Page 6 of Where Would You Be Now? (The Bannerless Saga 0.50)

“You’re good with the kids. They’re comfortable with you.”

“Yeah, I like them too.” She didn’t worry so much with the kids. She didn’t think about the future so much. Kids were easy: keep them fed, keep them clean, do everything to keep them safe. Simple. If she could teach them to read, then she’ll really have accomplished something.

Maggie seemed to draw even tighter to herself. Her shoulders were rigid, her hands in fists.

Kath’s brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s just … you looked like … you don’t want to have your own kids, do you?”

She hadn’t thought about it at all. Food and security, that was what she thought about these days. The question startled her, and she had to think a moment, but that moment was too long for Maggie.

“Oh God, you’re already pregnant, aren’t you? That’s why you like the kids, you’re practicing—”

“What? No! What gave you that idea?”

This didn’t seem to help. “But you’re having sex. Tell me, are you having sex?”

Kath glared. “I’m twenty years old, of course I’m having sex!”

“And you’re pregnant.”

“No, God no!”

“But have you been using protection? How do you know?” Maggie seemed desperate.

Kath paused, then shot back, “Because I’m sleeping with Melanie!”

Maggie drew back, and Kath wondered what she was going to rant about next. It wasn’t that she and Melanie had been hiding anything. It just made sense to double up on tents to save space, and they hadn’t actually announced anything when they became more than friends. It wasn’t being gay that Kath thought would upset people. It was being … adult. She wasn’t growing up. She was grown.

Now, Maggie did cry. Or laugh. Something that came from tension releasing, and causing whatever was holding her together to collapse. She slumped against the wall, both hands covering her face. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I’m sorry. It’s just … we can’t feed everyone, and people keep having babies and we can’t do anything, we can’t feed them—”

Kath put her arms around the woman and just held her.

“God, look at me,” Maggie said around sobs. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you and just look at me.”

“You don’t have to take care of me,” Kath said. “You have enough to worry about, just let me … be me.”

They stayed like that awhile, hidden in the shelter of the building where Maggie could lose it in private, and Kath stayed to make sure she was okay. The older woman had been right at the edge for such a long time.

Maggie finally pulled away, scrubbing tears off her face and chuckling at herself, a strained and painful sound.

“So, you and Melanie, huh? I think I knew that. Yeah. Oh God, I’m so messed up I can’t see what’s right in front of my face. I promised your mom I’d look out for you and if you turned up pregnant in this mess—” She took a shuddering breath, rubbed her face one more time. And like that she had put on a new mask, and was smiling. “I’m sorry. I forget sometimes, that you’re grown up.”

Kath offered words, a gesture of comfort, though it might hurt as much as it helped. Kath wanted to say it. “I never got to come out to Mom,” she said softly. “I mean, I sort of knew, I was starting to figure it out. Figuring out that I didn’t just put those pictures on my wall because I liked beach volleyball so much, you know? But I never told Mom.”

“Oh, hon. You know she’d be okay with it, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But I wish…” She shook her head. They all wished.

“You should be in college,” Maggie murmured, running a hand over Kath’s hair.

All the adults said that to her in their most maudlin moments. She should be in college. Not staying up half the night with a gun under her arm. Kath herself had stopped believing anything woul

d ever change. This was just what life was now. There’d never be somewhere else.

“Where would you be now?” she asked Maggie.

She looked around at the wide-open compound that used to be part of a pleasant street, the modest building now crammed with solar panels it didn’t used to have. “I’d be here, I think. But it’d be a lot different. Can you do a watch shift tonight? Mike’s come down with something.”

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