The Water Wars Read Online Free Page A

home-cooked meal,” Will piped up, coming to my aid.
    Our father considered this. None of us could remember the last time we had guests at our apartment. The three of us ate quickly at our small table, often in silence, the gloom of illness like a shroud. Loneliness was something we understood, even in a crowd.
    Soon we were grabbing the ingredients for a Mexican feast off the half-empty shelves at the store: a package of synth-tortillas, another package of chips, a bottle of salsa made with three percent real tomatoes, and a bag of soy cheese. Our father even bought a six-pack of Beer-o, which he claimed was almost as good as the real thing, although Will made a face behind his back like he was gagging. I pushed the cart while our father inspected items on the shelves, reading their ingredients and hefting them in his hands as if he could discern the harmful chemicals simply by weighing them.
    This was our happy father, the one I remembered from the days when our mother would take us shopping, singing songs about to-may-toes and to-mah-toes that always made us laugh. Our mother had been the silly one, but since she had become sick, there was very little silliness in our house.
    “It’s a lot of food for four, and even more for three,” said our father. “Let’s hope he can make it.”
    In the parking lot, the car started right away, and our father let Will drive home. He leaned into the steering wheel, grasping it with both hands, while our father kept one hand close to the emergency brake. The sun was low in the sky, and for once it looked warm rather than desolate. Even the fake flowers in the window boxes outside our building looked brighter, as if they had bloomed in our absence. We coasted onto the entrance road, and Will executed a perfect turn into the garage.
    While our father mashed quasi-vocados in the kitchen and Will rehydrated the beans, I tried to reach Kai on the wireless using the ID he had given me. But after fifteen minutes without a signal, I gave up in frustration.
    Kai lived only three kilometers from our building—a quick ride in the car or on my pedicycle—but at first my father didn’t want to hear about it.
    “At this hour who knows who’s on the road?” he said.
    “I’ll text you as soon as I get there.”
    “You just said the wireless isn’t working.”
    “It probably works at Kai’s.”
    We went back and forth for a while, but eventually my father gave in, as I knew he would. I could tell he was excited about a visitor—especially someone wealthy and mysterious—and now that he was making all this food, someone had to eat it.
    Our family lived in a section of Arch called “the Rails” where trains had once rumbled. Long ago it had been one of the least expensive places to live, but after the transportation system broke down, it was one of the few places where food and water were still available. As the other suburbs collapsed, the Rails survived and even thrived. But the legacy of poverty was hard to shake, and anything that reminded us of plenty held us in an incantatory grip.
    It was an easy ride to the Wellington Pavilion. No one passed me on the road, and the wind at my back made pedaling easier. The guards stopped me by the front gate, and I removed my goggles to show them copies of my Certification of Health and Vaccination. Still, they wouldn’t let me inside. Instead they called Kai on an intercom, and in a few minutes he appeared.
    “Hi,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
    When he cocked his head, he looked like a sunflower, I thought, a rare prize that grew only in hothouses: tall, reedy, with silky blond hair that shone in the twilight. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    “Inviting you to dinner.”
    “When?”
    “Now.” I held out copies of our certifications, and he took them tentatively in his hand.
    “What are you cooking?”
    “It’s a surprise.”
    He was only gone for five minutes. When he returned, he carried two plastene jugs and a small