Swarm by Lauren Carter Page B

empty pits, a few glowing with a dim internal light.
    â€œSo Thomson decided to travel,” Marvin continued. “He ended up here as a student. He met my mother at school and she sponsored him to stay.”
    â€œWhy was he so mad at you?”
    Marvin shrugged. It was clear he wouldn’t tell me.
    â€œAnd Phoenix?”
    Marvin stopped to straighten a bent cigarette. “She’s just a bitch.”
    â€œI didn’t think so.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo. Who is she?”
    Marvin stuck the smoke in his mouth and mumbled around it. “His one and only. The apple of his eye.”
    â€œHis daughter?”
    â€œStepdaughter. Born in Chiapas. Her parents were activists. Well, everyone was, unless you were military or a landowner.”
    I didn’t know where Chiapas was, but Marvin didn’t give me time to ask. “You know you don’t have to prove anything to her,” he said, stopping at the last in a line of row houses. “You don’t even have to see her again.” I followed him up the path and through the front door, already aware that was the opposite of what I wanted.
    People don’t always have reasons for what they do, Melissa. I left the diner knowing I would sleep with Marvin that night. Partly because I liked the feeling of his hand on my back and the heat of his confidence but also because the evening demanded it. I had never slept with a guy so quickly before, but Margo did it all the time and constantly told me to loosen up, be more spontaneous. Maybe it was out of character for me but since everything else had changed, I thought that could too. The box that had been my life—job, home, regular routine—had caved in, and going back to Marvin’s squat was just the breaking of one of the seams.
    The house was freezing cold and smelled musty. Marvin dumped his backpack on the floor. I heard the snapping of a match as he lit a candle lantern and the flames stretched every shape into large shadows. I saw a table with five chairs. Three books piled next to a typewriter. A black sleeping bag coiled on a mattress on the floor. The walls were covered with newspaper, cardboard, a blue tarp, and strangely shaped patches of plywood. In the mix a map was pinned up. Shiny red, silver, and gold stars formed a circle on streets north of the dark zone and the empty spot that was the lake. They glittered in the jumping light. They caught my eye, and I started walking over to look but Marvin said, “Come over here.” When we met in the centre of the room, he put his cold hand on my neck and a tremor went through me. He leaned his face toward mine and when he kissed me, it was like the opening of a black hole, hot and magnetic, sucking me in.

5 Island
    After Marvin rowed the boat into the bay at dawn, I went outside. A few of your footprints were on the far side of the garden fence. You wouldn’t have been able to climb it and I ached for you, your hunger, your helplessness, but the plate was also gone from the porch. I hoped that was enough. Like the fish, beets are good for iron. Greens are plentiful in the fields. Dandelion leaves, although the flowers have gone to seed so they taste bitter. Still, they’re better than nothing. If you don’t know what to look for I will leave a little bit out and you can learn.
    Mr. Bobiwash came when I was peeling the thin skins off the Roma tomatoes and sterilizing the jars. Mid-morning. Marvin back home and in the shed. Thomson made a sound like a woman starting to sob but fell silent when the knock came. Red pulp smeared on my apron, I opened the door. Mr. Bobiwash and his eldest son, Samuel, stood with guns balanced on their shoulders like sticks. They looked like hobos seeking work during the long-ago Great Depression I’d read about in newspapers in the dark zone.
    â€œThe cranes are back,” Samuel told me, excited. They come every year, at the beginning and end of summer. Hundreds land by