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Hector shrugged and smiled. “Trying to figure it all out keeps life interesting, I guess.”

Little by little, lights blinked on around the valley. “The power's back,” Gwen said.

“I don't think so. People are probably getting their small generators going.”

“Don't those need electricity?”

Hector shook his head. “Lithium battery chips.”

“Better hoard battery chips, then,” Gwen commented. “If we can't get them, we'll be in real trouble.”

“Whatever happens, at least we have each other,” Hector said.

Gwen looked at him sharply. There was something in Hector's low tone of voice, or maybe it was the bend of his body that made her think he was about to lean in for a kiss. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, moving back.

Hector looked hurt. “Mean by what?”

“‘We have each other.'”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don't know,” Gwen insisted. She had an idea of what it meant on her end of things, but she wasn't completely certain. Friends? More than friends?

“It means I'll be there to help if you need me.”

Gwen stood. “Uh, thanks, Hector, but I never need anyone. That's not how I am.”

“Someday you might need some help. Everyone does, sometimes,” Hector insisted.

“Not me,” Gwen said as she sat and began inching quickly down the roof. “I'd better get inside. It's going to take a while to wash my hair by candlelight.”

“You're going to wash it in freezing cold water?” Hector asked.

“Why should the water be freezing?” Gwen replied as she made her way down the roof.

“Your furnace has an electric start button. Unless you have a hot water tank—and I doubt you do in a house this old—you don't have any hot water.”

“I guess that means sleep,” Gwen said. That's what the whole town would do—sleep until things got better. Because there was nothing else they could do.

Tom thought that school might be canceled because of all the blackouts and the hard time people were having finding fuel. But the morning of the first day of school, the call Tom had been hoping for hadn't come. Instead, he had to walk the two miles to school—there hadn't been buses for as long as he'd been there—and head back to class. Most kids hadn't been able to charge their tablets, and teachers were being discouraged from using the electric boards, so class was bordering on chaos. Concentrating on what the teachers were saying was harder than ever. Tom found himself praying the school's generator would fail and the lights would suddenly blink out, causing the students to be sent home. Then he realized home wasn't much better.

After a week back, things hadn't really improved. Tom caught up with Carlos as they left their creative journalism English elective. “I thought the English electives were going to be fun, but this is a total bore,” he complained.

“I know,” Carlos agreed. “This substitute, Mr. Ralph, stinks. Where is Mr. Curtin, anyway? That's the main reason I signed up for the class. Did he quit or something?”

Tom shook his head. “I heard he lives so far away that he can't get enough gas to come to work each day, so he's on temporary leave.”

“It was cold last night, did you notice?” Carlos asked as the two of them headed for the cafeteria.

Tom blasted him with laughter. “Did I notice? How could I
not
notice? I begged Mom to turn on the heat, but she couldn't. Our oil tank is nearly empty. The oil company doesn't know when it's going to be able to deliver. Mom has to save what we have in case it freezes. She says if the pipes in the house freeze, they could burst.”

“My parents don't have any oil, either. I slept with four blankets,” Carlos recounted. “And I wish the electric would come back on. This is starting to drive me nuts.”

“Mom has an emergency crank radio. Last night, I heard that they expect emergency oil to bring the electric turbines back up by tomorrow.”

“I can't wait,” Carlos said. “I've been going to sleep at six o'clock because there's nothing to do. And then I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can't even watch TV. If I could at least recharge my phone, I'd call you and make you crazy, too.”

“I already feel crazy. My mother keeps wanting us to spend time talking, and then all she wants to do is freak out about this war. I was actually glad to come back to school this morning, because at least the generator means there's hot water. I actually enjoy showering after gym now.”

Tom saw Gwen turn the corner, walking toward them. He'd paid her money back on the first day of school, and ever since then they'd chatted briefly in the hall sometimes. He considered their relationship as being friendly, even if they weren't exactly friends.

Each time they met, Tom had the sensation Gwen was a girl in a costume, that she was hiding under the dark eyeliner, the jet-black hair, and the scruffy outfits. She was entirely different from Niki—and he still thought of Niki as the perfect girl, even though she'd forgotten all about him. Yet he thought Gwen was also attractive, intriguing, and sort of mysterious but with a dry sense of humor. There was something about her that he really liked.

Too bad she was seeing that guy with the Mohawk—the homeschooled one. He'd have asked Gwen if she wanted to hang out with him sometime if she wasn't already involved with another guy.

“Hey, Gwen,” he greeted her when she was close. “Why weren't you in journalism?”

Gwen checked to see who else was nearby before replying in a conspiratorial voice, “I ditched. I can't take that Mr. Ralph—what a dork. I wish Curtin would come back.”

“We all do,” Carlos said. “Did you freeze last night?”

Gwen answered with a little shrug, not meeting his eyes. “Not really.”

Tom suddenly realized what she meant. He stepped in closer to her. “Your brother has oil, doesn't he?” he whispered.

Gwen didn't answer, but she didn't have to. Tom could tell that her choppy, black cut was clean. Most of the girls at Sage Valley High had taken to wearing their hair pulled back or in braids to hide the fact that it was overdue to be washed. It was just too dark at night and the water was too cold for them to attend to their usual hair routines, at least not with the same care they usually used. The ones who washed it in the school showers didn't have time to style it.

“Where is he getting the oil?” Tom asked in a low voice. “Is it at the same place we went that day I got it from him?”

Tom remembered the old building where Luke had taken him. Luke had parked his motorcycle in front of the burned-out wooden building and insisted Tom stay with it while he disappeared around the back, before returning in ten minutes with a red canister.

“I told you…he doesn't have oil. That was just that one day. He can't get it anymore.”

“I don't believe you,” Carlos challenged her softly. “You can trust us. We won't tell anyone else.”

“He
doesn't
have oil or gas or anything,” Gwen insisted.

“Then why weren't you cold?” Tom asked.

“It wasn't
that
cold.”

“I froze my butt off! You're crazy,” Carlos scoffed.

“Could be,” Gwen agreed. “You're probably totally right about that.”

“Come on, Gwen, tell us,” Tom coaxed. “We just want to buy enough to get a generator going. The nights are really getting cold.”

Gwen looked at him and their eyes connected. Tom felt something pass between them before they both darted self-consciously out of the connection.

“Anyway, I have to go to the computer room,” Gwen said, backing away down the hall.

“It's closed,” Tom told her.

“They hook into the generator between one and two,” Gwen called over her shoulder.

Tom waved good-bye as he watched her disappear into the crowd.

“What do you think of her?” Carlos asked.

“She's interesting,” Tom replied. “She has sad eyes.”

“I like her stuff when she reads it in journalism. She's a good writer. Smart,” Carlos said. “She might be pretty if she wasn't so weird.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed. She
was
pretty. Not his type, of course, but still…there was that something about her.

Tom and Carlos arrived at the wide double cafeteria doors and instantly saw the sign taped to it:
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
. Mr. Ralph was nearby, and Tom turned to him. “No cafeteria?” he asked, jerking his thumb toward the sign.

“No refrigeration and no electricity equals no lunch,” Mr. Ralph replied without stopping. “It's more than the generator can handle. You can go out to eat if you want. New rule.”

“Do you have your car?” Tom asked Carlos.

“Yeah, but I just have enough gas to get home—I hope. I'm cruising on fumes as it is.”

“That stinks.”

“No luck with your dad's truck?”

Tom shook his head. “Not yet. There's no rush. I couldn't afford to put gas in it even if I got it going.”

“Doing anything this weekend?” Carlos asked as they headed down the hall.

“I'm supposed to go clean out the boathouse. Mom wants to sell the boat, so she asked if I would clean out the storage shed that has all the boat stuff in it.”

They were nearly to the lobby. “What are we going to eat?” Carlos asked, throwing his arms wide in frustration.

“I don't know!” Tom admitted. “What's everyone else doing?”

“I have no idea.” Carlos shook his head. “This is crazy, man. We're stuck here in school with no food and no wheels.”

“We can see if someone has a bag lunch we can grub from,” Tom suggested.

“Now you're thinking,” Carlos agreed. “We'd probably do better if we split up. No one will have enough for both of us.”

“You're right. See ya later.”

“Later.”

Students were milling around the halls and spilling out into the front walkway by the near-empty parking lot. Tom slid his student cash card into the vending machine before noticing every single thing was out. He wandered outside to the front of the building and scanned the parking lot across the road from the front entrance.

A red two-seater sports car pulled in front of him. The window closest to him went down, and Niki leaned across the passenger seat.

After their disastrous ice cream outing, Niki had been avoiding him. Tom could never make eye contact or find an opening to talk to her. He was sure she saw him as a complete loser for getting her stranded like that. And anyway, he'd heard she'd gotten back together with Brock. They were holding hands and nuzzling each other in the hallway once again, just like last year. He'd been delusional to think he ever had a chance with her.

“What are you doing?” Niki asked, looking sleek in her hot pink sweater, her perfect blond hair seemingly unaffected by recent conditions.

“Looking for lunch.”

“Want to go to my house? I'll make you a sandwich or something.”

Why was she being so nice to him? “Okay,” he said. He caught sight of Brock standing in the parking lot with some of the guys from the football team. Easily six-foot-three and every inch the star quarterback,
Brock was a formidable figure, not someone Tom would especially want to anger. “Maybe we shouldn't go.”

“Why? Because of Brock? He has nothing to say about it. We broke up.”

“Again? Whose idea was that?” Tom asked, noticing when he got closer that she smelled like a heady mixture of lemon and honeysuckle perfume.

Niki hesitated. “Mine.”

Tom didn't believe her. But maybe it was only wishful thinking on his part. If Brock broke up with Niki, he shouldn't mind seeing Tom and Niki together.

Deciding to chance it, Tom slid into the passenger seat.

To get out of the school parking lot, they had to drive right past Brock. As they passed, Brock glanced nonchalantly into the car. Tom couldn't read his expression, but he felt relieved that Brock wasn't glaring at him angrily. Just the same, he unintentionally slid lower in his seat.

“So, I haven't seen much of you, Tom,” Niki said brightly, as though this wasn't something she had intended. “What have you been up to?”

“Not much. Since I'm not playing football, I've been looking for a job, but so far I haven't been able to find one. Mostly, I've been trying to get my father's old truck up and going.”

“Oh, I heard about your father. I'm so sorry. I would have said something last time I saw you, but I didn't know.”

“It's okay. Thanks.”

Niki turned out of the school lot and drove down a block of neat houses. Glancing to his right, Tom noticed a tall, thin man with a head of thick, blond hair, standing on a lawn. “Pull over a minute, please,” Tom said.

“That's Mr. Curtin,” Niki noticed, stopping at the curb.

Tom sprang from the car. “Mr. Curtin!” he called, waving. Niki stayed in the car; clearly, she wasn't looking for any student-teacher reunions this afternoon.

The teacher looked to Tom and smiled. “Why aren't you in school, Tom?”

“Why aren't
you
?” Tom inquired. “I'm supposed to be in your journalism elective.”

“I'm coming back. I've finally bought this house closer to the school, so I can walk to work. I got a great deal because the former owner is moving south so his heating bill won't be so high. I was just out here looking for a place to dig a root cellar.”

“What's that?” Tom asked.

“A big hole in the ground for keeping food; it's naturally cool so I won't need refrigeration for things like potatoes, carrots, yams—root vegetables. I plan to grow my own vegetables next spring.”

“Why don't you just go to the grocery store like everybody else?” Tom asked.

“Where do you think that produce comes from?” Mr. Curtin replied.

Tom had never really thought about it. “I don't know. Farms, right?”

“Like all the farms in this town?”

“Are you kidding? There are no farms here anymore.”

“Exactly. The food is brought in by trucks and, especially in the winter, on freighters from places like South and Central America. Have you seen the supermarket produce department lately?”

“No, my mom does the shopping.”

“Check it out sometime. The fresh produce shelves are just about empty. The price of food in general has more than tripled. You need
gasoline for trucks and freighters, and they pass that cost on to consumers like us. I wish I'd grown a garden this summer, but I never expected that things would get this bad this fast.”

“Nobody did,” Tom said.

A slim, blond woman with her hair in a ponytail approached. “Mary, this is one of my students, Tom Harris. Tom, my wife, Mary,” Mr. Curtin introduced them. “Tom and I were just saying how nobody expected everything to fall apart so fast.”

“Well, we all should have seen it coming,” Mrs. Curtin said. “We've been headed down this road for a while. I guess no one—including me—thought the oil would really run out. We had no idea that everything is made from oil—plastic, insecticides, cosmetics—everything. Shampoo and soap are made of hydrocarbons, linked and processed from oil. Bricks and concrete are made with oil. The shingles on our roof. Carpet. Fertilizer. The asphalt we use to pave our roads—that comes from the bottom of the tank after oil's been refined. When there's no oil, the bottom of the tank is empty.”

“My wife has her PhD in bioengineering. She's been very involved with ecological issues for the last ten years,” Mr. Curtin explained.

“So I should have known better. People have been predicting this would happen for the last thirty years,” Mary Curtin said. “Now, at last, it's happened.”

“What's happened, exactly?” Tom asked. “I mean, once this thing with Venezuela is settled, we'll be back to normal, right?”