Fear: A Gone Novel

had finally found the way to beat Sam Temple. Without light he would not survive. When the final night came with no prospect of dawn, he would be done.
    She kissed him. He did not kiss her back, just gazed at the growing stain.
    Once upon a time, long, long ago, Sinder had been very fond of black. She had painted her fingernails black. Dyed her brown hair jet-black. Donned clothing that was either black or some secondary color chosen to accentuate the black.
    Now her color was green. She loved green. Carrots were orange and tomatoes were red, but each lived within green. The green turned light into food.
    “How cool is photosynthesis?” Sinder called to Jezzie, who was a half dozen rows away, down on her knees, searching with deadly focus for weeds, bugs, or disease that might endanger her beloved plants. An overprotective mother had nothing on Jezzie. The girl hated weeds with a burning passion.
    Jezzie didn’t answer—she frequently didn’t when Sinder turned loquacious. “I mean, I remember learning about it in school, but, man, who cared? Right? Photo-wuh? But I mean, it turns light into food. Light becomes energy becomes food and becomes energy again when we eat it. It’s like… You know…”
    “It’s a miracle,” Orc rumbled.
    “No,” Jezzie said, “it would be a miracle if it didn’t also work for weeds. Then it would be a miracle.” She’d found a root of something she didn’t like and was pulling on it, grunting with the effort.
    “I could pull that for you,” Orc said.
    “No, no, no!” both girls cried. “But thanks, Orc.”
    Orc did not wear shoes, but if he had they’d probably have been size twenty. Extra, extra, extra wide. When he stepped into the garden things had a tendency to be crushed.
    Sinder liked to get down low and look at her plants from close up. From one side she would see the miraculous leaves outlined against the backdrop of the lake and the marina area. From the other side she would see them almost like mounted specimens against the pearly gray blankness of the barrier.
    Now she was looking at the feathery structure of a carrot top against the blank black of the stain. It had the odd effect of making the leaf seem like a work of abstract art.
    She looked up from the plant and saw the stain suddenly shoot upward. What had been a ragged, undulating wave of black extending only a dozen or so feet above her head blossomed like one of her charges to become a terrible black bloom thirty, fifty, a hundred feet high before it slowed and stopped.
    She hoped Jezzie hadn’t seen it. But when her friend stood up there were tears running down her cheeks.
    “I feel bad inside,” Jezzie said simply.
    Sinder nodded. She glanced at Orc, but he was absorbed in reading. “Me, too, Jez. Like…” She didn’t have the words for what it was like. So she just shook her head.
    Jezzie wiped dirt from her brow and managed to actually transfer more dirt there. She was looking down toward the marina. Sinder followed her gaze and saw Sam and Astrid holding each other close on the top deck of the White Houseboat.
    Jezzie said, “At first when I heard she was back I thought it was a good thing. I thought Sam would be happy. You know: he’s been lonely.”
    It was a fact of life in the FAYZ that kids cut off from TMZ and Facebook and the ins and outs of Hollywood and reality shows focused much of their gossip hunger on the closest thing they had to celebrities: Sam, who most people liked and everyone worried about; Diana, who most people didn’t like but whose baby everyone worried about; the baby itself, in particular betting about its gender and possible powers; news of Caine from Perdido Beach; affectionate speculation about Edilio and the nature of his friendship with the Artful Roger; theories about Astrid with passionate disagreement as to whether she was a good person and good for Sam, or alternately a sort of Jadis, the White Witch from Narnia; and, of course, the whispered-about, much-speculated-about relationship (or lack of same) between Brianna and Jack and/or Brianna and Dekka.
    Remarks about Sam’s state of mind were no more unusual than speculation about Lindsay Lohan or Justin Bieber had once been. Except that every person at the lake felt his or her own fate was all too closely tied to Sam Temple.
    “He doesn’t look good,” Jezzie said. Sam was a tiny, distant figure from where she stood. And Sinder might have pointed that out on some other day. But the truth was