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Again, Hector's shifting eyes made him seem to be calculating how he wanted to answer before actually speaking. Then a look of resignation came over his face. “If it were up to me, I would be,” he finally replied.

Tom cast him a confused glance. “What do you mean?”

“I don't think Gwen is all that into me—I mean, in
that
way.”

“But you like her?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Tom said, absorbing this new information.

“Why?” Hector asked as they neared the trail leading into the hilly forest. “Are you interested?”

“In Gwen?”

“Who else are we talking about?”

Tom realized he was avoiding the question.
Was
he interested in Gwen? Niki was the one he was supposed to be involved with, wasn't she? And he
did
like Niki; he'd thought of no other girl but her for such a long, long time. But he'd found himself thinking a lot about Gwen ever since the night of the fire when she'd run off. Maybe he was just worried about her. But it felt like something more than that. “I don't know,” Tom admitted to Hector. “I'm not sure.”

Hector grunted noncommittally. “I'm not sure you're Gwen's type.”

“Probably not,” Tom conceded.
But still
…

Gwen put down the fork she was using to eat the salad she'd picked from the greenhouse on the top floor of the Whippersnapper 3 Green Model Home and stared intently out the expansive wall of a window to the forest outside. Solid forms were moving among the trees. One? No. Two. Squinting for a better focus, Gwen could tell they weren't the white-tailed deer that often browsed by in their constant quest for leaves and brush to eat. There were two
people
out there.

They wouldn't be able to look in at her. Yesterday she went outside through the camouflaged sliding door and knew that the window panel was made of mildly reflective one-way glass. At first, all they'd see was more trees, and as long as they didn't catch sight of themselves in the greenish reflection, they might not realize there was anything there at all.

Getting up off the floor, she went close to the window for a better view. The forms were coming toward her. Were they hikers? Forest rangers?

No—

Hector!

Tom!

Running to the side door, she pounded the button that caused it to slide open and raced into the forest, calling to them. “I'm here! Over here!”

Larry barked and ran to her first, knocking her back a few steps as he leapt on her, infused with the excitement of her outburst. Gwen rubbed his head. “Hi, pleased to meet you,” she said, laughing.

Hector and Tom ran to her. Hector threw his arms around Gwen, hugging her tight. “You're okay!” Then he gripped her arms, pushing her out of the hug for closer scrutiny. “You
are
okay, aren't you?”

Still laughing, Gwen leaned back into the hug. “Yes. Yes. I'm totally okay.”

“Thank goodness,” Tom said.

Gwen embraced him, too, her delight in seeing him making her forget any self-conscious inhibition. “Thank you for coming to find me. You, too, Hector. Thanks.”

Gwen's eyes welled with happy tears. Someone had come out to look for her—two someones. She recalled the night in the mine shaft when the desolate feeling of being completely unloved and alone had been so awful that she'd cried herself to sleep.

Stepping back to look at them, she decided they didn't look all that great. Tom's bright eyes had a weary expression, and his clothes were dirty. Hector was even worse. His Mohawk had flopped to one side and there were dark circles under his eyes.

“How have you two been?” she asked, quickly brushing the wetness from her eyes.

“Not great,” Hector admitted. “My trailer…like…just blew away.”

Gwen gasped. “That's terrible.”

“No kidding. It was terrifying.”

“Were you there at the time?” Tom asked.

“Hell, yeah! We were there. The roof just peeled right off. The whole trailer park is demolished. We were able to get into my mother's car and just pray
it
didn't turn over.”

“You were lucky it didn't,” Tom said.

“It did turn on its side,” Hector reported, “and it got blown down the road, but at least it didn't get far. That was the most horrible day of my life.”

“What about you?” Gwen asked Tom.

“Our house held, but the basement is flooded and so are the streets. I guess it's because we're at the bottom of the valley.”

“My house definitely wouldn't have lasted,” Gwen realized. “It doesn't even matter that it burned. It would've been washed out or blown away.”

“Maybe you should come to the shelter with me,” Hector suggested.

“Yeah, and have social services put me in foster care? I don't think so. Besides, I have it good where I'm living. Better than you guys, it seems.”

“Oh, yeah? Where
have
you been living?” Hector asked.

Gwen turned toward the reflective glass, but before she could explain, Tom jumped back, startled.

“Oh, man! What is that?” Hector cried as Larry barked at the reflection. “It's me!” Hector exclaimed as he walked forward to inspect his image. “For a second, I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

Gwen stepped ahead of him and knocked on the glass.

“What's in there?” Tom asked, coming alongside her.

“It's the Whippersnapper Three,” Gwen told them.

“The
what
?” Tom asked.

“I'll show you. Come on in. Follow me,” Gwen told them, leading the way to the side door that was set into a huge boulder.

“You would never even know this place was here,” Tom said, amazed, as he walked into the room on the main floor.

“I know,” Gwen agreed. “Almost no impact on its environment; even the front isn't intrusive, as you saw.”

Tom turned to look out at the forest, gaping in wonder. “Were we just out there? Is this one-way glass?”

“Yep,” Gwen confirmed. “The Whippersnapper Three features passive solar design and natural cross-ventilation that eliminates the need for an air conditioner. It's made from all recycled and recyclable materials. It has storm water retention, and it all runs on a magnetic generator that never costs any more than its initial start-up cost.”

“Awesome,” Tom murmured.

“And that one-way glass,” Gwen added, pointing toward the forest. “It's a solar panel.”

“When did you become an expert on all this?” Hector asked as he slowly turned in a circle, taking in the Whippersnapper 3.

Gwen pointed to the pile of books she'd taken from the bookshelves and stacked on the floor. “I've been reading those, plus all the sales brochures on this place. There's not much else to do.”

“So, do you have power here?” Tom asked.

Gwen nodded. “It seems like someone just left this house as it was and never came back. I don't think anyone ever lived here. It's just a sales model home. My best guess is that the people who built it live in California, or someplace else far enough away that it would cost way too much for them to move back right now.”

“You have power!?” Hector cried, taking his cell phone from his jeans pocket. He cursed softly. “I didn't bring my charger.”

“There's a charger rack downstairs,” Gwen told him. “It's to encourage you not to leave chargers plugged in because they drain energy. Maybe you can find one that fits your phone. But come upstairs first. I want to show you guys something.”

Gwen led them up a spiral staircase to the top floor. They stepped into a greenhouse brightly lit by natural sunlight pouring in. “I suppose you'd have to build a house like this in a clearing to get the sun in here like this,” she said, “but isn't it cool?”

“How come we couldn't see this from the outside?” Tom asked, staring up.

“It's still below the outside walls, just the top is open. See?” Gwen explained. “The side walls use ultraviolet grow lights and those containers on the walls are hydroponics.”

“Hydro what?” Hector asked.

“They're grown in the air without dirt,” Gwen told him. “See the way the roots dangle down out of those holes? Every day a nutrient spray gives them food.”

“How come these plants didn't die if the place was abandoned?” Tom asked.

Gwen pointed to sprinklers set into the glass. “Every day they get sprinkled with storm water collected in that cistern. There,” she answered, pointing to a large blue bin on the outside corner of the glass roof. “There was a lot of rotten fruit and vegetables when I first got up here 'cause no one had collected it, which is why I don't think anyone's been here for at least a little while, but I just dumped the old fruit in the composting bin over there.”

“This is awesome,” Hector said, snapping off a twig of green basil and popping it into his mouth. “It's nice and warm in here, so I guess something is heating it.”

Again, Gwen pointed up. “Those glass panels also work as solar heat, plus there are heating units in the walls that are powered by the same magnetic generator that's running the whole house. The panels must've been pretty thick to withstand the storm—but obviously they did.” Gwen looked to Tom and Hector. “You guys look like you're hungry. Are you?”

“Real hungry,” Hector replied.

“Dig in,” Gwen offered. “There are some apple and peach trees at the far end in those pots. Hector is standing by the herbs. Tom, up in that container are hydroponic tomatoes and next to that, cucumbers.”

“Where's the Twinkie plant?” Hector joked.

“Sorry, none of those,” Gwen said, smiling. “Since I've been here I've been sort of forced to eat the good stuff. You get used to it, you know.”

“Are these plants genetically modified to grow inside?” Tom asked.

Gwen shook her head. “No. They're totally natural. I've read a whole paper on what they've planted here. All these seeds come from a natural seed bank in Holland.”

“A seed
bank
?” Hector questioned, snapping bright yellow cherry tomatoes from a plant.

Gwen nodded. “The stuff I read was real interesting. About thirty years ago, big biochemical companies started making genetically modified foods, things like square tomatoes that would fit more neatly into shipping containers. At first everybody was suspicious of it, but then we all just got used to it.”

“I did a report on something like this last year in social studies,” Hector added. “Didn't the companies make it so the fruits and vegetables completely died out each year?”

“That's right,” Gwen said. “Farmers used to get their seeds from their crops. But now they had to buy them from the company every year.”

“I read about that, too,” Hector recalled excitedly. “They were called terminator seeds because they didn't renew themselves. Freaky.”

“Yeah, way freaky,” Gwen agreed. “So, then a few years ago, these reports started coming out by private medical groups claiming that a lot of the sickness they were seeing was tracing back to malnutrition. It turns out that the GMOs don't have the same nutritional value as the natural food had; only now there were no more seeds left. For a while, it looked like we had allowed the big biotech companies to destroy all the world's food. Except, fortunately, there were some groups that had thought this might be a problem and had begun collecting seeds.”

“At least somebody was thinking,” Tom remarked. “Is it hard to get the seeds?”

“Real hard,” Gwen confirmed, “but the Whippersnapper Three comes with its own supply.”

When they'd filled straw baskets with the food they'd picked, Gwen showed them to the basement kitchen. “You have to eat it plain because there's no salad dressing or anything like that here,” she added apologetically.

“Are you kidding?” Hector said. “Do you know how good this tastes after eating nothing but powdered cheese and macaroni for days?”

“It's great,” Tom agreed, popping a hydroponic strawberry into his mouth. “All I found was some stale cereal for breakfast. I had it dry and I haven't had anything since. It didn't seem like I was going to get
anything else to eat, either, the way those people at the grocery store were acting.”

Tom suddenly hit the table. “I can't believe I did it again!”

“What?” Gwen asked.

“I was supposed to bring my mother some groceries and medicine. She's sick. I was supposed to go right back, and I've been gone for at least three hours.”

“I'll go get her some veggies and fruit,” Gwen offered. “There's a bottle of acetaminophen in the medicine cabinet. You can bring that to her.”

“Thanks.”

“You know,” Gwen began thoughtfully, “there's a lot of food up there that people could use. I wonder if you guys should tell them about this place.”

“And have them duking it out in the forest?” Hector questioned. “You should have seen them, Gwen. They were clobbering each other for a bag of groceries. It was nuts.”

“Way nuts,” Tom agreed, shoveling a forkful of lettuce into his mouth while he hand-fed Larry snap peas, which the dog eagerly gobbled. “But I guess people get sort of crazy when they're hungry, especially people with kids.”

“We have to find a way to get some of this food to them,” Gwen said.

“Since when are you such a saint?” Hector asked lightly. “I thought you found people annoying.”

“People
are
annoying,” Gwen agreed. “But little kids shouldn't go hungry.”

“True that,” Hector agreed. “If you could fill a bag, I'll take it to the people in the shelter. I can say that I was abducted by a spaceship and
the aliens returned me to earth with a bag of food as payment for the valuable internal body parts they stole from me.”

“Okay,” Gwen agreed.

“If you have extra, some of my neighbors are completely out of food,” Tom added. “I'll say I got it in town somewhere.”

“Why didn't I think of that?” Hector said.

“That's not the way your mind works,” Gwen suggested.

“I have to ask you guys something,” Hector continued, looking bothered by what he was about to say. “Is it just me, or does it feel like it's the end of the world?”

“Why should it be the end of the world?” Tom asked.

Gwen thought she understood what Hector was getting at. “It's as though the world is falling apart, and no one is in charge or even knows what to do about it.”

“Exactly,” Hector agreed.

“But is it the end of the world, or only the end of the world as we've always known it?” Tom considered.

Gwen looked at him as though suddenly seeing him in an entirely different way. Even though she had always liked him, she'd assumed he wasn't a person who would ever ask a question like that. He was a football player, not a deep thinker.

It struck her that she had made the same quick judgments about Tom that she so deeply resented others making about her.

“It's the end of the world,” Hector decided.

“You could be right,” Gwen said. “Or maybe it's just that everything about the way we live is going to have to change.”