I shake my head and try to focus on the happy memories of my mom. When we’d cook radish stew together, play games of chess and checkers, watch the late-night news on our beat-up old telebox.

My mother is the most compassionate person I know. If someone in our neighborhood was sick, she was always the first to deliver a meal to them, using our already scant supplies to help out a friend. Sometimes I got mad at her, wished she wouldn’t do stuff like that, wished she wouldn’t give away our stuff. But I usually felt bad about my thoughts later on. In the deepest recesses of my soul I am always proud of her.

But as usual, my thoughts quickly do a one-eighty. Now I am thinking about all that has gone wrong, all that is bad. About the cruelty of life.

About how I have failed my parents. I don’t dare to hope that they are still alive.

I think about all the waste in the world. Although we live underground now, we still require many of the same basic necessities humans have needed for decades. Toothpaste, for example. Instead of being produced in a factory somewhere in China, it’s produced in a cave somewhere. Certainly not in China. If there is still a China, we aren’t connected to it anymore. China’s just a place on an old map from my history class in school. We are on a lone island.

The point is: we use up the toothpaste and then throw out the container. It is sent to the lava flow for destruction. Have human lives become like a tube of toothpaste? Something to be used up and thrown away? At first the tube seems so big, so full of life. But after just a few uses it becomes dented and lumpy—already life is ebbing away from it—and it’s only a matter of time before the final bit is squeezed out, rendering it an empty vessel, good for nothing.

I feel myself being squeezed out every day.

I try to distract myself, gazing up at the dimly lit cavern ceiling rising more than twenty stories above me. It’s weird being in the Pen, cut off from the town, and yet being able to see everything that the non-prisoners can see. From the yard, I can see the same massive cavern that houses our town, the Pen, all of us. If I didn’t know it so well, the 14th subchapter might be a stunning sight, with an arcing roof coated by the glossy sheen of the panel lighting that controls our days and nights. The cavern was excavated more than two hundred years ago, and covers more than five square miles. Most of the rough and jagged rocks were smoothed over, huge stone support columns built, stone roads laid, and houses and buildings erected.

There is a light commercial district, where goods can be bought, sold, and traded. Mostly they’re traded, because the wages are so low that money is short. I remember well the first money I ever had. My father saved for a month so he could give it to me on my tenth birthday. A single Nailin, bright and shiny and round. Printed with the face of the President. I stared at it for hours, trying to imprint its memory in my mind, for I knew it would soon be gone, wasted, on a silly dress I’d coveted for over a year. Every time I passed by the dress shop in town, I stopped to look at the dress. It was black and long, and would sweep the floor as I walked. The sleeves were sheer and translucent, elegant in their simplicity. Simple—that’s the way I like things. There were no frills, no laces, no bows—simple. I bought that dress with my first Nailin.

I outgrew it in three months. Funny the way the world works sometimes.

The pinnacle of the town, however, is the mine. All things considered, we are lucky. Many of the other subchapters in the Realm have mines, but none so valuable as ours. For ours is full of gemstones, raw and uncut—and worth a fortune to the sun dwellers. So you’d expect us to be a rich town. We should be, but once the taxes are taken out of the workers’ wages, it’s a pittance, barely enough to survive on.

When my father complained, they took him away. My mother, too, guilty by association. I was sent to the Pen and my sister to a crummy, broken-down orphanage. Yeah, life is good as a moon dweller.

Given my dark thoughts, I am glad when the two hours pass. I leave the yard, weaving my way through the kids who are still lounging about. Some are clustered in groups, speaking in hushed whispers, trading pages of books for cigarettes, and cigarettes for socks, and socks for whatever else will help them forget they are prisoners, that their lives are forfeit. Others are sprawled out on the rock, sleeping their sentences away. I wonder if their hearts have died, too, like mine had before it was resurrected by my glimpse of Tristan.

Inside the Pen it is like a cattle call. Kids are pushing against each other like a mob, all trying to get to the cafeteria. Feeding time is about the only time any of the kids show any kind of energy. Also when they are fighting. Interesting how both instances are a matter of survival.

I ease my way into the mash-up of bodies and manage to find a human flow that is moving swiftly in the right direction, like a strong current in one of the many underground rivers of the Tri-Realms. Soon—after only a few minor collisions—I am in the cafeteria.

Given the crowds, one might expect that the food is to die for. Perhaps it is a trendy new restaurant, one where you have to make a reservation, like Tawni suggested earlier. However, one bite of the lukewarm mashed potatoes or a spoon of the mystery stew is enough to clinch the notion that the executive chef would be much better suited to some other occupation—any other occupation. Seriously. It is bad. Tasteless. Like eating a shoe. And not a new one. One that has been worn for years by someone who suffers from severe foot sweating.

But we have no choice. It’s the only show in town, a monopoly—on our stomachs. So we add lots of salt, which by some miracle they provide in plenty.

Once in the food line, I order—by pointing at things and grunting—a gob of something covered in brown gravy, a noodle dish that looks like dead worms, and a plastic cup of brownish water. Yum.

I find Tawni right where she said she’d be—at one of the corner tables. Most every table is already full, so I’m glad she arrived early enough to get it. Usually I just take my food outside, to eat alone in silence.

There’s a guy sitting across from her. He’s naturally dark-skinned, which is the only way to not have pale skin when you live underground; unless, of course, you reside in the Sun Realm, where tanning beds are a staple in every household. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off, highlighting his muscular arms. He’s tall, but not as tall as Tristan. Funny how I’m already comparing other guys to Tristan, like I even know him.

Tawni spots me and motions for me to join them. I manage to squeeze through the throng of eaters and slide onto the bench next to her.

“Hi!” she says brightly, like we are just a bunch of friends going out to eat at our favorite haunt.

“Uh, yeah, hi.” I still can’t seem to remember how to speak like a normal human being. I glance at the black guy. He smiles.

“I’m Cole,” he says, extending a hand.

When he grasps my hand it disappears, as if it’s been swallowed up by his enormous paw. I shake his hand firmly, trying to act tough, but to my surprise he doesn’t return my iron grip. Nor does his hand crumple under the raw power of my squeeze. It’s just sort of there. It’s like his hand absorbs my strength, simply by the sheer solidity of his bones. His hand is also somewhat tender and gentle, smooth and well cared for. Somewhat feminine, if I’m being honest. It’s a contradiction, which I’m always intrigued by. Like bittersweet chocolate, which, by the way, I’ve only tried once in my life when my dad gave me a square for my eighth birthday.

By just shaking Cole’s hand I’ve started to like him. Can it be: another friend? Two in one day? It’s like a Christmas miracle.