“I don’t know.”

His eyes flashed open. “Really? You used to love lollipops. Though I guess you were a fan of orange.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. Your mother would buy bags of lollipops and collect all the orange ones and keep them in a drawer. You got one a week. You would go crazy.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You were young.”

“I remember a lot of things, though.”

“Well, this was a small thing.” He shrugged.

“What did she do with the others?”

“She handed them out to the kids in the building.” He chuckled. “We ate a lot of them.”

“What was her favorite?”

“Oh, green. She liked it because it’s not a flavor of something. It’s just a flavor.”

“It’s not something?”

“I guess it’s supposed to be apple, but it isn’t.”

“I thought it was like crab apples.”

“That’s what you tasted?”

“Yes, I tasted it.”

“That makes sense. Do you want your lollipop?”

“No.”

“Can I have it?”

But Agnes was already handing it to him.

Agnes asked, “She would give other kids lollipops?”

“Yeah, she used to give the kids lots of things. Stuff that you outgrew. Or toys you didn’t want. There weren’t a lot of kids in the building. Only a few younger than you. Do you remember them?”

“No.” Agnes couldn’t imagine a building that size with only a few kids. Even still she couldn’t picture them. “Did I know them?”

“Oh, yeah. The ones who lived around us. You were all friends. You would run up and down the hallways together. Especially after curfew. It annoyed everyone. But the parents thought it was fun. We would meet in someone’s apartment and drink. Of course, that was before you got sick. You and the others.” He drummed his fingers against his chin. “I think their names were Wei and Miguel and Sarah.” He laughed. “Wow. I can’t believe I remember.”

“I don’t remember them,” Agnes said again. But truthfully she was forming a picture in her mind of the fluorescent lights and the concrete floor of the hallway. Of one end getting closer, the sound of panting and screams. Then a new view, or the other end of the hall, and launching toward it. She heard adult laughter behind a door. Ice touching the sides of a glass. Her cheeks hurt. Her eyes were wet. She was smiling. A door clicked. A body came out into the hallway, and Agnes collided with it. No. Jumped onto it. Into the arms. Arms lifting her up. The eyes shining. Smiling face of her mother. Something astringent on her breath. The door ajar and the sounds coming from inside now seemed raucous.

“Okay, okay, bedtime for everyone,” she said. Agnes and the children booed. The adults inside booed. Her mother stumbling back, theatrically, barely holding on to Agnes, who was wrapped around her, arms around neck, legs gripped around her waist.

“How am I the bad guy?” her mother cried. Agnes buried her face in her mother’s neck. She could smell the heat of her—it was always hot in the building; none of the windows opened. She could smell whatever they had been drinking. Then Agnes smelled Glen because he had appeared and pretended to eat her nose. Then she could only remember the feeling of sleep. Of warmth, of cool sheets, her mother’s dry lips. “Good night, sweetheart.”

A shooting star drew a blue line above them.

How awful it must have been, Agnes thought, to leave such a nice life.

*

After a morning hunt, Agnes and other Originalists scraped and washed and stretched skins by the fire while the Newcomers explored the area.

Val appeared next to Agnes and sat down.

“How are you, kiddo?”

“Fine.”

“Friends?” Val held out her hand.

Agnes shook it. “Friends.”

Val caressed Agnes’s head. “Your hair looks ridiculous, by the way,” she said, a tsk in her voice. But she was speaking softly too. She was trying to be kind in the ways Val could be kind.

Agnes touched it. To the touch, her shorn head growing out all at once made her imagine a scene from an old wildlife special that lived in her memory like an image through fog. Of an immature lion with an immature mane. One skulking on the outskirts of the pride, not ready to take on the alpha. Yet.

“You’re going to have to decide if you want to have some self -respect and cut it again, or if you’re going to look stupid while it grows to your butt.” Val’s eyebrows, so shaped and black they looked painted on, wiggled. “It’s really so stupid-looking,” she said, smiling.

“Cut it please,” Agnes said.

“Okay.” Val clapped her hands. “You’ll look fierce.”

“I want to look like a young lion who is ready to be a leader.”

“Well, sure, that sounds like it could be fierce.”

Val got on her knees, and Agnes sat against her and took off her shirt.

Agnes closed her eyes as Val pinched sections of her hair to cut.

The strands lifted in the wind like dandelion seeds.

“Make a wish,” Val said.

“I did.”

“What was it?”

“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

“Oh, sweetie, it won’t come true regardless. What was it?”

“I wished that my mom didn’t suffer,” Agnes said. She hadn’t really wished that, but thought it would make her seem noble.

“Well, that’s very selfless of you. Next time, though, make a wish for yourself.”

“But you said they don’t come true.”

“If you make wishes for other people, like the one you made, you’ll never know. If you make wishes for yourself, at least you’ll find out. See my logic?”

“Yes, I see it. What did you wish for?”

“A baby.”

“Babies aren’t so great.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Then why?” Agnes heard the whispering snip of the scissors behind her ear.

“Because I want one. And I hate when I don’t get what I want.”

Agnes thought of Val’s life, or what she knew of it. She liked Val. A lot more than many did. She had never thought of Val as someone who hadn’t gotten what she wanted. But she guessed she didn’t really have a sense for everything Val wanted. And if it was a baby, then she certainly didn’t have that, and she had certainly tried. A lot. Everyone knew about that.

“Okay, you are done, m’dear. Looking good if I do say so myself.”

Val put her hand in front of Agnes as though it were a mirror. “See, take a look.”

Agnes stared into the calluses of Val’s hand and touched her hair. She cooed, something she somehow knew to do from watching the women greet one another with air kisses outside their office buildings. “I love it,” Agnes cried. She pretended she had on layers of lipstick and smiled like she imagined one would with layers of lipstick on. Her lips full, sticky, hard to move, covered in mud. It was funny to her that she could remember such strange images that had nothing to do with her daily life and never would again. Made-up women in an unbelievable world. She giggled like she’d seen them giggle, her fingers to her collarbone, her chin up at attention.

“You are a hilarious weirdo,” Val said, planting a quick kiss on the top of Agnes’s shorn head and bounding off to help with lunch. Agnes decided a swim would be a good way to rinse off, and a swim would be good for Glen.

He sat on a log whittling a piece of wood into a hook, his hands covered in small bloody nicks. Agnes stood over him for a moment before he looked up, and when he looked up, it was a slow, stiff, painful movement. He smiled.

“Que bonita,” he said, touching his own hair to show what he meant.

“Thank you, Glen.”

He picked a stray hair off her smock. “Make a wish,” he said.

“I did already.”

“Then I will.” He closed his eyes, held the hair to his lips to kiss it before blowing it into the wind.

He smiled up at her, squinting into the sun behind her.

“Do you want to swim with me?” she asked.

He shook his head, mouthed no, still smiling and squinting at her. He grasped one of her hands and wagged it back and forth. “So proud of you, my girl,” he said. His voice was reedy again, and fell into a whisper at the end.

“Thanks, Glen.”

He let go and went back to whittling, and she stood there for a moment more, wanting to somehow change his mind but not knowing how.

Everyone, even the smallest of the Newcomers, was busy around camp, but still Agnes went to the river. She knew she was neglecting important work. That worm of irresponsibility squiggled against her ribs, made her feel like a kid again, without a worry or duty, and she secretly cherished the feeling.