PART
THE FIRST TIME THAT I SAW A FINLY I WAS IN THE BOY'S LOCKER ROOM. The day started like any other. I woke late for the wagon that picked us up from the Outskirts and brought us to Westside Junior High. Had I known that moving from sixth grade to seventh would be like walking into an alternate dimension, I would have chosen not to go.
They ride a bus. Make it more modern, just broken down. Everything is Ancient, junk in the Outskirts. The city is white, glass, polished, minerals with trams and power run off aqualight. Make a moment where Atreyu is listening to Material Gurl in his headphones.
I stood beyond what you'd call my front yard, on dry sand, along the harder packed sand of the road. Roads in the Outskirts weren't made of white marble like the city proper. Roads out here sprung from continual use — and changed with the seasons, depending on flooding.
It was low tide and there were no storm warnings for any time soon. School would start on time today. I stood at the wagon-stop with my sandmask over my mouth and nose. I looked stupid, but my mother had insisted. As soon as I heard the wagon coming, I was going to take the mask off. No one wore sandmasks!
At least she hadn't forced me to leave the house with a suncloak. Low tide had been going on for more than an hour. The air was already hot and the sun was beating its rays hard. I could feel the sun on the bare skin of my shoulders. My vest was buttoned, I wasn't brash enough to leave it unbuttoned like some boys.
My domed hovel was behind me. It was covered in barnacles, coral, and anemone that attached themselves to its metal and glass sides. Today, it was sitting atop a dune, like the crown of a colorful head — tomorrow the landscape could be completely different if a storm comes through. Mother said there was only a twenty percent chance of a storm.
My neighbors' domed homes were adorned with colorful wildlife as well. Packed sand walkways and roadways were lined with seagrasses that waved as if caught in ocean currents, when in fact the air was dead — and in low tide, dry. My science teacher explained that the seagrasses were able to wave and undulate via organs called flotsam sacs. It was the same organ that allowed fish and whales to swim in the sky.
I heard the buggy before I saw it. My stomach tied immediately into a knot.
A few months ago it wouldn't have mattered. I never knew stepping out of sixth grade and into seventh grade would be like walking into an alternate reality. Last year I was popular. I hung out with Jaysen and all the other boys that lived in the Outskirts. Being a friend of Jaysen's prevented me from getting picked on by anyone in school, even the popular jocks. I had lost all of my credulity over the summer.
The wagon was being pulled by a giant hermit crab. It was a baby compared to how big they could grow. Their shells weren't disposable like other hermit crabs. Their shells grew with them. Most adult crabs lived out in the Dunes. When they died, often their empty shells were washed up against the stark-white highrises of the city. This is where we got our homes...And thus they were formally called shelter crabs.
The wagon wheels were deflated rubber tires that squealed with every rotation. The wagon was open-top. I wanted to keep my sandmask on, but I couldn't afford to provide Jaysen any ammunition. He'd been riding me pretty hard already and it was the first week of school. It was obvious that there was no salvaging our friendship, which honestly, based on how he'd been treating me it was hard to believe we had been friends. I stuffed my sandmask in my pack.
The driver sat upon a constructed seat, almost like a hammock, that hung suspended between two spikes of the shelter crab's shell. He held a crop stick in one hand along with reins in both which were strapped to the crab's large pincers. The wagon was pulled by chains that were hooked to a ring that was drilled through the crab's shell on the backside. Traveling via shelter crab was slow, as one could imagine, but the city didn't care to build tracks for their trams out here. So the crab wagon would cart us to the nearest tram station to the northeast.
