Schism by Britt Holewinski Page A

there.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Nothing. You just look…athletic.”
    Ben brushed his hand through his hair again. “So Chicago. If that’s where you’re from, why aren’t you going back there? Do you have family or friends there?”
    Andy gazed down at her iPod. “No family. None still alive, I mean. And I didn’t have a lot of friends in school.”
    “Not one of the popular kids?”
    “Hardly.” She looked up at him. “Were you popular in school?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t really think about it.”
    “That means you were.”
    He smiled but said nothing and kept his eyes on the road. She looked off to her right.
    After a long silence, “You guys should stick with us,” he said, then added quickly, “If you want to, I mean.”
    “But you hardly know us. What if you get sick of us?”
    He laughed. “I doubt it. You and your friends seem smart, and you can obviously take care of yourselves.”
    “And what, everyone else you meet is stupid and lazy?”
    He raised an eyebrow, indicating she wasn’t far off the mark. “Let me ask you,” he began. “Before the virus, when you were in school, did you get good grades?”
    “Yeah, I guess so.”
    “And when you were in Bermuda, did you guys feed yourselves by fishing and growing your own food?”
    “Yeah, we fished almost every day, and we had our own garden.”
    “Okay, and I suppose you all read a lot of books, right?”
    “Uh, yeah…hundreds, probably.”
    “That’s makes you the exception. Most survivors can barely read or feed themselves, so they either steal food or rely on others to feed them. They’re totally helpless. They’re like infants. But you three managed to sail hundreds of miles from Bermuda and survive. Alone.” Ben gave Andy a long look. “Yeah, you’re definitely the exception.”
    She turned away and looked out the window to her right. “My dad used to say that ignorance was dangerous.”
    “He was right. But all that means is that you’ve got the upper hand.”
    “‘Knowledge is Power,’ Sir Francis Bacon.”
    “Okay, now you’re just showing off.”
    Andy laughed. “Sorry, but I have to give credit to Charlie for that one. He likes famous quotes.”
    “He seems like a smart kid.”
    “Charlie’s a genius. His I.Q. is off the charts. We’ve tested it.”
    “Well that’s good because we need all the brains we can get.”
    “Then I guess we’ll have to stick around then,” she teased after feigning a sigh. “Unless a better offer comes along.”
    “I wouldn’t hold my breath.” Ben smiled broadly at her.
    And at that moment, a sudden and strange warmth erupted somewhere in the lower part of her abdomen. It was like nothing Andy had ever felt before, and she recognized that it had everything to do with the person sitting beside her.
    ***
    Eastern New Mexico was dry and hot. Andy felt like she was standing in an oven, her skin cooking under the intense sun. She wore a baseball cap and a thin white linen shirt over her T-shirt to keep from getting sunburned, though neither could ward off the heat. Even the warmest days in Bermuda had never been this hot. And then there was quiet, like a void. Gone were the sounds of the ocean and the tangible feeling of moisture on her skin.
    Sitting in the back of the truck with Ben and Charlie, she turned to Ben when they slowed enough for him to hear.
    “I know this part of the country is a desert, but did you guys ever think how hot the summers would be when you picked this place?”
    Charlie agreed. “After all those dreary winters in England, I’m all for warm weather, but this is hot .”
    “But it’s quiet,” was all Ben said.
    The last stretch of their journey ended a hundred miles west of the Texas–New Mexico border in the town of Santa Rosa. It was a small town and from all initial appearances, entirely deserted.
    When she was ten, Andy’s father bought her a book of photographs of the Grand Canyon. Young Andy had scoured