Cover

Dedication

For my son, Aaron, and my mother, Barbara,
whose generations I am torn between

Dear Cami,

We couldn’t breathe the air. To some people it seemed quick, sudden even. To some it seemed gradual. In hindsight, everyone said the signs were there. It was in the trees, the pollen. It happened in spring. And while spring doesn’t happen at the same time everywhere—we saw it happen one place first, and then another, and another—how could we have stopped it? What I’m trying to say is, some people, most people’s response to catastrophe, as it approaches, is muted. That was ten years ago: the Turning. It killed more than half of the world’s population. And the resulting world, the world we built from scratch, it’s not how I was taught a postapocalyptic world would be. It presents itself like a gift.

    Chapter One

Izabel moved through her morning routine. She poured Cami’s juice into a sippy cup. It was “spill-proof,” but that didn’t mean it didn’t leak. Izabel wedged it beside containers of snacks in Cami’s lunchbox. She zipped it up and put it in Cami’s backpack, which had flaps of fabric on the side to look like elephant ears. The trunk was embroidered on the front. Black plastic eyes had been sewn in until they were flush.

Then the shower turned off. The water stopped running through the pipes in the concrete slab beneath her. She knew Kaito was patting himself down with a towel, but she couldn’t hear that. Instead she heard the cars outside. One of her neighbors was playing music. Sometimes she felt as if she could hear every neighbor through their plastic walls.

Kaito would be stepping out of the bedroom soon. If she timed it right, the three of them would be in the kitchen together as they got ready for the day. Not that she didn’t want to be alone with Cami, only that she preferred not to be.

She broke off an oversized banana, cut it in half, and left it where Cami sat at the island. Then she poured soy milk into a bottle and took it with her into Cami’s room.

“Good morning, honey,” Izabel said.

Cami didn’t move.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up.” This time she put her hand on Cami’s leg.

Cami’s brow furrowed.

“I have your milk. Do you want your milk?”

Cami’s eyes popped open and then closed again, and then she rolled them open—with great effort it seemed—and the whites of her eyes were slightly pink.

“Good morning, mi amorcito.”

“Hi, Mommy.”

Izabel handed her the bottle of milk. She was four, but she insisted on bottles still. And Izabel couldn’t bring herself to care.

Cami sat up and drank, eyes closed again.