Album: Endemic
Band: Parathion

Toby: So this is the song I wrote about my hypothetical girlfriend.

Cain: Geez, lot of songs about lesbians on this one.

Toby: You don't know they're lesbians. I'm bi. Maybe they're bi.

Cain: They're also not here. You can date fake girls, or you can date a real me! And Luka! Who is the full package! I mean, love the one you're with, right? Maybe?

Toby: I'm going to need to start the recording again. You've ruined it. I hope you're happy with yourself.

Cain: Nah, I'll cut it out in post-production.

Toby: First of all, 'post-production' is just you taking the tape out. Second, that's a filthy lie.

Cain: I'm offended.

Toby: You always keep it in, because you think it's so funny.

Cain: It is funny.

Toby: I hate you.

Cain: No you don't.

Toby: Don't I?

Cain: Are you going to start?
Toby: [Takes in a deep breath.] One, two, three--

When I moved out of the nursery, my mother gave me the room that faces east. Since we're living near the harbor, this means I get an almost unobstructed view of the sky each morning as it rises in its thousands of shades of peach and rose. I can say all kinds of things about the emotions the colors have evoked in me since I was small, the tender yearning that blossoms in me and reminds me to get up no matter what I stand to face-- I suppose it's much simpler, much easier to say that the sun is my friend.

She's also the friend of the finicky old solar panels in the fields down below, sloping down the shore towards the harbors, where on one hand boats wait like loyal dogs near the cliffs and on the other hand, on more even land, our world recedes without much of a fight into the water. I've always thought of Maine herself walking into the sea to drown. The sun loves the sea, too, even though the sea and the land are opposed, the sun loves the grasses and the deer who eat them, the sun loves all the animals and the sun loves the humans that screwed them all over. Only the sun is powerful enough to love everyone without having to pick sides or reconcile contradictions. It helps that the sun is unthinking-- it really helps, because then the sun has to justify nothing to anyone. If anyone out there is looking for a higher power that will shape your life, save your world, and still love you intimately, something out there bigger than you that is definitively "there" and looking out for you... the sun is right there. Go attach whatever narrative you want to that.

Returning to the domestic, I look up at my scabby ceiling and then back over to the barren wall, which is covered in little marks from cuts Cain made with a knife, places where I punched the wall, places where we all hung up posters that got taken down later, who knows what else, and what appear to be food stains whose origins I don't remember. The rest of the room is nice, but it's lacking the kind of decorum that one might have in I don't know, a room where commercially available plastic goods are still being produced, rendering everything easily replaceable. Everything in here, from the bed to the bookshelf, has been needing repairs for twenty years, and I don't ask for them, because we have more important things to spend rations on.

Speaking of rations, it smells like eggs in my house. The house has the best smell acoustics of anywhere I've ever been. Someone could crack a soda in the basement and I'd smell it in the attic. As I stumble down the stairs, I see eggs cooking over the fireplace. My mother tends to them in her old, ratted apron, turning when she sees me with a slight, very condescending smile. "What are you up to today, Toby?"

"Not much," I say, grabbing and extending an open plate from a nearby table in the "living room". Like most of our plates, it cracked a while ago and was repaired with an old tube of Krazy Glue. At least the silverware's intact. Actually, it's a wonder someone hasn't stolen it yet to give to some militants in Northton to burn down for weaponry. Not that crime is that common, because law enforcement is a little more... strict... and communally based... now, but if I was going to risk starving or burning at stake, starving is longer. "Do you think they'd let anyone starve if they were low on credits?"

She shovels egg onto my plate, just more than she knows I'll eat. It's a big, scrambled mess straight from the chickens. "Good morning, Toby."

I twirl my fork around before finally lodging it into the gooey gold mess. "I'm just thinking."

"Can I ask why you'd be thinking of this?"
"It'd finally get rid of old MacGregor, but then I don't know who'd make all the moonshine," I say. "Wow, I miss apples. We have three months until they're ready, right? Do you think the spitters are going to give up their apples earlier? I checked on Preston yesterday before I left for Cain's house. He looks like he's doing okay, but man, if we could just get some apples..."

"I heard about the summons."

I look up with a large piece of egg in my mouth. I don't have much of an appetite, so this is primarily a favor for her and not for me. I slide the fork out, swallow, and place my utensil and the plate down. "Yep."
"You'd better be going this time. We've been far too lenient with you. If you were anything like Ellie--"

"Oh, don't we all wish I was Ellie?" I ask. "Look, I'll get married, knocked up, and pregnant soon enough, so you can stop nagging me about it like my body's a big old receptacle for someone's crummy baby. For now, I'm going to go look for a job I actually want to do, and you know what? I'll go do that."

"At least I know now that you're looking for a job," she says, her voice pulled taut by bitterness. "As opposed to doing absolutely nothing with the Alexanders' child and... the Roscuro boy."

I'm halfway across the room already, close enough to exit the house without bothering to give her a response. The door clicks shut, and I saunter out into a new day in Easton. No one bothers with gardening these days, so there are weeds everywhere. Patrick's outside already, playing in the dirt with his friends and gathering onion grass to dry in the sun and eat or sell later. They can pick up a credit or two for them from some obliging merchants who've found a thousand ways to cook them. It makes the kids feel like they're doing something.

"You kids having a good haul?"

Mimi Giles informs me, sharpening a stick with a rock while grinning at me the whole while. "Not yet. But we're gonna go hunt squirrels later! One of the Bayford kids caught one, and David from town said he'd teach us how to get 'em."

"He'll teach you how to set traps. You're not going to need a stick for that."

"Might for the Bayford kids," Mimi says.

"Yeah," yells Patrick. "Teach 'em to wreck our forts!"

I shouldn't be encouraging this. "Try to go for the hair, not the eyes. Hair pulling hurts, eye gouging gets you in trouble. Remember, as long as it doesn't leave marks, you're not going to get in trouble."

"Thanks, Toby!" yells Patrick.

I keep walking. As the trees shuffle overhead, patches of sunlight fall on the ramshackle houses on the suburb edge, moving in towards center town. A few places are burned down or ruined by improper foundations or who knows what else-- when something's really beyond repair, when there's nothing left to do, sometimes it just gets dropped. What else are we supposed to do? There's nothing we can really do against nature, anyways. The buried power lines have wide protections around them, usually bordering the streets, which were asphalt at one point and are now cracked through with weeds. Middle town is the only place that still looks civilized, where nothing's managed to butt its head in. There are some scorch marks from a fire eight years back, and the stone work, where it exists, is worn, but for the most part faded paint and dilapidated buildings proudly exclaim central Easton is open for business.

I stare right up at the blue sky overhead as I enter the queue, alone, outside of the sprawling library which has been repurposed to the Hanshaws' offices. There's already fifteen people outside, waiting for entrance in single-file. Cain's got to be late. Luka's usually good about these things, but he sleeps in on Mondays, right after our little "excursions" to Cain's basement.

The sun catches my eye. I squint directly into the light.

I wish we'd done something last night.

I wish I had a coin right now.

It had to be a freak coincidence, didn't it?

"They're not open?"
Luka's approaching fast. I tip my glasses. "How are you feeling?"

She gives me a quick two-finger signal and a smile. "Pretty good. It's always nice to see you, Toby." She glances around me at the queue of strangers. "Think we'll be here all day?"

"One would hope not."

"You have anything else you want to do?"

"There's always something else I should be doing."

Luka grabs my hand. "It'll be okay, Toby."

I can't help but smile a little when she puts her butterfly-light and sunbeam-warm fingers through mine. They're a little dusty from the morning, and the bags in her eyes inform me she's been awake since four in the morning, rising with the dawn to do chores so she could accompany us to take punishment for something that's not even her problem. Toby Alexander is a saint.

I don't deserve her.

We stand in line between adults we both know, in small town fashion, and I mentally work out why each of them must be here-- Ms. Helens must be here to complain about how distressed the local children are making her chickens, Rhodes is definitely going to submit that request for using scrap from a broken tractor to make that sword he's always wanted and he's going to get denied again, Annabel's probably asking for permissions for an extended holiday on campus over at Bayford. She always goes because Weston's where all the "innovation" happens, or so she says, and comes back with a half dozen hickeys and maybe a few tips on crop rotation that we don't have the right seeds or temperature to utilize. I try not to roll my eyes. She looks so anxious.

"Woah, is that Fred Jacks? You guys don't think the farmers and the fishermen are having a fight again over credit rates, do you?" asks Cain, busting in between Luka and I and grabbing one of our shoulders apiece. "Man, I love our economy. If I was capable of giving half a shit about anything, I'd be studying the hell out of it."

"You might want to quiet down a little," I say to Cain.

Cain smirks. "You afraid of something, Tee?"

"Fred Jacks could snap any of us like a toothpick." The man's biceps are larger around than I am.

"Pshaw, he wouldn't. We're all farmers here," Cain winks. "I mean, nominally, my dads are tradesmen, but remember when the tree fell on the barn a few months ago? They were the ones who chopped that baby into firewood. Not that it was great firewood, but... so. Think they're finally going to assign us to compost duty like they've been threatening for eight months?"

"I don't know, maybe?" I mutter. "Keep it down. I don't want anyone to know we're here. There are certain people who I might not want to--"

"Hark!" calls a voice from yonder, accompanied by the whinny of either a spooked horse or a very theatrical one. Cain has contemplated getting voice samples of the horse to use in a song, but there's no genre of music that really screams "horse noises". This is what Cain calls a failure of imagination. I can see him smirking as said horse approaches, bearing a rider with a horsey face open in a wide smile. I want to withdraw back into my shirt and past that back into a small pocket dimension. The rider calls, "Is that Ms. Engel I spy, with her two... companions? How would you happen to be on this day, which is fine as your sister, who so happens to be my wife?"

"Who are you again?" Cain asks. He knows.
"Cassius, assistant junior apprentice town co-paladin." Cassius always indulges him because he likes the sound of his own voice even more than Cain enjoys pretending he doesn't care about people.

"Wow, that really does sound less impressive with every single word you say," I whisper. "Paladin" is a fancy nerd word for "police on horses", but they do get to carry swords and have the whole chivalric duty thing going on. It's one of the wonderful anachronisms caused by society being rebuilt by total losers.

"May I inquire as to what you might have just said, Ms. Engel?" asks Cassius.

"Nothing, nothing, I'm just nervous about... our meeting to talk about playing during the next full moon festival. We've been working on this new set, and Cain agreed to behave, so, we thought we might get a song or two in edgewise..." I grit my teeth into what I hope approximates a smile, my elbows ready to stab whichever one of my companions (probably Cain) who does something to either make my lie worse or blow my cover (Cain).

"One set? We have a half dozen sets," Cain boasts. "Are we talking the Parathion set? That's not really summer festival material--"

"I was thinking Junebug," I say.

"Is Junebug out of retirement? I love Junebug!" Luka gasps.

Cassius says, "If the Hanshaws doth allow, I suppose it's just as well that the three of you be of some general use. I only ask, humbly, that you be on your best behavior this summer. For instance, if there's another incident with fireworks, shanking, raccoon wrangling, watermelon smashing, letting the dogs out, unexpected trips to Bayford, expired beans, young bears in dog cages, using any sort of public infrastructure as a musical instrument, truck stealing, fuel guzzling, Wiccan rituals... Ms. Engel and... Cain, I must inform you that you two are now legally adults which means we will be persecuting you to the furthest extent of the law."

"I'm ready to suffer for art," Cain announces.

"I'm not," I intercede. "Especially not bad art, Cain."

"I'm really offended," Cain says, as if he's actually offended.

Cassius surveys the three of us. "Ms. Engel, I don't mean to disempower you in any way, but while I know you've previously displayed a certain distaste in following your sister's path into competitive housewifery, I do believe you're underestimating the importance of domestic work in this town, and I think that you know that in the end, you are going to have to make a decision, and we all hope it's a good one, befitting of your moral character. May you have a pleasant day with the administration." He clicks the reins of the horse.

As the ass and the horse's posterior both clear out of the way, I see a girl holding a cigarette leaning against the gray-stained wall of the building. She looks up at me as if she's been waiting for me to notice that she's there. I use a liberal definition of "look", because her eyes are covered by bangs so heavy that I can't even make out her eyes, but I can still feel the intensity of her gaze on me. She brushes a finger over it, flicking waves of ginger-brown across like waves on a dawn sea, and though I still can't make out the color, for a second I catch the outline of an eye underneath it all, and feel a sudden jolt in my heart, as if I've been stabbed.

My throat tight, I ask Cain and Luka, "Do you two see that?"

"See what?" asks Cain.

Girl's gone. Coin's standing on its edge. What is wrong with me?

"Great, I think I really might be going crazy," I whisper under my breath.

"We can all hear you whispering about going crazy under your breath, Toby," Cain whispers under his. "And this isn't news to anyone."

"We should go inside," Luka whispers, standing close enough in between us that the whispering does nothing to abate her audibility. There's no one between us and the entrance to the building besides a huge hole which any one of the snippy, busy adults might fill at any moment, so we hustle in.

The interior of the building smells like a library and contains thousands of books, but it's had administration cast over it like a blanket. Papers lie in stacks everywhere. Every rope in the town has been appropriated at some point to turn into queue lines. Huge posters flank once-bare walls, usually crudely drawn in the absence of computer-assisted diagram making. Due to the inherent danger of fire, even with helpful containers for the flames, most of the library is lit naturally by huge windows. The place is still solemn and washed-out as its exterior, with a nervous energy that jitters under its skin.

We approach the reception desk, which houses Gina, the singular "intern" in any remotely white-collar job in Easton, looking frantic and bothered as usual. The library's fun light fixtures, which have electricity on every third Sunday, when we appropriate the town's power to them, swing listlessly over her head like the Sword of Damocles. "We're talking to--" I begin.

"Hanshaw wants you in the back."

Cain nods stiffly, then jerks a finger towards the back-back room. At some point, it was some kind of board room for people to hold meetings in, but now it's been fully refurbished with sofas and whatever antique furniture could be generously donated in exchange for "political favors". The first can of beans cracked open after the damage is on display in a glass case.

Ms. Hanshaw sits in the back, hands folded across each other. Her hair has silvered and her skin sags, but she has the regality of a heron on the banks of a river, and we are all fish, waiting to be plucked out and devoured. She purses her lips, then, with a broad sweep of her hand, gestures us all into the few spare wooden chairs before her. These are less fun than the sofas.

"You will be doing compost duty this entire summer. Sunrise to sunset," she says once we've situated ourselves. "You may leave."

"And what happens if we don't? Pay dock?" asks Cain.

She shakes her head. "I was going to say something more like exile."

I suck in a breath.

"Excuse me? Ma'am, I don't mean to doubt your authority, but that might be a little harsh. We've always managed to make ourselves useful, and since we've never had a set job, we've been able to assist everyone with their work. Settling on a single job isn't going to help us specialize, it limits our natural utility towards others," Luka has on her honey-talk voice.

Ms. Hanshaw nods. "I knew that's how you'd see it. The way I see it, we've been incredibly considerate towards you and your... peculiarities. I'm the mayor of a burgeoning city entirely cut off from the world at large. Our electricity is limited. Our manpower is limited. Our sister cities are all dysfunctional to a greater degree than we are. For all we know, the rest of the world is gone. Things are good here, but they're precariously good. We only have so much of the original stockpile of food left, and after that, we're going to have to start stockpiling for emergency in much, much greater quantities. If you were in that position, and some of your youngest and healthiest humans continuously refused to do their due, I don't think you'd be too generous to them, would you?"

She caught us. We're young, we're stupid, and we really, really do not want to settle into a formal job. I'm thinking of the next excuse, the next promise we'll make that'll keep us busy through the summer. "Compost duty, though?"

"I don't need to make excuses to the grasshoppers who played all summer, last summer, and the summer beforehand while all your fellows were becoming the best ants they could be," she says. "Toby, Luka, I think we've already discussed special situations for your particular aptitudes, if you do want to... take them at some point."

No, I do not.

"I'll think about it," Luka says. "If they really want me at Donnerston."

She nods. "This has been a lovely conversation. We'll see you at dawnbreak tomorrow, if you need an accurate time, I don't know, five. Now, if I hear about any insubordination, which I already know I will, I'll see you again, but I want you to remember that the first time, I was nice."

Cain gets to his feet without a word. We both wait for him to make her life a little more difficult. We wait for Cain to do something so stupid only he would have the balls to do it. We wait for Cain to be Cain. Cain keeps gazing into the dark, not at her but past her, and then he turns and leaves the room without us.

"You're kidding," Luka whispers.

Ms. Hanshaw says, "You two both know you're making a mistake."

"Thanks for letting us make it," I say. "I think, if you don't mind, I'll keep making it for the time being. Come on, Luka, let's go."

Luka holds tight to my side on the way out. My mind spins with hours of working with animal and human refuse, alongside decaying plant matter. It lands on none of this and instead back on the girl, the stranger, the way she looked at me under her bangs. The undercurrent of the scene has so little to do with what's actually going on that it makes me a little dizzy. Should I be waiting for something to come for me? Why do I feel like I'm about to be launched off a cliff when we've arguably been rooted in the ground?

Why did it keep standing on edge?

Am I the only one concerned about what arguably could have been...

We find Cain outside tapping out something on his necklace, which is blackened metal of some unidentifiable, heavy variety that clutches a small metal anchor charm I'm convinced he was born with. Most of the time, it's his drum, but he fidgets with the chain when he's simulating a guitar, too. I see his lips moving as he works through lyrics.

"Cain," I say, pushing his shoulder.

Cain keeps going. I can usually read his lips well enough, but I think this is a new song. He moves his thumb and forefinger all the way up the chain and then lets go.

"Let's go home and practice," Luka says.

"We're not actually playing Junebug," Cain warns, removing himself from the wall. He slouches when he's upset. It might be more endearing if it wasn't so obvious.

"Let's go home and practice for us," Luka clarifies.

Cain glances out of the way. "Right."

The sky's a low, soft blue. it reminds me of still water and... girl. Ginger-brown hair. Big bangs. Wild eyes. Where had I seen her before? I know everyone in the town. Everyone! She could be visiting, but I know most of the regular visitors, too.

"You guys really didn't see anything earlier?" I ask.

"No," Cain says. "Is it that important?"

"It's not important, I just..." I pause. I don't know how to tell him that this is bothering me without seeming unduly dramatic. "I think I'm a little messed up right now, too. Let's go home and get real messed up on the piano. Drums. Don't your dads have a harp down there somewhere? Let's just go do something that makes us happy."

Cain's basement is just the way we left it, that is to say, a mess. His dads are out during the day in center town. Nominally, they have a job that involves something vague about transport, but they can be found at the city square most days, essentially busking. If people didn't love them, Cain's whole family would have been run out of town years ago, yet whenever catastrophe strikes, whenever the noose should tighten around their necks, someone talks about how Derek babysat their kid, how Evann fixed their roof leak free of charge, how the two of them make the best pies or helped them with their job when things were rough.

Cain messes with the guitar. He has their energy even if he doesn't have their blood. His face twitches as he adjusts the strings.

"What band are we on, anyways?" Luka asks, situating herself behind the keyboard. She plugs in the solar battery.

"Luka is There Also?" Cain says.

"Sure," I say.

"Luka, drums. Toby, keys. Give me a line."

I tune the keyboard to bass and start playing him a line.

"Lower."

I drop it.

"Lower again."

Cain takes the most sinister rift he can manage, dark, heavy, all electric. We're not supposed to use this outside of special occasions, but any occasion is special if you're angry enough, I guess... Cain, come on.

"Luka, hit it!"

I have no idea what we're playing, but the whole house sags with it. The noise is this deep, rough rumble, this terrible growl that goes on and on. We are all feeling it in unison. It's hard to tell if what we do is work or play. We know what we're supposed to be doing, we know what we have to do, but nothing feels right like this. Nothing feels good like this. When you really give yourself over to the sound, when, for a second, you exist on the wavelength, everything feels right.

For a second, the fear cuts out, and the future does not exist.