Chapter 7: The Gym

I read Marshall's last line out loud to Harriet.

She took her reading glasses off and pinched her nose.

"Amber says no," she repeated. "Amber doesn't get to say no. The Program decides on airdrops."

"And who flies the plane?"

Harriet put her glasses back on.

"Wexler," she said.

We sat there for a while.

"Then we make it to October," I said.

"Then we make it to October."

***

By April the dark was total.

Not night. Night ends.

This was a black that sat on the windows, with stars so thick they looked spilled.

The crew played basketball in the gym on Thursdays.

Harriet said it kept people from killing each other.

I went to watch, because the alternative was my room and the radiator in my head.

Boone played slowly, and nobody could get around him.

The carpenter was quick and loud and talked the whole game.

At halftime somebody opened a care package from the last plane.

Homemade cookies in a tin, from somebody's mother in Wisconsin.

They went around the bleachers fast.

I was talking to the cook about his burn when I heard the carpenter cough.

Not a normal cough.

A tight, wet one, like he was trying to clear a door in his throat.

I turned around.

He had half a cookie in his hand and the other hand at his collar.

His lips were already swelling.

"Peanut," he managed. "There's peanut."

Then he went down on his knees on the gym floor.

I was there before I knew I'd moved.

His face was red and blotched. His breath was whistling.

"Somebody get the emergency kit off the wall. Now."

Boone was already running.

He threw it to me across the free throw line.

The gym's kit was the station's stock.

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