Page 56 of Trade
I watch Meghan disappear among the angiosperms. She’s beginning to waddle.
Cecily sees where I’m looking. “I know we hate her, but damn, she’s young.”
I sigh. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“Did they tell you what happened?”
I snort. “I only get told what I’m going to do these days. And what I’m not going to say.”
Cecily snorts back. “Well, you weren’t gone for two days when Miss Meghan packed up her things and took herself back to Level N.”
My jaw drops. “She did?”
Cecily leans against the table, crosses her arms, and nods. “At first, we figured she didn’t like being iced out by every married woman in the bunker—and every married man who didn’t want to be sleeping on the sofa—but then we found out that wasn’t even the half of it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“She didn’t move back into the unmarried women’s dorm.”
“Where did she go?”
“Do you remember Paul Andrews?”
“The intern?”
Cecily nods. I remember him vaguely, mostly because he was considered very handsome by the ladies, but he was painfully shy, so he spent a lot of time hiding from female attention in the broadleafs. I came on him once crouching in the crepe myrtle, and I nearly had a heart attack. He did his rotation and moved on.
“That’s where she went. Straight to Paul Andrews in his dorm.” Cecily arches her sculpted eyebrows. “It was ascandal. Susan Jordan was down there trying to talk her into coming out. Paul attacked the guys from Safety and Compliance. They got Meghan’s parents down there to plead with her like it was a hostage negotiation.”
“I had no idea.” But then was Bennett really going to tell me his girlfriend ditched him?
“Well, turns out, it’s not so clear who the baby’s daddy is. Meghan and Paul were apparently sneaking off to the access tubes together when Meghan caught your old man’s eye. Her parents saw an opportunity, so they encouraged her to play along, and then, well, you know what happened then.”
“Oh. My. Wow.” I don’t know what to say. Or feel. Bennett ruined everything for nothing. But then again, what was there to ruin? A program that was downloaded into my brain at birth that I was playing along with, too? The trade we all made—freedom and happiness for the illusion of safety?
“To calm everything down, they let Paul move in with Meghan and her parents and promised they’d get their own quarters down on G once the baby’s born. It’s been made clear that we’re all expected to pretend like it never happened. Let me tell you, staff meetings have beenawkward. Meghan sits in the way back, looking like a tomato, Bennett stammers over his words, and everyone gets whiplash looking between him and her.” She cackles.
I manage a small smile. “All of that for a taste of apple at the holidays when there are trees full of them Outside,” I say.
Cecily immediately tenses and glances around. “You can’t talk about that,” she hisses. “I know it’s hard, but you can’t. They’re listening. I don’t know how, but they always are.”
“Sorry,” I murmur. I hate the fear in her eyes. I hate all of this.
She gives my hand a quick squeeze. “It gets easier,” she says.
“Does it?”
“It has to, right?” she says, then sighs, brushes her palms on her pants, and turns to her tomatoes. “Let me show you how my babies are doing.”
We don’t talk about Meghan or Bennett or Outside again. Cecily shows me her data, and we spitball some ideas for other variables she can test, like the fineness of the bone she’s been grinding for the fertilizer. She tells me about the newest developments in the feud between Alan and Reginald—and how she believes it’s foreplay, at least on Reginald’s part.
I ask about the mimosa and the black cherry I’d been trying to baby back to health. She tells me Amy took over sharing her water rations with them, but the leaf scorch and dieback are still progressing.
She doesn’t ask about my injuries, although her eye keeps returning to my busted lip. I don’t mention the Outside again.
Eventually, a tech asks for her help, and I’m left alone to wander around my trees. As long as I can remember, they’ve always been the same height. I grew taller, but they stayed the same. I always thought they were so grand, but I can circle my arms around each of their trunks and examine their topmost branches from a sixteen-foot ladder.
I don’t know what to do with myself. What did I do at work before? Worry, mostly. Check on things that never really needed it. Answer questions for nervous techs so no one accused them of doing the wrong thing under their own initiative.Can I split the last of this bag between the oak and maple? Should I go ahead and deadhead these? Do you think if we rotate the birch, it might fill out on the other side?
