The thought of losing my job urged me to move faster this morning. I finished running the coal through my hair and reached up to put it away. As I did, there was a dull twinge of pain in my left side. I lifted my t-shirt and examined the bruise. Although it was still a bit tender, it was healing nicely. I blamed my own stupidity for the injury. My supervisor had warned me plenty of times about being slow at my job, but I was just so sad about losing my mom. Thankfully, my supervisor knew that, so instead of firing me, she ordered a guard to give me some incentive to move faster. The cracked ribs didn’t hurt nearly as much as the humiliation I felt at being beaten in front of my coworkers. My job performance was now greatly improved.

For my father’s sake, I was grateful I hadn’t been fired. He had almost completely stopped eating, and his already skeletal frame grew thinner every day. I encouraged him to stay strong, but my attempts were halfhearted. Painting a bright future for him was difficult when all he had to look forward to was joining the Cull next spring.

Yesterday, he lost his job because he was too weak to get out of bed. That made me the only one earning credits. I thought watching my mother leave us the morning of her Cull was the hardest thing I would ever endure. But watching my father die of grief was every bit as painful, only slower and more drawn out.

I was supposed to marry Reyes Crowe in a month from now, but I told him last night that I couldn’t abandon my father. The law prevented a married couple from taking in their parents. It was just one more way the bourge identified those who had outlived their usefulness. I had assumed Reyes would be sympathetic to my dilemma, so his anger surprised me. It wasn’t as if I was calling off our union. I was only postponing it so I could support my father until the next Cull. Spring was only ten months away, which didn’t seem that long at all.

Peeking into the bedroom at my father, I saw he was still asleep. Since I didn’t have time to take him to the common room for breakfast anyway, I decided it was best to leave him alone. I would just have to make sure he made it to supper tonight.

Leaving our apartment, I joined the throng of people heading toward the stairs. Some people descended almost two miles down into the mines, and others, like me, climbed a mile up to the Dome. I worked in the kitchen on the main floor with my best friend, Summer Nazeem. Kitchen duty was a coveted job, and we were lucky to get such good positions. And if I didn’t get moving, I was going to be late. After my recent less-than-stellar performance, I didn’t need to add tardiness to the list.

I walked to where Summer and I always met to go to work together but was surprised not to find her there. I took a step backward, preparing to wait for her, and accidently tromped on someone’s foot.

“Get off!” the woman yelled, and pushed me into the stone wall.

“Sorry,” I mumbled and peered into the crowd.

Someone said, “Sunny, what are you doing?”

I turned in the direction of the voice and saw Bron.

“You’re going to be late,” she said.

Bron was one of the guards in our sector. All the guards in the Pit wore white uniforms so they stood out in the darkness. Their stark presence was a constant reminder that our every move was being watched. Some guards were meaner than others. Bron was one of the good ones. She and my mother had been pretty good friends. Well, as good friends as two people could be when one was a bourge from the Dome and the other an urchin from the Pit.

“Have you seen Summer?” I asked.

Bron shook her head. She shifted her rifle onto her other shoulder and placed a comforting hand on my back. “Most likely on her way to work, which is exactly what you should be doing.”

I saw the concern on her face. She was trying to speak with my mother’s voice, and it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it, but so much had changed over the past two months and Summer had been my only source of strength. I didn’t want to go to work without her. I didn’t want anything else in my life to change.

I moved further along, away from Bron, and flattened myself against the cold stone wall to let people pass. When I went to school, my history teacher taught me that life in the Pit hadn’t always been so crowded. Our ancestors only numbered around two hundred when they took up residence in the Pit, and almost three hundred years later our population was almost five thousand. In the past, we accommodated our growing numbers by constantly mining farther down into the earth. Now, at almost three miles deep, the mine could stand no more, or so the bourge engineers told us. We were on the verge of collapse. A few of the mines had already closed, resulting in miners getting fired. And the ones who continued to work in the mines were scared.

As people brushed past me in the crowded hall, I caught snippets of excited chatter about the upcoming royal wedding. In two days the president’s daughter, Leisel Holt, would marry Jack Kenner. The wedding was going to be televised, and rumour had it that a big table of food would be set up by each television in the common rooms. And from what I overheard, people were already making plans to stake out a good spot.

Maybe Summer and I would try to get a good spot too. If there really was going to be a feast, the food would go fast. I just hated the thought of having to sit through the wedding. All presidential events began with President Holt giving a speech, reminding us of all we had to be thankful for. He’d remind everyone in the Pit how generous the bourge were when they gave us shelter from the bombs, maybe even flash some pictures of our ancestors signing the treaty, and then give a quick rundown of how we have all thrived living in the safety of the Dome. But like most people living in the Pit, I couldn’t care less about the wedding or about giving thanks. I was only interested in the food.

“Sunny!” Summer called.

I turned to look for her. “Summer! I’m by the stairs!”

“I know.” Suddenly, she was right beside me. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you standing here. Why didn’t you go ahead without me?”

“We always go to work together. Where were you? We’ll be lucky if we’re not late.”

“Oh, we’re going to be late. We’ll be lucky if we don’t get caught.”

“We’ll get caught when we scan in.” I thought hard for a solution but only came up with a weak one. “Unless we take our alternate route.” We hadn’t used the old mine shaft in months, because the last time we did we got in trouble for showing up to work dirty. But it only cost us half a day’s credits, and we didn’t even get a beating.

Summer thought about it for a second and then nodded. She knew as well as I did that losing a few credits was better than losing our jobs. We ducked around the stairs and headed for the end of the hallway, which meant we were moving against traffic instead of with it. That slowed us down, but once we reached the shaft, it would be a lot faster. I mumbled apologies as I squeezed past people and endured their rude looks and even ruder comments.

“Have you come looking for me to break my heart some more?” Reyes whispered in my ear. From behind me, his arms slid around my waist, and I turned within the circle of his embrace to face him. Even though I was taller than most girls, I still needed to tilt my head back to meet his gaze.

“You two really do make a nice couple,” Summer said.

“She’s right.” Reyes said, ignoring my attempts to loosen his grip. He wound his finger around a lock of hair that had escaped my ponytail. “So when are you going to marry me, Sunset?”

“Can we talk about this some other time?” I hated it when he used my full name, and he knew it. He was saying it deliberately to provoke an argument.

“We talked about it last night. I was hoping you’d have changed your mind this morning. I told you I don’t want to wait ten more months.”