The Indigo Thief Read Free Page B

vaccine had a dose of Indigo that lasted for thirty-five years. When a person reached their fiftieth birthday, it expired, and they were euthanized. The Carcinogens affected adults even worse than kids. Kids just fell to the ground, dead, but the adults went insane and died a slow, terrible death. Doctors dubbed it “Madness.”
    I thought back to the birth certificate copies I’d scanned and printed that morning. “Four,” I said. I pointed to my cargo shorts. “One for each pocket.”
    “None in my purse?”
    Okay, I’d lied. I’d hidden an extra copy in her purse that morning. In case I got mugged or someone spilled coffee on me. I couldn’t be too careful. The copies were my ticket to a vaccine, and a vaccine was my ticket to life. I couldn’t admit my paranoia to Charlie, however.
    I shook my head and made a mental note to grab the extra copy from her bag later. “Nope,” I said. “Just the ones in my pockets.”
    “So you’re really not nervous, then?”
    Her eyes were blue, like the eyes of all citizens over fourteen, but there was something different about hers. They were brighter. Not a normal shade of blue like the others, but a shade I called “Charlie blue.” She squeezed my hand, and my palms got sweaty.
    “Maybe a bit nervous,” I said, “but it’s nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”
    I was terrified.
    I turned to the screen that flashed with the green-eyed girl’s mug shot. A diamond stud decorated her nose.
    Charlie rubbed my hand. “You don’t need to be nervous, Kai. You went with me on my birthday a couple months ago, and I was fine, wasn’t I? I didn’t pass out in the waiting room or anything.”
    I nodded. She was right. She hadn’t passed out.
    But I had. In the waiting room while she was getting vaccinated. The nurses had revived me with promises of dinosaur stickers. I still had a T-Rex stuck to my notebook. I didn’t tell Charlie. I wanted her to think of me as a man.
    I sighed. “It’s just, well, it’s the whole needle and iris thing, really. It’s not right, watching a needle come straight at your pupil like a rocket to the moon.”
    “Don’t think about it like that. You’re numb when they do it.”
    “I know,” I said, “but it’s the whole idea of it. I mean, why hasn’t someone been able to put the drug in a pill or a mist or, heck, even a handshake at this point?”
    “Oh yeah, because an Indigo handshake would be really effective.”
    “I don’t know. We’ve got screens that bubble, right? The whole procedure’s a lot to stomach, that’s all.”
    Charlie squeezed my hand again. It was still pretty sweaty. I should’ve wiped it on my shorts before she squeezed it again.
    She grabbed my right hand and put my first two fingers below her cheekbone. “At the appointment, they just have you do the Federal salute, look up, recite the pledge of allegiance—‘ The Federation must not fall ’—and you’re done. You rinse your eyes out with some drops and you leave.”
    “Oh, that’s it? Great, no big deal then, just shovin’ a needle in the ol’ retina. It’s casual.”
    She poked my side. “C’mon, Kai-Guy.”
    “You’re tougher than me, Charlie.”
    It was true. Her parents had been euthanized four years ago. They were old when they’d had her—thirty-nine—so she’d always known it was coming. It didn’t make things easier though.
    The state moved her to from her home in Kauai to Moku Lani to live in H.E.A.L., the Federal orphanage. H.E.A.L. stood for the Home for Emancipated Adult Leaders, but the place had a reputation for doing anything but healing its charges, who had only a fifty percent chance of living long enough to receive their vaccination. They just didn’t have the support necessary to make it.
    “You think I’m tough?” Charlie straightened the chopsticks in her bun. “The boy who free dives less than a hundred feet away from the megalodons thinks I’m tough? Quick! Call the press, this is big news!”
    I