Devin’s arms wrapped around Joe, pulling him close. Joe needed this, needed Devin. Needed to sleep tangled in his arms. Tonight, they’d set out for Minneapolis.
***
They left Purcell at sunset. Joe held Devin’s hand openly, not caring about offending the townspeople who’d come out to gawk at their departure. On his other side, Navarro limped along. He’d insisted on walking Joe and the others to the wall. Joe wished he’d stayed home. His presence prolonged the goodbye, made it worse.
Just outside town, Aria joined them. She fell in step next to Peter and walked on. Didn’t look at them. Didn’t talk to them.
No one talked to her, either.
Joe had been in noisier funeral processions. Complete silence, except for the soft thump of Navarro’s cane and Flix’s stuffy breathing, which was muffled somewhat by Devin’s shoulder. Joe hadn’t expected to come to New America like this.
Just like the first day they’d seen the wall, the closer they got, the higher it loomed. Marcus should have been here with them, cracking jokes. Sadie should be home making dinner and yapping that sassy mouth.
Liliana was home alone after refusing to get out of bed to say one more goodbye, and instead of Marcus, they were traveling with Aria.
The wall snuck up on them so quickly. Before he was ready, or maybe far past it, Joe found himself watching Navarro say goodbye.
Navarro shook the boys’ hands, Peter and Devin, reminded Devin again how to manage with that sprained ankle. Flix didn’t respond when Navarro reached for him, so he just patted his shoulder. He moved on to Aria and dipped his head to catch her eyes. “Aria Diana Benitez Ramirez...” His voice choked, and he didn’t finish.
Aria acted like she hadn’t heard.
Navarro gathered her into his arms and kissed her forehead. When she shuddered and whispered something against his chest, Navarro nodded. He let her go and turned to Joe.
They stood there like fools, too stupid or proud to say what they needed to. Joe knew it while he was letting it happen.
“Take care of yourself,” Navarro told him.
“You, too.” Joe waved.
Navarro nodded and made his way back toward Purcell.
Joe would never see him again; he knew it as certainly as he knew Sadie and Marcus were dead. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of men Joe had known in his lifetime. Only three had mattered. And he was leaving one behind.
Joe looked at the wall again. Its mammoth size and cold surface made it beautiful, in a way. An engineering marvel, almost as impressive as his father’s domes. Three men. One walking away. Joe was walking toward another. The third walked beside him.
Joe walked through the gap in the wall, onto New American soil, and promised himself he was going home.
SIXTEEN
Two days after leaving Purcell, noontime sun fell warm and welcome on Joe’s face as he walked a ribbon of highway through Oklahoma City, leading a single-file line of mourners. They walked slowly because of Devin’s sprained ankle, and because of Flix and Aria’s broken hearts.
Joe’s heart wasn’t faring much better.
Crossing the border hadn’t improved their circumstances. If New Americans had a better world, it was well hidden inside buildings clotting with red dirt and bleeding out broken windows. He hadn’t seen any evidence of electricity, aside from a few homes and buildings with intact solar panels. No transportation, either. But the air was different here, more charged, more alert. If Joe wasn’t crushed inside, he’d be excited.
Three women on bicycles whizzed past, pedaling fast then coasting down an exit ramp. Joe hadn’t ridden a bike since he was a child, and even though he’d seen them from time to time in Austin, they were everywhere here. Sweet and childlike, Marcus would have loved the bikes more than any of them.
A warm, bready scent reached Joe’s nose. His stomach rumbled. He stopped and turned to his companions. Aria walked ten feet behind him, her eyes almost swollen shut with tears. Behind her, Peter acted as a buffer. At the back, so far away that Joe couldn’t see their faces, Flix and Devin shuffled along.
“Peter, are you hungry?” Joe’s voice came out raspy from disuse.
Peter glanced warily at Aria, then stepped around her, breaking the careful order they’d maintained since they’d set out. “I could eat.”
“Once Devin and Flix catch up —”
“Do you smell that?” Peter asked.
It would be hard not to. “Bread.”
Peter shook his head. “I mean, it smells fresh, like someone’s baking.” He grabbed Joe’s arm and pointed. “Look, there’s smoke coming out of that building.”
Down the ramp the cycling women had used sat a squat, flat-roofed brick building painted bright red. Two dozen bikes leaned against the exterior walls, and two small SDVs were parked on the cracked concrete lot nearby. A faraway, niggling memory stirred in Joe’s mind.
“I think it’s a restaurant,” Peter said. “Do you think we can go in? I have some money on my chip, and maybe they won’t care that you’re Mexican if you’re with white people. We might have to pretend you’re my servant.”
“I...I don’t... Restaurant?” Joe shrugged. He’d heard the word somewhere but couldn’t place it.
“You know? Where they make food for you and you eat it?”
Peter wrinkled his brow with something that could be pity, and Joe felt his face heat. Now that they were in New America, they’d need to rely on Peter’s knowledge a lot more; Joe would have to get used to admitting what he didn’t know. “Like a cafeteria?”
“I guess. A cafeteria is more like a kind of restaurant. Restaurants usually have a theme, serve some specific kind of food — Korean, Italian, ethnic Canadian, Mexican...”
The tug of memory fell into place, and Joe saw his father sitting across a table from him. His curly brown hair kept falling over his glasses, and he held a thick piece of paper, telling a
