“But wait a second,” says Jack, the Lev-ish kid. “Why would he let himself be taken without turning the rest of you in too? I mean, you guys are a big catch—he could probably cut himself a deal or something.”

Grace grins way too broadly, and Connor knows what she’s about to say. Now he wishes she’d never started this story.

“Because,” says Grace, “Camus Comprix is in love with Risa!”

She lets her words hang in the air. Connor reflexively glances to Risa, but she won’t meet his eye.

“But I don’t get it,” says another kid. “That whole media thing about them being a couple was fake, I thought.”

Grace’s grin doesn’t slip an inch. “Not to Cam . . .”

It’s Risa who finally puts an end to it. “Grace, enough. Okay?”

Grace deflates a bit, realizing that her moment in the spotlight is over. “Anyway,” she says, without any of her previous dramatic flair, “that’s what happened. Cam got caught, and we didn’t.”

“Wow,” says Jack, “who’d have thought the rewind would be some sort of hero?”

“Hero?”

They all turn to see Beau, who was elsewhere in the basement, pretending not to listen, but apparently he had. “How many dozens of kids like us did it take to make one of him? There’s nothing ‘heroic’ about him.”

And Connor can’t help but say, “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Beau gives Connor a nod, finally finding himself and the Akron AWOL on common ground.

THE FOLLOWING IS A PAID POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

DON’T BE FOOLED BY MEASURE F!

Supporters of the so-called Prevention Initiative claim that it’s all about the protection of at-risk children—but read the fine print! Measure F allows the Juvenile Authority to identify and track incorrigible children for the purpose of unwinding them as soon as they turn thirteen—which will be legal once the Parental Override bill becomes law.

Measure G, on the other hand, funds the Juvenile Authority by giving cash incentives for the capture of AWOLs—who have already proven themselves to be menaces to society.

No on F! Yes on G! Make the sensible choice!

Paid for by the Alliance for an AWOL-Free Nation

Later that evening, as everyone settles in for the night, Connor lays his bedroll next to Risa’s in the same semiprivate nook where Risa slept their first time here. It’s away from the other kids, and Connor shifts a tall bookcase to make it even more private. Risa watches him create their secluded nest, and doesn’t bat an eye. Connor takes a deep breath of anticipation. This could well be the night where the stars of their relationship finally align. He’s certainly imagined it long enough. He wonders if she has too. Connor tentatively lies down beside her. “Just like old times,” he says.

“Yes, but the last time we were here, we were only pretending to be a couple to keep Roland’s hands off of me.”

He reaches out then, gently caressing her cheek with Roland’s fingers. “And yet his hand is still all over you.”

“Not all over,” she says playfully. Then she rolls away, but grabs the offending arm as she does, wrapping it around herself like a blanket, and pulling them into a tight spoon position, his chest to her back. The moment is electric, and they both know that anything is possible between them now. There’s nothing to hold them back. Except this:

“I can’t stop thinking about Cam,” Risa says. “The way he sacrificed himself for us.”

Connor’s grafted arm pulls her tighter. He wishes it could be his own arm, but he’s facing the wrong way for that. “Cam is the last thing on my mind.”

“But after what he did for us, I feel like we need to . . . honor him somehow.”

“I am,” Connor says, smirking, although she can’t see. “In fact, I’m saluting him right now—can’t you tell?”

“Ha-ha.”

In the silence, he can feel her heartbeat in his arm as he holds her. Her heartbeat in his chest pressed to her back. It’s almost too much to bear. He wants to curse Cam for still being here between them, no matter how close they press. “So what do we owe him? Our eternal restraint?”

“No,” Risa says, “Just . . . our hesitation.”

Connor says nothing for a while. There are so many layers to his disappointment, but yet within that strata might there not be a vein of relief as well? He lets himself settle into the reality of what won’t be happening tonight, setting his hope and desire at a distance, close enough that he’s still aware of it, but far enough away so that it’s not so tormenting.

“Okay,” he tells her. “This night is for Cam. Let’s hesitate our brains out.”

She snickers gently, and they settle quietly into the night. Body heat and heartbeats until dawn.

•  •  •

Connor doesn’t remember his dreams, only an amnesic sense that he had them, and that they were powerful. No nightmares—he’s sure of that. They were dreams of fulfillment and empowerment, for that’s how he feels as the faint, diffused light of morning touches upon the tiny basement window behind them.

To fall asleep, and to wake up with your arm around the only girl you’ve ever truly loved . . .

To know that the two of you have in your possession a device as earthshaking as a warhead . . .

To feel invincible, if only for a fleeting moment . . .

These things are enough to stop the world in its tracks and start it spinning in a new direction. At least that’s how it feels to Connor. Until now he had been clinging to a threadbare hope, but now that hope feels full to bursting.

There’s never been a moment in Connor’s life that he could call perfect, but this moment, with his arm numb from being around Risa all night, and his sense of smell overwhelmed by the fragrance of her hair—this moment is the closest to perfection he’s ever known. Even the shark seems to be smiling.

Such moments, however, never last for long.

Soon all the other kids are waking up. Beau moves the bookcase that gave them some level of privacy, claiming it was blocking the path to the bathroom, and the day begins. The kids down here have become creatures of routine, going about their business, or lack thereof, as if nothing has changed. Yet it has. They just don’t know it. The world has just been turned upside down—or more accurately, it’s been turned right side up after having been capsized for so long.

In a few minutes there’s the bang of the trapdoor opening as Sonia arrives with breakfast, calling down for “some goddam help up here.”

“Why don’t you go help her,” Risa suggests gently, for she knows that nothing short of a call to duty will peel Connor away from her.

Upstairs, Sonia has groceries enough to feed an army. Between Beau, Connor, and Grace, who is aggressively helpful today, the supplies are brought down in two trips, and Connor finds himself with nothing to carry the third time he comes up the stairs.

Today the trunk has been pushed off the trapdoor at a haphazard angle, impinging on a small plastic trash can that got in its way.

That trunk has been the elephant in the room since Connor arrived, although he hasn’t dared to speak of its contents. Connor turns to see that Sonia has left to park her Suburban somewhere legal.

He’s alone with the trunk.

Unable to resist its gravity, he kneels before it. It’s a heavy, old thing. Antique to be sure. Old travel stickers adorn it, practically shellacked to the surface. Connor can’t tell whether the old steamer trunk has actually been to those places, or if the stickers are merely decorations applied once it stopped travelling and became a piece of furniture.

He doesn’t dare open it, but he knows what’s inside.

Letters.

Hundreds of them.

Each one was written by an AWOL who’d been through Sonia’s basement. Most wrote to their parents. They are missives of sorrow and disillusionment. Anger and the screaming question of “why?” Why did you? How could you? When did things go so wrong? Even the state wards, unloved but tolerated by the institution that raised them, found something to say to someone.