Chapter 4

Advice: Always have a hair tie on your wrist.

The next day was the third and final warning. The one I really should have thought about. Because it was supposed to comfort us. And those are the types of warnings that mean something’s already gone wrong.

I felt the milk from my cereal turn sour in my stomach. The first real picture of a zombie. They had given a warning about how the following images would be graphic and were not recommended for children. And when I saw them I suddenly went from believing “I’m seventeen and I’m basically an adult” to “I’m definitely not an adult.”

The zombies were terrifying. Well, they weren’t calling them zombies yet. “Some sort of virus, perhaps an elevated form of rabies,” some scientist said. Whatever they were, there were videos of them. Standing over their latest prey, a bitten girl in England turning from human to something else. A camera zoomed in so close that it practically got a mugshot of one in France.

They said that the zombies still seemed to be concentrated in Western Europe. We were far enough away still. There was a rumor about a sighting in the southernmost tip of South America but nothing was confirmed. We had nothing to worry about. The weather would be pretty good the rest of the day, and we might actually be feeling some of that fall weather coming into next week! Someone had their hundred and third birthday. There was an accident on the highway and traffic would be bad this morning.

In homeroom, zombies were all the buzz. But by lunch, everyone was more occupied with homecoming than the zombies that we might have to be inviting. Because we thought everything was fine. Nothing to worry about. It had just been paranoia when I had decided to switch out my flimsy flats for Converse and slipped a hair tie on my wrist. Just in case, I told myself.

Chapter 5

Advice: Carry pepper spray.

The moment that I would mark as the moment that shit officially hit the fan, I had been walking back from the bathroom, my steps echoing in the empty hallway. Mrs. Buchanan was listening to her radio during her free period, her door open and the smell of her cinnamon candle drifting to the nearby lockers. I heard her coffee mug, no doubt stained all around with lipstick, fall to the ground. She must have dropped it while listening to the news.

"…have swam across the Atlantic Ocean, already making their way through some of the coastal cities at a rapid pace. Schools and businesses in the upstate areas are already locking their doors to protect students and employees. Do not go into basements or attics without exits. And by all means, if your car has enough gas that you don’t have to stop, leave."

I sprinted down the hall back to my classroom, as I assumed we were about to head into a code red lockdown. Thank goodness I just peed.

Apparently I hadn’t needed to stand outside of Mrs. Buchanan’s door to hear the news, because when I shut the door behind me to Mrs. Albertson’s classroom, the entire class was staring at her computer, which was tuned in to the local radio station, where a viewer had just called in, reporting a zombie sighting at a gas station not even an hour away from us.

Mrs. Albertson barely registered my re-entry, she just moved toward the door to lock it (as is a code red necessity, though I wasn’t quite sure how much good that would do us).

The only information the radio station seemed to be able to give us was that the governor was sure everything would be “just fine” and that everything was “under control,” though everyone knew the policemen were probably called back to their office to stay shut in. These zombies apparently didn’t seem to stop with just one bullet. There was only one thing they seemed to be scared of: sunlight.

It was “partially cloudy, folks” outside, and the zombies were supposedly moving in patterns that matched the clouds.

The final bell rang. But no one moved a muscle. We just listened to the voice of Andy Michelson over the news website. Then the station turned to static.

We listened to that static for a full minute before anyone had the courage to move a muscle. Mrs. Albertson turned off her computer. And then unplugged it. No extra lights. They might be afraid of sunlight, but regular light would probably attract them. Or maybe we were so scared that turning the lights off seemed to be the only sensible thing to do.

“Check your phones now, and then I want them turned off. Silent and no chance of lighting up,” Mrs. Albertson said, her voice tight.

Everyone, like they were snapped out of a trance, pulled out their phones. I had four messages from Mom, and five missed calls. Six missed calls from Dad. They were from ten minutes ago. I sat, paralyzed, my fingers begging to text back. I felt horrible, knowing they might think I was dead. But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I set off their ringtone if they were hiding.

I powered down my phone. Tears pricked at my eyes and I lowered my head onto my cool desk. I pulled my hair up into a ponytail. Trying to run with it down was basically running with a curtain in my face. Just in case, I whispered.

It was late afternoon, and gray light was filtering in through Mrs. Albertson’s blinds. Dust floated on the few beams breaking through the clouds, and it seemed so odd that things were so dire on an afternoon that felt so lazy.

We sat in stunned silence. I would have thought we had all turned to stone if it hadn’t been for the tiny twitches: the bobbing of throats when we swallowed, people squeezing their fingers where they had poked their keys through, like the Wolverine. I rubbed my thumb over the trigger of the pepper spray I took out of my purse. I wasn’t supposed to have it at school. Those who tried sharpening the rulers with Mrs. Albertson’s scissors had given up. It was nearly impossible and we weren’t even sure zombies could be stabbed effectively, especially if it took several bullets to take one down. But we needed something. Anything.

I ground my teeth together, terrified to hear a crash. Terrified to hear a scream. But the silence was just an inky cloak, covering all of us. We were waiting for a rip in the fabric.

Chapter 6

Advice: Know the layout of your school. You know, just in case.

The worst noise I’d ever heard in my life was not the sound of my little sister Layla crying every night for the first year of her life, making me the most sleep deprived seven-year-old the world had ever known.

The worst noise I ever heard was not the sound of the front of my car getting crunched sophomore year. Not my fault. When we were leaving the court, my mother called the guy who hit me a few things I’m not supposed to ever repeat (inconsiderate jackass and a dick- my mother, raised a Catholic!).

And, the worst noise I ever heard was not the sound of the Wicked Witch of the West cackling on screen the first time I watched The Wizard of Oz. That shit was freaking terrifying for a kid and no one will be able to tell me differently. Fairy tale my ass.

The worst noise I ever heard was the clanging. And the moaning. And the thrashing. Metal shaking and echoing howls. It was twilight now, the whole room of heavily breathing seniors cast in an odd blue light. They were at the fence of the football field.

Terror is the evil cousin of adrenaline. It’s not a fun rush, or an exhilarating sensation. My entire body was filled with pain, my heart seizing up like a fist.

They could smell us, I knew they could. No way they couldn’t. It seemed too implausible, too lucky that they wouldn’t be able to smell fresh flesh. Their footsteps were like earthquakes, and I knew we could all feel them getting closer to the school. Guys shook and bit their lips. Girls looked at each other with glossy eyes, gripping their phones or water bottles or coffees, desperately making last-minute searches through their purses and book bags for something that could suffice for a weapon, knowing that there was nothing. Unless the power of a good metaphor was to come in handy, or the power of an exponent could combat the undead, we were screwed and we knew it.

Glass shattered. That was the door to the front desk. I closed my eyes and tried my best to be brave. I imagined that front door glass in smithereens, imagined the zombie that had done it, blood dripping from his hands and his head, which he probably used to get the doors to break. I tried to imagine the dead look in his eyes. What it would look like to see someone with that pallid skin, that unfocused stare, those gnashing teeth.

I heard people around the room beginning to whisper broken prayers. Begging for forgiveness, begging for protection. I thought that I should pray too, but my mind was fixed on the image of broken glass and blood. Everyone was trying to get their consciences right before they died, but I was still dealing with the idea that I was about to die. Or rather, that I was about to contract a deadly, rapidly-acting disease, die, and then come back to life to kill people.

Did the zombies know what they were doing? Did they keep the memories from their life? Was their essence still trapped somewhere within those savage walls? Like a coward, I hoped they didn’t. I didn’t want to still be there while my body ripped people apart.

I could hear the echoing in the hallways, the breaking of more glass. Screams from the other classrooms. I whimpered as the screams got closer. And closer.

And then a greenish hand crashed through the tiny glass window above the doorknob.

The zombie’s hand groped the entire area around the glass with fervor, looking for a way to get in. This is when we all stood up, our bodies tense, because I guess we figured: you know, what the hell?

We were going to fight.

The blue light from the window seemed to be pointing at the reaching hand. I could tell it was searching for the doorknob. Were these things still capable of normal human thought? But it didn’t matter if it could think, because the worst thing about this was the blue light and the green hand and how I could see every drop of blood on its hand. Did the blood come from the zombie breaking the windows, or from the people it had murdered?

Did zombies have blood?

I didn’t really want to find out, but I figured I probably would.

In the times I had imagined a zombie attack, as one does, I thought it would be a terrifying, but loud, experience. And I can vouch for the terrifying. But it wasn’t loud. At least not yet. It was eerily quiet. The zombies moaned and glass shattered onto tile flooring, but it wasn’t loud. It was like a clock ticking, like sand scraping against glass as it fell through an hourglass.

That made the boom all the more startling. The boom that I knew was a door falling a few rooms down, followed by the hinges and the nails of the door daintily clattering to the floor as their not-so-dainty destroyers moved into the room. I waited for a split second, biting into my lip until I tasted copper.

That’s when it got loud.

The screams.

They were horrible.

Sick as it sounds, I knew everyone was doing the same thing: trying to gauge how far away those screams were, trying to figure out if someone they knew was in there. Trying to figure out how close those screams were to us.

I thought first of Lola. My best friend, so dainty but so loud and outgoing. All brown curls and blue eyes and bright smile. But it wasn’t her classroom, she was right on the other side of the wall in the science lab. I imagined her armed with scalpels and scissors. And rubber gloves. No way was she getting zombie blood (if that existed) or guts on her perfectly manicured nails.

Almost simultaneously, I thought of Ellory and Caleb, who were in calculus. Which was down the hall. Approximately where that door had fallen. I felt my gut turn violently, and I felt my stomach threatening to throw up. Dizziness ensued and the hand reaching for the doorknob, the hand so, so close to the doorknob, doubled and tripled in my vision.

What if that was their room and they-

BOOM.

If my senses weren’t failing me, that was the door next to the one that had just fallen. There were more screams, and I could hear the slapping of shoes against the tile flooring. Could hear thuds against the walls.

A few wails of agony that sounded like they were turning from something human into something not so human.

Chapter 7

Advice: …learn to play baseball? And know your literary references.

So the students and teachers were turning into zombies. I must admit that I thought my French teacher, Monsieur Kravis, was kind of one already. But there was a chance that today I’d meet a real-life zombified version of Monsieur Kravis, seeing as that the third booming of a falling door seemed to come from his neck of the hallway.

I heard screaming behind me and dared to look. Kids were fleeing through the back doors of the school and out into the soccer fields. I assumed they were hoping to jump the fence and escape into the houses that were just beyond the school grounds.

The loudest boom yet.

The door next to us. There was the sound of shattering glass and I peered as far as I could toward the window, and saw Lola, polka dotted dress and all, scuttling through the tiny window. I knew that some of the kids wouldn’t be able to even make it out of the window in that room. Lola’s small frame was an advantage at this point. She was running toward the gym. In fact, a lot of people were running toward the gym. Why trap yourselves?

Then I realized they were going for the athletic equipment. The weights and barbells and bats and golf clubs and hockey sticks.

The zombie had pulled his hand out of the glass and I realized he was starting to work on the hinges of our door.

We had to get out of here.

I pushed up against the glass of the back window but it wouldn’t budge.

“Archer,” I said, grabbing the arm of the boy next to me. “Give me that.”

He didn’t seem too thrilled about the idea of giving over his sole weapon, the ruler that he had sharpened to a point, but he gave it to me. I wedged it into the underside of the window and pressed my weight against it. I felt the ruler flex, and the bottom of the window popped open.

Felicia Gray was the first one through. She had catapulted under the glass before Archer and I really had it open. The moon hadn’t made a full appearance, but the sun had definitely slipped beneath the horizon, leaving a cloudy gray and black-red behind.

A few more through until there were three left- me, Archer, and Mrs. Albertson. Ever the adult, she ushered us through first, and, ever the gentleman, Archer made sure that I was in the front of our three person line. I didn’t need to be told twice; the door was creaking in a way that doors shouldn’t creak.

I bolted out, and right as I did I heard the door slam. My heart exploded and my legs caught on the edge of the window, making me fall into the mulch beneath the window. Archer had barely avoided falling on top of me. But Mrs. Albertson’s scream, and then the lack thereof, was what got me up and running. Archer had grabbed my pepper spray and released it on the window before joining me in a sprint to the gym. There was no screaming from that direction.

I joined the pack at the equipment closet, where Coach Marks was handing out anything that could count as a weapon. I got a baseball bat. It was an odd weight in my hands. I could barely hit a baseball. I figured a zombie head was along the lines of an easier target, but a harder resistance. A shudder shimmied down my spine.

The gym lights were off, the only things visible were the dark outlines of people moving around, clutching their newly found weapons. From the faint light leaking in from the glass doors of the gym lobby, our reflections rippled and swayed against the watery look of the newly waxed floor of the basketball court.

I could hear the sounds of screams and the sounds of zombie wailing. The sounds of thumping and death.

And so I stood, rooted to my spot in the gym, when the first zombie came through the door, and looked at us all, taking us in.

You know that moment in Frankenstein? Not all the Hollywood versions of it, but like the real one we all have to read at some point in our high school career? That moment when the Creature is standing outside of the window the day Victor gets married. When he smiles?

Well this first zombie was a kid in my English class who I had distinctly remembered as being the only one who hadn’t Sparknotesed the whole book. And I took the half-second to think that maybe he was referencing that piece of literature.

Because he took us all in. Well, I guess he was no longer really a he. Mark Fitzy was gone. 

This was an It.

And I swear, it smiled.

Chapter 8

Advice: Yes, you actually do want to be with the football team’s quarter back.

At one point or another, everyone wonders how it is that they’ll go. I could die of heart failure or a car crash or anything like that. Honestly though, I was kind of hoping to just die in my sleep of old age.

I didn’t ever, not once, think that I might die at the hands of my zombified best friend.

I thought you had gotten away! I wanted to scream. She staggered forward, her feet taking her in different directions, almost like she couldn’t decide which one of us to pick off first. But then her eyes latched on to me.

I held my baseball bat, terrified of what I would do to my best friend who was now a zombie. (I guess she was my ex-best friend at this point, but I hadn’t really been able to process that yet.)

I shook the tears that blurred my vision, knowing that behind my best friend, other zombies had entered the building. I could hear the screams behind me, but I couldn’t look away from those blue orbs of eyes. I felt myself backing up toward the center of the basketball court, like everyone else, preparing to fight back to back, but all I could see were those brown curls she slept in curlers every night to attain. I could see past the gory grin to the dazzling smile I saw at lunch.

I gripped the bat again.

And heard a horrible growl over my left shoulder.

That was when I snapped out of it.

I spun around to face a girl my height with grungy looking hair and grayish skin- she had definitely been a zombie for a while. She opened her mouth, tilted her head in the scariest way possible, and I knew she was headed straight for my throat. I wasn’t exactly sure where zombies had learned the etiquette of vampires, but I didn’t want to find out.

I swung the bat at her face, and her neck made a sound I never want to hear again. She fell to the ground, but kept twitching. I guess I couldn’t kill her again, no matter how hard I hit her. But, before I could watch her too long, another zombie was at my other side. A tall man with a button down, tie, and ragged suit on.

I had to hit him along with a greenish gray first-grader toddling about, her mouth snapping like a piranha. The guilt I felt for hitting an adult and hitting a child grappled in my stomach. I knew the zombies probably didn’t identify with the age of their bodies, but after seventeen years of social norms, you don’t just overcome things like that so easily.

With the next zombie, I finally gave the stereotypical girl-in-a-horror-film scream, and honestly hadn’t I been expecting it sooner? His breath drifted over my face, room temperature but smelling like garbage. His teeth were rotted, his eyes yellow around the edges. He had a deep gash in the side of his nose that, when he shifted into the right lighting, looked like a giant nostril on the left side of his nose.

His yellow teeth chomped down, like he thought just by wanting to eat me, he could. I swung the bat again and again, and the zombie pulled his hands up, his gold cuff-links the only thing that didn’t look deteriorated and stained by blood and death.

I hit him in the head, probably hard enough to dent. His hands flew up, not toward his forehead, but to me, and I screamed and stumbled backwards. I was going to fall, so I gave one last swing with everything I had. I heard a crack from his skull, and he fell, sputtering in a way that was all too human, but no blood came out of his mouth, he just rolled on the floor, as if trying to regain his composure. I barely caught myself and looked around.

My chemistry teacher, Mrs. Morrison, was swinging around a pocket knife she wasn’t supposed to have. The cheerleading team had assembled in the corner, their fearless captain, Morgan Warrington, swinging a bat like mine. The point guard of the boys Varsity basketball team, Jacob Jensen (at an impressive 6 feet, 3 inches), jumped up and grabbed the rim, pulled himself up and started throwing baseballs from a bag he must have gotten from Coach Marks.

We were desperately outnumbered.

Scratch that.

We were just desperate.

I heard a growling in front of me, and when I looked up, I saw the evil grin that definitely did not belong to my best friend.

“Lola,” her name a sob on my lips. “Lola, please.” But my voice was a whisper. My hands started shaking and I them around the bat. I screamed and raised the bat. “Stop, Lola! Please!”

She got closer, letting out a sound that is the closest thing I’d ever heard to a growl coming from a human. Her red lipstick was all smeared and she had a black eye. I wondered if she got it before or after she… died.

By the time I worked up the courage to swing, her hands were already gripped around the bat, pulling it from me. I held on for dear life, but she was stronger. I wasn’t sure if that meant zombies had extra strength, or if all the yoga classes she took were helping her zombie bod.

I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to look into hers, and pulled with all my might. She pulled back, her growl a mocking noise.

And then it was like she had given up.

I opened my eyes and thought for one happy moment that maybe zombification was some sort of curse that could be lifted, and that Lola had somehow overcome her death.

But then she hit the ground in front of me, a sickening dent in the side of her head, her eyes rolled back, still flickering back and forth. Because a golf club to the temple could kill a human, but not a zombie.

I looked up at the owner of the golf club to see Levi Post: all-star quarter back, all-star idiot, and all-star zombie killer, apparently. A pair of undead convulsed on the ground on his other side. A quick glance, and we both knew we were the only two humans in the gym even close to the door. Levi looked up from my best friend, his latest “kill” for lack of a better word, and his eyes locked in on mine. He was terrified, just like I was. He pointed to the bat in my hand and waved me towards him.

He stepped around me, our backs against each other, watching as newly bitten zombies writhed on the floor around us.

“We’re getting out of here. You and me,” he yelled, and I briefly wondered if this is what he sounded like when he called plays in the football huddle. “Let’s go!”

With shaking hands, I raised my bat.

When people walk away from a fight in movies, they walk slowly and sure-footed as everything explodes behind them. But as I walk through the mall, everything all blurred and lukewarm, I can tell my steps are too fast, too clumsy. I don’t whisper ‘sorry’ like I usually do when I bump shoulders with people. The big, color-coded map of the mall burns in my vision. The icy drafts drifting in the air grip frozen fingers around my neck and ankles.

I put my hand to my forehead, dizzy from using so much of my power at once. I’ve never encrypted anyone before, and I feel my power re-filling me, replenishing me, like blood rushing back into a limb that has fallen asleep. But in this moment, I welcome the numbness. I wish it would crowd out the guilt.

I’ve heard stories of so-called heroes who have encrypted hundreds in a day. Heroes who find their pride in taking another’s freedom. It’s always deemed a tragedy when they are found to be encrypted themselves.

I should be proud.

You know you had to. The voice in my head doesn’t sound like my own.

I can’t shake the image of the woman as the chair hit her in the back of the head, her eyes rolling back into her skull, knocked out. Not dead. I didn’t hit her that hard. I hope.

My stomach begs to throw up.

But, she was the one who followed me. She realized I was a Realmer and had wanted to encrypt me. I knew we couldn’t let Norms see the fight, so I ran to the back room of the darkest store I could find. If I had just switched realms she would have followed me.

I try to slow my pace, but my feet trip over themselves. A girl a little older than me sprints toward the store I just left. She has a tattoo curling around her right ankle. It’s like a dare.

I look around as I make my way to the front exit, wondering how many of these people are like me, blending in with the crowd.

“Roughly one in twelve people are Realmers,” my father told me once. Much more rare to actually figure out who they are, though.

I clutch my jacket as I leave the mall, and the crunch of dead leaves startles me; my nerves are still singing at a high pitch. I keep my eyes wide open, ignoring the cold sting of the air. Every time I blink I see her unseeing eyes.

The next few blocks calm me, windows with bright lights and laughing customers line both sides of the street. The air smells of greasy food.

I slide my phone from my pocket and check my messages out of habit. Nothing. My thumb hovers over the messages with my mother. I want to call her, to tell her that I’m okay, that I made it through a fight she will never be allowed to know about.

The door is unlocked and warmth envelops my senses as soon as I enter the house. Yellow light glows from dusty light bulbs, and the heat from the vents seeps in through my clothes. Quiet conversation floats from the kitchen, and the oven has made the air stuffy.

I drop my bag by the stairs and slip into the kitchen. “Hey, George,” I say, falling into a chair at the table. He smiles at me from behind the island, wiping his hands on his flour-covered apron.

“Hey, sweetheart!” he says. I look up and smile back at him, not yet wanting to tell him that I encrypted someone, especially with a guest here. I can’t see his whole face, only the side that is smiling at George. His hair, so blond as to be striking and bright, catches my eye.

“Where’s Molly?” I ask.

“Not quite sure,” he says. “I’m sure she’ll be getting along soon.” The lines wrinkle around his smile, but I see a heaviness in his eyes, the same paranoia I’m feeling.

I bite the corner of my lip, pushing away the thought of Molly getting encrypted. A Realmer’s vote is, in a way, installed into their body. But their vote can be stolen by force. Knock a Realmer out, and trace their ankle while using Realmer power to change their vote, and they’re stuck with a vote that’s not theirs. No way to switch back.

“Avery,” George says. “This is Trace.” Trace hops up from the barstool and walks over to me. Holds out his hand.

“Trace Lutz,” he says. I slip my hand in his and we shake.

“Avery Jamison,” I say, “Third Realmer.”

“A what?” he asks, knitting his eyebrows together. My heart abandons a few beats. I had just assumed that he was...

“I-I,” I say, “it’s a club at my school, and I thought-“

Trace starts to laugh. “Fifth Realmer,” he says, slightly nodding to himself, and I breathe 

out a sigh of relief. George chuckles from his place behind the island.

But then his words sink in.

“A Fifth Realmer?” I ask, looking at George instead of Trace. Fifth Realmers are pretty rare, and most of the younger ones spend their time in the Fifth Realm, practicing their Fifth Realm power, or shadowing the leaders of the Realmer government.

George nods, and Trace laughs under his breath. I look up and see a tiny smirk on his face, I’m not sure it’s even there. We are in the First Realm, so I try to work my way into his thoughts.

Nice try, Sweetheart. I’m on lockdown.

Fifth Realmers have a reputation for being arrogant. One corner of his mouth fails more than the other to suppress a smile, an attractive look on him.

“Thanks,” he says.

“What?”

“I have the full mind power.”

Oh.

I try to clear my mind, though it’s more difficult to block out someone with the full mind power. It’s something I’ve always been jealous of, having all three stages of mind manipulation. They can know thoughts, use the power of suggestion, or completely control another’s mind.

I give him a sugary-sweet smile as I seal my mind against his power. His eyes twinkle with amusement. “Not bad.”

His power is strong, a battering ram against my mind. “Not bad yourself.”

I hear the sound of a flag whipping in the wind, the sound of someone switching Realms. Molly appears next to me.

“Hey y’all,” she says, a little breathless. Molly lives in Pennsylvania with George, but she’s a southern belle stuck in snow. She’s a little heavy-set and has a few wrinkles on her rosy cheeks, but I can’t remember a time I knew her without them.

“What happened?” George asks, placing a large casserole dish on the table. Now that the panic has subsided, I’m starving.

Trace drops into the chair next to mine and George pulls one out for Molly on the other side of the table.

“Jenny got encrypted.” Her voice sounds defeated. Jenny is one of her closest friends, a Traveler. “I went to visit her in the Second Realm after running some errands.” She pulls her purse off her shoulder and wraps the straps around the back post of her chair.

“When I got there, she was on the couch, I assumed asleep. But when I went over to wake her, she wouldn’t want me to let her sleep if I was there, it took a lot to wake her up. When I did, she was shaking. She said she was alright but I should leave, someone had broken in and encrypted her. We saw shadows moving around in her kitchen right before we switched Realms.”

“Is she safe now?” George asks, sitting down next to her.

Molly nods. “She’ll be staying with someone else tonight. That man that encrypted her was probably waiting for more family, but it’s just her husband, and he’s on a business trip.”

“Well,” George says, shifting in his seat, “let’s eat, then.”

“This Census is starting to make me nervous,” Molly says. “The Fifth Realmers have been doing a fine job in the government.”

“Well, the family thing has been the biggest platform for Travelers, right? Restricting travel would end up splitting different-realm family members,” I say. “I haven’t read any news that can come up against that.”

“Jim from work talked to me about a new ‘Kinship of Realmers’ argument today at work,” George says. “The Restrictors are really taking this to a new level. It was like he was taught a certain way to explain it. I can almost imagine how so many people have bought into it.”

“Shame,” Molly says. “I’ve got hope, though. As the Census gets closer, I’ll bet a bunch of Restrictors will sit down and think about shutting down Realm travel and only seeing their family once a year.”

“Let’s hope,” George says. “Jim was spewing all sorts of pro-Kinship rhetoric like ‘we are all one big family as Realmers.’ He said that First Realmer babies would be assigned to First Realm foster families and continue in foster families as they move up Realms.”

“That’s not nurturing enough, prizing power over family. We’ll have delinquents on our hands if they aren’t taken care of properly. Powerful delinquents. This will be a full-on war before we know it.” Molly shakes her head and takes what she calls a “cleansing breath.”

We eat in relative silence after that, only making small talk in between bites. I let my mind wander. It’s not legal to encrypt someone, and I wonder if Realmers ever actually call the police when they get encrypted. Not Norm police, obviously, but Realmer police. Technically, something was stolen. A vote. Then again, law enforcement is usually too busy encrypting people themselves.

“Trace, child, are you never full?” Molly asks with a chuckle. Trace just smiles. I finished ten minutes ago. Trace is still going strong.

“Trace will be staying with us for a little while,” Molly says, directing her eyes to me. “He’ll be staying in that extra guest room, I hope that’s okay, I know you sometimes use the desk in there for homework.”

“My parents had to go back to finish up stuff with our old house in Michigan,” Trace says, taking a loud gulp. “But I needed to enroll in school as soon as possible.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” I say. My mind won’t stop replaying the woman from the mall, dropping to the floor over and over again. She’s probably fine by now, at least I hope so. I just can’t get the image of her heavy-lidded, unblinking eyes out of my mind.

“Avery, are you okay?” George asks. “You look pale.”

“Do I?” I press my hands to my cheeks- freezing fingers against flaming skin.

“Is something wrong?” Molly asks.

I pause. “I encrypted someone today.”

“Oh?” Molly asks. The clock in the kitchen ticks audibly, and now I picture myself stealing her vote. The fingers I slid around her ankle suddenly feel dirty.

“Yeah, at the mall.” My voice sounds empty.

George gets up and rests a hand on my shoulder on his way to the kitchen. “It would have been them or you.”

“I guess so,” I say. Molly slips me a sympathetic look.

“Who wants dessert?” George asks, parading over to the table with pie covered in whipped cream.

I’m about to excuse myself when I hear my voice saying “I do,” in chorus with Trace and Molly.

I look over at Trace and glare. I catch him just in time to see his face turning away from me. He’s smiling down at the table cloth. He made me say that using mind control. My guard must have slipped.

“C’mon,” he whispers, leaning in his chair so that Molly doesn’t hear him. “You seem like you could use it.”

I open my mouth to protest, then stop. “Thank you.”