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had a rooster. If he could pick a broody hen this time, they’d be able to raise some meat as well.
    Or maybe they’d just roast this one up. They’d never had an extra chicken to butcher, but he thought he could figure out how it was done.

     
    Mango lifted his head and woofed when West turned the corner and came walking toward the library, his pack full and heavy on his back. Clover closed her book and stuffed it into her own pack.
    West lifted a small metal cage toward her and the chicken inside it squawked. It was small and brown, with a black head. “Is it an egg chicken or a meat one?” she asked.
    “Egg.”
    She’d like to eat the animal’s meat, but if it would lay, then they’d have food for lots of meals. “Did you get candles?”
    West shook his head. “Not this time.”
    Clover shouldered her own pack, refilled with books, took one of West’s bags, and picked up Mango’s lead. “I got a book about beekeeping.”
    “Clover.”
    She hated when he said her name like that. “What? We could have our own honey, and wax for candles, too.”
    “You’ll be in school in a month.”
    “It doesn’t hurt to know things. I won’t be at school forever.”
    Clover tried to match her strides to West’s, but his legs were six inches longer than hers and she couldn’t do it. She took shorter, faster steps. Her red sneakers slapped against the concrete, like a song almost.
    Wednesday was her favorite day of the week, and the library was her favorite place in Reno. Once her pack was filled with books, she went to hear the new first-aid instructor teach about setting bones. And then she connected their laptop computer into the library’s nets and took a look at the classified ads.
    “Someone in Little Rock is looking for a husband,” she said toWest. “Healthy, age twenty-six, red hair and blue eyes. Good cook and seamstress. One five-year-old son.”
    “Trying to marry me off to an older woman?”
    Clover ignored him. “And I saw a message from Albany, New York, that said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”
    “Roosevelt,” West said, finally slowing a little for her.
    “Why don’t you ever read the ads, West?” They were the only way that the cities had to communicate with each other. The only thing that widened the world a little bit.
    “I don’t have time. Besides, I have you to filter out the best for me.”
    Good point. Also, she didn’t particularly want him hanging out with her in the library, trying to tell her what books she should read or classes she should take. “Why would someone quote an old president in the ads?”
    “Haven’t got a clue.”
    Clover adjusted her pack. “I think I’ll go for a run when we get home.”
    “Mrs. Finch has soup for us. And bread, if we’re lucky. That way we can keep the loaf I won today and use it tomorrow.”
    Clover made a face. West stopped walking altogether.
    “What?” she asked.
    “You shouldn’t have said that I don’t like her soup. Sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps us going.”
    “But you don’t like it.” Clover doubted anyone in the world actually
liked
cabbage soup.
    “That’s not the point.”
    She didn’t argue. He was right. The point was, free food is free food. And Mrs. Finch was their neighbor. “Fine. I’ll eat it. And then I’m running.”
    Running was Clover’s favorite thing to do, after reading. She loved the way the cement felt hard and unforgiving under her feetuntil she reached the park and the dirt path that wound its way alongside the Truckee River.
    She liked the wind in her face and how it smelled like water. And the way Mango ran beside her, keeping her company. But most of all she liked the way the steady pace untangled her thoughts.
    She had a lot to think about with her Academy orientation only five days away.
    “Do you think it’ll be like primary school?” she asked West.
    “What’s that?”
    “The Academy.”
    Primary school made cabbage soup look like a