This chapter opens informing us that Risa is unaware of what happened with Connor’s group, in case we were confused and thought she was psychic.

In case we thought she was an intelligent character who is good at watching and understanding people, it goes on to explain that She assumes guys talk about guy things, whatever those things are. and has no idea about their shitty unwinding/souls talk, even though apparently the exact same thing happened in hers and basically every other containing.

This also illustrates the terrible writing of this book. The subject matter may make sense for all the kids to be talking about, but that doesn’t mean what they feel is going to be the same. A better way of illustrating this would have been to show the first half of a conversation in Connor’s crate and the second half in Risa’s, allowing the reader to see how they’re similar and where, if anywhere, they differ. (It would also kept the chapter lengths more equal.) I’d like to also point out that the way the author actually did it allowed him to avoid having any of the girls discuss abortion among themselves. This is likely for the best because I can’t even imagine how awful it’d be to see him putting his opinions in their mouths, but it still shows how utterly meaningless he thinks women’s experiences are. Of course actually having a uterus wouldn’t matter in your feelings about abortion!

No one will discuss these things again, or even acknowledge having ever discussed them at all

Bullshit. The kids should be talking about this stuff all the time.

but because of it, invisible bonds have been forged. Risa has gotten to know an overweight girl prone to tears, a girl wound up from a week of nicotine withdrawal

Invisible bonds apparently don’t extend to knowing their names. Also, I would really think that teen smoking would go way down with the whole murdering kids thing, and it’s not like it’s too popular currently. Why do they even still have cigarettes?

and a girl who was a ward of the state, just like her— and also just like Risa, an unwitting victim of budget cuts. Her name is Tina.

The book then explicitly says Risa forgot everyone else’s names, even though she hasn’t even gotten out of the damn crate yet.

“We’re exactly the same,” Tina had said sometime during the flight. “We could be twins.” Even though Tina is umber, Risa has to admit that it’s true.

I really like twins who don’t look anything alike as a trope, but this is soured by the fact Tina is just a set piece. Risa’s not actually attached to the character, she’s just here to make a point.

It’s comforting to know there are others in the same situation, but troubling to think her own life is just one of a thousand pirate copies.

Congrats, book, you’ve officially ruined Risa. Her feelings are not that it’s horrible the same thing is happening to lots of people, it’s that she’s glad other people get getting fucked over like she is but sad it means she’s not special.

Not sure why “pirate” is there, I’m assuming some sort of freudian slip where he rants about internet piracy so much that it just starts slipping out whenever he thinks about copies.

Anyway, she says that basically everyone in the state homes is exactly the same, and also explains they’re all given the last name Ward.

as if being one weren’t enough of a stigma.

That and it must be hell on the record-keeping. I mean that’s basically what last names are for these days, to increase the number of unique names. Why would the government want to create a discriminated group who’ll have more trouble getting work and therefore need more benefits?

Also, why would it be a stigma in the first place? As has been mentioned, actual kids raised in orphanages as overstuffed as Risa claims would be barely functional, but we’re also told that a kid like Risa who’s got marketable training (nurse work) and is extremely talented musically is still below their cutoff.

Any “Ward” who survives to eighteen must be exceptionally skilled.

The plane lands, and “the nicotine girl” and “the pudgy girl” speak up because names are haaaaaaard to write. Note also both of them have negative characteristics, which is presumably why the author is treating them so poorly. The fat girl who is not worthy of a name because she is fat wonders if they’ll be moved to another plane.

“They’d better not be,” says Risa. “There’s not enough air in here for another trip.”

Risa knows this because of her learnings.

Footsteps. Banging, She hears voices, although she can’t make out what the voices say.

So the crates are far from soundproof, then – what’s the point of making them airtight?

Someone pops the crate open and asks if they’re okay.

It’s not a Fatigue—Risa can tell right away. The voice is younger.

Because clearly no eighteen year olds were in that group, since it’s not like young people are ever activists.

They have to wait a bit because they’re going to check on all the crates first. He does tell them they’re now in ~the graveyard~. Also it is very hot and the kid is suntanned.

The three girls look remarkably different from her memory of them when they first got in. Getting to know someone in blind darkness changes your impression of them. The large girl isn’t as overweight as Risa had thought. Tina isn’t as tall. The nicotine girl isn’t nearly as ugly.

I hate this book so much.

Then there’s instant rumor mill, where all the kids are whispering that a lot of kids died on the trip. It turns out there actually was one crate of kids who died, and Risa gets this directly from a kid who saw it, but somehow five minutes has already mutated that beyond all reason because lol rumors or some shit.

There were five guys in there instead of four, and they all suffocated.”

I find it really hard to believe they were operating on that tight of a margin, especially since Connor and Risa’s crates don’t seem to have even run into any issue with their air. They’re shoving kids of all different sizes into these things, they likely don’t have a precise idea how long it’ll be, and yet they’ve apparently calculated things this precisely?

This also gets back to why were they in airtight crates in the first place.

Please, God, let it not be Connor. Let it not be Connor. Her last words to him had been angry ones. Even though he had saved her from Roland, she was furious at him. “Get out of here!” she had screamed.

There is really nothing to say here.

On the way out she sees the kids are wearing military clothes.

“Army surplus,” he says. “Stolen clothes for stolen souls.”

THAT ISN’T WHAT SURPLUS MEANS.

All around are planes and Risa figures out what’s going on. This place buys decomissioned planes for scrap, and uses them to transport the kids. Specifically, she lectures another kid about how dumb he is for not getting this, because Risa may be stupid and inferior to Connor, but she’s still better than anyone without a name.

She manages to see Connor.

they briefly make eye contact, and exchange a secret nod. That nod says everything. It says that what happened between them yesterday is history

Oh thank goodness Connor is willing to let bygones be bygones. I sure how Risa doesn’t screw up by getting mad the next time Connor leaves her to be raped.

Then she sees Roland there as well. He meets her eye and gives her a grin. That grin says things too. She looks away, wishing he had been in the suffocation crate. She considers feeling guilty for such a nasty wish, then realizes that she doesn’t feel guilty for wishing it at all.

Risa does not, of course, even consider feeling guilty for wishing someone she doesn’t know died instead of Connor. The book’s also unaware that wishing Roland died is wishing a kid who didn’t attempt to rape her lived, so there really isn’t room here for pondering if it’s right to wish death on someone in general.

A wild adult appears! He’s in real uniform and they call him “The Admiral”. Risa says he’s in his sixties and has a scarred-up face.

Only now does Risa realize that his uniform is one from the war. She can’t recall whether these were the colors of the pro-life or pro-choice forces, but then, it doesn’t really matter. Both sides lost.

No. The prolife side won. They got exactly what they wanted on abortion and they also got everything else they could want, down to the damn name of the war, at the “cost” of free organs for them.

He explains that they’ll stay until eighteen or we procure a permanent sponsor willing to falsify your identification which, uh, sounds kind of worrying? How do you know that person won’t turn you in?

What we do here is highly illegal, but that does not mean we don’t follow the rule of law. My law.”

I think “follow the rules” would get across the same idea without sounding quite so dictatory and like he thinks he can do anything.

But apparently this guy is super great and Risa says he’s looking at all of them and she bets he’s memorizing every face!

It’s intimidating and reassuring at the same time. No one will fall between the cracks in the Admiral’s world.

Right. You know this already, even after five kids fell through the cracks just a few minutes ago.

Anyway, Connor is BADASS so he sticks a hand up to ask who the guy is. Guy refuses to say his name but says he was an actual admiral of the navy. I have no clue why he’s being cagey since the list of sixty year old retired admirals can’t be very long, so it’s not like it’ll save him if someone’s caught by the police and blabs. Plus his real name is presumably on all the paperwork for this place.

The law said it was my job to look the other way, but I did not. I will not.” Then he turns to the crowd and says loudly, “No one gets unwound on my watch.”

So why is this guy good but all the other adults evil?

Also the guy has perfect teeth even though the rest of him is all battered, so I guess he actually has no teeth at all. Sixty is pretty young to have lost your teeth, though. And generally pretty young to be looking so ancient and worn down.

He goes on to say that yeah, it’s a dictatorship not a democracy. I have never seen admitting that help handle kids. They do better if you pretend you care about their opinions, and honestly plenty of times they’ll agree with you about what’s best so why not let them?

Also apparently the other kids have nicknames and wow book I really don’t care. You haven’t even said anything like that they’re all encouraged not to know people’s real names, or that it’s part of the kids defining themselves as their own. The author just suddenly felt like nicknames everywhere, so nicknames it is.

As they’re led off to be clothed and fed, the jet that brought them here is towed to its final resting place in the massive junkyard. Only now does Risa take a deep breath and release it, along with a month’s worth of tension. Only now does she allow herself the wonderful luxury of hope.

This is so unsatisfying.

Risa has taken two major actions of her own in this whole book – she runs when the bus crashes, and she claps to cause a riot. She also participates in taking out the policeman, but Connor seems to have claimed all the credit for that plan, and she tricks the woman into giving them food and clothes, but that doesn’t matter because they go right from there to the school and then the safehouse, where it’s all adults doing stuff for them. There isn’t even tension about the kids having to stay quiet, about Risa having to take care of the baby, nothing. Just Connor bitching about Roland.

And it could work, having them pushed around by outside forces, if only the author would admit to it. They’re getting unwound because of adults, they’re chased by adults, they’re helped by adults, and the underlying issue of the book is adults compromising over children’s bodies. But that doesn’t matter either. Instead of doing anything to give the kids actual agency or even acknowledge they don’t, the book just tries to layer a new plot on top with Roland, taking the the adults’s work to keep them safe for granted.