Epitaph Road Read Free Page B

cousins and they hadn’t spent much time around boys. When we’d met the day before, they couldn’t keep their eyes off me. Of course I’d been a curiosity my whole life, so I was pretty much used to the animal-on-exhibit treatment by now.
    The girls had just moved from a small town in Nebraska where the male population was in single digits. The big rooming house my mom and aunt owned had vacancies, and it was near the University of Washington, where the girls’ moms were starting new jobs. From halfway across the country they’d negotiated a package deal that meant they could keep their families together.
    Coincidentally, Nebraska also happened to be the birthplace of my grandfather, Joshua Winters. So in my mind the girls had something going for them already. Besides the cute factor, that is.
    Silently, I got up, slipped into shorts and a T-shirt, and yanked open the door. “Hey!” I growled, and the taller, blond-haired girl — Sunday — almost went backward through the hallway wall. I hadn’t surprised the dark-haired one, though. Tia just looked at me as if she was bored, meeting my gaze in a little contest. Then she laughed. It was a great laugh, from somewhere deep inside her chest.
    â€œYou’re funny for a boy,” she said. “Most of the boys I’ve seen have long faces.”
    â€œI wonder why,” I said. The irony in my voice was supposed to remind her of the reason for her long-faced boys. Everyone knew the cloud we lived under. The bug that had caused Elisha’s Bear — the name some female Bible scholar, and then the world, had given the monstrous plague of 2067 — had visited three more times since then. So far the outbreaks had been away from North America, away from cities, never involving more than a few thousand males, and throwbacks at that, but who could predict when or where the next one would arrive?
    â€œHe ain’t funny,” her cousin said, shaking off her collision with the wall. “He scared the crap out of me.”
    â€œSorry,” I said, although I wasn’t. “But you woke me up. And ain’t isn’t a word.”
    â€œSorry, professor , but I spend my time on the things that count — the stuff we’ll be tested on in our trials. And grammar ain’t one of ’em.”
    â€œOur trials ain’t until September,” I said.
    â€œSpoken like a true slacker,” Sunday said.
    â€œBefore your aunt left for work,” Tia said to me, throwing her cousin a little frown, “she told us you’d show us the neighborhood. We were hoping it would happen this morning. ”
    â€œI have a history session,” I said, “in an hour.” School was out for the summer, but history was a year-round subject, separate from the rest of the curriculum. Unlike grammar — or creative thinking — history was a major piece of our trials. Disregard the past, suffer the future, the oft-repeated saying went.
    â€œWe know,” Tia said. “We’re registered, too.”
    â€œWe’ll keep you company,” Sunday said.
    â€œI have plenty of company already.” All the time. Everywhere. My aunt. My mom. A dozen official or unofficial watchdogs.
    â€œBut we can go with you?” Tia said.
    â€œIf my aunt said you can, then you can. But when I’m ready to leave the house, you have to be ready, too. I don’t like being late.”
    â€œWe’re set to go,” Tia said.
    â€œSo you really do care?” Sunday asked me.
    â€œI have to,” I said. Passing the trials was important to me — at least the practical me — because it would keep my options open. If I decided to stay within the confines of PAC-dictated society once I got to be an adult, I’d have educational, career, and citizenship opportunities (like voting, for instance) not available to people — guys, especially — who didn’t make the grade.
    We