PODs (8 page)

A girl sat in a corner of the living area, crying. She looked younger than me, maybe twelve or thirteen, with a mocha complexion and her hair in tight braids. I named her Baby. Not because she was crying—I did enough of that myself—but because she was obviously the youngest.

Finally, there was a boy sitting against the wall, doodling in a notebook. Brown hair fell over his face. He didn’t look up as I came in. I named him Doodle Boy.

I picked up my bags and walked to the hallway that led off the main room. I stuck my head in the first door and looked around. The room had the same white walls and brown carpeting as the main living space. Five beds—more like cots—filled the room, aligned perfectly from one end to the other. Only two were neatly made; one had a tangle of sheets and a pile of clothing that spilled onto the floor. What looked like two windows were set into the far wall—the curtain on one was pushed aside, revealing a glass pane that emitted a yellowish glow in a pale imitation of daylight.

“That’s the guys’ room,” I heard someone say. I realized it was Doodle Boy. He still didn’t look at me.

“Oh… sorry.”

“The girls’ room is at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. My smile was wasted. He didn’t look up from whatever he was doodling.

I walked down the hall, passing a bathroom and what looked to be a storage room before reaching what was apparently the girls’ bedroom. I went inside and looked around. It was a mirror image of the boys’ room, with one minor exception. There were only four beds—the fifth was a crib. The three girls who’d arrived before me had claimed their beds. On the bed closest to the wall was a box with my name on it. I flipped it open and found a laptop, the lid labeled with my name and the POD and sub-POD numbers.

Interesting
.

Closing the box, I looked around for a place to store my things. Someone spoke behind me and I jumped. I turned around and Friendly’s face was so close to mine our noses nearly touched.

I took a large step back. “Do you speak English?”

The girl raised her palms up and shrugged. “Little,” she said before rattling something off in a language I didn’t understand. This time it was my turn to shrug and smile.

Friendly started talking again; reaching under the bed, she pulled two drawers from the bed’s base. She pointed at my bags and then the drawers. She reached around me to the headboard and pulled down the front. Inside were shelves and a clock reading the day and time.

So much for storage space
.

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, her accent stretching out all the vowels.

She walked into the hall, motioning for me to follow her. When I didn’t, she ducked back in and motioned to me again, I followed. She entered the bathroom, where she showed me a row of metal lockers—the kind they had in school. They were about four feet high and two feet wide—not a lot of space to store everything I’d need for the next year.

Each brown door had a name on a card in a slot. The girl pointed to a name and then herself. “Jai Li.”

“Jah Li,” I said, trying to say it like she had. She smiled and nodded.

“Jai Li.”

I found my locker and pointed at it. It was labeled with my full name, Evangelina. She frowned and I laughed. I pulled a pen from my bag and scratched out the ending of my name, leaving only “Eva.”

I pointed to my name, and then myself. “Eva.”

She smiled. “Eva,” she repeated.

“Jai Li,” I said in return.

She giggled. I smiled at the sound. I’d just made my first friend. Of course, the only thing we could say to each other was our names, but maybe before this whole thing was over we’d find a way to connect.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the neighboring room. A stacked washer and dryer were next to the door, with a small washtub, a mop and broom, and other cleaning equipment. Beyond the laundry area, thick shelves held all the things we’d need for the year, like bins full of vitamins and shelf after shelf of neatly stacked MREs, each labeled with a POD resident’s name and a date for consumption. I fingered a stack of MREs with my name across the top.

Someone’s picked out what I’m going to eat every day for the next year of my life. How bizarre is that? How do they know I’m going to want lasagna on March 12th?

Additional shelves held things like toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste, cleaning chemicals, and laundry detergent. I turned around in a circle, taking everything in. My head pounded looking at the supplies. A year’s worth of my life sat on those shelves and all I could think was, what if they didn’t buy the right flavor of toothpaste? My mom knew what kind to buy. But she wasn’t there. And a quick glance at the shelf told me the right flavor of toothpaste wasn’t there, either.

What an idiotic thing to think of, Eva. Get a grip
.

Across from the laundry area was another small room, the door labeled “Waste.” Inside was a trash compactor and a chute for our garbage.

After the tour, Jai Li and I wandered back into the living area. I stood in the middle of the room, uncertain what to do next…or for the next year.

“I’m Tiffany,” a soft voice behind me said. I turned and found Pregnant Girl smiling at me from where she sat on the couch. She had a deep dimple in her right cheek.

“I’m Eva.”

“Nice to meet you, Eva. Did Jai Li show you everything?”

“I think so.”

“Well, there isn’t much to show.” She stood, her hand against her rounded belly. “We have a 1980s stereo—with a cassette player—and these.” She pulled a sliding panel open on the wall that separated the bedrooms from the living area. There were shelves behind it—shelves full of book after book after book. There must have been hundreds, many of them yellowed with age.

“Well, that ought to keep us busy for a while.”

“Yeah.” She smiled again. “There are DVDs, but we haven’t found a television to play them on yet, so we’re just watching them on the laptops. One’s probably stuffed in the storage room somewhere. We also have some board games and cards, and there are games on the laptops. They’ve set up a social media website on the POD-to-POD intranet, but so far no one’s in the mood for chatting or games.”

I nodded. I understood. Everyone was mourning the loss of someone, of everyone we’d ever known. For every one person in the PODs, there were thousands left topside. We’d all left people we loved up there.

I walked back to the bedroom. Thankfully, Jai Li didn’t follow, and Tiffany eased back into her position on the couch. After spending two weeks without anyone to really talk to, I had thought I’d be chatty, but I didn’t feel like being friendly. Thinking about the people left topside made something deep in my chest ache. My parents were up there.

I started unpacking my things. I reached in my suitcase, pulled out the too-cute-for-words-but-too-expensive purple hoodie my mom had insisted on buying me and started to cry. I slipped it over my head and finished unpacking while warm tears slid down my face.

That afternoon the last of our roommates showed up—a boy about seventeen or eighteen, tall and lanky, with dark mahogany skin.

“I’m Seth.” He didn’t stop to talk with anyone, just walked in the front door and through the POD to his bunk. That was okay. No one felt like talking much, anyway.

Just after Seth walked through the door, the tech locked it, just like he had after I’d arrived. But there was something else. We could hear the seal closing around the door. It sounded like a cat hissing. I hated the sound; knowing what was happening made me feel claustrophobic. I was stuck—we all were. We couldn’t get out of the POD until that seal was broken…and that could only be done from the outside. It was like we were in a prison. I guess we were.

For the next two days, no one spoke to anyone else. Surprisingly, it was a comfortable silence, considering we were nine strangers.

I fingered the small photograph taped to the headboard of my bed. I stared at my mom’s face; it blurred from my unshed tears. My head started to pound and my throat burned from trying to hold back a sob. I was starting to remember the good things about them rather than the last time I’d seen them. I didn’t want that memory to mar the many, many happy ones I had. But the happy memories were painful, too.

Day Four

Seth and Earphone Guy lay on their beds, listening to music. Doodle Boy was still hovering over his journal. He was either writing or drawing—either way, he didn’t look up, and he hadn’t said anything since he’d told me where the girls’ bedroom was. Mr. Antisocial stalked the POD with a scowl whenever he left his computer, and Baby still sat in the corner crying. Jai Li, while nice, didn’t have much to say that the rest of us could understand. Tiffany moved back and forth from the couch to her bed, reading and sleeping. Occasionally I could hear sniffles and muffled crying from her side of the room. And Beanbag Guy hadn’t left the beanbag since I’d arrived. He even slept in it.

I was pacing the kitchen, looking in cupboards and drawers, when Seth walked up to me.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” I said, grabbing the orange juice out of the double fridge and pouring a glass. It was made from a powder and had a weird aftertaste. “Want some?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“I’m Eva, by the way.”

“I’m S—”

“Seth,” we said in unison. I smiled.

“What do you think’s going on up there?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“People are still rioting and calling for a new raffle, convinced this one was fixed.”

“What do you think?”

“About the raffle? Yeah, I have a feeling it was rigged.” He shrugged one shoulder and drained his glass of juice. “Most people topside are sure it was. No one over the age of twenty-five was chosen, or anyone under twelve. The news is manipulating the facts, of course.”

“Yeah, I didn’t listen to their theories before I moved down here. I have my own.”

“What’s your theory?”

I jumped at the sound of his voice behind me. I got the slightest whiff of cologne when I turned to face him. I looked around the room and noticed our conversation had everyone’s attention.

“What’s your name, Doodle Boy? I don’t feel like discussing anything with someone who’s too rude to introduce himself.”

He tried to hide a grin. “Doodle Boy?”

“Yeah, all you’ve done since I got here is sit against the wall, doodling in your notebook. So I nicknamed you Doodle Boy.”

“Fair enough. My name is David.”

“Nice to meet you, David. I’m Eva.”

“So tell us about your theory, Eva. Why is everyone so upset about the raffle?” David asked.

I pulled out a chair and sat at the table. “Well, everyone is convinced it was fixed. Like Seth said, no one over the age of twenty-five was chosen. Children under the age of twelve were also left off the list. So it’s obvious that age was a factor in who was selected, raffle or otherwise.”

“They chose the young, healthy people,” Seth said.

“Yeah, but my theory doesn’t stop there. Seth, what was your best subject in school?”

“Math.”

“And what was your grade point average?”

“Four-point-oh.”

I nodded. So far my theory held up. “David? Tiffany?”

“Science and, yes, I carried a four point,” David answered, resting his chin on his fist and elbow on the counter.

“My best subject was also science,” Tiffany said, “I majored in biochemistry in college. Four-point-oh.”

“I’m George.” It was the first time Beanbag Guy spoke. “I was in college studying to be a nurse. I had a four-point-oh GPA, too—all through high school and college.”

“I’m Aidan,” Earphones Guy said quietly. “Computer science and networking. We had an honors track, so my GPA was a five-point-oh.”

Our eyes moved to Antisocial Guy. We waited for his answer.

“Josh, and what the hell difference does it make?” Pieces of the pretzel he was eating spewed from his mouth.

“So here’s my theory. If you wanted to rebuild a nation, you’d want young, healthy people, but also intelligent ones. After all, how could you build a great nation if it was filled with idiots? I would bet that if you polled the people who were chosen, you’d find they excelled in one subject or another. I carried a four-point-oh grade point average in school. I did well in all my courses, but I excelled in English.”