It was the end of middle shift, so I figured I’d find Mother at the cart, selling. Eventually I rounded a corner and saw her ahead: a lean, proud woman in an old jumpsuit. Worn, but laundered. Shoulder-length hair, with an air of fatigue about her as she served a wrap to a worker.

I froze on the walkway, uncertain how to approach. I realized right then that I hadn’t visited enough. I missed my mother. Though I’d never really been homesick—my scavenging trips as a kid had prepared me for long times away—I still longed to hear her comforting, if stern, voice.

As I hesitated, Mother turned and saw me—and she immediately dashed over. She seized me in a powerful embrace before I could say anything.

I’d watched other kids grow taller than their parents, but I was much shorter than her—and when enfolded in her arms, for a moment I felt like a child again. Safe, snug. It was easy to plan future conquests when you could retreat to those arms.

I let myself be that girl again. Let myself pretend that no danger could reach me.

Mother finally pulled back and looked me over. She took a lock of my hair between her fingers and raised an eyebrow—it had gotten long, and now tumbled past my shoulders. The DDF haircutters had been forbidden me for the first part of my stay, and after that I’d just gotten used to it long.

I shrugged.

“Come,” Mother said. “That cart won’t sell itself.”

It was an invitation to a simpler time—and at that moment, it was what I needed. I helped my ever-practical mother work her way through her line of customers, men and women who looked baffled to be served by a pilot cadet.

Odd, how my mother didn’t call out, like other street vendors would. Yet there was almost always someone at the cart buying a wrap. During a lull, she mixed some more mustard, then glanced at me. “Will you go back to getting us rats?”

Go back? I hesitated, only now realizing that she didn’t know I was on leave. She… she thought I’d been kicked out.

“I still have the jumpsuit,” I said, gesturing—but her blank stare confirmed she didn’t know what that meant. “Mom, I’m still in the DDF. I was given leave today.”

Her lips immediately turned down.

“I’m doing well!” I snapped. “I’m one of only three pilots left in my flight. I’m going to graduate in two weeks.” I knew she didn’t like the DDF, but couldn’t she just be proud of me?

My mother continued mixing the mustard.

I sat down on the low wall running along the walkway. “When I’m a full pilot, you’ll be taken care of. You won’t have to sit up late at night rewrapping food and then spend long hours pushing a cart. You’ll have a big apartment. You’ll be rich.”

“You think I want any of that?” Mother said. “I chose this life, Spensa. They offered me a big apartment, a cushy job. All I had to do was go along with their narrative—say I knew he was a coward the whole time. I refused.”