Fear

Astrid got down to business. “I came back because the dome is changing.”

“The stain?”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yeah, but we thought maybe it was because of what Sinder’s doing.”

Astrid’s eyebrows rose. “What is Sinder doing?”

“She’s developed a power. She can make things grow at an accelerated rate. She has a little garden right up against the barrier. We’re experimenting a little, eating just a little of the vegetables, seeing if there’s any kind of … you know, effect.”

“Very scientific of you,” Astrid said.

He shrugged. “Well, my scientist girlfriend was off in the woods. I had to do my best.”

Had she just reacted to the word “girlfriend”?

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…” He wasn’t sure what he hadn’t meant to do.

“It wasn’t the word ‘girlfriend,’” Astrid said. “It was the possessive. The ‘my.’ But I realized that was stupid of me. There’s no better way to say it. It’s just that I haven’t been thinking of myself as anyone’s anything.”

“No girl is an island.”

“Seriously? You’re misquoting John Donne? To me?”

“Hey, maybe I’ve spent the last four months reading poetry. You don’t know.”

Astrid laughed. He loved that laugh. Then she grew serious. “The stain is everywhere I looked, Sam. I traveled along the barrier. It’s everywhere, sometimes just a few inches visible, but I saw areas where it rose maybe twenty feet or so.”

“You think it’s growing?”

She shrugged. “I know it’s growing; I just don’t know how fast. I’d like to try to measure it.”

“What do you think it is?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly, side to side. “I don’t know.”

He felt as if a hand was squeezing his heart. The FAYZ punished happiness. He had made the mistake of being happy.

“Do you think…,” he began, but he couldn’t quite get the words out. He changed it to, “What if it keeps growing?”

“The barrier has always been a kind of optical illusion. Look straight at it in front of you and you see a blank, non-reflective gray surface. A nullity. Look higher up and you see an illusion of sky. Day sky, night sky—but never a plane. The moon waxes and wanes as it should. It’s an illusion but it’s also our only source of light.” She was thinking aloud. The way she sometimes did. The way he had missed.

“I don’t know, but this seems like some kind of breakdown. You know how sometimes a movie projector—like the one we had at school, remember?—will get dimmer and dimmer until pretty soon you’re squinting to see anything?”

“You’re talking about it going completely dark?” He was relieved that his voice did not betray him with a tremor.

Astrid started to reach to touch his leg and stopped herself. Then she twined her fingers together, giving them something else to do. She wasn’t meeting his gaze but looking slightly past him, first to his left, then to his right.

“It’s possible,” she said. “I guess, yes. I mean, that was my first thought. That it’s going dark.”

Sam took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to freak out; he was sure of that. But the only reason he was confident was that he, himself, had the power to create light. Pitiful little Sammy suns and blinding beams, not bright yellow suns or even moons. But he himself would have light. He wouldn’t have to be completely in the dark.

He couldn’t be in the dark. Not in the total dark.

He realized his palms were damp and he wiped them on his shorts. When he glanced up he knew Astrid had seen, and that she knew what he was feeling.

He tried out a wry grin. “Stupid, huh? All we’ve been through? And I’m still scared of the dark?”

“Everyone’s afraid of something,” Astrid said.

“Like I’m a little kid.”

“Like you’re a human being.”

Sam looked around at the lake, at the sun sparkling on the water. Some kids were laughing, little kids playing at the water’s edge.

“Complete darkness.” Sam said it to hear it, to see if he could accept it. “Nothing will grow. We won’t be able to fish. We’ll… We’ll wander in the dark until we die of hunger. Kids will figure that out. They’ll panic.”

“Maybe the stain will stop,” Astrid said.

But Sam wasn’t listening. “It’s the endgame.”

Sanjit and Virtue found Taylor that morning when they went outside for some exercise: Sanjit running back and forth, circling around a huffing and puffing Virtue, who was definitely not much of a runner.

“Come on, Choo, this is good for you.”

“I know,” Virtue said through gritted teeth. “But that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it.”

“Hey, we have a nice view of the beach and the—” Sanjit stopped because Virtue had disappeared behind a car. He doubled back and saw his brother bent over something, and then he saw the something he was bent over.

“What the… Oh, God, what happened to her?”

Sanjit knelt next to Virtue. Neither of them touched her. The girl with skin the color of a gold bar and both lower legs and one hand simply gone. Cut off.

Virtue held his breath and put his ear close to Taylor’s mouth. “I think she’s still alive.”