Hungry (27 page)

“Now you see why Ana is so important to people like me?”

In that very moment, I am smacked with a realization as horrifying as the thick orange air that hit me a half hour ago. This whole thing isn’t about me proving Ahimsa and my mother wrong. And it isn’t about One World allowing people like Ana to talk about food. There is something deeply troubling going on in the world, and for the first time, I feel genuinely scared. More scared than when we were being shot at or fleeing from Pico and Iris, because the reality in the Outer Loop is not temporary. Nobody here can just run away. And the people who are flooding the Inner Loop to protest Ana’s arrest want more than her release. They want their lives.

I feel like a small-minded idiot for not understanding this before. I feel like a privy. And even that is troubling, because for the first time, I get what justice for the people out here might mean for people like my family. “Basil, I…” I start to say, but I can’t finish. How can I tell him I’m worried about my family now that they’ve put a price on his head?

“Listen.” He squeezes my shoulder. “This is all overwhelming, I know. And we’re both exhausted. We need to rest and give ourselves a few days to get better.”

“Here?” I ask, looking around at the rubble and ruin. Then I backpedal, trying to sound less appalled than I am. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems.”

“Nope.” He pulls open the front door with his good arm. “It’s worse.”

*   *   *

“Mom,” calls Basil as we enter. “Mom, it’s Eli.” We walk slowly through the dark and cluttered rooms toward the sound of a personal transformation story coming from a screen in the back of the house. The air inside hangs heavy with stale kudzar smoke, making me want to flee outside for a breath of marginally fresher air.

“She won’t recognize you,” I whisper to Basil.

“Not sure she would recognize me even if I didn’t look like this,” he tells me.

“She can’t be that bad.”

“Want to bet?”

When we find his mother, she’s sprawled across a dingy orange sofa, one arm slumped to the floor among empty Synthamil bottles. Ashy skin pulls tight across her sunken cheeks. Dark hair, threaded with gray, spills across her eyes. The screen blares and flashes, but his mother doesn’t stir.

“Is she…?” I hold my breath.

“Alive?” Basil asks, matter of factly. He finds a remote device and manually mutes the sound of the screen. “Don’t know until you check.” He picks his way through the detritus then crouches down beside her, staring at her as if he’s come across something only vaguely familiar. “Mom.” He pokes her bony shoulder. “Mom, wake up.” He pokes her harder. “Hey Mom. Hey Alice!” he says and shakes her.

“What the hell!” she spews as she jerks awake, arms and legs flailing. “Who are you? What do you want?” She reaches under a cushion, searching frantically for something.

“It’s Eli,” Basil shouts as he skitters backward. “It’s your son.”

“You don’t look like Eli.” The woman squints, uncertain, and slowly withdraws a gleaming knife from under the cushion. I stagger backward, not breathing.

“Well,” he says, arms up. “It’s me.”

She furrows her brow. “Who’s that then?” She motions to me with the point of the knife.

“A friend,” he tells her. “We need a place to stay for a couple of nights.”

“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” she asks him.

He sighs, as if he’s been through this many times before. “Elijah Robb Mintner. Born March twenty-ninth. Age seventeen. Son of Alice Jane McHill and Robert ‘Buddy’ Mintner. Younger brother of Arol James Mintner born July third, died twelve years ago on September eighteenth. I have a birthmark on my butt the shape of a sock and a scar on my shin from where I fell when I was six years old.”

Without warning, the woman bursts into tears. She sobs as if she’s just lost everything. Basil looks over his shoulder at me, rolls his eyes, and mouths, “Sorry.” I’m too stunned to speak.

“You need a smoke, Ma? Want a kudzar?” He searches for a pack on the cluttered table beside the couch.

“Yeah,” she says through her crying jag. “Give me a ciggie, honey. It’ll calm my nerves.” She holds out a shaking hand. Basil unearths a crumpled pack, removes a kudzar, lights it, and takes a long drag before he hands it to her. She sucks hard, pulling it down to mostly ash, then exhales loudly. As if he knows the drill, he lights another one. “How about you put the knife away?” he asks, then hands her the second kudzar as she smashes the butt of the first underfoot on the rug.

“You don’t know what it’s like out here,” she says, her voice still quivering. “I have to protect myself. Especially now that all those blasted geophags are living in the football field.”

Basil frowns at her. “Who are they?”

“Who knows!” She wipes the back of her hand across her eyes and sits up a little straighter. “Why are you here?” she asks him, sniffling. “And what are you doing with this girl? Doesn’t look like she’s from around here.”

“Just passing through. Wanted to check on you.”

She smirks as if she doesn’t believe him. “Well,” she says, sucking on the kudzar like it’s a lifeline. She shoves the knife back under the couch cushion. “Ribald’s not going to like it.”

“Ribald?” Basil asks, eyebrows up.

His mother chews on the inside of her cheek, a habit I’ve seen in Basil when he’s nervous. “My friend.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“How am I supposed to know?” his mother explodes. “In the joint again, I reckon. Man couldn’t stay out of trouble inside a bag.” She looks at me. “Where you from? What’s wrong with your leg?” She looks at Basil. “And your arm? You get beat up or something?”

“We met at a meeting,” I tell her. “And we had a little motorcycle accident on the way here.”

“A meeting, huh? So you’re all political like this one? Fighting the big fight?” She punches at the air with one gangly arm. “Going to bring down the system? It’s not enough that I lost one son for the cause?” She spits the last word then laughs bitterly. “You’re both idiots! Gonna wind up in jail or worse. Just like your old man!” she shouts at Basil. “Can’t hold down a job. Gotta rabble-rouse and make everybody around you miserable! You saw what happened to your poor brother, trying to be just like your father! And for what? For what?” She smacks the cushion. “You keep this up and you’ll be just like him. A loser.”

Basil stands stiff, staring over her head as she berates him. I step forward on my good leg and say, “He’s not…” but Basil grabs hold of my wrist and shakes his head.

“Not worth it,” he whispers.

I breathe deeply and swallow all the words I’d like to use to defend Basil.

She rolls her head against the back of the couch. “My head is killing me. You got anything?”

“You know I don’t,” he says.

She narrows her eyes at him like she’s about to explode again, but then her face clears and she laughs. “Guess that proves you’re my boy. You never give me nothing.”

He ignores her dig and kicks at an empty bottle. “You had any nourishment lately?”

She shrugs. “Probably.”

“Got any more?” he asks, cautiously.

She scowls at him. “Get your own.”

My breath catches in my throat, but Basil seems unfazed by her unkindness.

“Why?” he asks with a chuckle. “So you can sell it like you used to?”

“Don’t you start on that again,” she says with a fresh kudzar dangling from the side of her mouth. “If your father had…”

“Let’s not do this,” he tells her, holding up his good hand. “We’ll be here a couple days, then we’ll be out of your way.” He glances at me and jerks his head toward the door. I follow him out of the room.

“I’ll have to check with Ribald,” she calls after us. “He’s the one who pays the bills around here.”

Basil stops and stiffens, then looks over his shoulder at her. “Is it money you want?”

His mother picks flakes of dried kudzu from her tongue. “Ever since your father got arrested again, it’s been tough to make ends meet.”

“Fine,” he says and marches back. He hands her several bills from his pocket. “That should cover it. Make sure no one knows we’re here.”

She sucks on the kudzar, squinting one eye against a curlicue of smoke. “You in trouble?”

He pulls out one more bill and dangles it in front of her then says, emphatically, “No.”

She snatches it from him. “Nice to have you home, son.”

*   *   *

Basil takes me through a warren of dreary disorganized rooms to the other end of the house. Through the back door, I see more disintegrating sculptures and junk littering the dirt. Beyond that is the dry riverbed. Around us, three-legged chairs, mattress springs, crooked lamps, and all kinds of artifacts from another time are piled high. Tangles of clothing cascade from the open drawers of tall metal cabinets. There are at least three washing machines and a dozen ancient gutted computers stacked up in a corner.

“What do they do with all of this stuff?” I ask.

“Mostly nothing.” He runs his finger through the dust on an old piano that reminds me of my second-grade network photo when I was missing most of my teeth. “My dad fancies himself an artist, but in reality, he’s just a hoarder, and the only thing he makes is trouble.”

“I can picture you when you were little,” I say with a half laugh at the thought of a cute curly-haired kid digging through all this junk. “I bet you created all the things you couldn’t buy.”

“The noble savage,” he sneers.

“You should be an engineer!” I tell him.

He scowls at me. “God, you really are clueless, aren’t you?”

I stumble backward as if his words shoved me. “What? I just meant you’d be good at it. You’re really brilliant. The smell scanner, the transponder, the bicycle cart, that windmill pump…”

“Don’t you get it yet? I’m not like you,” he says with a cold glare. “But I suppose from your perch up there on the ladder to success, you can’t see down this far.”

I blink away my surprise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He stomps his foot. “ICMs, the right Virtu-Schools, internships, and family connections are all part of a big machine churning out the status quo and protecting the exalted few who’ll never let someone like me elbow my way in. I can’t be an engineer no matter how brilliant I am because there is no ladder for me to climb, but you got halfway to the top just by being born!”

I try to get a word in so he’ll know that for the first time in my life I understand how unfair the world is, but Basil bulldozes right over me.

“When One World gobbled up the entire nutrition market then one by one snatched every other enterprise and bought off all the politicians, they killed any chance that someone like me could ever make it out of this mess. The best I can hope for is a menial job fixing what’s broken in a system that couldn’t care less whether I live or die. A loser! Just like my dad.”

“You’re not a loser,” I argue, but I’m angry at him for screaming at me, so I add, “And don’t get mad at me about the system. I didn’t make it, but at least…”

“You profit from it!” he snaps. “What was I thinking, getting involved with a privy!”

“Why are you screaming at me?” I shout at him. “I don’t deserve this.”

“Then go back home!” he shouts.

His words sting. “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do,” he says calmly and clearly.

I search his face, trying to find that boy who filled me with so much emotion that I grabbed his hand and ran away, but he looks at me blankly with unfamiliar icy blue eyes as if he doesn’t know me.

“Basil…” I take a step toward him, but he turns, throws open a door, and stomps up a sagging staircase to the second floor. “Fine!” I yell after him, wondering if I every really knew him before this moment. “Maybe I will go back!”

“Fine!” he yells down at me. “Then go.”

I stand among the wreckage of this house, crutches chafing the underside of my arms, wishing I could storm out rather than limp away. I can’t believe I let him drag me all the way out here to treat me like this!

I hop on one leg to a decrepit love seat half hidden among the shadows and plop down exhausted. Stuffing spills out of the cushions like guts from an open wound. I’m tired. I’m dirty. And my leg hurts. At the moment I want nothing more than a bath, a drink of water, and some clean clothes. Then maybe I could think straight.

From another part of the house, I hear Basil’s mom shuffling around, muttering to herself. My mom might be self-absorbed and difficult to deal with, but at least she feeds me. And no matter how angry I’ve been with her, I know that she loves me. My parents would pay my restitution if I had to go to jail, not charge me to stay a night or two in my own home. And they would never speak to me the way she spoke to Basil. I had no idea a parent could be so awful to her child. If I weren’t so pissed off at Basil right now, I might feel sorry for him, but he had no reason to be mean to me, especially when I’ve thrown everything away to be with him.

Obviously I can’t stay here. I glare at the stairway, wondering how he could flip on me the minute that we’re safe. Grandma told me Basil isn’t the boy I thought he was. I should have listened while I had the chance.

I see another door beside the stairs. It’s half open, revealing a sink, a tub, and an old-fashioned big-bowled urinal. It occurs to me that I could clean myself up, “borrow” some clothes from the piles lying around, and be on my way. The thought of accepting this whole ordeal as a mistake makes my chest hurt, but the thought of staying here with Basil so suddenly hostile makes me feel worse. So I haul myself up and rake through the shirts and skirts and pants in the metal drawers. Most of the clothing is threadbare or totally the wrong size, but with enough digging, I find some things that might work. Then I hobble to the bathing room, shut the door, and start to clean up.

While I’m washing and changing, I hear the front door open then feel the house shake when it slams shut. Overhead, I hear Basil run across the floor and barrel down the creaking stairs. The front door slams again. I hear shouting as Basil and his mother argue, then a car starts and roars away. The house becomes very still.

I realize then that Basil isn’t going to come back inside and apologize to me like I’ve been hoping. He’s left with his mother and I’m alone. Despite my bravado about walking away, suddenly my predicament feels much more dire. I have no money, no friends, nobody to turn to for help out here. Worst of all, Basil’s mother, that awful hateful woman, is probably right. The puny little protest by the Dynasaurs and Analogs and their sympathizers won’t put a dent in the gigantic machine running society. Basil’s right, too. I’m nothing but a privy who finally figured out the world sucks and thought she could change it. Tears creep into my eyes. This time, I’m too worn-out to stop them.