Page 3 of Relyn
“Yeah, I’ve heard of those kinds of cousins. I’m not into that. This girl is all on the up and up.” She patted the dash above the steering wheel.
“Whatever. You’re weird.”
“I try. How’s your reading schedule going?”
Marco fiddled with his backpack and looked down. “I got a couple of pages down.” Which probably meant he’d opened it and read the first few pages with them in class.
“But I got a question. Why should I care about some girls that lived that long ago?” Marco said.
“It’s about the story, Marco,” Nora said. “It’s about being able to read people and their intentions. Sometimes the people you don’t trust turn out to be the ones trying to help you the most.”
“I don’t trust no one, no how.”
“That’s a double negative. You don’t trust anyone,” Nora corrected.
“Exactly. Maestra, in this world, you gotta look out for yourself.” Marco crossed his hands over his chest.
Nora sighed. “I would hope that you’d trust me.”
He looked dubious and then glanced out the window. They were already on their street. Marco slunk down real low in his seat. Nora slowed. As she reached his house, she could see four or so boys hanging out on the front porch, trying to stay out of the rain. She didn’t recognize any of them. Most of them looked slightly too old for high school, anyway, probably in their early twenties.
“Just keep driving, Miss. They don’t need to see you with me.”
“Who are they?”
“Just some guys. From Work.”
Nora was immediately suspicious of what kind of work he was doing, but she continued two houses down and pulled into the short tight driveway just big enough to hold her small car.
“Marco, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Nothin’.”
She turned off the car. He was trying to peek over the door frame to see if there was a clear view from his porch.
“Okay, but if those were guys from my work, and I was avoiding them like that, you’d suspect I was into something shady too.”
Marco opened the door and practically slid out. “Nah. You? Shady? Mississippi, you shine so bright, even Mr. Darcy wouldn’t be able to throw shade on you.”
And with that, he sprinted across the short distance to her tiny backyard, and disappeared among the trash cans. He’d probably hop the neighbor’s fence to get in his own back door, so the crowd at the front would be none the wiser.
Knowing it was foolish and dangerous to go sticking her white nose in neighborhood business, Nora got out of her car and climbed the steps of her own porch.
After the invasion, Philadelphia’s neighborhoods had become even more schizophrenic. The rich and middle class that had survived had tried to buy up as much outside the zone as possible, crowding the poor out of neighborhoods that had long been dismissed as untrendy, but many of them had nowhere to go. One street would be filled with bourgie tech workers doing thousands of dollars of upscale renovations, and the next block would be filled with those still working paycheck to paycheck and whose houses had needed a fresh coat of paint for the past twenty years. There had been hopes that this new arrangement would lead to a stronger, more diverse community. Instead, it seemed to just lead to uneasy neighbors.
Nora’s small slice of real estate had been one of the windfalls of her life. During her student teaching, she’d taken on a job, helping Marie, a retired teacher, in exchange for rent. The pair of them had lived together for two years, with Nora doing all the shopping and chores around the house, as Marie had been touched by the Blue and got winded after just a few steps. When Marie had died peacefully in her sleep one night, Nora wassurprised to find that Marie had left everything to her in her will, as she didn’t have any family left to leave it to.
So Nora had found herself with a house with no mortgage at the age of 22. Since then, she’d put away a portion of her salary a bit at a time, and remodeled as she went, still trying to keep the character of the house that Marie had loved so much.
Nora dropped her bag by the door and went to turn on the kettle. On a rainy day like this, she needed a cup of tea and a good book before she could even think of grading papers. Marie said it made her an old soul, just like her. Nora agreed.
Just as she sagged down into her favorite chair, the vid wall beeped. It was her one concession to newer tech. Nora had allowed her father to install it last year, after he went on and on about getting it for her as a gift. It only took one call to realize that he’d set it to accept her parents’ vid line without consent. The last thing she needed was her parents being able to drop in on her living room at any time without warning. Her father hadn’t mentioned anything when she reversed those permissions.
Nora sighed and took the call. Her parents' living room flashed into full view along her wall. Her mother looked disappointed to see her sitting there, a mug in one hand and a book in the other.
“Hello, darling. Did you hear the latest family news?”
No, she hadn’t, because if she had, her mother wouldn’t be calling, but Nora kept her mouth shut. Her mom would continue to tell her anyway.
