“It’s here for them,” said Hot Sauce.

They looked up through the big crack at the blued sky respectfully.

Then Honesty said— “You’ll join up, right, Hot Sauce? You going to go over?”

But Hot Sauce didn’t answer, and then Kevin wanted to go to the bathroom, so they had to call out “Not me,” to see who had to escort Kevin to the bathroom. He was a big boy and easily old enough to go to the bathroom by himself, but Kevin had such a huge facility for freaking out and locking himself in places that you had to wait until he’d finished peeing to make sure you didn’t need to bust a door lock open with half a brick. By the time that had been agreed on (they concluded Ruby had said not me last) the question had been dropped, and there was Hot Sauce, very still and looking at the sky.

Nona whispered, “Join what, Hot Sauce?”

Hot Sauce didn’t answer her. When she did say anything, she asked a question instead, which was irritatingly like Pyrrha. “You like it here?”

“I love it here,” said Nona sincerely. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

“You’re sweet,” said Hot Sauce.

That settled it, Nona knew. If Hot Sauce thought Nona was sweet, she was going to be part of the group no matter what. From that day nobody bothered to question Nona’s presence no matter what she said or how old she was or how little facility she had for buying anyone drugs. She was one of them, which gave her enormous pleasure. She was born to the untold wealth of belonging to Camilla and Pyrrha and Palamedes, and now added the beauty of being friends with Hot Sauce and Hot Sauce’s friends, which gave her high status in the world, even considering Kevin. She loved Camilla and Pyrrha and Palamedes, but the thing about being with Hot Sauce and the others was that you could be completely and entirely alone.

Eventually, when it got dark enough, all their families would come looking for them—Cam always came horribly early—except for Hot Sauce, who had nobody to come looking for her, and Honesty, whom nobody ever remembered about. But even with this flaw in paradise, Nona could do nothing but hug her knees to her chest and feel fantastically, wonderfully lucky, luckier than anyone else who had ever had the pleasure of being born.

4

THE MORNING ROUTINE was that they would walk together until Pyrrha had to split off, and then Cam would drop Nona off at school and go off to do her own thing, clean the house or do crimes that Nona wasn’t allowed to partake in. Nona liked the walk, but the early morning was as cold as the afternoon was hot, so to keep warm she had to stamp her feet and put her hands in her pockets. They walked alongside all the other workers—the ones who didn’t get picked up in the morning in the worker vans, or didn’t have a job that merited a worker van, or didn’t have a job but lived in hope—and they all trudged slowly through the street in clusters, parting only when a truck ground through, the driver leaning on the horn if someone didn’t move out of the way quick enough.