through the common room.
“Putting the stuff away,” the girl said, looking puzzled.
Nathan reached out and grasped a hunk of her hair, twisting it with a yank until she cried out. “Next time you screw up it’s coming right out,” he said, drawing his arm back and wiping his hand on his jacket. He pointed to the room that held his personal stash. “That ‘stuff’ goes over there .”
No one else said anything as the girl hustled off, but the tension in the air made the hair on the back of my neck rise.
He sent me off on the second day with a personal assignment: “You lived here,” he said. “Find me a secure storage space.”
I thought it’d be a relief to leave the fire station for a while. But leaving, I had to pass the stragglers lingering outside, empty-handed or with bundles of goods deemed not quite enough payment to be accepted. An old man was sitting in the courtyard sobbing. A mother was trying to corral her two scrawny little kids while begging everyone who approached to spare something for her so she could pay for their shots. “Please,” she said, extending her hand to me, and I automatically shook my head and muttered, “Sorry.” The moment squeezed around my gut like a clenched fist as I walked on.
I’d spent most of my teens exploring these streets in the five years Dad’s job had transplanted us here. Weaving through them now stirred up memories of a person I’d let myself forget. I’d rallied in this square with hundreds of other protesters, shouting and brandishing my poster board. I’d stood by this statue wheedling passersby into signing a petition. Mom used to say that I’d always been a crusader—even when the only injustice I was trying to defeat was the fact that Kaelyn had gotten a slightly bigger piece of my fifth birthday cake, a story she’d never gotten tired of telling—but it was in this city that I’d really woken up to the world beyond the island. To what sort of people I wanted to kiss and date, and how many other people had a problem with that. To the privilege allotted to me because I could be mistaken for a white guy with a dark tan, and how many walls could go up when I wasn’t.
I had ranted and raged, and looking back I had the feeling I’d been an exceptionally difficult kid to live with. But it had been important. I’d wanted to set things right .
Now I was nineteen, not a kid anymore, and I wasn’t sure where that kid had gone. Zack had encouraged me to keep my head down, with no idea I used to be the kind of guy who’d call out people who just looked the other way.
It wasn’t that world anymore. I was still trying to set things right, I just... couldn’t approach it the same way. Taking a stand on my own would have gotten me killed. I’d needed a platform to work from, and I’d gotten myself one by insinuating myself with Michael—as far as that had taken me. I’d saved Kaelyn’s life more than once, helped her get the vaccine to the CDC.
But even Michael didn’t like the way we were running things, apparently, and looking around me, I could understand it. Most of the people we were ruling over didn’t need brutality to keep them in line. They were already crushed. The Wardens could ease back—we could be guardians here instead of tyrants, earning respect instead of spreading fear, without losing one bit of the hold we’d gained. We could be helping rebuild this city instead of terrorizing it.
I could imagine that, but I couldn’t imagine how to maneuver Nathan into going for it. I did know the person I’d used to be wouldn’t have been content to slowly nudge the situation in that direction from behind the scenes. That kid would have been furious at the way Nathan was exploiting the survivors who needed the vaccine, at the suffering the Wardens were prolonging right outside the walls of the building that kept me secure, not pretending to be okay with it.
Maybe I was furious, under that twist of guilt. Maybe I’d just gotten
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