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going?” she called after her. The only response was the slam of the front door. Inside one of the many cupboards, something fell off a shelf and broke with a small crash.
    Once outside, Esther walked blindly through the darkness for several blocks before she calmed down enough to think. She could sense rather than hear a pack of feral dogs rummaging nearby. The animals were cowardly yet, when desperate, had been known to attack anybody unwise enough to be outside at night, alone, without a weapon.
    Esther sat on a street corner, her ears keyed to a possible attack, adrenaline coursing through her body. She knew it was stupid to be outside, yet she needed to make a physical statement, to create some distance.
    After an hour, she went back.
    She suspected her sister would sit up waiting for her, as she had so many times in the past; in fact, she secretly wanted it to be true. Yet when Esther returned, she found Sarah in her room, asleep. As she stood over her, Esther experienced a strange, twisting sensation in her stomach. She had an impulse to touch her sister’s long, black hair, fanned out on the white pillowcase and framing her face, but at the last second, she changed her mind.
    Instead, she went back to the main room and sat alone in the dark. Stubbornly, she decided she would wait to watch the sun come up.
    Hours later the first rays of light found her sound asleep, fully dressed, curled like a cat on the far end of the couch.
    Miles away, someone else was watching the sun rise.
    It was a solitary boy on a bike, on the major roadway that passed by the outskirts of Prin. At sixteen, Caleb was lean and deeply sunburned, with a strong jaw and hazel eyes that, despite his distrustful gaze, had once been gentle.
    Like Esther, Caleb chose to protect himself from the sun in his own way. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt, jeans, canvas gloves, and a battered Outback hat. In his backpack, he carried a few belongings. His vehicle was a scuffed black mountain bike with patched tires that had seen many miles.
    He had been on the road for months and could finally see his destination on the horizon: a glimpse of the lone church spire that marked the town of Prin.
    And still, he hesitated.
    He unzipped his backpack, took out a green steel bottle, and swished it around. As he feared, it was nearly empty. The sun had only just risen and the morning was still cool. Yet the sky was cloudless and he knew it would be another day of blazing heat.
    By the side of the road was an old gas station, abandoned and in ruins. In front, Caleb noticed several rusty old oil barrels. One of them was uncovered and now brimmed over with rainwater from a recent storm.
    Caleb walked his bike to the edge of where the grass used to be and released the rickety kickstand. Then he crossed to the barrels and looked down. The water was so clear, you could see all the way to the bottom, where a pink pebble lay. He couldn’t help himself; he stooped to smell it, and at its irresistibly cold scent, he imagined plunging his head into it, opening his parched mouth and swallowing, gulping, drinking as much as he could without coming up for air.
    His eyes were closed and his lips were at the surface of the water; at the last second, he gave a shudder and forced himself to pull back.
    That would have been suicide.
    The trembling surface reflected the cloudless sky above him. It also reflected his face, which shocked him with its gauntness and its look of need.
    Making up his mind, he uncapped his green bottle, lifted it to his lips, and emptied it within seconds. It was only a few mouthfuls of hot and metallic water, but he savored every drop.
    Then Caleb got back on his bike and headed for town.

THREE
     
    A S MOTHS DANCED AROUND THE BRIGHT SPOTLIGHTS OVERHEAD , S ARAH waited outside the Source, nervously brushing back her hair.
    Before she left, she had primped in front of her cracked mirror, combing her long hair so that it lay across her shoulders in a style she