone else had to be responsible and step up and say something because it was just plain dangerous for her to be left with the kids. Which was why Sammi had gone to Mr. Swarmer.

Only.

If she’d really wanted to punish her, Sammi would have told Dana, not Mr. Swarmer. Underneath his whole “nobody’s in charge here” thing, Dana totally thought he was in charge. He was always ordering people around and pretending he had the council behind him. Or maybe he did, but Sammi would bet he did a lot of behind-the-scenes ass-kissing and favor-trading and threatening to get his way.

And Dana was such a Goody Two-shoes. If he knew about Cass, he’d probably make an example of her, publicly humiliate her, like he did when they found Mitchell Keller stealing the box of cocoa mix off the raider cart. Dana had suggested public stocks. And while the council had voted that down, they had given the thumbs-up to the reparations chair. Mitchell had to sit there for two days, with a sign he’d written saying what he’d done and how he was sorry, and he wasn’t allowed to say anything until the two days were done and then Dana made a big deal about forgiving him in a big speech up on the steps of the community center.

All over a box of cocoa mix. What would they do for something as serious as what Sammi told Mr. Swarmer?

Because she hadn’t exactly said that Cass never drank on the job. She said she didn’t know. Which was true, sort of, but really, Sammi knew Cass would never do anything to endanger a child. Especially Ruthie. No one could say that Cass didn’t love her daughter, and even though Sammi was angrier than ever, if that was possible, about Cass and her dad, she was starting to feel a little guilty-okay, a lot guilty-about telling Mr. Swarmer that she “didn’t know” what time of day Cass drank or who she got it from.

At least she hadn’t told them the other thing. About how Cass and Ruthie had been infected. Sammi couldn’t bring herself to spread that, knowing what she knew-the immunity was super-rare but if you were immune, you weren’t a danger to anyone. There were people in New Eden who’d completely freak if they knew, idiots who’d probably want Cass gone, just because she’d been sick in the past. And even angry, Sammi knew that going that far would be wrong.

Besides, if her dad found out she’d talked to Mr. Swarmer, he’d probably be furious. He could be such a bastard but he was kind of rigid about right and wrong, at least his version of right and wrong. He’d be all over her about lying, even though he’d been lying to Valerie all along-one look at her tearstained, puffy face when she came by earlier with her friends made it clear she’d had no idea about Cass. But what went on between adults, that way, was a private matter. The council would probably all disapprove-and given what a bunch of tight-ass losers they were, she guessed they’d disapprove a lot-but there was nothing they could actually do about it.

Besides…if Sammi told people about that, then her dad would be implicated too. And Sammi wasn’t ready to take that step. She hated him, true, but he was all the family she had left, and he’d do anything for her, to keep her safe. She couldn’t let go of that right now. Maybe if Jed was still around…but no. Jed was dead.

So she couldn’t bring herself to hurt her dad, and she had a ready-made way to hurt Cass, and that was what she had done, and at first it had felt really good, to imagine Cass getting her wrists slapped, having everyone spying on her all the time to make sure she wasn’t drinking, and if they were watching Cass like a hawk then she’d sure have a hard time sneaking out to meet her dad, right, which was a win for everyone…

Except Sammi was starting to think she’d made a mistake. A big one.

Half an hour ago Ingrid and Suzanne had come by with Jasmine between them and Twyla holding Dane’s and Dirk’s hands, and Elsa had been with them and they were talking about a car. A car for the moms with little kids, and Jasmine, who was ready to pop. So that was what, three adults and three kids, which was a full car right there.

And no one said anything about Cass and Ruthie. Which meant they weren’t getting a ride, even though they had every bit as much of a right as the others-or they would have, anyway, if Sammi hadn’t started a rumor that might not even be all the way true.

And that still wasn’t any big deal because Sammi knew, deep down inside, that come morning it was going to be basically everyone for themselves. Sure, there’d be a lot of talk about sticking together, and the smartest people would figure out ways to stay in groups, while it suited them, but in the end they’d all have to fend for themselves. Everyone would be so focused on saving their own asses there wouldn’t be much left over for taking care of anyone else. People would get left, abandoned. Discarded. But at least in that regard, Cass was in better shape than most. Despite her drinking thing she was strong and fit and brave and healthy.

But then there was Ruthie…

Ruthie wasn’t like other little kids. She spooked kind of easy, and then she went quiet, really quiet, like she thought if she played invisible the problem would go away. In the community center earlier tonight, when Cass left to help her dad, Ruthie wrapped her arms so tight around Sammi’s neck that she was almost strangling her. She put her little face against Sammi’s and made a tiny little whimpering sound. Ruthie was not strong, not the way you had to be to get through what lay ahead. And she was only three. Three.

What if the thing that Sammi had done had condemned both of them? What if it was her fault that they