“What’s it to you, bud?” Alpha said, and I’d nearly forgot I’d asked her a question. Hell, I was still gazing into her eyes like a damn fool.
“Just wondered if you’re a local girl.”
“Why? Where are you from?”
“Nowhere,” I told her. “Nowhere at all.”
That day I hardly slept worth a damn. I kept waking to the strange sounds of the city, wanting to head back to the forest but then drowsing off again. Slipping in and out of dreams like I was waiting for something. And I reckon I was waiting on Alpha to come get me. But Alpha never showed.
At sunset, I made my way outside, figuring a route that put me right above the mud pit. With the ramp raised up, you could hardly see the bodies twisted below, but I squatted on the walkway, checked to make sure I was alone, and then stared down at the squirming rags.
“Sal,” I hissed, peering under the railing. “It’s Banyan.”
A face glanced up from the shadows. The scrawny dude I’d spoken with before. “Got better, did you?” he called.
“You seen my buddy? The fat kid?”
I heard Sal calling, scrabbling into view. “Banyan,” he yelled. “Banyan.”
“Right here, kid.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting free.”
His face turned red and tight and he clenched his fist at me. “What about me?” he screamed, and I stood to make sure no one was paying attention to his ruckus.
“Keep your voice down,” I hissed. “Someone’ll come.”
“Don’t you forget about me,” he yelled as I sauntered away, and I could hear him calling after me. “Don’t you forget, tree boy. I got the number. The number you need.”
When I reached the forest, I got caught up in my tracks again. In patches, the trees were still rusty. But many were now sparkling in the dusk.
I watched the women working at the leaves and branches, scraping with wire and steel wool, just as I’d said. Alpha hooted and whooped at the sight of me.
“You like it?” she called, her whole body coated in sweat. And the forest looked great, but I tell you, that girl looked even better. She strutted and shook on the scaffold, her body like a smokeless fire. Her skin slippery and gold.
A pirate with green hair said something to Alpha that made all the women bust out laughing, and they kept staring at me as I pretended to be busy, checking their work. My face burned up red as they watched me. And that just made them laugh even more.
Ahead of me, Jawbone dropped from the scaffold where she’d been working at Hina’s thigh.
“Hell of a job,” I told her as she came toward me.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “You, too.”
That night, I got all the rebar curved how I wanted and then welded it together just right. Way I did it, the hair was shorter than Hina wore it, but it’d work better that way, putting the focus more on her face.
I worked with Alpha beside me. She was good with the blowtorch, and the sparks shone in her eyes as the soot stained our skin. We welded till the sun was too high and then rolled back into the city, swelled by that good kind of tired when your body’s been worked to the bone.
“So you build a statue,” Alpha said, as I knelt to drink from a rusty pipe. “And then you never see it again.”
I splashed the dirty water on my face, the back of my neck. It was still early and the streets were empty.
“Me seeing them ain’t what’s important,” I said. “Just so long as somebody can.”
“And you make enough to keep drifting, one place to the next?”
“Better than robbing folk blind and hauling them off the forty.”
Alpha knelt beside me, cupped her hands under the pipe. “It’s called surviving, bud.”
“Gotta believe in more than that.”
She rubbed water over her arms, smeared the soot off her legs. “Like what?”
“Like what you leave behind.” I pointed back toward the forest. “The statues, they’re like stories. They keep things from getting forgot.”
“You believe what the Rastas say? That there’s still a place where real things grow?”
“I don’t know. They say it’s over the ocean. And I’ve seen the Surge.” I nearly felt bad for lying to her. For not telling her there were trees growing someplace. Trees people were fighting to find.
“So you like statues and stories,” Alpha said, making to stand. “What about old world songs?”
“Never had much in the way of music. Though I guess I never had many stories, either.”
“That’s what you get for just drifting.” She grinned. “Come on. You better stick with me.”
I scrambled up, and we started along a broken path. And as I followed behind her, I felt like I was being tugged toward something. Like how the needle on a compass points north.
In a far corner of the city, we reached a crooked stone building, and the dirty flag raised above it showed a falling yellow sun. Alpha banged at the door, then pushed it open, leading me inside.
“Captain?” she hollered into the silence. “You here?”
There was no answer. We were alone, out of the sunlight.
And we were surrounded by hundreds of books.
I stared around at the walls, the shelves full of pages and dust. All that paper. All those words.
A plastic desk sat in the middle of the room, and in the corner there was an old bathtub full of CDs. Piles of books had been stacked like towers across the floor. It was beautiful. Cluttered and sealed off from the world. My old man would have loved it.
“Where’d you get these?” I said, rushing to the shelves and running my hands along the soft covers, the cardboard spines.
“They were passed down to Jawbone,” Alpha said. “Along with the right to read ’em. I’m not even supposed to come in here. But she’s a good one, the Captain. Reads to us all the time.”
“Yeah?” I grabbed a book and started thumbing at the pages. “You heard Lewis and Clark?”
“Don’t think so.” Alpha stared at the book in my hands. “You can read?”
“My dad used to.”
“Where’s he at now?”
I stayed quiet. I felt sort of pissed for bringing it up at all. It was none of this girl’s business. And even if the books had blown me away, wasn’t this just a waste of my time?
“Said you were heading to Vega,” she said.
“I am.” I slammed the book back on the shelf. “Once I get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t worry, bud. I’ll help you finish it. Soon as the sun goes down.” She came over and straightened up the shelf beside me.
“You could let me run now. If you wanted. You could show me which way to go.”
“What’s the rush? You got a girl waiting?” She said it half like she was joking.
“Ain’t got no girl, damn it. It’s my old man. He’s in all kinds of trouble.”
“Then I tell you what, you finish the statue like the Captain wants, and I’ll drive you back to the forty. First chance we get.”
“You would?”
“Sure.” Alpha leaned against the shelves and studied me. “Most folk are just busy trying to keep alive. Seems like you’re different, bud.”
“Thought you were just about survival.”
“I thought you said there’s something more.”
It was like she wanted to believe it. Or she wanted to believe in me, maybe. I picked up a book and glared at the cover, my brain all jumbled and fried.
“I know how it feels,” Alpha said, her voice soft. “My mom raised me here and left me here and I used to wish for a whole lot different.”
“And now what?”