She dressed quickly and stood back to check the results in the full-length mirror that hung behind the closet door.
She was still obviously a girl. From a distance she might pass, but up close, no way.
She analyzed the problem. It wasn’t her body; that was covered effectively. The problem was that she simply had a girl’s face. The nose, the eyes, the lips, even the teeth.
“Not much I can do about my mouth,” she whispered to her reflection. “Except not smile.”
Then, as if arguing with her own reflection, she said, “You never smile, anyway.”
She rummaged in the bathroom until she found some medical supplies. Moments later she had a white bandage on the bridge of her nose. That helped. She could pass. Maybe.
She stepped out into the hall. No one there, which wasn’t surprising. Dinner, such as it was, had come and gone. Kids were hungry and weak, and no one had energy for much except lying in their rooms.
Diana knew better than to take a car. A guard was being kept at the entrance to Coates again. They’d be sure to stop her and summon Drake.
Drake might let her go. She was, after all, following Caine’s orders.
But then again, he might not. What better time to arrange an “accident” for Diana?
So she took a side door out of the dormitory, the door nearest the woods. She was acutely conscious of the crunch of her oversized boy sneakers on gravel and then grateful for the softer sound of pine needles and moldering leaves.
It was a long walk to skirt the gate. The woods were dark. Straight overheard, when she looked at the sky, she could see the rich blue of evening. But night fell early under the trees.
It took her an hour to work her way through brambles and over gullies. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the road—woods were woods, to Diana, one tree like the next. But at last, as night crept up on twilight, she climbed a slippery embankment and stepped onto blacktop.
She had no brilliant plan for getting to Jack. She couldn’t exactly knock him on the head and carry him to Caine. She would have to rely on other means. Jack had always had a crush on her, not that he would ever act on it.
A pity she looked like a boy now.
It was all downhill until she hit the highway. There at last were widely separated pools of light cast by the ever fewer functioning streetlights, and a faint glow from the empty storefronts that hadn’t yet burned out their last lightbulbs.
She was footsore and weary when she reached Perdido Beach and she badly needed a rest. It was going to be a long night, of that she was sure.
Diana walked down Sherman Avenue and onto Golding Street, looking for an empty house. They weren’t hard to find. Few homes showed any glimmer of light, and this one house was so shabby, so run-down, that she was convinced no one would be staying here.
The lights were off inside and repeated efforts yielded only one functioning light bulb, a Tiffany-style lamp in the cramped and overstuffed living room. There was a roll-armed easy chair decorated with lace doilies and she sagged into it gratefully.
“Some old lady lived here,” she said to the echoing emptiness.
She put her feet up on the coffee table—something the previous resident would no doubt have frowned on—and considered how long she should wait before risking the streets again. Jack’s place was only a few blocks away, but it would mean passing through the more densely populated center of town.
“I would sell my soul for some TV,” she muttered. What was that show she used to watch? Something with doctors and all kinds of soap opera plots. How could she have forgotten the name? She’d watched it every . . . every what? What night was it on?
Three months and she’d forgotten TV.
“I suppose my MySpace and Facebook pages are still up, somewhere, back in the world,” she mused aloud. Messages and invitations piling up unanswered. Where are you, Diana? Can I be your friend? Did you read my bulletin?
What ever happened to Diana?
Diana is ____________. Fill in the blanks.
Diana is . . .
She wondered what everyone in the FAYZ wondered: Where were all the adults? What had happened to the world? Was everyone “out there” dead and the only life here in this bubble? Did people in the outside world know what had happened? Was the FAYZ like some giant, impenetrable egg plopped on the Southern California coastline? Was it a tourist attraction? Were busloads of the curious lining up to have their pictures taken in front of the mysterious sphere?
Diana is . . . lost.
She got up to search the kitchen. As far as she could see in the deep gloom the shelves were empty. They had been cleaned out, of course, Sam would have seen to that, marshalling his resources.
The refrigerator was empty, too.
Diana is . . . hungry.
But she found a working flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer. With this she explored the only other room, the old lady’s bedroom. Old lady clothing. Old lady slippers. Old lady knitting needles stuck through a ball of yarn.
Would Diana still be here, trapped in the FAYZ when she was old? “You’re already old,” she told herself. “We’re all old now.” But that wasn’t quite true. They’d been forced to act older, to behave in ways that were very adult. But they were all still kids. Even Diana.
There was a book beside the old lady’s bed. Diana was sure it was a Bible, but when she shone the light on it, she saw a reflection from glossy raised lettering. It was a romance novel. Some half-undressed woman and a kind of creepy guy in what looked like a pirate outfit.