Well, it’s time for Risa to show what she brings to the table.

Risa offers the woman a big smile. “Hi, my name is Didi? And I’m collecting clothes and food for our school? We’re, like, giving them to the homeless? And it’s like this competition— whoever gets the most wins a trip to Florida or something? So it would be really, really great if you could help out?”
The sleepy woman tries to get her brain up to speed with “Didi,” airhead for the homeless. The woman can’t get a word in edgewise because Didi talks way too fast. If Risa had had a piece of chewing gum, she would have popped a bubble somewhere in there to add more authenticity.

The whole childmurder thing really doesn’t seem to have done anything to change how teen stereotypes act. Also, why do they even still have homeless people? You’re culling anyone whose parents don’t care enough about them, so no one’s throwing their kids out. The state institutions slaughter their underachievers, so you’re also not getting people who were in foster care and then left to fend for themselves. And presumably being a runaway is itself a cullable offense.

Whatever’s left should be pretty manageable, even before pointing out that there’s no rational reason that the government wouldn’t just make being homeless a cullable offense.

Utter worldbuilding failure aside, Risa’s idea is a good one. And it works – the woman gives them some clothes and canned food – although on the latter, they’ll have trouble eating it.

(This would seem to suggest things are generally prosperous. That fits with everything else we’ve seen – the state says they’re dealing with a ton of kids, but they only need to get rid of five percent of the teens to house everyone in what seem decent facilities and give them piano teachers and beautiful pianos. How does that fit with the upswing in births and how badly we’re wasting resources on raising then slaughtering kids, though? Maybe we’re exporting organs to the rest of the world.)

“It’s like playing the piano; you just have to know which keys to strike in people.”

Although…

I guess this comes down to if the state kids were sent out on these sort of fundraisers a lot. Risa’s role here is what I’d expect out of the society kid the rest think is stupid and pampered, not Ms. School-of-Hard-Knocks, and I had the idea they were mostly kept away from other people – I mean, they seem to be in giant facilities and to have on-site teachers.

And that explanation would’ve been a lot better than some piano nonsense. “We’re sent out on all sorts of charities and fundraisers, and you get in trouble if you do badly.” would explain it and give us a bit more of an idea of what sort of place it was. Or, it could be that she liked getting out and they’d let the kids join outside charities – she liked getting to see the normal world. Or it could be that they’d get rewards for succeeding – and what type of reward she thought was worth this would give a good sense of if they’re given a very good or very bad life normally. Or maybe it could even be that she actually cared about these sort of issues and that’s why she’s been canvasing neighborhoods before.

Anyway, Connor’s super impressed and takes back what he says about stealing being the right idea.

“Actually,” says Lev, “scamming IS stealing.”

She really is collecting for the homeless, though! It’s not like she said she’d be giving it to starving kids in Africa, or that it’d be auctioned to save the blue whales.

Risa feels a bit prickly and uncomfortable at the thought, but tries not to show it.

Oh for-

No, Risa totally does not. This was Risa’s idea in the first place, so she’s obviously done stuff like this before, abet presumably as part of an actual organization. She didn’t even lie about what it was for, which would have been perfectly understandable in the situation she’s in, so she doesn’t even have a bit of guilt about how it’s kind of like stealing because the woman wanted it to go to the blue whales.

Now. If this is supposed to be showing that Risa is super into rules, fuck that! She’s not. The most you can say is she doesn’t seem to outright hate authority and she doesn’t throw a tantrum about getting unwound. As soon as she sees a chance to escape, she bolts, and then she’s fine with a plan about deceiving and then assaulting a police officer.

It could make sense for someone in her situation to have been raised to be extremely serious about following the rules, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened.

So I’m left to believe this is the author speaking, reminding you that scamming is Very Bad.

The woods have ended at a tract community.

I wasn’t sure if that was a synonym for boring suburb so I googled it and apparently it’s even more conformist than I was picturing.

That’s horrifying.

Manicured lawns have turned yellow along with the leaves. Autumn has truly taken hold.

What the fuck?

Okay, maybe this is special future grass or something, but I’ve never seen lawns turn yellow for autumn. They turn yellow when they die, which requires a lot of cold. Your leaves should be pretty much gone by then. And honestly, they stay kind of greenish year-round, so this sounds like it’s somewhere colder than I’m used to. But where I am the weather is unpleasant when it comes to sleeping in a forest by late summer. It’s survivable into autumn proper, but the only way the current unpleasant wouldn’t be at the front of their minds is if they’re busy thinking about how the weather’s only going to get colder. They absolutely wouldn’t be discussing “if” they should find people and get stuff. They will die if they don’t.

The homes here are almost identical, but not quite, full of people almost identical, but not quite. It’s a world Risa knows about only through magazines and TV.

Wait.

To her, suburbia is a magical kingdom.

But.

Perhaps that’s why Risa was the one who had the nerve to approach the house and pretend to be Didi.

THERE’S NO WAY SHE WOULD KNOW HOW TO DO THAT IF SHE’S NEVER EVEN BEEN ALLOWED OUT OF THE COMPOUND

THIS

FUCKING

BOOK

The neighborhood drew her like the smell of fresh bread baking in the industrial ovens of Ohio State Home 23.

On a different note, can I complain about how “industrial ovens” is presumably supposed to be showing how terrible it is, but actually I really liked the school food when I was a kid. Just because stuff is being produced in big masses doesn’t make it bad, and plenty of the school lunches were an improvement over the stuff parents would give, especially the sort of parents who gave out stuff like lunchables.

The clothes Risa scored include a change of clothes for Connor and a jacket for Lev. Getting some for her will require repeating the trick, though.

Connor doesn’t see the point and Risa explains that on TV the cops say what the criminal was last wearing.

“We’re not perps,” says Connor, “we’re AWOLs.”
“We’re felons,” says Lev. “Because what you’re doing—I mean, what we’re doing—is a federal crime.”
“What, stealing clothes?” asks Connor.
“No, stealing ourselves. Once the unwind orders were signed, we all became government property. Kicking-AWOL makes us federal criminals.”

That doesn’t make any sense. They’re going to be killed. Unless they’re decided to start burning people alive to prove a point or something, they can only fine you, imprison you, or kill you.

It doesn’t sit well with Risa, or for that matter with Connor, but they both shake it off.

What the fuck does that mean? Are they uncomfortable by the way Lev is talking about them being criminals, or are they unsettled at the assertion they’re just property, or is this like the scamming thing and the message is just being a criminal is something you should always feel kind of bad about regardless of the situation?

Also, she thinks about how next they should go to a library! Yes, Risa, you are the only competent one. She thinks she can find maps there to get a good idea of where there’s a big wilderness area to hide in. Also books on actually surviving in such, Risa, those are pretty important too. While you’re there, Connor’s still got that bite wound, so nip over to a computer and google “human bite wound”.

There are rumors of hidden communities of AWOL Unwinds. Maybe they can find one.

I’m pretty sure those would be more the urban legend kind of rumor.

For starters, it’s actually really hard to keep hidden. Then there’s the fact these communities would be made up of kids, who’d somehow have to find lots of other kids, then invent a hidden community for themselves somehow despite being made up of thirteen to seventeen year olds, then somehow have a way for new kids to find them without anyone else finding them instead. And even if you did know how to live in the wild, you’re not going to be able to support a full on community! That’s why people went off the hunting and gathering model, you need to start up actual agriculture once your population starts going anywhere. And that’s a surefire way to get noticed. Really, even if you could feed yourself off deer or whatever, the larger the community the more noticeable it is.

They’d be better off hiding in cities and blending in with the homeless, except that as I said, unwinding seems like it’d eliminate those people. Even if, somehow, there’s still a plentiful adult community, if you see a homeless kid, it’s either an unwind or a kid whose parents are currently heading out to get the paperwork, so either way it’s time to inform the police.

Anyway, as they go, they see someone else on the street.

a woman approaches them—just a girl, really, maybe nineteen or twenty.

A fifteen year old is not going to be looking at a nineteen or twenty year old and quickly correct herself about how “just a girl, really”. “Just a girl, really” as a phrase for people that age is pretty much limited to creepy old guys who want to fuck something just this side of legal.

Anyway, although she’s speeding along she’s moving a bit stiffly, because that’s totally all giving birth to a baby does, some very minor discomfort, because this is the unnamed mother of last chapter.

That’s all just to establish the baby wasn’t just a set piece and they’re in its vicinity.