The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam 2)

We were supposed to glean in groups, so we could defend ourselves against the pleebrat street gangs, or the winos who might grab our pails and drink the wine, or the child-snatchers who might sell us on the chicken-sex market. But instead we'd break up in twos or threes because that way we could cover the territory faster.

On this particular day I started out with Bernice, but then we had a fight. We squabbled constantly, which I took as a sign of our friendship because no matter how viciously we fought we'd always make up afterwards. Some bond held us together: not hard like bone, but slippery, like cartilage. Most likely we both felt insecure among the Gardener kids; we were each afraid to be left without an ally.

This time our fight was over a beaded change purse with a starfish on it that we'd picked out of a trash pile. We coveted finds like that and were always looking for them. The pleeblanders threw a lot of stuff away, because -- said the Adams and Eves -- they had short attention spans and no morals.

"I saw it first," I said.

"You saw it first last time," said Bernice.

"So what? I still saw it first!"

"Your mother's a skank," said Bernice. That was unfair because I thought so myself and Bernice knew it.

"Yours is a vegetable!" I said. "Vegetable" shouldn't have been an insult among the Gardeners, but it was. "Veena the Vegetable!" I added.

"Meat-breath!" said Bernice. She had the purse, and she was keeping it.

"Fine!" I said. I turned and walked away. I loitered, but I didn't look around, and Bernice didn't hurry after me.

This happened at the mallway, which was called Apple Corners. This was the official name of our pleeb, though everyone called it the Sinkhole because people vanished into it without a trace. We Gardener kids walked through the mallway whenever we could, just looking.

Like everything else in our pleeb, this mallway had once been classier. There was a broken fountain full of empty beer cans, there were built-in planters with a lot of Zizzy Froot cans and cigarette butts and used condoms covered (said Nuala) in festering germs. There was a holospinner booth that must once have sp

un out suns and moons, and rare animals, and your own image if you put money in, but it had been trashed some time ago and now stood empty-eyed. Sometimes we went inside it and pulled the tattered star-sprinkled curtain across, and read the messages left on the walls by the pleebrats. Monica sucks. So does Darf only betr. UR $? 4 U free, baBc8s! Brad UR ded. Those pleebrats were so daring, they'd write anywhere or anything. They didn't care who saw it.

The Sinkhole pleebrats went into the holospinner to smoke dope -- the booth reeked of it -- and they had sex in there: we could tell because of the condoms and sometimes the panties they'd leave behind. Gardener kids weren't supposed to do either one of those things -- hallucinogenics were for religious purposes, and sex was for those who'd exchanged green leaves and jumped the bonfire -- but the older Gardener kids said they'd done them anyway.

The shops that weren't boarded up were twenty-dollar stores called Tinsel's and Wild Side and Bong's -- names like that. They sold feather hats, and crayons for drawing on your body, and T-shirts with dragons and skulls and mean slogans. Also Joltbars, and chewing gum that made your tongue glow in the dark, and red-lipped ashtrays that said, Let Me Blow It For You, and In-Your-Skin Etcha-Tattoos the Eves said would burn your skin down to the veins. You could find expensive stuff at bargain prices that Shackie said were boosted from the SolarSpace boutiques.

Tawdry rubbish, all of it, the Eves would say. If you're going to sell your soul, at least demand a higher price! Bernice and I paid no attention to that. Our souls didn't interest us. We'd peer in the windows, giddy with wanting. What would you get? we'd say. The LED-light wand? That's baby! The Blood and Roses video? Gross, that's for boys! The Real Woman Stick-on Bimplants, with responsive nipples? Ren, you suck!

After Bernice had left that day, I wasn't sure what to do. I thought maybe I should just go back, because I didn't feel too safe, alone. Then I saw Amanda, standing on the other side of the mallway with a group of Tex-Mexican pleeb girls. I knew that group by sight, and Amanda had never been with them before.

Those girls were wearing the sort of clothes they usually wore: miniskirts and spangled tops, candyfloss boas around their necks, silver gloves, plasticized butterflies clipped into their hair. They had their Sea/H/Ear Candies and their burning-bright phones and their jellyfish bracelets, and they were showing off. They were playing the same tune on their Sea/H/Ear Candies and they were dancing to it, swivelling their bums, sticking out their chests. They looked as if they already owned everything from every single store and were bored with it. I envied that look so much. I just stood there, envying.

Amanda was dancing too, except she was better. After a while she stopped and stood a little apart, texting on her purple phone. Then she stared straight at me and smiled, and waved her silver fingers. That meant Come here.

I checked that no one was looking. Then I crossed the mallway.

15

"You want to see my jellyfish bracelet?" Amanda said once I got there. I must have seemed pathetic to her, with my orphanish clothes and chalky fingers. She held up her wrist: there were the tiny jellyfish, opening and closing themselves like swimming flowers. They looked so perfect.

"Where did you get it?" I asked. I hardly knew what to say.

"Lifted," said Amanda. That was how the pleebrat girls mostly got things.

"How do they stay alive in there?"

She pointed to the silver knob where the bracelet fastened. "This is an aerator," she said. "It pumps in oxygen. You add the food twice a week."

"What happens if you forget?"

"They eat each other," said Amanda. She gave a little smile. "Some kids do that on purpose, they don't add the food. Then it's like a miniwar in there, and after a while there's just one jellyfish left, and then it dies."

"That's horrible," I said.

Amanda kept the same smile. "Yeah. That's why they do it."