Foreverland Is Dead

looks the same age as Cyn—sixteen or seventeen, if she had to guess. The girls, as far as she can tell, are younger. They’re still on the porch, watching from a distance. She can’t blame them. The brick house is spooky, even without the fence. The light is still on but nothing moves inside.
    It’s almost noon. Cyn’s cheeks feel sunburned, maybe a little wind-scorched, too.
    “Want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Roc asks. “‘Cause none of the other dipsticks have a clue.”
    Cyn shakes her head. “Where’d you get the food?”
    “There’s a stash in the dinner house, in the back room. All sorts of stuff—eggs and fruit and milk. You put that there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “That means I don’t know.”
    Cyn pushes herself up, pausing until her balance is right. Roc watches her knock the dust off her bare knees. Cyn’s only wearing a t-shirt and underwear that look like they’ve never been washed. Smell like it, too. She puts the jeans on and they fit just right. The boots are worn leather, cracked along the seams. There’s a hole in the right one, but they fit. Without socks, though, they chafe.
    “Maybe we should get everyone together,” Cyn says. “Meet in the dinner house around the table, find out what everyone knows. See what’s around here.”
    Roc heads back while Cyn tucks her shirt inside her jeans, flipping the waistband one more time, reading her name stitched inside. It feels strange.
    Everything does .

    The solar panels had raised their mechanical faces to follow the sun. The garden is mostly free of weeds. The houses all face a large, grassy meadow interspersed with swaying yellow flowers.
    White-capped mountains are in the distance.
    The middle of nowhere.
    The girls are on the porch. Three of them stand next to the door, shoulders hunched against the slight chill. Or maybe it’s fear. Their filthy shirts freshly stained, their chins glistening with the sticky juice of apples or oranges. Their eyes, though, are still hungry.
    The one girl that doesn’t belong is in the corner. Her blouse is clean, her shorts pressed. Her socks have little frilly edges. She leans into the railing, blonde hair hiding her eyes.
    Roc tells one of the girls to fetch her an apple.
    Cyn walks past the porch for a closer look at the bunkhouse. The cabins look different in the daylight. Even older than she would’ve guessed, like they were built with an ax. The horses gallop to the wire fence, one of them rearing up. They snort and stomp dust clouds.
    The windmills stand in contrast to the dilapidated barn. Wind harvesters. That thought pops into Cyn’s awareness, like she knows it’s not some ordinary windmill but a wind turbine that converts kinetic energy into electricity.
    Yet the barn is missing planks.
    The girls watch her, all except the blonde. She’s hiding in the shadows.
    “Let’s go inside,” Cyn says.
    Roc pulls the door open, lets it slam behind her. The others watch Cyn, wait for her. She opens the door and waves them in. Cyn looks around like she’s not sure if someone else will show up. The horses whinny.
    The walls and furniture look like something from pioneer days, all hand-carved and primitive. A cold black wood stove is in the back, a pipe running straight up the wall, through the rafters and ceiling. But the windows are triple-pane insulated.
    The girls shuffle around the table but don’t sit. There are plenty of chairs —twelve of them. There are only six girls. Roc drops into the chair at the head of the table, throws her boots on it. She rips into the apple, juice dribbling from her chin.
    Cyn examines the rough surface of the table and the candleholders, which appear to be iron rods crudely welded together. Wax puddles on the table. The walls are barren and the wood floor scuffed. There are two doors on the back wall, one on each side of the stove.
    The girls heads are shaved, all except the blonde. Roc’s laughter breaks the silence. “You’re looking at them like cattle.”
    Bits of apple shoot from her mouth.
    “What are your names?” Cyn asks.
    No one speaks. She points at the one with black hair and dark skin. Indian, maybe.
    “Jen.”
    “That’s what it says inside your pants?”
    She nods.
    “Okay. How about you?”
    Kat’s hair is bright red, her cheeks freckled. The other one is Mad. She has black skin, tight curly hair. The blonde has found the corner again, looking for a mouse hole to climb