Swipe

them.
    “So, she have any plans for a job?” Aunt Susan was asking, between bites of cake thumb.
    “Not yet,” Dad said. “But she’s looking. We don’t want to rush her at all.”
    “I’m just glad she can run errands for us now,” Mom joked, and everyone laughed.
    “Yeah, I’m sure that’s just what she wants to think about on her big day!” Uncle David said. “Chores! Real nice!”
    Out of the laughter, Grandma spoke quietly, but her voice cut through the room and commanded attention. “Shame on you,” she said. “All of you. How easily you’ve forgotten about life before the Unity. Before Lamson, and Cylis over in that awful E.U. It’s not a joke!”
    “We know, Grandma,” cousin Jake butted in. “Paper money, citizenship from birth—”
    “Walks to school in the snow—”
    “Uphill!”
    “Both ways!”
    The family all chimed in, talking over one another and laughing. Grandma’s reminder of the old ways was one they’d heard a hundred times. Even Logan knew it by heart.
    “You laugh now,” Grandma said. “If I could cut this Mark out right here, I would.” She fingered a charm on her necklace as she spoke. Logan had seen it before, but he didn’t know what it meant.
    “That’s enough.” Mrs. Langly shook her head. “This is hardly an appropriate conversation to be having the morning of—”
    “It’s the perfect conversation to be having the morning of Lily’s Pledge! While there’s still time to walk away!”
    “Mama, stop it! Today’s about Unity, country, quality of life! The States War—we were falling apart!” Logan had never seen his mother so worked up, especially not at his grandma. “Who knows what would have happened without Lamson? Do you think we’d even be here? This town was burning when he turned the tide. Your home was burning .”
    “Oh please.” Logan’s grandmother clawed at her Mark until the skin around it was red and chafed. “You all think—”
    “So why’d you get it, then?” Aunt Susan interrupted. “Why not just turn it down and live with the rest of the bums on Slog Row? Huh? Think we would have missed you too much?”
    “Well, if I’d have known then what it was starting—”
    “Mama, I cannot believe that you really think this morning is the best time—”
    But then Lily entered the kitchen. “Let her finish,” she said. “Grandma’s right. It’s important.”
    “I’m finished, sweetheart,” Grandma said, and then she was silent, and she stared again at her own Mark, remembering.
    “It’s all good review for the test, anyway, right?” Lily said, lightening the mood. And everyone laughed nervously, and looked at their own Marks, and ate.
    And it was true what his mom had said, that in the years before Logan’s birth, before General Lamson came along, his family and all the families in Spokie had suffered, had feared for their lives. There wasn’t a year in school Logan wasn’t reminded of this, of the war his generation was born into but just barely remembered, when states still divided the continent and fought horribly among themselves over things as simple as economics and religion and basic human rights. Logan couldn’t remember which state his would have been. Wisconsin, maybe? Minnesota? They’d all been called such strange things. Even the American Union had a weird name—the United States—as if separate states could ever be united.
    But was it also true what his grandmother had said? Had always said? About life being better before the Unity? It was hard to imagine. In school the lessons stopped short of any real exploration of the topic. They simply didn’t teach the time before the war, except to say that everything about it had led to the fighting, to the chaos, and was worth forgetting and never repeating. On the Internet, Pedia articles that might have explained the era were perpetually “Under Construction” or “Down for Maintenance,” even when the rest of the Web worked fine. And whenever Logan got up the nerve to ask a parent or teacher about it outright, whenever he wondered—innocently, curiously—what possible advantages the old government might have had, or what details separated the myriad religions prior to the Inclusion, he would be told only, “Not to worry, not to worry,” that it was best this way, no doubt about it.
    “But can’t you just give me a straight answer?” Logan would ask.
    And the adults would grow nervous and say quietly, “You just never know, Logan.