turn against me. From Sal Wilkerson, the Prophet, I became Sal Wilkerson, the Liar. Sal Wilkerson, the Crazy Girl. Sal Wilkerson, the Girl Who Cried Rain. And instead of families wanting to take me in every season, they had to be forced to, bribed with more rations or work exemptions.
When the sun set and everyone went into their houses, I climbed down. I took my bucket out of its place under the toolshed at the base of the wall and started on my weekly journey. My dust mask thudded against my chest and my bucket against my thighs as I slinked quietly along the wall, toward the Dowsing Well. It was too dark to manage without touching the walls, and I felt the names go by under my fingertips. Susannah Halper, Lennie Rodríguez, John Rowe, all buried in the walls, plastered in with their faces turned out to the desert beyond.
I left the wall and slipped between the legs of the tower, moving quickly through the path I had made for myself, through the narrow spaces between the bare-plank houses. No one was outside except for Mr. Jameson, so I relaxed. Even though he was head of the guard, Mother Morevna’s second-in-command, he always looked the other way when he saw me go by.
Mr. Jameson had been the one to oversee the building of the walls. He’d been the leader of the group that went out into the desert and had seen how everything had changed. He’d been one of the three men who’d made it back alive. He was strong and quiet and tough as an old boot, and I liked him. He of all people could commiserate, when his wife and son were back in Texas, somewhere outside the tiny, temporary world he’d been stuck in. If they were still alive. If a world even existed beyond the desert anymore.
He knew how I hated being shifted from family to family, about the lean-to I’d built against the northern wall to sleep under when one family had been particularly bad. He’d even put in a motion to let me live with him once. And when his motion was rejected on account of him being “too high on the food chain to be compromised,” he’d spent his nights revamping an old chicken house for me to live in. It wasn’t the same as a house, of course, but it was surprisingly good—better than staying with Trixie, at any rate—and I was grateful to him. It had wallpaper—the same kind anyone else had, anyway: newspapers and flour sacks. It had a lock and windows and a floor made of plank wood. It had a dresser salvaged from who knew where, and even a bed made of feed sacks and feathers, and it only smelled a little like chickens anymore. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. And at least there I was alone because I wanted to be, not because I had to be.
“Why did you do this for me?” I’d asked him.
“My daughter is about your age” was all he’d said. I liked that he always said “is,” not “was.”
Now his hooded eyes flickered to my nose. “That girl been after you again?”
I thought about it for a second, trying to decide if it was more cowardly to say yes or no, then shook my head.
“Stepped on a rake,” I lied.
“You sure it wasn’t a shovel?” he said, his eyes serious under his old, sweat-stained Stetson.
“No, sir,” I said finally. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a tattletale.
He squinted at me, then gave me a nod and spat tobacco into an old peach can.
“Get on outta here, then,” he said. “And if you have any more problems with rakes, you let me know, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you, sir.” And I slipped through the alley between his house and the Andersons’ and made my way toward the Square.
I heard the hammers before I saw the work lights. Already, the circle at the center of town was being set up for Mourning Night. About twenty young men were working. In the shadows of the old jail and Baptist church, they hammered and sawed. Some were hauling pieces of wood to the place where the bonfire would be, others had begun setting up the platform that Mother Morevna would stand on during the ceremony.
It was our most important holiday, a celebration of those we had lost during the year. In the evening, we would bring pictures of