“Very much.” The food was getting easier to eat and my stomach was feeling better. I finished the container and downed my glass of water. Jack was finished, too. “I guess we should head to work.”

“You don’t want to wait and see Reyes?”

I shrugged. “I’ll see him tonight.”

He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t push for an answer.

We walked silently together to the stairs. He surprised me when he gently took my arm and pulled me toward him and kissed the top of my head. “Stay safe,” he said and then began his descent into the mines. I stared after him, wondering at his act of affection.

When he was out of my sight, I made my way up to the second floor. Crystal was already there, waiting patiently for the room to be unlocked. When she saw me coming, she quickly turned her attention to the floor. Obviously, she didn’t want to socialize, which was fine by me. I didn’t want to either. So we stood together in an awkward silence. She gave me a sidelong glance every once and a while. I probably looked awful.

Supervisor Madi sneered when she arrived. “I see we have another early bird.” Perhaps being early wasn’t a good thing.

She unlocked the door, and I went to follow her in, but she let the door fall back and it almost slammed in my face. I caught it by one hand before it did.

“You didn’t think she was going to hold the door open for you?” Crystal asked.

“I’ll know better next time.”

As I walked into the laundry room, I realized that getting here early wasn’t such a good idea. Di wasn’t here yet, and I still needed pointers on the finer details of doing laundry. I scanned in and went over to the carts of dirty laundry already queued and waiting to be done. I took the first one, returned to the station I had worked at the day before, and started sorting clothes. I was almost done when Di walked in.

“Good morning, Crystal. Good morning, Autumn,” she called out to both of us. Crystal ignored her as she had the day before.

“Good morning, Di,” I said.

“Oh, someone had a hard night last night,” she said when she saw my swollen eyes. “Lover upstairs?”

Crystal perked up and paid attention to our conversation.

“A lover upstairs?” I asked.

“Are you somebody’s mistress? Did he treat you badly?”

Now I understood what she meant. She wanted to know if I was in the same position as Summer was with the president. “No, nothing like that. I just had bad news last night.”

“Someone pass away?”

“My father.” I thought if I gave her an answer she would stop asking questions.

She put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

I didn’t want her sympathy. It made me want to cry again. “I hope I’ve done this right,” I said, gesturing to the piles in front of me.

She looked over my work and changed a few things in the pile. “You really need to pay close attention to the darks and lights. You put dark clothes in with light and it will ruin them.”

“Thanks for the advice. I really do appreciate it.”

Di left me to go and do her own work. The morning seemed to pass by quickly. I managed to get two carts full of laundry done by the time lunch was brought in. The laundry room seemed infinitely hotter that day. Then I remembered that the day before the room had been closed for half the day due to the lockdown. It really was hotter in there. The bulletproof vest didn’t let my skin breathe, and with every minute it felt like it was getting heavier. I wasn’t sure how long I could stand it.

I retrieved my food and water rations and sat on the floor to eat, thankful to get off my feet. My water was cold and refreshing, and it was all I could do not to guzzle it. Di sat across from me, looking at me curiously.

“It’s hot in here,” I said.

“You can have the rest of mine. I’m not that thirsty.”

I wavered for a moment, not sure if it was polite of me to take her up on the offer, but I was so hot that I accepted gratefully. Drinking it and dumping it over my head to cool me off were almost equally appealing. I drank it, thinking the latter would get me into trouble.

“You don’t look so good,” Di said. “You’re really hot, aren’t you?”

“I guess I’m not used to the heat.”

“Where did you work before?”

Her question caught me off guard. I didn’t have an answer ready. I couldn’t say the kitchen because she would want to know why I would leave such a plum job. And it was hot in the kitchen too, so I would be used to working in the heat. I had to think of something else.

“Sewers.” That seemed like a good lie. It was cold and smelly there and perfectly reasonable that anyone would look for a job somewhere else.

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a nasty job.”

“Back to work!” Supervisor Madi called out. It had only been twenty minutes since we sat down. When I worked in the kitchen we were given a half hour for lunch.

“She’s a slave driver,” Di said as she hoisted herself off the floor and walked over to return her empty food container. I followed her and put my own away.

My full stomach combined with the heat of the room was making me sleepy. I became slow and clumsy and kept dropping things on the floor.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Jones?” Madi said, coming to stand threateningly close to me.

“I’m sorry, Supervisor. It won’t happen again.” I retrieved a shirt from the floor.

“Be thankful it’s dirty clothes hitting the floor. You don’t want to know what’s going to happen to you if they’re clean!”

She stood there watching my every move, her hands balled into fists just waiting for me to drop something. I didn’t give her the satisfaction. Eventually someone else caught her attention, and she left me to stomp to the back of the room. I heard her scream at another worker and looked up in time to see Madi strike the girl. Blood streamed out of the girl’s nose.

I quickly looked away when I saw Madi scanning the room to see who else she could challenge. If only I had the courage, I would gladly confront her, but like everyone else here, I was too afraid. Some hero I was turning out to be.

Di gave me a stern look. I tried to jolt my befuddled brain into an alert state, but it was difficult. I had a sudden urge to run away and hide in the mineshaft like Summer and I used to do when we were kids. Sometimes we’d stayed in there for hours talking about everything and nothing. Life was so much simpler back then.

I managed to get all the clothes into the washer without dropping any, although the real challenge was going to be when I had to take the clean clothes out and get them dried and folded. I forced myself to be more methodical, concentrating on every detail, and somehow managed to get through the rest of the day without dropping anything else. But it took me forever. When the bong bongs heralded the end of the working day, I still had clothes to fold. I didn’t scan out until twenty minutes later.

“Jones,” Supervisor Madi said when I came up to scan out. “I don’t care what you’re upset about in your life, when you’re here in my laundry room you pay attention to what you’re doing. I can’t say I like you very much. Hopefully, you can change my mind about that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I wasn’t sure if I could oblige her, though. After today, I didn’t like me very much either.

Chapter Seventeen

Jack was asleep in the chair when I got back to the apartment. I shut the door behind me as quietly as I could, but he awoke. He looked drained. The circles under his eyes were every bit as dark as the coal smudged through his hair.

“You had to work late again?” he asked.

“I guess that’s the way of the laundry room. Ready to go for dinner?”

He nodded groggily and put on his hat. I could tell he didn’t really want to go. He was exhausted and needed to sleep.

I headed toward the sixth-floor common room. Not that I really wanted to see Reyes, but he would wonder why I had disappeared if I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t want him to come looking for me and create a scene on the floor where we lived. It was better to let him down closer to his own home and far from ours.