After my shower, which is mostly me scrubbing my skin raw under icy water, I jerk a brush through my wavy hair and force it into a braid again. I put on more comfortable clothes, topping them with a jacket. The temperature drops at night around here, especially in the fall. From the side of my bed, I see smoke spiralling towards the sky from the fire down below.

When Dad is at home, which isn't too often, he stares at the sky. He tells me about all the different constellations and galaxies. When he was growing up, he lived in Knoxville, a city much bigger than the ruins of Chattanooga. There, the lights and smog blocked out the sky. Yet, he visited the planetarium and observatory with his father, and together they studied an unreachable, enormous night sky.

That's the first thing he noticed about the world changing around him.

He could finally see the stars.

On nights like tonight, when he's working at the Research Facility or the infirmary, I glance up and name the constellations I can pick out through the clouds, just to prove to myself that I haven't forgotten them. My memory is gradually getting worse. I can't remember what the ocean sounds like, but I instantly recognize the smell of a gun right after it's been fired. My mother's appearance is nothing but a vague and blurry memory, but the alarm ringing in my head is unmistakable. It instills instant fear in me within the first few tones as the conditioning kicks in.

So, I want to remember these constellations as long as I can. I'll cling to those little moments Dad and I shared, before he quit smoking and threw himself into work. When he was "Daddy," not "Dad", and I was still small enough to hold on his shoulders to see above the trees.

Just a little bit longer.

With a gentle sigh, I turn from the window and head downstairs. The ground floor sits empty. Laughter drifts in from the backyard. They managed to get a fire going good enough that I can see it over their seats as they sit in a circle around it.

As I walk out, Jane hands out small raw fish from a silver, insulated bag. They must've come from Compound 3, because I can't remember the last time we had fresh fish. I watch the Transfer crew skewer their fish using an assortment of sticks, shoving them in the fire afterwards.

"Welcome back," Jane says, handing me a stick and one of the fish. It's damp, and the fins on its back jab into my palm. I look down at it, trying not to scrunch my nose up.

"Oh, you don't know what to do with it," she continues. In one swift motion, she takes it out of my hand, stabs it with the stick, and hands it back to me. "Roast that, and dinner is served."

I find a seat around the circle, beside a girl with a neat French braid and a boy with messy blonde hair. They're older than me, with wind burnt cheeks and eyes that shine with experience. They both smile at me, or maybe at the way I dangle my dinner over the fire like it might sprout legs and walk away.

"Alright!" Jane's voice carries over the chatter and crackling fire. "Everyone's here. Let the campfire stories begin."

Everyone goes dead silent, staring at her.

"We know all of our stories," a man says. He's about my height, twice as wide, and has hair so black it puts coal to shame.

"Well, Jay doesn't, Trevor." She spits his name like it's an insult. Trevor looks at me, the fire reflecting in his hair.

"Then maybe she should tell us a story first," Trevor says.

"We are guests in her house. I will not make her share if she's not--"

"It's okay," I blurt. "I'll share something."

Jane sighs, and I see the color start to recede from her face. For a minute, I thought I saw smoke coming out of her ears.

I stare at the fire in front of me. What story should I tell? There's the one about Duncan... The one about the girl... There's Isaac's story, but that's not mine to tell. Maybe...

My stomach knots up. The story building in my chest feels like an elephant waiting to escape its pen. I'm terrified it might trample me, but keeping it caged is exhausting.

If I had a friend to tell, I would. Instead, it's just me and these strangers. What difference could it make? If they judge me, they can just leave and never see me again.

"So, when I was little, my parents and I lived in the suburbs of Knoxville. It's not too far from here--a couple hours max. My father worked for the Center for Disease Control, and my mom was a teacher at a private school. She had been a teacher there before they got married, and so that's where I started preschool when I turned four.

"Everyday we would walk to school together. It was only two blocks. Sometimes, we would stop and get ice cream on the way back. If it wasn't too hot, we would play at the park closer to our house."

I stop for a minute to catch my breath. The man with messy hair helps me get the fish off my stick. When I mumble a rushed thanks, he replies, "De nada, Jaelyn."

"We had a pretty good life, I guess. But the summer before I was supposed to start kindergarten, my mom got really sick. She stayed in bed and slept all day long. Didn't work, didn't take me to school. She would go with Dad to work sometimes, but it always seemed to set her back when she did. At night, I could hear her coughing and crying out. Dad never let me in the room to see her, but when they came in and out, I caught glimpses of her. He gave her a shot of medicine every morning. Nothing ever got better, though.

"One night, banging on the wall from their bedroom woke me up. I went down the hall, and the door was cracked open. When I looked inside, the bed was empty. That was weird, because Mom wasn't supposed to be up. So, thinking I would find her and help her back in, I went on inside.

"Mom was standing by the wall with both hands pressed up against it; her head was kind of propped up against it, too. I remember that her legs were showing under her nightgown, and they were sort of yellow and discolored. She'd always complained about varicose veins, but this was different. These were bright purple and stuck out of her skin like worms. She was slowly banging her head on the wall in a dull rhythm. It was creepy, so I flipped on the light, and when my eyes adjusted, she was facing me.

"I can't remember what she looked like before that night. I've tried, but what I saw blocked out everything else. Her eyes sank into her skull, so deep they were almost black. And she was so thin, like she was made of twigs. When she walked towards me, her leg dragged behind her. Worse yet, she never stopped staring at me.

"I stood, frozen, scared out of my mind. She picked me up, which must've taken a lot of effort, and I could hear her crying. She just held me for a minute, sort of sobbing, and I started crying, too.

"Then, my dad appeared in the door, yelling for her to put me down, for me to try and run away, for me to do anything but sit there. Chaos broke out after that. Mom held onto me for dear life, ripping the sheets off the bed, roaring like an animal, and scraping the wall with her fingernails until she left red marks down the white paint. Dad had to use the bedside lamp as a club to knock her out."

I stop, because my breathing is coming out in chunks. The effort it takes not to cry in front of these strangers wears me out.

"What happened after that?" a girl beside me whispers. I blink to clear the tears from my eyes.

"I don't really know. Dad took her to the hospital, and she didn't come back. Turns out, she'd gotten out of the house and killed, maybe eaten, our cat before I found her in the room. There was never a funeral, never a goodbye. She was just... gone. After that, the virus got going, and the national alert was made. We moved into Compound 4 by mid-December."

No one says anything. All I hear is them chewing on their fish and breathing. I take a slow, careful bite. The flavor surprises me--pleasant, not too strong or fishy.

"Well, even I can't top that," Trevor says, shattering the quiet. "Wow, Muney." I cringe at the use of my nickname. What good would it do to correct him, though? He's not trying to be mean. So, I laugh a little and pick at the grass under me.

"I have something we can talk about, but I don't think it will be as good as Jay's story." I look up to see Jane running a hand through her red hair. "On the way over, we followed our usual route, right? Did anyone notice anything different?" She glances around the circle, but most people avert their eyes instead of answering. "Come on; I know you saw them. The remains of tents on the shoulder of 127, at the base of the mountain."

"They're just tents, Jane," the girl beside me says in a quiet, careful voice. I get the feeling they've had this discussion before.

"How many times have we driven that route and never seen any sign of tents? Don't you think it's strange?"

"They could have been there, and you just didn't see them the first time around."

"I see everything, Emily. I know for a fact those tents have never been there before."

By now, I'm all ears. My back straightens into a perfect line, perpendicular to the ground. I get what she's trying to say, and I think Emily does too. I think everyone does; that's why they're choosing to ignore her.

Tents mean life. Life outside The Wall.

"And," Jane continues breathlessly, "when we drove through that last town--Dunlap, isn't it?--I could have swore I saw a light on in that old supermarket building."

A wave of whispers spreads across the crew as heads turn to each side and consider what she just said.

"You're imagining things again." Emily shakes her head. "The president of Compound 3 already wrote you up once for spreading false rumors about people living outside The Walls." She crosses her arms, glaring at Jane. Yet, the fiery woman stands her ground. I jump as she turns on me.

"Then, how do you explain the graffiti, then?"

A dozen pairs of eyes turn in my direction. Even Emily looks at me, seeming to have lost her momentum.

"If there are people out there--which I'm sure there are--then we can all agree that they're looking for Jaelyn. They made that clear."

"What did the graffiti say?" I blurt, clambering up onto my knees. My pulse beats like a club on a tribal drum against the skin of my neck. It throbs incessantly.

Yet, instead of answering, the eyes turn away. Even Jane sort of withers, almost like she's afraid to answer me. I look from person to person with a silent prayer that I look as desperate as I feel.

I'm surprised when my eyes fall on Trevor, and he sighs.

"'Help us, Jaelyn Price.'"

I suck in an atmosphere of air and hold it. My vision sways for a minute, and I steady myself by holding onto the ground in front of me. I can't even wince as what's left of my fish rolls into my lap and sears my leg.

They can't know how familiar that statement is.

The little girl stands in front of me, those last words repeating, bouncing around my skull like a tennis ball.

I open my mouth to speak, but as if on cue, every light in the neighborhood switches off. A faint glow in the distance tells me it isn't a total black-out. A few screams come from the houses around us, obviously shocked by the sudden lapse in power. We glance around at one another as the fire casts eerie shadows on our faces.

The speaker on the powerline overhead emits a harsh crackling. I sit up instinctually.

"Residents of Compound 4," a masculine voice says, unstable from the terrible connection, "I am sorry to interrupt you like this. Starting tonight, we will be enforcing a curfew. There will be no power after ten p.m., and all residents should be in their homes or tents. Sleep well, Compound 4. Remember, you are safe behind The Wall."

Jane stands up, and a few of her crew members follow suit. They begin stomping out the skeletal remains of a once beautiful fire.

"Who is your president, Jay?" Jane asks me as she ushers people inside.

"Evan Hartley. Why?"

She hums in understanding and holds the back door open for me.

"I have a feeling he didn't like our conversation very much."

"How could he hear us?" I feel my way through the now dark house, one hand placed against the wall and the other in front of me. As my eyes adjust, I dig through cabinets for candles and matches and line them up on the counter.

"You're too naive," Jane says as she shuts and locks the door behind her last crew member. "If you think he's not watching every move you make at all times, then you're not thinking enough."

She walks into the living room, and people begin to unroll sleeping bags and other supplies. I lean on the doorframe, trying to soak everything in like a sponge.

The answers to my questions are outside The Wall.

Maybe I'll have to go out there to find them.