Read Horizon (03) for Free Online

thought about how Sage always acted like pregnancy was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Not around Kyra of course, because that would be mean, but when she and Sammi were alone. And that made Sammi wonder…maybe Sage wasn’t as relieved about having had the miscarriage as she pretended to be.
    Which Sammi kind of got. At least if you had a baby, there would be something to do all day long. And someone to love you back. For you, not for who people wanted you to be. Everyone was so messed up, from everything they’d seen, everything that had happened. A baby wouldn’t be like that—a baby would never have seen cities getting blown up and burned down, whole fields and farms leveled, all the plants dead. And now, with the kaysev and all, a baby would never go hungry.
    Of course, there was still the Beaters.
    Sage lifted the oversize T-shirt Kyra wore as pajamas, and sure enough, there on her still-mostly-flat stomach was a faint gray line running from her belly button down. And a few black hairs lying flat against her skin.
    “Shit,” Sammi said, impressed.
    Kyra sighed and shifted in her sleep and Sage pulled the covers back up over her, then snapped off the flashlight. They sat on the floor with their backs to Sage’s bed. Sammi, who saw well in the dark, could make out the shapes of Kyra’s bottle collection on top of the dresser, a few wilted weeds stuck in some of them.
    “I saw Dad with Cass tonight,” Sammi said, surprising herself. She hadn’t planned to tell. Sudden tears welled up in her eyes and she pushed them angrily away.
    “What do you mean, with? ”
    “Like, with his tongue down her throat and his hands in her pants. And she wasn’t exactly saying no. They were down on the dock doing it like, like dogs.”
    They weren’t exactly doing it, of course, and not like dogs either, but Sammi was pretty sure they’d been headed that way. And she’d bet this wasn’t the first time.
    “Oh wow,” Sage said, seeming genuinely shocked. “I never would have thought that.”
    “Yeah, no shit.”
    “I thought she was, like, with—”
    “Smoke? Yeah.”
    There was a silence, and Sammi figured they were both thinking about Smoke, how messed up he’d been when they first got here, bone showing through his skin, scabs oozing pus, missing a couple of fingers, scars crisscrossing his face and body. For a while Sammi visited him a few times a week, and then she just sort of stopped. She felt guilty about that—guilty as hell, since Smoke had always been there for her and her mom back when they all sheltered at the school. But she couldn’t stand looking at him half-dead, because it reminded her too much of when her mom and Jed and all the others were killed. And none of them even killed by Beaters, but by supposedly good humans.
    Smoke didn’t even know she was there, anyway. Sun-hi said he might never come out of his coma. Zihna said his “energy was growing stronger,” but that was just the hippie way she talked all the time.
    “So…what about Valerie?” Sage asked.
    “What about her?” Sammi snapped, and then regretted it. She had wondered the same thing. Valerie was always trying to get close to her, asking her about her friends, Sage and Kyra and Phillip and Colton and Kalyan and Shane, offering to make snacks for them all, offering to loan her clothes that Sammi wouldn’t be caught dead in. Valerie was nice, in her boring way—but there was no way Sammi needed another mom.
    “Well, Cass is kind of…way hotter than her. I mean, you know?”
    “Yeah, but—” But it was still her dad. “I mean, it would be one thing if Dad wasn’t on my shit all the time about every little thing I do. His new thing? Now he doesn’t want me going off the island without telling him first. I’m like, I always tell Red or Zihna, and he says that’s not good enough. If he’s off working or whatever I have to wait until he gets back.”
    “Sammi…he’s worried about you. I mean, you’re his