The screen remained black.

“What’s supposed to happen?” Rainy asked.

Pax picked up the instruction sheet. “It’s supposed to boot from the USB drive. There’s some kind of hacker operating system that’s supposed to load and go looking through RAM for the password.”

“It’s not even blinking,” Rainy said.

“I can see that.”

How much time had passed, thirty seconds? Maybe the USB port was dead. He looked at the side of the laptop and saw there was another port next to the first.

Another ten seconds passed. Fifteen. He yanked out the thumb drive and unplugged the laptop. Then he put the drive into the second port and plugged it in again.

“Should you have done that?” Rainy said.

“I have no idea.”

The screen flashed, and the Macintosh loading screen appeared. In a few seconds the log-in dialog box appeared.

“Shit.”

“It’s okay, Paxton,” Rainy said, and patted his hand. Her fingers were cold.

“It was probably working in the first port! I should have tested this first. All right, we’re going to try this again.” He picked up the instruction sheet and started reading through the steps yet again.

“Tommy says you’re a junkie,” Rainy said.

He jerked his head up. “What?” He could feel the heat in his cheeks. “That’s crazy, hon. Do you even know what a junkie is?”

“We know about the vintage. We’ve taken care of you while you were on it.”

“I don’t think you understand-”

“We’re worried about you, Paxton. Both of us are. We want you to stop hurting yourself.”

He put down the paper. “I’m working on it,” he said. He smiled. “The problem is, I’m a better person when I take vintage than when I don’t.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true, hon. I just, uh, feel more.” He picked up the screwdriver, ran his thumb along the metal. “It’s hard to explain, but I get this feeling of, I guess, connection.” He laughed. “Honestly, sometimes I lose track of where I stop and other people begin. Even people I have trouble relating to, on the vintage I can talk to them.” Even dead people, he thought. His conversation with his mother had been better than any he’d had with her while she was living. “I can just… love them.”

Rainy took the screwdriver out of his hand and put it on the table. “Maybe you should try doing it without the vintage.”

She regarded him with that preternatural blank calm. After a moment he said, “You know, you’re pretty clever for a twelve-year-old.”

“You don’t know many twelve-year-olds.”

“Seriously, you’re the smartest kid I’ve ever met. You remind me so much of your mom.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Tommy says that all the time.”

“Okay…” he said. Who wouldn’t want to be Jo Lynn Whitehall? Pax certainly did. Maybe they didn’t like it because of the way Tommy said it. “You know,” Pax said, “You haven’t told me yet why you and Sandra ran away from him.”

She wouldn’t look at him. She went to the sink, picked up a cloth towel.

“Rainy, did he hurt you? Or Sandra?”

“Tommy wouldn’t hurt us,” she said. “Not like that.” She rubbed the cloth along the edge of the counter. “He wants to take us away. Out of Switchcreek.”

“Ah,” Pax said.

She turned to face him. “You knew?”

“Tommy came looking for you tonight,” Pax said. “He said some things.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“It’s an empty threat, Rainy. Tommy can’t leave Switchcreek-soldiers are guarding all the roads.”

“No, there’s a plan,” she said. “A plan to sneak us out. A couple of the white-scarf girls told us. People in the Co-op are working on it.”

“What? Why? Why would they let him take you?”

Rainy looked away. “We told you-we’re special.”

“Yeah, the natural-born thing. But there are other natural-borns, aren’t there? Why you two?”

She shrugged. “Because we’re the first, I guess.”

“Rainy, this doesn’t make any sense. If you’re that special, they wouldn’t just let Tommy run off with you, they’d protect you.”

“They think that’s what they’re doing.”

“This is bullshit,” Pax said. He got up from the table. “When was this supposed to happen?”

“In the morning.”

“What?”

“That’s why we left tonight. We can’t trust Tommy, or the reverend.”

“Wait a minute. How are they going to get you out? There are checkpoints, helicopters-”

“I don’t know, they didn’t tell us that!”

Jesus, he thought. Tommy was going to get them killed like Deke and Donna.

“All right, listen,” Pax said. “I’ll go to the Co-op, I’ll talk to the reverend-”

“No! You can’t talk to her!”

“I’ll tell her that if Tommy tries to kidnap you that I’ll tell the Guard.”

“But she’s a part of this! You can’t trust her, Paxton.”

“I’m not talking about trusting her-I’ll be informing her. She won’t be able to do anything to you, and Tommy won’t be able to do anything to you. I promise.”

She regarded him warily-or what he took for wariness.

“I promise,” he said again.

“Look, there’s nothing we can do till morning. We’ll worry about all that stuff tomorrow. Meanwhile…” He picked up the remaining can of compressed air and put it in front of her. “Why don’t we take another crack at this?”

Rainy fell asleep at the table with her head resting on her forearm. They’d made no progress on getting past the log-in screen. Weygand’s hacker scheme had given them nothing but cold hands. They’d spent an hour trying every password they could think of-“sandra,” “rainy,” “lorraine,” “switchcreek,” “bowie,” “changes,” then birthdays and favorite places-and then when Rainy put her head down he went on trying the names of flowers and the names of authors on her bookshelf. Uppercase, lowercase, title case. Nothing worked, but at least the laptop refrained from locking him out.

The tube of vintage, melted now, seemed to burn in his pocket.

“Let’s go, Rainy.” She startled when he touched her arm. He helped her to her feet, then ushered her through the dark to her bedroom. He circled his arms around her thighs and hoisted her to the top bunk.

“Paxton,” she said from the dark.

“Yeah, hon?”

She was silent for a long time.

“Are you crying, Rainy?”

She sighed. “No. I have trouble crying.”

“Me too.”

“I sure want to, though.”

Another long moment passed, and then she said, “My mom did some bad things.”

Rainy couldn’t use the A-word more than once, it seemed.

“I know it’s hard to understand,” Pax said. “Some things aren’t black and white. Your mom wasn’t against children-she wasn’t against you. She just believed that a woman has a right to choose when-”

“She killed her baby, Paxton. My little sister.”

“Oh, hon,” he said sadly. Rainy was the stronger of the two sisters, but this had obviously been eating at her, too. “Your mom wasn’t a bad person. It’s just that some people believe that a fetus isn’t…” Isn’t what? He wasn’t prepared to have this conversation. “Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand.”

“She talked about giving all the girls pills. She said they ought to put it in the water.”

“She didn’t mean that.”

“Mom didn’t say anything she didn’t mean. Everyone knew that.”

“Okay, you may be right on that one.” He put a hand through the rails and squeezed her calf. “But those girls at the Co-op, they’re getting pregnant without having a choice. Your mom wanted to protect them.”

“No, she wanted her choice. The white-scarf girls want their babies, Paxton.”

“But they’re just girls. They’re not old enough to make that decision. And when they do get pregnant, of course they want to keep the babies. It’s hormones, it’s-”

“It’s not just hormones!”

“Okay, I shouldn’t have said that. But someday you’ll understand that even good people can do things that seem wrong. Bad things. Sometimes they have to.”