Until a low whistle echoes against the store fronts.

I freeze and push myself against the closest wall, already scanning the streets for escape routes.

“Hey, psst.”

Twilight has made way for dim nightfall, and I can’t figure out where the sound comes from.

Then someone moves from the shadows.

“What are you doing out?” A girl’s voice, soft. She sounds unthreatening, but I can’t be certain.

She steps into the light, and she’s my age, perhaps a little older. She has long black hair, light skin, worried eyes. She holds her hands wide in a gesture of goodwill. Her clothes are dirty but whole, and she wears a jangling bracelet around her wrist. I drink in her presence. It’s so strange to see someone outside of Hope that my brain latches on to every single detail. The mismatched shoes. The slight scars on her forearms. The hint of sadness in the lines of her face.

She keeps a careful distance. “Are you okay?”

I open my mouth. I try to dislodge my jaw and shape my tongue around the right words in an effort to answer, but like so many times before, the words exist in my brain, but I can’t speak them. I cannot will them into being.

She takes a step back. “Are you sick?”

I shake my head.

“Are you alone? Are you a survivor too?”

Nod.

“Do you need a place to spend the night?”

I hesitate. I don’t. I want to go home when I’ve got what I need, but does it look weird if I say no?

As if she read my mind, she says, “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Quite a few of us have no one—have no home to go back to, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. If you need shelter, the town hall is set up for us lost and lonely.” She points down the road, to the right. “It’s a bit chaotic, so I usually walk around until I’m tired, but they’re good people. They may even have some food rations left for you. They try to divide those as equally as possible.”

I try to not look confused.

“We’re all we have now, right?” The girl can’t suppress the sorrow in her voice, but I hardly notice it.

I hold my hand over my heart. “Thank you.”

Before she can say anything else, I step out of the light and into the shadows. She mutters something. I don’t listen. My heart hammers. I follow the route she pointed out, and my feet march to the beat of her most important words.

Food rations. Food rations. Food rations.

She might just mean they rationed food like we have, but if the town has actual rations… Could we get them too? It would mean the world. The winter. Our lives. Grace will hate me for disappearing on her, but this information would make up for that.

We wouldn’t have to steal from dead people.