“Happy sent the Smiler poison through the rain,” Sam says, her voice quieter now, “and the rain was concentrated on the populated portions of the world. I had swum a mile out to sea. I was foraging one of the barges at the time, looking for electronics, or clothes, or anything valuable I could fix and sell. Happy didn’t send the rain that far out, and so me and the other Junk Children on the barges, we survived. Got a hell of a shock when we made it to shore, though, I’ll tell you that.”

“Hey, did you know Pod before all of this? He was a Junk Child too.”

“What, you think just because we both grew up in the homeless villages we had to have known each other?” she asks, a note of anger in her voice once again. “Well, we did, as it happens, but that’s just coincidence.” She laughs, quietly this time, at the expression on my face.

“Okay, okay,” I mutter, “your turn.”

She thinks for a second, tapping a finger against her chin affectedly. “What did they lock you up for?” she asks, and then leans forward, raising her eyebrows in an exaggerated questioning expression.

My smile turns into a sigh as my humor fades. As usual when anyone brings up the topic of my incarceration, the vivid image of the boy falling from the roof appears in striking clarity in my mind. I see my sister standing there, near the edge of the Black Road Vertical, the impossibly high tower block where we used to live, her face covered by a Halloween mask. I see the boy falling back, a look of incredulity in his eyes, a look of disbelief, of denial.

“I took the blame for something my sister did,” I reply.

“And what did your sister do?” Sam asks.

“That’s two questions,” I say, taking another drink.

“Fine. Your turn.”

“What’s the deal with the baby?” I ask, without hesitation.

“That’s perhaps the most incoherent question I’ve ever heard,” Sam says. “What do you mean ‘what’s the deal’?”

“I don’t know,” I say, the alcohol giving me more confidence than is good for me, “like, who’s the dad, and how long until it’s born, and is it a boy or a girl, and how come you’re not exhausted, carrying it around all the time?”

“That’s three … four questions,” Sam says, a sadness sweeping over her.

“You don’t have to answer,” I tell her, reaching for the bottle and finding that there’s only a quarter of the whiskey left.

“Pick one question,” she says. “Maybe I’ll answer.”

“Who’s the dad?” I ask.

She sighs. “A dead man.”

She reaches out a shaking hand and grabs the almost-empty bottle from the floor. She lifts the bottle to her lips and then changes her mind, puts the cork back in, and sets it down.