The Treemakers (A YA Dystopian Scifi Romance Adventure) Read Online Free Page B

wash. Once they’re finished, the olders will go, two at a time, holding the hose for one other. Hygiene is very important; if you develop something that was preventable, like a cavity or an infection . . . it’s not your day.
    Last year, Molina let a wound get infected and couldn’t work for a week. When she was well, the Superiors punished her by taking away two meals a day “until further notice.” By the end of the first week, she was famished and wobbly, and couldn’t concentrate. She pushed the wrong button on the sun torch and it backfired, burning her up in seconds. Had I been working the chopper back then, I might’ve saved her. The Superiors, of course, claimed it was merely one of those “factory accidents”—a terrible stroke of luck. But we all know the truth.
    One by one, the girls finish up and, freshly washed, take their seats at my feet. I scoot my storytelling stool to the corner by the hole where I sit every night so the boys can hear me, too. As I scan slicked hair and clean faces, I notice a lot of them match mine. Sad. Confused. Angry. My palms begin to sweat. Jax is right there, closest to me on the other side of the hole, where he usually is. But right behind him is an empty space on the bed in the corner where Toby sat every night, eagerly awaiting my story.
    He’ll never hear another one again.
    There’s a lump in my throat. My strength threatens to cave as my vision wades through tears. Crying for someone you love is a natural, healthy thing, but I have to be strong for the little ones. If I start crying, then they may think, Who’ll take care of us, now that Momma Joy has lost her strength? No. Poor things have been through enough. I sit up straight and breathe in deep. Everyone’s seated, and Aby holds Baby Lou in her lap. At least she’s too young to understand the horror that occurred today.
    “What story you gonna tell tonight, Momma Joy?” Chloe asks. The hair-braiding chain begins at my feet and curves in a semi-circle around me; little girls learning the ways of girl things, like hair, and giggles, and secrets. On my other side, another group has curled up in blankets, chins rested in their hands, staring up at me.
    “Okay.” My voice is crackly and weak. I clear my throat, and start again. “Okay, first, I want to have a moment of silent reverence for our brother, Toby, who died outside today. He was loved and cherished by us all, and he’ll be greatly missed.” I lower my head to hide my tears, and wipe at them while I say a silent prayer that God, or Who or Whatever is out there, took our brother to someplace beautiful.
    “May Toby go to Paradise today,” I say, “where he’ll dance, play, and be loved forever.”
    “And so it is,” we say in unison.
    I lift my head, wiping wetness from my face again. “In honor of Toby, I’ll be retelling the first story I ever told, the one I made up the night he became our brother: the story of Billy’ s Dragon.”
    A hush falls over the room, and I close my eyes to lose myself in it. Jax says I’ve got a gift; not everyone envisions things in full color, with intensity and complexity. I didn’t even know I could, until that first night.
    “Once,” I begin, “there was a little boy named Billy. He was sad, because a giant storm came and swept his town away, with his whole family, too. Everyone drowned, except for Billy. Soon, the water filled up his house, so he climbed inside a washtub, scared. He floated out the second floor window and away in the washtub with only a pocketful of magic stones his daddy had given him for his birthday. If only he could’ve floated by the kitchen on his way out, then maybe he could’ve gotten some food.
    “Hours went by as the roofs and treetops disappeared beneath the water, and still he floated farther and farther away. Billy cursed his daddy for lying to him about the stones’ power. He’d tried for months to get them to do something, give him wings to fly maybe? Or even X-ray