Peeto nodded soberly.

Shame nudged at me. Time for a peace offering. “Anything you could use?”

“Me?” His narrow face got tighter.

“Not trying to catch you out. You were his tier-mate, too.”

“But not, y’know, his friend. I mean, Rube was easier on me than most, but . . .”

To say true, Rubio had been as ready to dump on Peeto as the rest of us, but I’d always sensed a hidden sympathy for a fellow social misfit, even if he rarely acted on it.

“Go ahead.” My hand hovered over the suitcase lid. “Last call.”

Peeto squatted, fumbled among the thin layers of clothing, and snatched out a clean black T-shirt. Rubio’s signature color. It would hang on Peeto like a shroud, but it was soft and entirely without stains or holes.

“I’m sure he’d approve.” I snapped the case shut. “Can you take it down? Got my own to do, then I have to see about Jenn.”

Peeto’s eyes widened. A cache of oily gossip waited behind that look.

I held up my hand. “Don’t say it. Just don’t. I’ll get her out of there.”

I could maybe sympathize with Peter Sweeney, even feel sorry for him. But I was never going to be his friend.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Packing out my bunk was quicker than Rubio’s, even with only me doing it. I knew I wasn’t coming back, so I stole a moment to say goodbye. To my cracked window. My peeling plaster wall. My looming cornice, home to my two flood-frazzled books. This cramped but private space that let me feel safe enough to recover, to find myself again. What comforts would I find in a big, clanking stadium? Still, it was clearly time to move on.

Inside the desperate hurry-up swirling through the den, I sensed an undertone of relief at the change of routine, even anticipation of a new adventure. I’d embraced it, not only for the den’s sake but in Rubio’s memory. But it didn’t come easy.

I drew Hannah’s soft leather backpack from under my mattress, stowed away for just such a day. Everything I owned would fit inside. Packing brought a sharp memory of leaving stuff behind to move onto Haiku. Even so, I’d taken a locker full of clothing, clean sheets and towels, books, cosmetics, a phone. A dog. Perched on my bunk, I wrapped my toothbrush in my threadbare washrag and slid my mostly used toothpaste tube in beside it. Such small nonperishables were still to be found in abandoned apartments or dry-ground drug marts. Like, who’d bother to loot toothpaste? Or soap? Well, maybe. For resale at the Souk. But given recent events, how long till even those items became scarce luxuries?

We’d have to learn to make our own. Our own everything.