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  Though I barely know him and wouldn’t risk following a stranger unless in the most extreme circumstances, I’m desperate. Besides—his parents are bound to be home. It’s a Sunday. The Grays would’ve been at church this morning, praying for friends and family and a better tomorrow. Surely they’ll be waiting for us when we get there. Right?

  I shake the thought from my head and allow Leon Gray to lead me a few units down from my own. When we come to apartment 10, he opens the door and calls, “Mom!”

  “Yes, sugar?” a pleasant voice replies. “Where are you? And be quiet. Your father’s taking a nap.”

  “I’m here, Mom. And okay,” he says as he stamps the frost off his boots. I do the same simply out of courtesy.

  “Do you have someone with you?” A woman peeks around the corner. She steps out to reveal the dough she is stirring within a simple ceramic bowl. “Oh. Hello there, dear.”

  “Hello,” I manage, lowering my eyes.

  “Is she one of your friends, Lee-Lee?”

  “We used to go to school together,” Leon replies, the hint of annoyance in his voice likely caused by the juvenile nickname. He turns to regard me for a moment before returning his attention to his mother. “This is Sophia Garza. From apartment 7.”

  “Oh! Miss Garza! How’s your mama doing, honey?”

  “Not well.”

  “I brought her here to give her some hand warmers.” Leon starts into the house. “Is that okay?”

  “Her mama’s sick, honey. Of course it’s okay.” Mrs. Gray watches me with sad, sympathetic eyes. “Go get her the hand warmers, Lee-Lee. And Sophie, dear, you come here for a minute.”

  I nod and move forward as Leon disappears into the depths of the apartment, which is sectioned off into separate rooms with dividers like our own. His absence, brief as it happens to be, is unsettling. I already feel like a stranger here. What could his mother possibly want?

  In the small kitchen, she turns to face me. “Do you need anything?”

  “No,” I reply. “Just the hand warmers.”

  “I mean… do you need food, child? Someone to help you cook?”

  “No ma’am. I don’t.”

  “Are you sure? Because I can help you cook something if you need it. We have to go out front and use the burn barrel to cook the biscuits, but I’d be happy to send some home for you and your little brother.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have no way to repay you.”

  “There’s no need to repay me, honey.” The woman laughs and sets the bowl of mixed dough down. “We’ve got to stick together here at the Sunset Suites. Am I right?”

  I nod, though hesitantly at that.

  About this time, Leon has returned with the hand warmers. He holds the packages carefully, as if any slight movement will cause the chemicals inside to activate. “These should help until the power comes back on,” he says.

  “They better hurry up and fix it,” Mrs. Gray says. “Otherwise we’re going to have a whole lot of people freezing tonight.”

  I don’t even want to think about that. Rather, I reach out, accept the hand warmers, and say, “Thank you, Mrs. Gray. I’ll come back for the biscuits.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Leon says.

  He leads me back into the cool winter, and unlike what I expect, he walks with me toward my apartment unit—his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes set to the ground below him.

  “So,” he says, after a moment’s hesitation. “What’ve you been doing to pass the time now that you’ve been out of school?”

  “Honestly?” I ask, turning to face him. “Gaming.”

  “Which one?”

  “Dystopia.”

  “Ah.” Leon smiles. “I had to cut off my internet because my family needed my GAC.”

  “I feel guilty that I haven’t been giving my mom mine.” A twinge of embarrassment flutters about my ribcage. “I mean, I use most of it to buy food for me and Diego. The little bit I have squirreled away was to keep the internet on and to upgrade my hardware, but you know how long that takes to save.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Honestly, Leon…” I close my eyes and sigh. “I wanted to place.”

  “Place?”

  “In the regionals. So I could maybe win the million.”

  “Oh.” He frowns. “Wait. You said wanted to?”

  “Today was the last day to place in ranked. My computer went out during the blackout. During one of my qualifying matches.”

  “I’m sorry.” I can tell from the way his eyes fall that he’s unsure what to say. “I can only imagine what that must’ve felt like.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it,” I reply. I shove my hands into my pockets alongside the hand warmers as we come to stand beside my apartment and lift my eyes to face him. “I mean… being out of school and all… I thought I’d try, you know? It’s not like I can go get a job until I turn sixteen, and that doesn’t happen until next week.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. You do what you can to help your family.”

  “It just doesn’t seem like it’s enough.”

  There’s nothing either of us can say in response to that.

  I reach up to run my hand through my long dark hair, then reach for the doorknob. “Thank you for the hand warmers. I’ll come back after I’ve tended to my mother.”

  “All right,” Leon says as I push the door open. “Oh, hey. Sophia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t lose hope. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I reply.

  I close the door behind him.

  In a world like this, it’s hard to have hope sometimes. It’s even harder to keep going.

  Chapter 2

  We eat biscuits by candlelight as the sun falls and masks our world in shadow. Coupled with the soup Mrs. Gray has provided, it is a meal I wouldn’t have had the energy to make after my premature defeat, especially for a family who has been relying on me so heavily for the past six months.

  “Sophie,” Diego says, lifting his eyes from his half-eaten bowl to look at me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you still sad that you didn’t win your game?”

  “Not really,” I say, hoping he won’t press me on the matter any further.

  The truth is: I’m devastated. The knowledge that I’d come so close to maintaining a ranking position on the Dystopian leader boards only to have it ripped away from me by an error of human machinery is like having a kidney removed without permission. Bound, then gagged; lifted, then pulled; deposited into, then shut within the trunk of a car. It is as if I have been kidnapped and no longer have a will of my own—as if fate, whoever she happens to be, left the course of my future in the hands of someone else.

  As I think on this, and as I try my hardest to maintain my composure in light of all that has happened, I hope Diego won’t see that I’m upset. It’s dark, thankfully, so he won’t notice the disappointment on my face. If I’m not careful though, he’ll definitely hear it in my voice.

  Rather than continue the conversation, I spoon the last of my soup into my mouth, then rise and extend my hand to accept Diego’s empty bowl. “Time for bed, squirt,” I say.

  “Aww!” Diego says. “Really, Sophie?”

  “It’s dark, and you have to be up for school in the morning.”

  “But—”

  I shake my head.

  With a sigh, he makes his way toward his side of the room.

  “Brush your teeth!” I say. “You know what Mama says about a stinky mouth.”

  “Stinky mouths are for stinky people,” Diego responds, and begrudgingly heads toward the bathroom.

  Allowing myself a moment of respite in the small kitchen along the far wall, I breathe in, then out. I imagine my emotions are pooling from me with each exhale, and fresh hope with every inhale. Regardless, it doesn’t seem to help. Images of what could have been continue to flash through my mind.

  A prize, unimaginable—

  Lives, changed—

  Futures, fulfilled—

  My mother could see a doctor. Diego could go to a better school. And me? Well, I could take care of my family forever—or, at least, for a very long time.

  I shake these thoughts out of my head. Even the fantasy is too painful to imagine.

  After I have tucked Diego into bed, and recited by heart his favorite story, I slip into my mother’s bedroom. The interior is so shrouded in darkness that I can barely see a thing.

  “Magpie?” she asks. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Mama. It is.”

  I can’t help but smile at the nickname, which I’d earned from my obsession with birds as a child. The semblance of normalcy it brings is enough to dull the ache in my heart and the throb at the back of my neck.

  “Come here,” she says.

  Fumbling through the darkness, I come to the bedside. When my mother’s hand finds mine, I squeeze, but gently. Her skin is hot to the touch.

  “Did you get enough to eat?” I ask, not looking toward the bowl she’d requested I’d only fill a third of the way for fear that my movements might upset her.

  “I did,” she replies.

  “You’ve gotta eat more, Mama.”

  “I know, sweetheart. And I will. Just… not tonight.”

  I sigh.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I lie.

  “Magpie.”

  “Really, Mama. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  She doesn’t say anything for several long moments. When she finally does, it’s to ask, “Did you win your game?”

  I want to say no—that I didn’t, because the truth is almost too painful to bear. But rather than offer her an answer that is lik
ely to bring harm, I say, “I tried my best.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  This time, the smile that comes is genuine, not forced. She’s always been my biggest supporter. I just wish I could do more for her.

  After a moment of holding her hand—of squeezing, of running my thumb along her sweaty palm and thinking on what tomorrow may bring—I rise from my place on the bed. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

  “Sleep well, baby.”

  “G’night, Mama.”

  “Goodnight,” she says.

  I perform my nighttime rituals in the privacy of a darkened home. I brush my teeth, comb my hair, wash my face and my body, and dress into the insulated pink nightgown that has seen better years. Once beneath the covers, I consider what little moonlight streams in first through the windows, then the slats in the divider separating my side of the room from the rest of the apartment. Then, I begin to wonder.

  What would have happened had the power not cut off when it did? Would I have killed the Lobo? Would it have killed me? Would I have emerged victorious in a battle of wits against not only the computer-generated monsters, but the player characters about the map? I know I’m a good gamer, but just because I’m skilled doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t better.

  I sigh.

  The fact of the matter is: it doesn’t matter. By ‘leaving’ the match early, even if not by my own will, I will be penalized for my supposed poor sportsmanship. Even if I somehow did rank in the leader boards, my chances of being summoned to compete in the Kingsman Online Gaming Regionals are slim to none.

  Better to believe you failed than to believe you have a chance, my conscience says.

  Though it stings, I can’t deny the truth of the matter.

  As I close my eyes, and as I begin to drift off to sleep, I can’t help but think of how great life would be if I was invited to the Kingsman Regionals.

  At least I’d get to compete.

  At least I’d have a chance.

  I awaken sometime the following morning to the groan of the furnace coming back on. Tired beyond compare from a restless night, I expel a breath and roll over to bury my face in my pillows. There’s nothing I want more than to succumb to sleep—to drown my worries in the soft pillow sheet and delicate blankets surrounding me—but know I can’t. I have to not only rouse, feed, and get Diego ready for, but walk him to school.

  With that in mind, I roll out of my bed, call, “Diego!” then add, “Up!”

  He responds with a groan from the other side of the room.

  “Come on, D. Get up.”

  “I don’t wanna!”

  “Do it anyway.”

  “Maybe school’s been canceled?” he asks, hope in his voice.

  “Why would it be canceled?”

  “The blackout?”

  “The power’s back on. Now up.”

  He protests at first, but eventually I hear the pad of his footsteps across the hardwood floor with the usual grumbling that occurs on school mornings. He glances toward my side of the room, and through the thin slats that separate us, I watch him, waiting for some form of argument. When none comes, however, and when he turns to enter the bathroom, I pass into the kitchen.

  My reality hits me almost immediately.

  Living here, in this one-bedroom apartment, struggling to make it through life with the knowledge that my mother may eventually die and I will be forced to care for Diego on my own—it’s like a cyclone bearing down upon me: the wind my thoughts, my mind its eye. I am instantly assaulted with the magnitude of this burden; and while standing there, staring at the cooler in which I’d meticulously arranged all our perishables to ensure they would not go bad overnight, I wonder if we’ll ever get out of this mess.

  Maybe, my conscience is quick to add, if your mother—

  I shake my head.

  No. I can’t think about that—not now, not in the aftermath of such a cruel defeat. I know my mother will be fine. She has to be.

  With that thought firmly implanted, I go about pulling the remains of Mrs. Gray’s potato soup and the eggs I will use to supplement Diego’s breakfast with protein from the cooler—the former of which I pour into a saucepan, the latter I begin scrambling. As I cook, careful to make sure I don’t use too much salt or pepper for fear of upsetting Mama’s stomach, I listen for the sound of her bed creaking to signal that she has awoken. Sometimes she doesn’t like being roused from a late-night’s sleep to eat, but that’s how she’s always been, even before the sickness. The Bite has only exacerbated that fact.

  I have just finished cooking breakfast when the door to the bathroom opens. Diego rushes across the space, filled with newfound energy, his hair still damp and his skin radiating warmth. “What’s for breakfast?” he asks.

  “Last night’s soup,” I say, “and eggs.”

  “Again?”

  I glare at him.

  He sobers instantly. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

  With a frown, I tousle his hair, say, “It’s okay,” then serve him a healthy serving of each before gesturing for him to sit and eat.

  I know he doesn’t mean to be difficult. He’s just like any other seven-year-old boy, filled with life and very rambunctious. All he wants is for life to be easy, for life to be normal, for life to be filled with the simple and innocent things. He can’t help but be frustrated by the ins and outs of human existence.

  Watching him eat from the kitchen, I spoon soup into my mouth and carefully spear eggs beneath my fork, all with the knowledge that, were it not for me, my little brother would be on his own. At least in my shadow he has the chance at a somewhat-normal existence.

  He beams as he finishes devouring his breakfast. “Ready!” he says.

  “All right. Let me check on Mama. Then we’ll go.”

  Diego darts toward the door as if he has forgotten he is going to school—full of life and joy.

  At my mother’s doorway, I lean forward, knock, and ask, “Mama? Are you hungry?”

  “Not now,” she replies, her voice filled with exhaustion.

  “All right. I’m taking Diego to school now.”

  “Be careful, Magpie. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I say.

  I turn to find Diego watching me, his coat already on, his boots upon his feet. “Ready?” he asks.

  “Ready.”

  It has snowed since last night. While walking through the simple parking lot, which holds no vehicles and instead resembles a grotesque garden of dead weeds and asphalt, I consider the dreary sky and the lack of true sunlight it offers. Diego—always the merry one—skips ahead, stamping footprints in frost, while I, with my hands in my pockets, try not to think of what the next week will bring. I fail miserably in the process.

  My birthday, ever looming over my conscience, comes to mind.

  Normally, the day would have been special—joyous, even, for my mother would have made a cake, a special meal, maybe even bought me a present.

  This year?

  I shudder.

  The responsibility that my sixteenth birthday will bring is enormous. With my years of schooling done, and my financial assistance within the Government Assistance System being cut down soon, I will be forced to get a job to support my family. What I’ll do, I can’t be sure. I’d planned on going to school to maybe learn how to program the games I loved to play, but now, with Mama being sick, that’s out of the question.

  Maybe I’ll be a baker, I consider. Or maybe I’ll work on machines.

  Or maybe, I’m loathe to think, we’ll all go hungry, and there’ll be nothing that I can do to stop it.

  I pause, close my eyes, then take and expel a deep breath. We have only just left the Sunset Suites, yet I’m already burdened by what my life will bring next.

  If only the power hadn’t gone out.

  If only I could’ve placed.

  If only I could’ve been invited to the competition.

  If only I could’ve won.

  One-million dollars wouldn’t have held us over for the rest of our lives, but at least it would have offered us a chance. For Mama to get better, for me to go to school, for Diego to have the childhood he deserved.

  “Sophie!” Diego cries somewhere ahead. “Come on!”

  I open my eyes to find that he is halfway down the street, waving his arms in an effort to beckon me forward.

  “Coming!” I call back.

  Quickening my pace, I catch up to him. It is about this time that I hear the voices and cries of other children as they make their way to Cardinal Elementary, and instantly I am thinking about my mother and what she could be needing.