“So… um… hmm… the, uh, third set of grandparents… They traditionally serve the community, as they see it. On Earth, they would be the breadwinners, the ones who leave the home and bring back sustenance. They are farmers, for the most part. They cultivate a plant-like growth that they milk for its sap.…”

And life went on.

Jamie tried to talk me out of sleeping in the supply corridor, but his attempt was halfhearted. There just wasn’t another place for me. Stubborn as usual, he insisted on sharing my quarters. I imagined Jared didn’t like that, but as I didn’t see him that night or the next day, I couldn’t verify my theory.

It was awkward again, going about my usual chores, with the six raiders home—just like when Jeb had first forced me to join the community. Hostile stares, angry silences. It was harder for them than it was for me, though—I was used to it. They, on the other hand, were entirely unaccustomed to the way everyone else treated me. When I was helping with the corn harvest, for example, and Lily thanked me for a fresh basket with a smile, Andy’s eyes bulged in their sockets at the exchange. Or when I was waiting for the bathing pool with Trudy and Heidi, and Heidi began playing with my hair. It was growing, always swinging in my eyes these days, and I was planning to shear it off again. Heidi was trying to find a style for me, flipping the strands this way and that. Brandt and Aaron—Aaron was the oldest man who’d gone on the long raid, someone I couldn’t remember having seen before at all—came out and found us there, Trudy laughing at some silly atrocity Heidi was attempting to create atop my head, and both men turned a little green and stalked silently past us.

Of course, little things like that were nothing. Kyle roamed the caves now, and though he was obviously under orders to leave me in peace, his expression made it clear that this restriction was repugnant to him. I was always with others when I crossed his path, and I wondered if that was the only reason he did nothing more than glower at me and unconsciously curl his thick fingers into claws. This brought back all the panic from my first weeks here, and I might have succumbed to it—begun hiding again, avoiding the common areas—but something more important than Kyle’s murderous glares came to my attention that second night.