Deprived

Chapter 2

Mr. Tom, the blacksmith, stood under a shed pounding away at an orange piece of metal. Sweat oiled his black skin, some beaded, some dripped down his face and arms.

Maize stepped under the shed—the sound of metal hitting metal tearing deep into her ears—and the heat in the shed competing with the desert heat outside.

"Mr. Tom," she said.

"Agh!" He said, his head down, pounding at the piece of metal.

Maize grabbed a stick of dried-up celery Mr. Tom had left for her on a wooden table and left one of her mother's homemade Solix cakes.

"Mr. Tom, can you build me a spacecraft so I can leave this miserable place?"

"Agh!" He said, still pounding, never looking up.

Mr. Tom was a faithful trader, and that was all that mattered. Besides, her nana always said that "A man of few words'll get a job done faster and better than a gabber. You mark my word, child. Them gabbers are nothing but trouble."

She left the sweltering shack and entered the damning desert heat outside. Up ahead, village guards high on elephas patrolled the square.

Mrs. Martinez stood at the front of her stall, hand-me-down clothes draped over her arms and shoulders. "Get your Preppie hand-me-downs: shirts, skirts, and everything in between."

How many of Mrs. Martinez's hand-me-downs had Maize wore over the years? But she didn't need any used clothing just then. She passed Mrs. Martinez's stall.

What is she smiling about? Maize whispered.

She was probably glad she didn't have to pay rent for that stall she'd been renting because she was sleeping with the Preppie owner—a man who was married with five kids.

Maize didn't return Mrs. Martinez's smile—she continued on her way to work at the factory.

A steady flow of morning drunks shuffled into Mr. Frank's grum bar. One of them was Johnny boy, the most recent village drunk.

Two doors down, in a decrepit shack, junkies were holed up, squeezing drops of poison from dirty rags into their red, empty eyes. As the poison coursed through their bodies, they leaned onto one another and collapsed, so they looked like a pile of layered elapha's dung.

On her right, a stench shot from rusty cars piled high—two junkies' domicile.

The line at the water stand was long and winding. Lessers gripped their white plastic containers in their hands as they waited for another refill. It was water Wednesday.

The Giant Screen switched to a four-quarter screen. It reported the decrease in rations would begin next month; the names of thieves in the village to be hanged on the gallows that evening; the faces of the most recent missing children—two more teenagers, one boy and one girl, had gone missing; and a picture of Maize and Leon, the new Chosens.

Maize's stomach quivered. She wanted out, and she wanted out now, or she was sure she would go mad.

Hearing a commotion up ahead, Maize watched as a guard hopped off his elepha and walked over to a man standing on the path. The crowd immediately retreated and formed a circle around the two.

Maize drew closer, elbowing and kneeing her way to the front of the crowd.

"It's Sam." Someone in the crowd whispered. "Poor guy."

Sam was yellow-skinned and covered in sores. Maize's heartbeat quickened; her eyes glistened over with tears. The man was a rack of skin and bones dressed in clothes. Standing next to him, her brother Liam would look healthy.