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it.
    We’re lucky, I remind myself. As far as I know, our house is still there. Probably trashed, maybe even looted, but it’s not burned down the way some were, with Connies still inside. We have shelter and food, we’re mostly warm, mostly dry. And all of this will pass, I tell myself as I try to get comfortable on the couch’s sagging cushions and stare down at my trigonometry book without really seeing the numbers on the pages.
    It’s useless. I missed too many lessons, can’t make it up. And what’s the point? I’m really never going to use this stuff. Because of everything that’s happened, I’m not goingto get my diploma when I should’ve, not so long as I have to keep working, which I have to do if I want to take care of Opal.
    Then I remember Tony.
    I was supposed to call him. It’s not quite ten. I pick up the phone, check for a dial tone. It’s not guaranteed anymore. Cell service is better, since they determined it was more important to fix the towers than the underground lines. More people have mobiles than landlines. Or they did. I used to have a cell phone, but it got lost—not that I could afford the service now. Everything’s gone twice as expensive. Or it’s rationed. Or simply unavailable.
    I get a dial tone, but then hear a fuzzy, fading voice and get a burst of crackling static. I think it’s Mrs. Wentling talking. I recognize her nasally, whining voice. I hang up, try again. Her voice is louder this time. She pauses. Maybe she hears me, too. I try one more time, and finally when I pick it up again, the line’s clear.
    I dial Tony’s number, praying he’ll answer and not his mother. I’m in luck. He picks it up in the middle of the first ring, like he’s been waiting for me to call. At the sound of his hello, I let out a long, shaky sigh.
    “It’s me.”
    “Velvet! I thought you were going to call me!”
    “I
am
calling you.”
    “Yeah, but …” Tony pauses, lowers his voice. “Earlier. You know. Because of my mom.”
    Tony’s mom has never liked me, not even before the Contamination changed everything. Tony’s mom worked out like a maniac, running miles and miles in any kind of weather. Every day. She never drank anything but diet cola and water, and she never ate anything but salad. She worked so hard at being skinny, you’d think she’d have been more understanding of the Connies, all people who’d been trying to get skinny, too.
    But she wasn’t. Even before the Contamination, I’d heard her make nasty comments about fat people, about anyone who “relied on pills and powders” to diet. I’d heard her make nasty comments about a lot of people, actually. I was sure she made them about me, too, though she was at least nice enough or maybe just not brave enough to say them to my face. During the worst of it, those bad, bad months that summer when the world was ending, I’d taken Opal to their house. I knew Tony would help us.
    But his mother wouldn’t.
    His dad wanted to, but I think she’d beaten him down long ago. I stood on their front porch, our suitcases at our feet, my little sister crying and clutching at my hand. She was only wearing flip-flops, and later I found blisters all over her feet. We’d walked from the temporary shelter the soldiers had put us in, all the way to Tony’s house. Five miles on hard concrete in the heat of August.
    His mother had opened the door only enough to peek out. She was so skinny, she probably could’ve squeezedthrough that crack, but nothing else could. I knew she knew who I was, but she asked, anyway.
    “Please,” I’d begged. “My sister …”
    “No. I can’t, Velvet. Where are your parents?” She should’ve known. If we were there on her porch, it had to be because our parents had been Contaminated. They were Connies. They were danger.
    I knew I shouldn’t blame her, but I did.
    They are mindless and violent, they are dangerous and brutal and horrifying. They are scary. But they are still human, not undead