“You’re not coming,” he says over the clanking of his wrenches and screwdrivers.

I kick at a loose pebble. It’s fruitless, but something inside me has changed since the encounter with the Sheriff. I walk over and put my hands on my hips. “You’re going to have to let me someday. What if you’re not around to trade?”

He answers without looking, his eyes examining two wrenches in his calloused fingers. “You better pray Ethan’s old enough.” He drops one wrench back in the tool chest with a clang. He stands to get back under the Jeep. I take a step to block his path. His mouth tightens into a hard line.

“That’s years down the road. I gotta learn to wheel and deal. I’ll wear goggles and your leather jacket. No one’ll know.”

My stepfather sticks a hand in the pouch of his overalls and squints at me. He’s trying to see me like the townies would. My black hair is cropped short like my brother’s. Each morning I bind my breast with bandages until I can barely breathe. I wear boy’s baggy clothing. Still it’s obvious if someone gets a close look I’m not a boy. My Auntie laments what she calls my dangerous beauty. I’m too girly with curvy hips, slender cheekbones, full lips. The best I can do is pass for a bender, the feminized boys that are born instead of girls after we poisoned the planet. Benders can’t have babies, so they’re lower-class citizens. Passing for a bender does not help my chances in town much.

Arn puts a hand on my shoulder and moves me aside. Then he lies down next to the Jeep. “Nope. Not going.”

“But, Arn, I—”

“Enough, Riley!” he shouts, gripping the side of the truck. His head and torso disappear beneath our jalopy. I’ve had enough fights with Arn to know this conversation is over.

I slump back to the house, a pain welling beneath my breastbone. I walk in the house, but instantly regret it. I want to be alone. The barn. It’s my smelly sanctuary. Then I hear Ethan coughing from our bedroom.

Whenever the dust gets bad, Ethan coughs until his hankies are bloody. And the dust is almost always bad. I picture his thin frame hunched over, his body quaking with cough. Sucking on the caramel hidden in my nightstand might help him. I take a step to our shared bedroom.

“Riley Anne,” Auntie bellows. A strange bashing sound echoes from our kitchen. “Your help … oomph … is requested. Hold still, you vermin!”

I want to ignore Auntie, but what is all that banging and scraping? I run in the kitchen.

What I find would be comic if it weren’t so dangerous. Auntie Bell stands on a kitchen chair. In the cone of morning light from the open window, her loose cotton dress exposes far too much of her body. Leathery skin droops from her arms and breasts. Her face is lined like a dried lakebed. Her long, gray hair flies wildly behind her. She peers into the dark recesses of a cabinet, a broom in one hand and a butcher knife in the other.