Foreverland Is Dead

us.”
    Miranda stops quivering but doesn’t lift her head. Cyn pats her knee. Roc reaches over her head and yanks the chair back. Miranda has to stand to keep from falling. Cyn stands between them. She holds out one of the keycards.
    “Here.”
    “What’s this?”
    “It unlocks the kitchen. If there’s not a phone in the brick house, we need to start rationing food.”
    Roc puts the keycard around her neck. “Why?”
    She doesn’t look at Roc. She stares at Miranda. “Because we’re going to run out.”
    Miranda looks up. Her eyes are blue, her face clean and free of scratches. Cheeks puffy. She lacks the gaunt tug of hunger.

    Miranda waits on the front porch while Cyn and Roc lock the kitchen.
    Kat, Mad , and Jen venture off the porch towards the garden. They don’t want to be around Roc and she can’t blame them. But they didn’t ask Miranda to come. They couldn’t care less about her.
    She doesn’t care , either.
    She wouldn’t hang out with them anyway. She doesn’t like to mix. She’s not sure what that means, but it seems to have to do with race. Blacks, Irish, and Indians—that sort of thing.
    Miranda ’s the one quaking on the porch while they walk through the garden, but they’re the dumb ones. If Cyn hadn’t said something about the food, those pea-brains would’ve plowed through those shelves like rats, led by the Dagger Queen. They wouldn’t listen to Miranda. No one would. She’s too small and…different.
    T hank God for Cyn.
    Miranda can’t remember any more than the rest of them, only she didn’t wake up in the bunkhouse. She saw where they woke up, looked like a redneck cellblock that smelled like an armpit. The stink was in them and they didn’t smell it. Miranda breathed through her mouth when they were in the same room.
    “You ready?”
    Cyn comes out of the dinner house. The shoestring is around her neck, the plastic keycard dangling between her breasts. She needs a bra. The rest of them don’t.
    Miranda least of all.
    “Let’s go see what’s in the brick house.” Roc puts her hand on Miranda’s neck, guides her off the porch.
    Miranda breathes through her mouth.
    The house is a two-story home with Old Georgetown brick, functioning shutters, and a green metal roof. The cabins look like they were built two centuries ago. The brick house, last year.
    They slow at the end of the garden. Roc still has her hand on Miranda’s neck, gently squeezing.
    “Circle around,” she says. “If we stand where the tall grass starts, we’ll be able to see into the front door.”
    Cyn doesn’t know much about the fence. The others tested it from every angle, knowing where their necks would start buzzing and how close they could get. They walk along an invisible line but only they can feel it. Feels like nothing to Miranda.
    They stop twenty feet from the house. Double doors are between large windows. There’s a lamp in each one, the one on the right still on.
    It’s no accident the house face s south, not that any of the others would know. The southern exposure allows the light inside for warmth. The other end faces north. They’re protected from the winter wind by trees. Miranda doesn’t know where they are, but it doesn’t take a genius to know winter is cold.
    She ’s not really sure how she knows.
    “Open both doors,” Roc says. “Open them real wide so we can see.”
    “Find the kitchen,” Cyn adds . “We need all the food out of there, first thing. We don’t want anything going to spoil if no one’s in there.”
    “ Yeah, that’s great,” Roc adds, “but if there’s a phone you forget the food and start dialing 9-1-1.”
    Miranda wants to get away from them—she doesn’t like all the attention—but the other direction doesn’t feel any better. The brick house is so quiet. The lamps look like eyes, the steps like teeth. As much as she hates the attention and body odor, she remembers what the inside of the brick house smells like.
    It ’s not body odor.
    Roc pushes her.
    Miranda ’s legs are stiff. Roc shoves her again. Miranda steps safely inside the fence. Roc can’t reach her, but now she’s stuck between them and the brick house. She wants to chew on her finger, bite the skin from the sides, but stops herself from that bad habit. Perhaps she’ll just sit down, right there, inside the fence.
    The first step is the hardest. The second one isn’t much better.
    The grass is worn away n ear the bottom step. Miranda looks down at her shoes.