“Okay, we don’t have to talk about that right now. We’ll never talk about it if you don’t want to.” I set the bowl on the floor. “But do you know what you can eat?”

She shakes her head again. “Hungry.” The whisper is so quiet that I barely hear it. Her lips hardly open to talk, but I can still catch a glimpse of her razor teeth.

My insides churn. “Can you tell me what you’re hungry for?” A part of me desperately wants to know the answer. But the rest of me dreads what she might say.

She hesitates before she shakes her head “no” again.

My hand comes up without me thinking about it. I’m about to stroke her hair like I’ve always done. She looks up at me, and her hair falls away from her stitches.

Crude, uneven stitches crisscross her face. The stitches that run between her lips and ears give her a forced grin that cuts her face. Red, black, and bruised, they scream for attention. They run down her neck and into her dress. I wish there wasn’t one cutting across her neck like they’d sewn her head onto her body.

My hand hesitates over her head, almost touching her hair but not quite.

Then I drop it back to my side.

I turn away from Paige.

A pile of clothes sits on my mother’s cot. I dig through for jeans and a jersey. Mom didn’t bother ripping off the tags, but she has already sewn a yellow starburst on the bottom of the pant leg for protection from the boogeyman. I don’t care so long as it’s dry and doesn’t smell too badly of rotten eggs.

I change out of my wet clothes. “I’m going to see if I can find something else for you to eat. I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Paige nods, looking at the floor again.

I leave, wishing I had a dry jacket to cover my sword. I consider wearing the wet one but decide against it.

The school sits on a prime corner with a grove owned by Stanford University across one street and a high-end strip mall across another. I wander over to the shops.

My dad always said there was a lot of money in this area and even the strip malls show it. Back in the day, in the World Before, you could see Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, eating breakfast here while he was still a living resident of Silicon Valley. Or catch Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, grabbing a bite with his friends.

They all looked like middle managers to me but my dad was into all that. Technocrats, he called them. I’m pretty sure I saw Zuckerberg digging the latrine ditch beside Raffe at the camp a few days ago. I guess a billion dollars doesn’t buy much respect in the World After.