Pulse

now.”
    There were no more beanbags, so he sat cross-legged on the floor and opened the book. He had never turned real pages before, but it was sort of like turning pages on his Tablet, only he had to admit, it felt very different. The pages were heavy, and he liked the way they brushed against his skin as he moved them and landed on the first page of the story. It was, he would recall much later, impossible not to touch the image. If he had done this on his Tablet, something would have happened, and that was the biggest shock. Tablets reacted to everything . If they were touched, they did something. When he touched a Sneetch on his Tablet, words were spoken, lessons and commands emerged, and he was expected to interact . But the book just sat there, and for this Hawk loved it. His index finger traced the line of the picture of the Sneetch. He felt the roughness of the paper—nothing like the slick glass of the Tablet. He felt the yellow color of Sneetches’ fur like he’d never felt yellow before. It got under his skin.
    Fifteen minutes later, after having been lost entirely in the story, Hawk heard a voice.
    “Told you. It’s not the same, right?”
    Faith was pointing her flashlight in Hawk’s direction, which felt blinding and harsh as he looked up. It woke him from what felt like a dream he’d fallen into; a dream with green stars and furry, yellow creatures and bright-blue water. Forever after, Hawk would never forget the words of that book, or the feeling of holding the story in his hands. He retold the whole story of the book out loud, all the way from the creation of the first star-bellied Sneetch to the very last page. “This book is about us,” he concluded, looking off in the direction of where the Western State awaited them. “All of them in there, the few of us out here. It’s timeless.”
    Liz stretched her arms over her head and let the book in her lap flop shut, yawning loudly. “Great story, bro. Tell it again.”
    Hawk didn’t catch Liz’s sarcasm. He was a tad slow when it came to pretty, older girls and their senses of humor, so he went on about the parallel between their own lives and that of the Sneetches until Liz rolled her eyes and he realized he’d already said too much.
    “What are you reading?” Hawk asked her.
    Liz looked at the cover of the book and ran her finger along the smooth illustration of a monster sitting on the shore where a small boat was arriving.
    “ Where the Wild Things Are . It makes me forget about everything else. It’s like the rest of the world just falls away.”
    Suddenly, a sound echoed down the long corridor and made its way into the library.
    Faith slowly shut her copy of Green Eggs and Ham . In all the times they’d been there, no one had ever followed them. And now it had happened twice in one night. It scared her, but it also made her protective. Who would come into this special place besides her and the people she showed? What were they doing here?
    Drifters .
    The word squirmed itself into her brain, and she was suddenly imagining a mysterious group of people living in one of the classrooms in the abandoned school.
    “Shut off your lights,” Faith whispered, and they all did. The library turned especially dark in an instant.
    “What if they see the Tablets?” Hawk said nervously. “It’s the first thing they’ll take.”
    Faith and Liz were thinking the same thing, but they didn’t say so. It would only upset Hawk even more. Maybe it had been a mistake leaving them behind like they had. They waited a while longer, but there was only silence; and they began to wonder if they’d heard anything to begin with. Maybe it had been their imaginations.
    “This has been really cool and all,” Hawk said. “But I think I’m ready to get my Tablet back. And I should probably go home before my mom starts messaging me, wondering where I am.”
    Faith lived in the neighborhood, but Liz didn’t. Her house was a fifteen-minute walk away, on the other side of the abandoned mall. Neither of them had any idea where Hawk lived.
    They decided not to turn the flashlights back on unless they had to. Their eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and they quietly padded along the slick floor of the corridor. When they came to the cafeteria door and found no one, they all felt sure it had only been the wind through the opening. They kept thinking that, laughing nervously, until they arrived at the table and they were staring at two, not three,