Then every device in the house dinged again. Izabel looked this time. It was the News app—a statement about the precautions the town was taking to ensure everyone’s safety. Izabel tapped into the app and the main page was already filling with stories about how few people had been approved, all the statistics and the demographics of the approvals.

“Come out, pumpkin,” Kaito said.

It was one of the rare days that Izabel was glad the air was toxic. A day when, in the old world, there would have been riots. Or at least police in riot gear. Police, threatening people with their own violence—a kind that was ready to meet nonviolence, ready to meet panic.

“No!” Cami yelled. “I’m a moon child and I’m going to be taken back to the moon kingdom!”

Izabel looked away from the tablet and back at her family: Cami under the table and Kaito crouching down, trying to negotiate with her.

He said, “But that means you must have done something terrible in the moon kingdom and you were sent here as punishment. And you’ve never done something terrible.”

Cami spit on the floor. “I spit on the floor,” she said. “That’s terrible. I’ve done terrible stuff.”

Izabel and Kaito tried not to laugh.

“That’s gross, honey,” Izabel said.

“What about all those suitors that wanted to marry you, my beautiful moon daughter?” Kaito said.

“They were all fakes! They couldn’t even get me the branch with jewels on it!”

“That’s true,” Kaito said.

“They stole a branch and I heard them do it and I knew we were being followed!”

“That’s a different story,” Izabel said.

“Oh, yeah,” Cami said.

“In that story,” Izabel said, “the daughters keep leaving. They find a new kingdom. Maybe this is the part of your story where you find a new kingdom.”

“Maybe,” Cami said. “Can I have a tissue?”

Izabel gave her a tissue and watched Cami wipe her spit back and forth on the floor.

    Chapter Thirteen

In the car, Izabel pushed down her mask. Instead of selecting a destination, she pressed the icon to program a route. She traced her finger through the streets of the hypercontrived town, along the edge of the concrete slab they all lived on, as close as the car would get to it, then by the solar field to the west, the warehouses, the porting station, and then back, weaving through the streets of houses that radiated to the east, until she would arrive home again.

An alert came up on the screen. She would need to change the air filter herself on a route this far. Do you feel comfortable doing this on your own?

She checked that there was a new filter ready for her. Then she pressed Yes.