In the After

“She’s being modest,” Tracey said. I noticed their conversation had stopped and they were all listening to me and Vivian now.

“What was it?” I asked.

“I conceptualized a fabric that was strong, flexible, and extremely thin. Something breathable that wouldn’t tear and could stop a bullet.”

“The suit that the Guardians wear?” I asked, stunned.

“Yes. I came up with the initial idea for the synth-suit. I can give you a copy of my proposal to use as a model so you’ll know how to submit your ideas.”

“That would be great.” The class seemed like something I might have enjoyed Before.

Vivian showed me where to get supplies: notebooks, pens, calculators. “Feel free to take a walk too, if you want. We’re encouraged to let our minds wander, try to achieve that ‘eureka’ moment, you know.”

“Won’t I get in trouble for being out of class?” I asked.

“No, everything we do is for the good of the whole. There isn’t a need to rebel.” Vivian smiled. “This isn’t like high school.”

I took my notebook to a desk and stared at it while Vivian rejoined her discussion. I needed to think of something that would benefit New Hope, something for “the good of the whole,” whatever that meant. It sounded like a slogan. I had nothing. Soon it was lunchtime and I hadn’t accomplished anything.

“Don’t worry,” Vivian reassured me. “They don’t expect you to come up with something every day. They just want us to look at situations from a different angle. The more minds contributing to our community, the stronger we all are.” Another slogan.

“But what if I don’t ever think of anything?” I mumbled.

“If you can’t generate useful concepts then you class out and only have to worry about your nonexempt job and doing a few extra chores every now and again. Amy, relax.” She laughed lightly. “Kids may call you a Dusty, but it’s not the end of the world.”

“I suppose not.” I didn’t really want to scrub toilets for the rest of my life, but I could think of some worse things.

“Come on, let’s go get some food,” Vivian suggested.

“All right . . . Do you think it’s okay if I look in on my sister, Baby? We’ve never really been separated,” I explained quickly.

“Sure, what class?”

“Three . . . I don’t know where she would be now, though.” I hadn’t thought about how to find her if I needed to. I was already losing my edge.

“I’ll help you find her,” Vivian offered. She knew some of the Class Three teachers and we learned that Baby’s class had taken a short field trip to the farm. We continued on to the cafeteria, but I was still distracted. I hoped Baby was getting along okay without me.

Inside the noisy cafeteria, Vivian and I grabbed our lunch trays and made our way through the line. I tried to restrain myself this time, but I couldn’t resist taking both a soy burger and a few helpings of vegetable stew. Most of the dishes today looked like vegetarian hippie fare, stuff my dad would have loved.

Vivian steered me to a table with more teenagers decked out in red and introduced me to the group, rattling off names. I smiled, trying to listen politely while I shoved food in my mouth and hoped no one expected me to talk. But I was not so lucky.

“Amy, what was it like seeing your mother after so long?”

“What do the Floraes look like, up close?”

“What did you eat? I’ve heard a couple post-aps exchange marinade recipes for flame-broiled rat!”

I felt light-headed and swallowed loudly. “Well . . .”

Something touched my back.

I stood in a flash and grabbed the knife from my tray in one motion. Swinging around, I knocked over my chair and crouched to a defensive position, ready to thrust the blade into my attacker.

“Whoa.” Rice held his hands in the air. “Amy, it’s only me.”

I paused, then lowered the knife, my hands shaking from the sudden surge of adrenaline. I stood, mortified. The cafeteria had gone still; everyone was staring at me. But all I could think was how I hadn’t heard him sneak up behind me. I was exposed and vulnerable in the center of the large room. It was so loud in the cafeteria, it was hard to concentrate. There could have been a Florae behind me and I wouldn’t have known.

I turned and quietly placed my knife back on my tray. The cafeteria noise picked up again as I reached down to right the overturned chair.

“Are you okay?” Rice asked, lowering his hands and looking concerned. I could see that he was trying to minimize the awkwardness of the moment for me.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about that.” I said nervously. “Do you want to sit with us?”

“Rice has already classed out,” Vivian joked, helping to break the tension. “He can’t eat with lowly Class Five kids.” Everyone at the table laughed uneasily.

I faked a smile though I really wanted to cry. “Actually, can you walk me back to class?” I asked Rice softly. I no longer had much of an appetite.

“Of course.” He put his hand on the small of my back and we left. I expected him to walk me back to the school entrance, but we took a slight detour and headed for the Quad. Rice sat on the grass and motioned for me to sit beside him. We rested there for a while, in silence.

“Rice . . . I don’t know if I can do this,” I confided as I lay back on the soft grass. “I thought things were going okay, but I keep freaking out, like last week when Baby dropped her glass and just now when I almost stabbed you. . . .” I began to tear up.

“You just have to give it time,” he said softly, laying his head down next to mine and squeezing my hand. “You’ll get used to it.”

“What if I don’t?” I asked in a whisper.

“Amy, I know what it’s like to feel out of place.” He turned his head toward me. “I told you that I was named after my father, right? Well, my parents died when I was very young and I was raised in foster care . . . until Hutsen-Prime found me.”

“Found you?”

“I won my fourth grade science fair and the next day Hutsen-Prime offered to fund my studies, to put me on a fast-track course. I finished high school when I was twelve and my undergraduate studies in a year and a half. That’s why I was here,” he explained. “I was in my second year of grad school when the Floraes arrived. In the few days it took them to reach this far into the country, a student working on a sonar project for the Navy discovered the creatures couldn’t stand the noise.”

“And that student was you?” I asked, enthralled. Rice really was a genius.

“No.” His voice was heavy. “I knew her, though. She gave her life to save the campus. . . .” He trailed off.

“What happened?”

“We were setting up the emitters,” Rice explained, his face pained. “We knew we had to expand in a circle, keep the Floraes on the run, away from the compound. We thought they were still far away, but suddenly one was right in front of us, at the center of the sonar radius. It didn’t know where to run, but as soon as it spotted us, it . . . rushed us.”

His eyes lost focus and I could tell he was back there, in that awful place nearly three years ago.

“It reached her first. And I ran. I thought I was dead for sure, the Floraes are so fast, but it stayed with her. I was lucky.” He sat up as he spit out the word bitterly, as if he were anything but.

“A lot of people here don’t understand. I mean, they know the Floraes are real, that they’ve killed nearly everyone on the planet, but they’ve never seen one up close. They were here when it happened. They can’t understand what it’s like.”

I sat up next to him. “I survived outside of New Hope with the Floraes. You couldn’t have saved her. You did the right thing by running away.” I placed my hand on his arm, my touch bringing him back from his memories.

“Yeah. Well. That was a long time ago.” He shrugged. I gave his arm a squeeze before letting go. “We’ve