Hunger

mere memory of hamburgers made Sam’s stomach growl. “Cabbage?” he repeated.
    Albert nodded toward Edilio. “That’s what Edilio says. He’s the one who found it yesterday.”
    “Cabbage?” Sam asked Edilio.
    “It makes you fart,” Edilio said with a wink. “But we can’t be too choosy.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if we had coleslaw,” Sam said. “Tell you the truth, I could happily eat a cabbage right now.”
    “You know what I had for breakfast?” Edilio asked. “A can of succotash.”
    “What exactly is succotash?” Sam asked.
    “Lima beans and corn. Mixed together.” Edilio braked at the edge of the field. “Not exactly fried eggs and sausage.”
    “Is that the official Honduran breakfast?” Sam asked.
    Edilio snorted. “Man, the official Honduran breakfast when you’re poor is a corn tortilla, some leftover beans, and on a good day a banana. On a bad day it’s just the tortilla.” Hekilled the engine and set the emergency brake. “This isn’t my first time being hungry.”
    Sam stood up in the Jeep and stretched before jumping to the ground. He was a naturally athletic kid but in no way physically intimidating. He had brown hair with glints of gold, blue eyes, and a tan that reached all the way down to his bones. Maybe he was a little taller than average, maybe in a little better shape, but no one would pick him for a future in the NFL.
    Sam Temple was one of the two oldest people in the FAYZ. He was fifteen.
    “Hey. That looks like lettuce,” E.Z. said, wrapping his earbuds carefully around his iPod.
    “If only,” Sam said gloomily. “So far we have avocados, that’s fine, and cantaloupes, which is excellent news. But we are finding way too much broccoli and artichokes. Lots of artichokes. Now cabbage.”
    “We may get the oranges back eventually,” Edilio said. “The trees looked okay. It was just the fruit was ripe and didn’t get picked, so they rotted.”
    “Astrid says things are ripening at weird times,” Sam said. “Not normal.”
    “As Quinn likes to say, ‘We’re a long way from normal,’” Edilio said.
    “Who’s going to pick all these?” Sam wondered aloud. It was what Astrid would have called a rhetorical question.
    Albert started to say something, then stopped himself when E.Z. said, “Hey, I’ll go grab one of these cabbages rightnow. I’m starving.” He unwound the earbuds and stuck them back in.
    The cabbages were a foot or so apart within their rows, and each row was two feet from the next. The soil in between was crumbled and dry. The cabbages looked more like thick-leafed houseplants than like something you might actually eat.
    It didn’t look much different from a dozen other fields Sam had seen during this farm tour.
    No, Sam corrected himself, there is something different. He couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but there was something different here. Sam frowned and tried to work through the feeling he was having, tried to decide why he felt something was…off.
    It was quieter, maybe.
    Sam took a swig from a water bottle. He heard Albert counting under his breath, shading his eyes with his hand and multiplying. “Totally just a ballpark guess, figuring each cabbage weighs maybe a pound and a half, right? I’m thinking we have ourselves maybe thirty thousand pounds of cabbage.”
    “I don’t even want to think about how many farts this all translates to,” E.Z. yelled over his shoulder as he marched purposefully into the field.
    E.Z. was a sixth grader but seemed older. He was tall for his age, a little chubby. Thin, dishwater-blond hair hung down to his shoulders. He was wearing a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from Cancún. E.Z. was a good name for him: he waseasy to get along with, would banter easily, laugh easily, and usually find whatever fun there was to be found. He stopped about two dozen rows into the field and said, “This looks like the cabbage for me.”
    “How can you tell?” Edilio called back. E.Z. pulled one earbud out and Edilio repeated the question.
    “I’m tired of walking. This must be the right cabbage. How do I pick it?”
    Edilio shrugged. “Man, I think you may need a knife.”
    “Nah.” E.Z. replaced the earbud, bent over, and yanked at the plant. He got a handful of leaves for his effort.
    “You see what I’m saying,” Edilio commented.
    “Where are the birds?” Sam asked, finally figuring out what was bothering him.
    “What birds?” Edilio said. Then he nodded. “You’re