Then she recognizes the voice as Tom’s.

Tom is screaming at the driver to leave.

“Go! GO! GO!”

Malorie rushes to the sound of him, to grab him, to get him away from the car. But the engine is revving so hard that dust rises like a curtain, and Malorie coughs.

The engine revs again, and Malorie holds a hand over her mouth and reaches for Tom with the other. She finds his shoulder.

Or does she?

Is this the shoulder of the driver?

A hand falls upon hers.

“GO!” Tom yells. And Malorie pulls back. Despite the chaos, despite the fear, it strikes her, suddenly, that Tom is a man now.

Another blow to the car. Then Malorie has him by the waist. She’s pulling him back. Olympia says something, words lost in the din of the engine.

The car moves, and Malorie bumps hard against Tom as he’s flung back into her.

“Go, you stupid assholes!” Tom yells. “Just go!”

Tears in his voice. Malorie doesn’t understand. His emotions sound wider, more powerful, than they ever did in the cabin.

“Tom,” she says. “Calm down!”

But Tom is far from that. And the car is driving away.

“Why, Mom? Why? Weren’t you gonna tell them to go? Weren’t you gonna tell them to leave? That’s what you do!”

Malorie wasn’t expecting this. He’s not mad at the car, he’s mad at her. As if she were somehow the danger and not the stranger idling without speaking.

“Tom, we’ve survived this long—”

“That’s all we do!”

“Tom—”

“That’s all we do is survive!”

This steals her breath. She doesn’t know what to say.

The car grows quiet in the distance, and Malorie knows she’ll never know what the driver had in mind.

In the old world, he or she could’ve given them a ride to the train.

“Come on,” Olympia says. The mediator.

The teens return to the road, their shoes crunching the gravel on the shoulder. But Malorie can’t stop thinking of what Tom just said.

All we do is survive!

Not a boast. A gripe.

Malorie walks. Again the faces of her parents return to her mind’s eye. Their jokes. Their advice. The way they parented, too.

She hopes they’ve lived by the same rules she has.

“Ready, Mom?” Olympia says. Still mediating. Still attempting to sidestep the fact that Tom just blew up at Malorie.

Malorie doesn’t respond. She only walks, knowing the teens can hear her, can pinpoint her exact location with their ears.

And as she walks, she hopes her parents have done exactly what Tom has suddenly accused her of.

She hopes they live by the fold.

She hopes all they do is survive.

TEN