“I think that’s a hard one to grow out of. I’d probably worry I wasn’t worrying enough.”
Sophie grabbed the ID card from his hand and sat opposite him. She used the opportunity to examine it and make sure it still looked right. Yep. It still looked like a waterlogged picture of David. One corner had separated and she fought the urge to peel it. She waved the card at him instead.
“I bet you’ve had way worse things to worry about than this.” It was meant to be a lighthearted remark, but she regretted it the moment she’d said it. His face passed from morose to unreadable.
She tried to change the subject. “Are you going to see any of your old friends now that you’re home?”
He shrugged and took a swig of beer. “I don’t know who’s around.”
“There’s a guy from your class who comes to our meetings, but I don’t think you were friends.” She felt a thrill mentioning the meetings while holding his forged ID.
“Who?” David asked, his face still neutral.
“I probably shouldn’t say—well, except he goes to protests, so you’d see him on the news if you were looking, so it’s not really a secret. Will Yuen.”
“Will-You-Answer-Already?” He smiled. “That dude was weird. Always took ages to answer a teacher’s question, like his voice was beaming in from light years away, before and after his Pilot—wait. I thought your meetings were for people who didn’t have Pilots.”
“People who don’t have them, including people who never got one and people who had theirs deactivated.”
“You can have it turned off?” The life came back into his face. He sounded genuinely interested.
Sophie tried to figure out if he was messing with her. “Of course you can. You didn’t know that?”
“I mean, I guess I did. I know they disable it if a soldier is having trouble after a head injury. I didn’t know people did it on purpose.”
“Don’t you remember Ma asking you to turn yours off, back when you were complaining about it that first year?”
He scratched his head, then nodded. “I guess I never considered it a serious option. I would never have done it then. I knew how much they’d spent, and how hard I’d begged. I would never have admitted it was a mistake.”
“Was it? A mistake?” She tried not to sound too eager or look too expectant when he took a minute to answer. He looked out the window, though she could tell his attention was on her as well.
“No. It’s helped me, even though it can be irritating. It’s saved my life.”
She hadn’t expected him to say otherwise, but for a moment it had seemed possible. She would have loved to have him back on her side of the great divide.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
VAL
The sun had begun to set over the outfield, painting the sky in purples and pinks as the family picked their way through the full stands to the nosebleed seats. A baseball game had seemed like a good idea for an outing, with lots of distractions to keep everyone occupied.
Unfortunately, the change of venue hadn’t made much difference. The first problem was that David and Sophie had wound up seated next to each other. Val wouldn’t have thought that would be an issue with two adult children, but they acted determined to regress now that they were living under the same roof again. She didn’t hear the conversation start, or a change in tone, just a seamless continuation of the same unbearable low-grade sniping that had been going in the house for weeks.
“Enough.” Val looked from David to Sophie and back. “How old are you two? Do you really have to fight like that?”
“He started it.” Sophie crossed her arms, mimicking Val.
David frowned and ran both hands through nonexistent curls. “All I said was I couldn’t take you to work with me. Jesus, Soph, I’m still new there. Let me gain some traction before I start trying to pull strings. I already got off on the wrong foot when I laundered my badge.”
“But I thought you were doing presentations at schools and stuff. I want to watch you present. Is that so wrong?”
“That’s not wrong, just weird. Why would you want to watch that? I thought you were anti-Pilot.”
“I am. I’m curious about the arguments you use to convince people.”
Val silently agreed with David: Sophie’s position was strange. Still, it was the bickering that was getting to her, not the content. “I don’t care who’s right and who’s wrong. Find a way to deal with this that doesn’t give me a headache. You’re both adults.”
Val hoped that was the end of the arguments as Sophie and David both reoriented away from each other. She was starting to feel she was the only one in the family actually there for the game. Julie had her tablet and her phone out, scrolling the former while thumb-typing something on the latter; she might as well not be with them, though if quizzed she’d probably know the score.
Sophie watched the players below and flagged down every vendor. She’d always loved ballpark food: hot dogs, pretzels, nachos, Cracker Jacks, ice cream. As a kid, this had been the one place where they’d allowed her that junk, and she still made the same indulgences. In between snacks, she pulled out her phone and typed, her fingers lightning fast.
David watched the crowd more than the game. He had no stillness in him. David and Julie both had twelve-dollar beers in plastic cups. Every once in a while he would exhale, then tilt his beer back. Val noticed that even while he drank he kept his eyes open to his surroundings.
Fine. Val would pay attention for all of them. The runner on first inched out to steal. The pitcher whipped the ball to second, but the runner had seen the pitcher turn and was already safe back at first.
“Why do they let the players get
