Parched Read online

  Shimmering holos of Gyan are everywhere. Pearls of his infamous wisdom ripple under the image of our bearded, beatific leader: Freedom for the self is freedom for the whole. All are equal, equal is all. Evolution, enlightenment, en masse: Eden. Each of them bears the Trust logo: the swirling white T enclosed in a yellow-trimmed blue circle. Either more appeared after I left or, more likely, I just didn’t notice how many there are. As we pass through one, the hard flash of light makes me shiver.

  In order to begin my much-needed makeover, Izzy drags me into her favorite new boutique. We’ll use my new ID to collect clothes. Because I haven’t used my Goods Allowance in a year—the Allowance we have for everyday, essential items like clothes, homewares, education supplies—I have a ton of credit.

  Izzy marches inside like she means business. I trail behind. Funny—this used to be our old dynamic. Even though I always thought of us as equals, ultimately Izzy called the shots. I was always along for the ride. It never used to bother me. It’s just the way it was. But it’s different now.

  “This is cute, and so is this and this and this!” Izzy emerges with an armful of dresses—swaths of pale, pretty cloth. “You have to get this one, it’s just to die for.”

  “Actually,” I say, “I’m just going to try these on.”

  “Pants?” She reacts like I’ve held up a clown suit. “You don’t wear pants.”

  “I have a top too,” I argue, holding up a black V-neck.

  “Very . . . utilitarian.” Izzy shakes her head, unable to compute. “You can get anything in this store, and this is what you want? Seriously?”

  “I’m not really in a dresses mood right now.”

  “But these would all look amazing on you,” she insists. “You have to get at least one.”

  I used to buy whatever Izzy suggested. I realize how unused to following orders I am now, even orders from a friend. But I don’t want to upset her.

  “I just have so much to do now that I’m back, and dresses aren’t as practical,” I say in my most reasonable voice. “Next month, for sure.”

  She sighs, relenting. “Fine.” Then, with a consoling grin: “Guess I’ll have to try this on myself.”

  The pants and top fit well, both made from a fine hemp that feels strong and resilient. And I like how I look in them too. Capable is the first word that comes to mind. How weird—that’s never been an adjective of any importance to me until now. The tag inside both the shirt and the pants says, “Made in the Zone.” No wonder they’re so well made. Substitutes sewed these strong seams. For a moment I consider not getting these clothes as a protest, and collecting clothes from someplace else, before I realize there isn’t a someplace else. Unless I want to make my own clothes, I have to get items created in the Manufacturing Zone.

  “Hey, Tess?” Izzy calls out. I peek out from behind my curtain. Izzy stands in the center of the fitting rooms wearing the flimsy dress she’d wanted me to try on. And nothing underneath. She twirls provocatively. “How does it look?”

  Where I’m flat and sinewy, Izzy’s got more curves than the South Hills. She’s hot and she knows it. I give her an unimpressed shrug. “It’s fine,” I tell her with deliberate boredom. “Bit frumpy.”

  “Bitch!” she exclaims with a grin. She goes to swat me but I duck out of reach. She starts giggling, which makes me start giggling. “I’m getting a second opinion.”

  And with that she flounces out into the store, basically naked. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Izzy has shock value down to a fine art. She wouldn’t last five seconds in the Badlands.

  I end up getting five tops, three pairs of pants, a black jacket, and a random selection of socks, undershirts, and underwear. I stopped wearing a proper bra in the Badlands because no one else wore one. Now they feel too restrictive, and I’m too flat-chested to really need one. At the last minute, I let Izzy switch my black jacket for a blood-red one, which actually looks pretty badass. As a delicate-looking sales assistant scans my new ID, I tell her I’ll wear my new clothes out of the store.

  “Sure thing,” she says, nodding at the Badlands shirt and pants in my hand. “Do you need a bag for your old clothes?”

  “No,” Izzy answers for me flatly. She’s behind me, fully clothed and fiddling in her purse. “You can burn them.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” I tease her. “Don’t you want to keep them?” I wave the clothes in her face. “They’d look great on you.”

  She smacks at my hand. “Get those away from me.”

  I blink. “C’mon, Iz. I was kidding.”

  “Well, I’m serious, they’re disgusting. I can’t believe—” She catches herself and shakes her head, just once. Her eyes are flashing with a hardness I’ve never seen before. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  Without another word, she turns and strides out.

  The clear sound of two bells rings out across the Hive as I hurry to catch up with her. Two o’clock. I’d been hungry for lunch but now my appetite is gone. When I reach Izzy, she addresses me with a cool, no-nonsense expression. “You should use your Pleasure Allowance for a cut in Charity.” She means getting a designer cut with a stylist, instead of using my Goods Allowance for a standard style at an ordinary barber.

  I nod, wanting to make peace. “Should we take an airbus?”

  Home to most of Eden’s artisans, the colorful and charming Charity oozes an effortless hip feel. Post-ed students squat on wooden crates in the coffeehouses to discuss art and philosophy and poetry. Street healers offer everything from reiki to aura cleansing. Storytellers tell tall tales in underground performance spaces, while dancers spin through the plazas, silk ribbons rippling out behind them. By the time we jump off the clean, spacious airbus, being back in our favorite part of Eden has cut the chill between us. Izzy’s fingers curl into mine, pulling me into the salon she’s chosen.

  My stylist’s name is Starfish. He’s well over six feet tall and skeleton-thin, with large, luscious lips that curl down in a permanent pout. Bangs flop over one eye. The one I can see regards me suspiciously as I sit down in front of the mirror, black cape around my shoulders to protect my clothes. “Sooo, what are we doing today?” Starfish has a habit of drawing out his vowels.

  “Cut and color,” Izzy answers. “For the cut, I’m thinking something girly, sophisticated, definitely cute, a little bit sexy?”

  “Okaaaay,” drawls Starfish. “And color?”

  Again, Izzy takes the floor. “You wouldn’t know it, but she’s a natural blonde.”

  Starfish feels the texture of my coarse black hair reluctantly, speaking to Izzy via the mirror I’m sitting in front of. “I can use henna to warm this into a nice chocolate brooown.”

  “Perfect.” Izzy nods.

  “Do I get a say in this?” I ask, half amused, half annoyed.

  Izzy rests her hands on my shoulders. “No offense, Tess, but the decisions you’ve been making lately have been pretty freakish,” she says sincerely. Then, as if speaking to a child: “Lucky you’ve got me to help guide you back to the world of the sane and the stylish. Oh,” she adds to Starfish, “and lose the weirdo plaits with the feathers.”

  “No.” I pull back, my fingers moving to my Badlands plaits protectively. “I like them. Leave them.”

  Starfish frowns. “But I need to unbraid them for the color—”

  “I said, leave them.”

  After washing my hair, Starfish wraps the three plaits in tinfoil, not bothering to hide his distaste. Then he mixes the color and starts working the cool, sticky mixture through. I’m not in a talkative mood, so I let him tell a long-winded story about a fight he’d gotten into last night with his boyfriend that involved a disagreement over a gray scarf. Izzy flicks through a fashion stream using the salon’s scratch, one eye on me, one eye on a flashing carousel of woven straw purses.

  Washing the henna out seems to take forever. I’m overly conscious of the amount of gushing warm water Starfish is using. As it gurgles into the basin behind me, I find myself calcula
ting what I’d do with it if I was still out there. Wash everything I own. Bottle it and keep it somewhere safe. No, sell it in Zhukov’s bar and live like a king.

  Back at the mirror, Starfish unwraps the plaits and then starts drying my hair with a hair dryer. Wet, it looks the same color as before, but as it dries it looks . . . pretty, turning my ordinary brown eyes the color of rich milk chocolate. When I run my fingers through it, it feels as soft as lamb’s wool. Starfish swats my hand away. “No touching the masterpiece until I’m finished.”

  Even though I like how it looks, all the water needed for this whole production gnaws at me. The more I think about it, the more flat-out ridiculous it seems. I make the mistake of mentioning this to Izzy.

  “Yeah.” She nods, swishing through a collection of light pink tops. “Totally.”

  “Izzadore.” That catches her attention. “You’re not listening to me. This is a waste of water.”

  “No, it’s part of your allowance,” she corrects me. “When you get your hair colored, that uses some of your Lake Allowance, right?”

  Starfish nods in agreement. “Sooome.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that I just used a week’s worth of water coloring my hair,” I say. Then, after Starfish’s look of confusion, I add, “A week’s worth for someone living in the Badlands.”

  “I don’t think so.” Starfish sniffs. “Not a week’s worth.”

  “It’s true. I was just—”

  “Tess,” Izzy warns.

  “I was just there.”

  Starfish glances at Izzy, and for the first time, I see something real and human on his face. Alarm. Izzy’s lips are pressed together so tight that they’re white. Starfish clears his throat uncertainly. “So, your cut. Let’s start by losing these.” He twists his fingers around my three thin plaits and gives them a sharp tug.

  “Ow!” I exclaim. “I said leave them.” I jerk away from him. My face is hot. I feel sweat on my brow. In a voice that’s unexpectedly loud, I blurt out, “Edenites should be using less water. And it was wrong of Gyan to cut off Moon Lake.”

  The salon goes dead silent, as if everyone has frozen at once. Izzy’s mouth drops open. Starfish laughs nervously, high and weird. I glance around. The other customers click their gazes away quickly, but two older women with heads full of tinfoil glare back at me with ugly disapproval. Publicly denouncing Gyan is a crime against the state. Plus, everyone has a comm, and everyone has scratch. Everything I just said could’ve easily been recorded. The air feels like it’s alive with electricity, the tension so palpable I can feel it on my skin. The thought repeats itself, giddy, elated, and panicked. I just broke the law.

  Izzy is staring at me, her chest visibly rising and falling. “We should go,” I say, whipping the cape off my shoulders and grabbing my bag of clothes from the boutique.

  In what has to be a first, Izzy is silent as we book it out of the salon. And the only thing she says when I say we need to talk is, “Where?”

  Animal Gardens are the extensive grounds that form part of Eden’s Central Zoo. Animals that don’t need to be locked up are free to roam in habitats curated especially for them, making the gardens educational as well as beautiful. I lead Izzy to the glass-enclosed rain forest.

  Here, the air is humid and sticky-warm, alive with the ringing chorus of tree frogs. We move along a slatted wooden walkway, deeper into jungly scrub. The vines overhead form deep shadows. We’re the only ones here, the steamy air proving too unpleasant for most Edenites. It’s also completely off-cycle: the educational streams that defined plant species, bird calls, and animals had to be taken out a few years ago after the humidity kept corroding the scratch.

  My feet move soundlessly along the damp wooden walkway. Izzy lags behind. We haven’t spoken since the salon. Even though I’m wired, my brain playing what I said in the salon on repeat, being here is taking the edge off. I don’t want to fight with Izzy. I want to talk. I breathe in the smell of fresh, wet green and blow it out through my lips, trying to calm the insistent tap tap tap of my heart.

  Through the trees, I glimpse a tall, ungainly bird pecking around a tree trunk. It’s a dodo. Years ago, Abel worked on bringing the once-extinct bird back to life. There’s something distinctly comical about its tiny eyes, bulbous beak, and oversized feet. I go to point it out to Izzy, but she’s too far behind. By the time she catches up, the dodo is gone.

  Eventually, the path widens to form a deck overlooking clear water rushing down wet, mossy rocks. Fine spray dampens our hair and clothes.

  Izzy turns to face me, her voice raised to be heard over the burble of tumbling water. “Look, I get it. You’ve been through a lot. You’re not thinking straight.” She sighs, placing one small hand on my arm indulgently. “I forgive you, okay?”

  I frown. “Iz, I didn’t bring you here to apologize.”

  She blinks and drops her hand. “You didn’t?”

  I take a deep breath. “I need to talk to you. About the Badlands.”

  Izzy freezes. Her voice drops a full octave. “What?”

  “What I said in the salon, it’s true. It’s—”

  But Izzy cuts me off with a raised palm. “Tess,” she says, swallowing hard. “I am really trying here. Okay? I am really friggin’ trying. But this, this Badlands stuff? I just cannot—” She spins away from me for a second, just a second, before whirling back, eyes glittering. “I thought you were dead, Tess. I thought you were friggin’ dead. And then you show up, and you’re like, ‘No, I’m fine, I was just in the Badlands’—the friggin’ Badlands. And you’re acting like, like I’m not supposed to freak out, like we’re just going to go back to normal.” She’s pacing before me, words pouring out of her. “And at first I felt like, great. Yeah. Let’s go back. Because I loved the way things were. I friggin’ loved it. You were my best friend.” Izzy’s voice cracks and she struggles to keep it even. “I don’t get it.” She stops to face me, mouth working. I know she’s trying hard not to cry. “I don’t get what is happening.”

  I stare at the waterfall, at the tumbling, endless water gushing into the rockpool. “People are starving out there, Izzy,” I say. “They live on a bowl of pourriture a day. Kids, Iz. Kids live like that.”

  She shakes her head in confusion. “What’s poo-rita?”

  I shake my head, trying to arrange my thoughts. “It’s not important. Look. All this exists because people out there are dying and the Trust is letting it happen. They’re making it happen.”

  Izzy rolls her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not that bad.”

  “I’m telling you it is,” I explain incredulously. “I was there. We have to do something about it.”

  “Do something about it?” Izzy repeats scornfully. “What are you going to do, Tess?”

  I shake my head, caught out. “I . . . I don’t know. I only know I have to change things.”

  Izzy looks at me with gentle pity. She sighs, and softens her voice. “Tess, this is just the way things worked out. We ended up the lucky ones.” She puts one hand on my arm and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “Look, I’m not totally heartless. I care about the Badlands, sure I do. But we’re in Eden and they’re out there. You can’t change that. So you may as well just enjoy it.”

  I twist my arm out of her grasp.

  Izzy just stares at me. I know she doesn’t care. I know because I didn’t used to either.

  Then, after a few moments, Izzy says in a voice as small as a lady-bug, “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

  Suddenly, I am overcome with exhaustion. “I feel like I don’t know me either,” I say blankly. I sink down onto the wooden bench and lean my head back against the railing. A family of spider monkeys swings through the tops of the tall trees above me, a canopy of endless, tangled green.

  Izzy sits down next to me. “I know you,” she says. “The old you. Tess Rockwood: fun and loyal and up for anything. Tess Rockwood: smart, way smarter than me.” She draws in a deep breath, gaze dropping to t
he wooden walkway under our feet. “I’ve been thinking a lot about you since you left.” Her eyes find mine again. “Maybe I stopped you from doing stuff you wanted to do?”

  “What stuff?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, overwhelmed. “I don’t know, all that science stuff. You were always so into it. Maybe I was . . . mean about it, sometimes?”

  I’m stunned. Izzy doesn’t apologize, and more importantly, I’d always thought she had little to no self-awareness.

  “Maybe,” I say hesitantly.

  She takes both my hands with hers. “I won’t be like that anymore. I’ll be . . . whatever, supportive. Just forget the Badlands, Tess. Please. I missed you so much.”

  I always thought Izzy was the most rebellious person I’d ever met. But now I see that we weren’t rebels at all. I pull my hands gently out of hers. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t.”

  When I get up to leave, Izzy doesn’t try to stop me.

  chapter 5

  When I wave my new ID over the scanner next to the front door, it swings open with a chime. Abel either forgot to take me off his home access list or recently added me back on. I’m betting it’s the former. The smell of rich and pungent cooking greets me as I wander down the hallway. “Hello? Uncle A?”

  Kimiko whizzes out from the kitchen. “Good evening, Tessendra.”

  “It’s Tess,” I tell the fembot curtly. “Only my family calls me Tessendra, and you ain’t—”

  But my words are cut off by the sight of the dining room table. It looks ready to host Gyan himself. Abel’s best silver cutlery spreads out from gleaming china plates. White linen napkins nestle inside red mechanical bolts that have been upcycled as hip napkin rings. Curls of butter sit in shallow glass dishes made from the bottoms of wine bottles. A large white candleholder carved with intricate floral detail holds no less than seven handmade candles. They flicker gently in the middle of the table, making everything feel positively regal.