CHAPTER 2 #3
The winds were starting to pick up, the first drops of rain pitter pattering against the canopy of leaves around us. The first rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
Our community hall was the only structure in the entire colony large enough to hold all five-hundred-and-twenty-four of us at once. The broad, ovular building spread out over half a dozen sturdy trees. Today it was packed with tables and rows of chairs.
I spotted my mother in the hall already, along with my sister, Auntie Naomi, and the flowers, with which they were busy decorating the walls. A dozen other early comers had arrived, including Jessie’s mother and her five younger children.
With each trip I made from the kitchen to the hall, more people arrived.
After setting down the last tray in the serving area, I took a moment to catch my breath and look around at the gathered assembly.
My father and his brother, Uncle Vance, had come together, and now sat with my mother, Bea, Auntie Naomi, and my four other cousins, the oldest of whom was fourteen.
My eyes then sought out Rosalie. The slight, five-foot-four blonde sat with a group of ten other girls, laughing and chattering. I could easily see what Robert saw in those large, hazel eyes of hers—she was a cutie.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Jessie. We shared a smirk, and I was sure we both thought the same thing.
“Where’s lover boy?” I asked in a quiet voice as Mrs. Farr passed by us carrying a large pitcher of guava juice.
“Off changing,” Jessie murmured with a slow smile. “Wants to make sure he’s irresistible tonight.”
I kept my gaze on the hall’s main entrance, watching as the final arrivals trickled in. Sure enough, barely three minutes later, Robert entered the room, looking rather suave in a crisp pair of brown pants and a fresh shirt.
His elder sisters and their partners followed behind him, along with his wiry, six-foot-tall father, who was, in almost all respects, the opposite of his wife: introverted, quiet, and thoughtful.
The couple almost reminded me of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, characters from a classic novel by an author whose name I’d forgotten.
The book was one among the many our founders had fortunately managed to archive.
Robert walked over to us and cast a look in Rosalie’s direction. I was about to assure him that we had his back despite his stinginess, when one of the senior-most members of our community took to the small, raised platform in one corner of the room.
“Are we all present?” Mr. Sturridge spoke through a banana-leaf amplifier, looking around the room with his warm, white-bearded smile.
“I confirm. I did a count,” Jessie’s father, Evan, spoke up.
“Excellent.” Mr. Sturridge beamed. “Then how about we batten this place down. Volunteers, please?”
Ten men from around the border of the crowd immediately began securing the doors, sealing us in from the weather outside.
“Thank you,” Mr. Sturridge said. “Now, let me start by welcoming you all to this celebration! All that wondrous food is waiting for us—” He gestured to the line of serving tables.
“—And we must not keep it waiting. But let us first observe three minutes of silence to reflect on why we are all gathered here today, and meditate on one simple thing you are grateful to our founders for this evening.”
A hush fell over the room. Everybody closed their eyes.
Apparently, in the earlier days of our community, Founders’ Day had been more ceremonial, with lots of speeches and formalities honoring our founders, but we had evolved over the years.
Now it was more of a casual affair. Aside from the opening three minutes of silence, formalities were kept to a minimum.
I closed my eyes respectfully and considered what I wanted to focus on this year.
Last year, I chose our library, with its shelves of preserved books that provided us with a connection to our past, an understanding of where we had come from, as well as a rich education.
The year before that, it had been the wealth of medicinal knowledge we had accumulated over the years, since I had come down with a particularly bad fever.
This year, I settled on freedom. The freedom we had to live without dependence on anything or anyone except our immediate surroundings.
It was easy to take for granted, and I probably didn’t take enough time to be thankful for it.
From what I had learned about the time before the End, society had become the opposite: they had weaved such an intricate web of man-made systems that it was rare to even have a piece of food in your home that was grown in the state or country you lived in.
And when the web broke… Well, it was a nightmare.
Mr. Sturridge clapped his hands. “Thank you, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, for that beautiful silence. And now, without further ado, let the celebrations begin!”
Everyone made a beeline for the serving tables. Our plates piled high, Jessie, Robert, and I then found a spot to sit and dug in. I ate until I had zero capacity to take even one more bite, not even of Mrs. Barnie’s mango truffles.
Chairs scraped. I looked toward the center of the room to see teenagers already clearing space for a dance floor.
Two of my cousins, Myra and Seb, along with the rest of the musical band, set up wind and string instruments in a corner.
Myra played the flute, and Seb the guitar.
They had spent three weeks practicing for tonight.
The music started and, as if on cue, the thunder grew louder overhead. The rainfall pummeled down in a rolling beat. The natural light had almost completely dissipated from outside, and lanterns were lit, casting a warm, cozy glow about the room.
Grabbing Robert and Jessie by the arms, I headed for the dance floor, which Rosalie and her friends had just stepped onto.
The closer we got, the tighter Robert’s posture became.
Once we were ten feet away, I left him standing there and tugged at Jessie to follow me toward Rosalie.
A group of guys were already gravitating in the same direction, and I’d be damned if I let one of them reach her before we did.
But when I was barely two feet away from my destination, one of the boys reached me. Specifically, the one male in the room I had been hoping to avoid this evening.
I groaned. Ryland. A fifteen-year-old who, for some reason, had developed an embarrassing interest in me since we’d been grouped as partners on zip line maintenance last winter. I thought I’d managed to blow him off the last time he approached me for a dance, at a birthday party a month ago.
Jessie shot me a knowing look. “I got this,” she said, her low tone barely suppressing her amusement, before releasing my hand and continuing toward Rosalie without me.
“Uh, wait,” I murmured, moving to sidestep the chubby, ginger-haired boy. But he shifted in front of me again, a wide and hopeful grin plastered across his face.
I exhaled slowly, trying not to glare at him. “Yes, Ryland?”
“That’s a beautiful dress, Tanisha,” he said, his eyes sparkling with admiration.
I grimaced. Nobody called me by my full name.
He held out a hand, his gaze darting toward the dance area. “Care for a—”
“Thanks, but no,” I said, moving around him.
But once again, he positioned himself in front of me.
This time, I glared at him. “What is your deal?”
“I’m sorry. I haven’t been handling things very well,” he said, glancing down at the floor, where his foot traced a slow semi-circle in front of him.
“It’s just, you know how they say intense situations can bring people together?
Well, I think that’s what happened. I can’t shake what I felt, when we were dangling together…
hundreds of feet above the ground… with nothing but—”
“Dude, we were just oiling the joints.”
“We could have been killed,” he said solemnly.
I stared at him, exasperated. “You’re fifteen!”
He shrugged, nonchalant. “I’ll be sixteen in a handful of weeks. What’s an age difference of three or four years in the face of a lifetime? I’m a patient man.”
“Listen, kid,” I said, imbuing a sense of finality in my tone as I clamped my hand over his shoulder. “I’m not trying to be mean, but you’re better off with someone your own size. Okay?”
If there was one thing I was not thankful for about my community—and our neighboring colonies in general—it was the pressure youth felt to find a partner.
It wasn’t imposed on us by our parents, it was just there.
Evolved over the centuries, likely seeded by the knowledge that there wasn’t an unlimited number of us.
Nobody wanted to be left on the shelf, and boys like Ryland—if I were to be brutally honest—would not be most girls’ first pick.
It made me feel sorry for him, and my mood softened as I took in the disappointed expression on his face.
I sighed, opening my mouth to try to ease the blow, but he stepped away before I could, mumbling a “sorry” and ambling back to his group of friends.
I breathed in, taking a moment to digest the stab of guilt, and then turned toward Jessie—only to realize that in the short time I’d been talking with Ryland, she’d been successful in her mission.
For, lo and behold, standing almost right in the center of the dance floor, Robert and Rosalie swayed in each other’s arms, probably in the closest physical proximity they’d ever been to each other.
A smile tugged at my lips. Goal.
I then spotted Jessie, standing by her mother and her three youngest siblings. Her baby brother had just puked, and Jessie was helping to clean him up. She came over to me once she had finished and dropped wearily into a chair, wiping the last fleck of vomit from the hem of her dress.
She exhaled, leaning back. “Not sure I ever want kids.”
I sat next to her. I wasn’t sure I wanted them, either. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a partner. My days were more than consumed by mastering the diverse skills needed to keep our community surviving.
“Always be self-reliant, Tani,” my grandmother used to say, while her dressmaker hands weaved together strands of fabric. “Birds fly together, but storms can separate even the strongest of flocks.”
So far, our community was lucky enough to have never experienced any true disasters, but we could never become complacent.
Jessie had gone out with a twenty-year-old guy called Noble last year, who had come over from a neighboring commune to visit family.
They’d spent a handful of balmy evenings together—picnicking on lookout platforms, racing each other along the zip lines, even daring a moonlit swim in a river pool.
But when Noble suddenly got serious and proposed, Jessie panicked and cut things off.
Apparently, we both had commitment issues.
I looked at Robert, who was still staring at Rosalie like she held the secrets of the universe—or at least amazing hair. Mrs. Farr still remained ignorant, over by the recycling bins, but his older sisters had noticed by now and side-eyed the couple from the periphery with not-so-discreet smiles.
“Do you think he’ll still want to come with us to see Zina tomorrow?” I wondered, remembering Jessie was also supposed to be part of the scout team.
She frowned. “Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”
"Well, now that he’s united with the love of his life…” I shrugged, letting the pause hang. “Maybe he wants to keep the fire going. Ride the high. You know. Build on the momentum.”
Jessie smirked. “Nah, he’ll show. He wouldn’t dare snub Zina.” She leaned in slightly. “Though if he stays up too late, he’ll be unbearable tomorrow. Unless someone gives him a reason to be in a very good mood.”
Her gaze flicked up to the large, solar-powered clock above the main entrance. She gave a low whistle. “Already nine-thirty.”
I nodded. We’d need to move out at first light, pushing hard to cover ground before the heat turned the jungle into a furnace.
And we’d need to stay sharp. Trouble or not at Zina’s camp, the journey would ask its own price.