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"Not exactly the five-star accommodations you’re used to," I call, in the cheerful voice that infuriates her so She doesn’tI retrieve the canteen, set aside earlier to filter water collected froive you a comment card when this is all over so you can co herself up on her elbows She glares wearily attwo beds, Major" Her voice is tired, but there’s still a hint of that edge in it

Fighting the brief and insane i the leaf litter I’ into two piles Too quickly, she lapses back into silence and stillness And without her there to aggravate o

I can’t let ineabout the Icarus, the wayto say

I rerief after they told us about Alec, how the three of usmore than a handful of words My mother didn’t write a poely at the piles of food the neighbors dropped around I skipped school and went out every day to risk h overgrown forest until I was lost and exhausted Though never quite exhausted enough to sleep at night

Sloe learned how to talk about hi other than sadness Moh her poetry was irrevocably changed, she riting again Dad went back to his classroom, and I went back to mine

I waited impatiently for h so brother couldn’t, surviving the trenches, I could bring him back

I still don’t know if he believed in what he was doing--if he felt like he wasrebellions in a new colony every few ht the rebels had a point--occasionally I do--or if he just liked the rush, or wanted to see new places I was too young to think to ask those things when he went, and once he was on assignment, we just wrote back and forth about trivial, everyday things You don’tnear someone you love You don’t want to attract the reaper’s attention

My parents and I fought when I told theotiated a kind of peace around e every week, for the words that will tell theet home

I can’t listen to the part of ht not ain

"At that stage had you reached the plains?"

"No, we caress those first few days Can I get soood time, Major Hoas Miss LaRoux’s emotional state?"