Fear: A Gone Novel

and demanding explanations that most kids—Astrid included—could not somehow reduce to a few words scratched on a piece of plaster, or gouged with a nail on a piece of wood.
    Where is Petey?
    Astrid’s mother held that sign. She’d written it with a Magic Marker on the side of a canvas bag, because now the rain was too intense to allow for paper.
    Astrid stared at it for a long time. And in the end she could manage no answer better than a shrug and a shake of her head.
    I don’t know where Petey is.
    I don’t even know what Petey is.
    Sam was beside her, not touching her, not with so many eyes watching. She wanted to lean against him. She wanted to close her eyes and, when she opened them again, be with him up at the lake.
    Desperate months had gone by when all Astrid had wanted was to be out of this place and back in her old life as her parents’ loving daughter. Now she could barely stand to look at them. Now she sought desperately for an excuse to leave. They were strangers. And she knew, as Sam had always known, that they would in the end be accusers.
    They were a stab in her heart when she just could not take any more, when she just could not start to feel any more. Too much. She couldn’t switch suddenly from one despair to a different despair.
    Dekka stood behind Sam with her arms crossed, almost as if she were hiding. Quinn and Lana stood a little apart, just marveling at the sight of the outside world, but having as yet no faces to connect with.
    “We’re monkeys in a zoo,” Sam said.
    “No,” Astrid said. “People like monkeys. Look at the way they look at us. Imagine what they’re seeing.”
    “I’ve been picturing it since the beginning.”
    Astrid nodded. “Yeah.”
    “You want to know what they see? What my mother sees? A boy who fired light from his hands and tried to incinerate a baby,” Sam said harshly. “They saw me burn a child. No explanation will ever change that.”
    “We look like savages. Filthy and starved, dressed like street people,” Astrid said. “Weapons everywhere. A girl lying dead with a rock crushing her brains.” She looked at her mother and oh, there was no avoiding her mother’s look of … of what? Not joy. Not relief.
    Horror.
    Distance.
    Both sides, parents and children, now saw the huge gulf that had opened up between them. Astrid’s father seemed small. Her mother looked old. They both were like ancient photographs of themselves, not like real people. Not as real as her memories of them.
    Astrid felt as if their eyes were looking through her, searching for a memory of their daughter. Like they didn’t want to see her, but some girl she had long since ceased to be.
    Brianna came zooming up, a welcome distraction that caused silent faces on the other side to form round circles with their mouths: Ooh. Ahh. And hands to point and cameras to swivel. Brianna gave a little salute and a wave.
    “She’s ready for her close-up,” Dekka said dryly.
    “Is it bright in here, or is it just me?” Brianna said. Then she drew her machete, whirled it at ten times human speed, stopped, sheathed it again, and executed a little bow to the baffled and appalled onlookers. “Yes. Yes: I will play myself in the movie. The Breeze is way beyond special effects.”
    Astrid breathed for what felt like the first time in a long while. She was thankful Brianna had broken at least some of the tension.
    “By the way, back to business: they’re headed into the desert,” Brianna announced to Sam. “A happy little crew, Mom and daughter and Uncle Whip Hand. I got a little too close and that baby nearly buried me under about a ton of rock. That is one bad baby.”
    Brianna nodded, satisfied. “That can be my tagline. ‘That is one bad baby.’”
    “No, no,” Dekka said. “Just: no.”
    Astrid smiled, and her mother thought it was meant for her and smiled back.
    “I saw someone recording it,” Sam said. “Me burning that … that creature. You know what they’ll see? You know what people out there will think?”
    Astrid knew he was jumping out of his skin. She could see—anyone could see—the look of horror on Connie Temple’s face every time she looked at her son.
    “Son,” singular, for Caine had taken one long look at his mother, turned, and walked away, back to town.
    “You’ve been afraid of this for a long time, Sam,” Astrid said in a low voice. “You’ve been afraid of being judged.”
    Sam nodded. He looked down at the ground, then at Astrid. She