Page 4 - My FlipBook

M ER ED ITH T A TE

out early. I’m sure the city guards would love nothing more
than an excuse to throw me in the stocks for a week.
“Besides,” Ma adds, “we can’t not get some of James’s
cactilixer—especially at the festival discount price. And we
can’t miss the Leader’s address.”
I’d love to miss all of it. I hate the Leader’s address. They
always bribe some poor little Blank kid from the wasteland
or the bunks onto the stage in this humiliating water jug hat.
The kid becomes the star of an awkward presentation about

Trinnea’s history and the drought, in exchange for a little cash.
I always feel so bad for whoever they get. Probably because
for years, it could’ve easily been me.
Someone knocks into my side, way too rough to be an
accident. I grimace, keeping my head down. The woman glares
at me, daring me to confront her. Of course, I can’t—not unless
I want a fist in my eye. “Just until the address,” I say. “Then
I’m going home.”
Ma sighs. “Whatever you say, Zadie.”
I follow her down the closest aisle, lined with stands. My
pulse hasn’t stopped ticking like a bomb since the second I got
downtown. It’s like I’ve been holding my breath for the past
twenty minutes, waiting to go home and let it all out.

The normally vacant Center Square is jam-packed with
wooden stalls selling spiced breads, fried dough balls, and stinky
cheeses spider-webbed with blue mold. Other booths carry
various elixirs and remedies, their stalls covered with glass
bottles filled with colorful liquids. Little kids swarm around
game booths, using their telekinesis and levitation Skills to

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