Pulse

or what?
    Faith tried to pay attention to the audio stream in her earphones as she waited for an answer, tapping out a few notes on the lightboard.
It’s complicated.
    Faith messaged back:
Better to talk in person later?
    She wondered if it was about leaving for the Western State. Most arguments with parents were. In some strange, unsaid way, the Field Games felt like a marker for everyone who remained outside. It was a national moment to shine, to show the rest of the world they were a unified people with the will to do what had to be done in order to survive.
    Hawk messaged back:
My mom heard a rumor the States were going to stop letting people in. I’ve searched, haven’t seen any sign of that. That’s kind of intense if it’s true.
    It had never been a threat Faith thought too much about, but it was an idea she’d heard people talk about for years. China and Africa had closed their States years ago, and almost everyone had complied. Of the billions of people in China alone, only a scant few thousand were unaccounted for within a month of the announcement. China had already built eleven interconnected States, and they were always working on more; but the rest of the country was empty. Africa, with its fourteen state-of-the-art States, was a vast landscape of deserts, trees, and animals nearly devoid of human life.
    Faith thought of all the places in the world that were empty of people. She knew she could walk for days and days through once-thriving cities and not see a single person. It was what made her current location different. There were people, hundreds of them, all in one place on the outside, like they’d been herded there by a shepherd on their way to somewhere else.
    Faith pulled up a program on her screen with an interactive map of the United States. There was a lot of empty space, with two circles that could not be missed. One was in the place where Nevada had once been, only the circle was bigger than that. It leaked out over Oregon and Idaho and what was left of California after the floods. This was the Western State, almost two hundred square miles, so vast it was almost unthinkable. To the east, covering parts of Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee, was another enormous circle; the Eastern State. It was just as big and getting bigger by the day.
    The old high school was the tiniest of red dots, and seeing it sitting in the shadow of the Western State, Faith knew the truth of the matter.
    She sent a message to Hawk:
We’ll be overrun by the State pretty soon anyway. Unless we move again. And I’m pretty tired of moving.
    And that was the bitter truth. The States were fine with letting people stay outside, but they couldn’t be too far off into the unknown. They had to be reachable within a few hours of driving so the white vans from the State could return by nightfall. And the States kept growing, gobbling up more space as the population grew.
    Another message came in, and Faith read it without really thinking:
I have something I need to show you. Meet tonight at the old mall parking lot, 9 p.m. Thanks.
    She was about to tap out a message to Hawk telling him that would be fine when she realized the message hadn’t been from Hawk. It was from Dylan Gilmore. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she hoped he wasn’t watching in case she looked nervous. She began chewing on her pinkie nail without even noticing she was doing it, unsure of how to respond.
    A message came in from Hawk:
You’re probably right. Matter of time. What do you think your parents are going to do?
    As she’d expected, the conversation had turned to her own parents, which was something she didn’t want to talk about. So she decided to answer Dylan instead.
What do you want to show me? And how did you message me during a lecture? Have you been talking to Hawk?
    It was risky, but she was curious. The last time she’d gone with a boy to see something he really wanted to show her, she’d ended up consuming two Wire Codes and blacking out the entire thing. There were times, in her darker moments, when she imagined a lot of bad things happening to her that night. Part of her felt it was better this way, not knowing; but it was also hard not being able to remember. She might spend the rest of her life wondering.
    By the time class let out forty minutes later, Faith still hadn’t gotten an answer from Dylan; and when Miss Newhouse let everyone go, Dylan was gone before Faith could get up the nerve to talk with