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with her sandwich.
    “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” she asked after she took a sip of water.
    She looked up at me.
    When she looked at me like this, when she really focused on me, it made me shy for a moment. She was so smart and so perceptive, I felt like she could see right through me.
    How could someone as beautiful as she was like me at all? Would she ever feel the same reckless love that I felt for her? The do-anything kind of love?
    “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” she repeated.
    I looked away.
    “You know that woman, the one from the line?”
    I nodded.
    “I’ve looked for her every day. At the listings, in the Clubhouse, I’ve never seen her again.”
    “You think they took her away,” I said.
    Astrid nodded, her blue eyes wide with fear.
    *   *   *
    I remembered the woman.
    We had been on line for breakfast.
    It was a really beautiful morning, the Clubhouse was filled with the scent of maple syrup and Astrid was being funny.
    “How’s my hair?” she asked me.
    I had given her possibly the worst haircut in the history of personal grooming back at the Greenway when we all got lice. Sahalia had since done her best to shape it up. But still … Astrid now basically had a blond faux-hawk, a style from around 2002 that our old barber had always tried to sell me and Alex on. Some of Astrid’s hair curled but in other places it just frizzed out.
    “You look like a deranged baby chick,” I told her.
    “Nice,” she said. She ran her hand through the blond mess of it. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to flatter pregnant women shamelessly.”
    “I meant, a beautiful, radiant, deranged baby chick,” I said. “Obviously.”
    Astrid winked at me and pulled on the knit green ski cap I’d given her back at the Greenway.
    “Maybe it’s better for everyone if I wear this,” she said.
    “Yeah, I think it’s for the best,” I agreed.
    We put our trays on the metal serving table and slid forward. Suddenly I was jostled from behind. Pushed aside and some woman was grabbing for Astrid.
    “Barbie! Barbs?” the woman was saying, her voice frantic.
    She was thin, maybe in her twenties, with blond hair. Wearing a baggy sweater.
    The woman spun Astrid around.
    She looked at Astrid’s face and gave a cry.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you were my sister.”
    “It’s okay,” Astrid said kindly. “I think we all hope to find our lost family members here—”
    “No!” the woman moaned. “It’s not that. It’s not like that at all!”
    The woman kind of slumped and swayed. I put my hand on her shoulder.
    “Are you okay?” I asked. She seemed like she might faint.
    “Come over here.” I led her to a table and sat her down.
    Astrid sat down next to the woman and took her hand.
    “I saw your belly and I thought you were my sister Barbie,” the woman said.
    “Where did you see her last?” I asked, expecting her to say Castle Rock or Denver or Boulder.
    “At the medical center,” she said. “Just two days ago. She had some pains and she went in to be checked and they took her!”
    “Took her where? To a hospital?” I asked.
    “I don’t know! These men from the US government went and talked to her and told her she was needed in the States for medical testing. But she wouldn’t go. She was scared to leave me and she said she just wanted to stay here.”
    Astrid’s breathing was speeding up. I saw her put a hand to her throat, absentmindedly.
    “What does she look like, your sister?” Astrid asked.
    “She’s thin, like you, and is carrying the same way. But she’s a brunette.”
    “Does she wear an eyebrow ring?” Astrid asked.
    The woman nodded.
    “Oh my God, I know her! She’s in my pregnancy group.”
    “When we woke up in the morning, she wasn’t in our tent!” The woman went on. “I think they just took her. She said they were asking her all kind of questions about the time she was exposed to the compounds. It was only for a few minutes. I was