My reply was to hold up a pinky, our new G-rated version of the middle finger.
Mia gasped, albeit unconvincingly, and returned the gesture. This got us laughing again. I know seeing a couple of dweebs flashing their pinkies at one another may be confusing to most, but this was kind of an inside joke between us all—and stupid or not, we needed inside jokes.
When Monica entered this world, Mia enacted a new rule concerning our frequent use of vulgarity. We were not allowed to curse or flip each other off or make any other obscene gestures so long as Monica was in the vicinity. Her innocent ears and eyes were too pure.
You’d think Mia would’ve had the toughest time cleaning up her act, but to our surprise, that wasn’t the case. Mia transformed from a drunken sailor to the female version of Mr. Rogers.
Stone and I were the ones who had trouble, and Ell even slipped up a few times. I guess I never realized how much I swore before being around a baby. The whole ordeal really opened my eyes to how much my vocabulary needed expanding.
Frowning, Mia said, “I’ve been drinking since I was about eight, Ell.”
“It’s only your…whatever age birthday once, right?” I said.
“True,” Ell said. “That’s a good point…” She clapped her hands and rubbed them together. You could see it on her face: the scheming had begun. Skipping, she left the room, and I looked at Mia and mouthed sorry.
“She’s gonna throw me a party, isn’t she?”
I nodded. “Think so.”
Mia hung her head. “Shit.”
“Hey, you swore.” I held out my hand. “Pay up.”
She slapped my palm, grinning. “C’mon, Grady, it’s my birthday.”
The party wasn’t really a party. Not at first, anyway. We had it in one of the entertainment rooms, which were located in the “hub,” as the people here called it. It was a fitting name because this building stood smack-dab in the middle of the City. The City had been part of the nearest town’s—New Hill’s—expansion. Construction crews worked around the clock to build a man-made lake, a new housing development, and a recreation center (the hub). Then things got bad, and the crumbling government passed over leadership to the U.S. military. Efficiently as ever, they repurposed the whole area into a refugee camp.
Nick Rider told me they certainly had their work cut out for them. He’d been here from the beginning, having grown up just down the road. Other towns were evacuated, his included, and he sat front row while soldiers erected high fences all around the block, lit up the lantern in the lighthouse, and cleared as much snow as possible in order to build a covered walkway tunnel system.
Now, with less manpower, keeping the uncovered walkways cleared was nearly impossible, but the enclosed ones—these “tunnels”—helped keep us safe. You could move from one end of the City to the other without feeling so much as a gust of wind or seeing a snowflake. It was kind of like a cheaper version of Minneapolis’s Skyway System.
The gymnasium really was the “hub” of the compound. The tunnels encircled it with the entrances to the other buildings at each junction. These buildings were the barracks, a hospital—which housed the holding cells beneath (I knew this all too well) —and a kitchen/cafeteria. Most everything else was in the hub. There you had an auditorium, a library, two entertainment rooms with projectors, a small basketball court sans three-point lines, and an exercise area with a few sets of free weights, treadmills, bikes, and elliptical machines.
Most people spent a lot of time here, for good reason. As the weeks went on, I became one of those people. We slept in our barracks and ate in the cafeteria, yeah, but all of our free time, when we were not working, that is (the jobs came later), was spent in the hub.
There was only one place I never visited while living in the City, and that was Berretti’s lab. I asked Nick Rider about it once during those early days. We were standing just outside the lab’s door.
“He pretty much lives down there,” Nick said, nodding to the door. It was made of foot-thick steel. A heavy crossbar lock fell across it, and beneath the crossbar was a wheel-style handle you’d see on a bank vault. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY was written on it in large red letters. The locks looked like new additions. They probably came to be after the incident.
“Who’s authorized personnel?” Eleanor asked Nick.
Nick shrugged. “Pretty much Berretti and a couple of his assistants. Used to be a lot more, but they’re gone now.”
“Not you?” I said.
“I’ve got the key code to the door, but I don’t like going down there.” His face turned grave. “Too many reminders of what happened. Like I said, it’s best to let John do his thing. Keep him on a short leash, but let him have some slack from time to time.”
I didn’t like that, but on the day of Mia’s birthday, Berretti was the furthest thing from my mind. I linked up with Ell in the entertainment room after she’d told me to meet her there an hour prior. I intended to help her decorate and all that jazz, but when I opened the door, I realized there wasn’t much left for me to do.
Gold streamers were hanging from the ceiling, waving lazily in the soft current of heat blowing from the register. Balloons lay on the floor. Not just a few—I counted at least two dozen in varying colors: red, blue, green, purple. In the far corner sat a small stereo. It was playing the Beatles. Songs from their album Revolver, if I remember correctly. Hell, there was even a collection of wrapped boxes stacked on a nearby table.
My mouth fell open. I was speechless.
Ell, standing on a chair and hanging a banner on the far wall that had HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIA!! written on it in big,
