Free Vagabond by J.D. Brewer Page B

 

    “Favorite color?” Xavi asked.  
    “Snap-pea.”  
    “That’s a color? What happened to plain ol’ green?”
    “There’s so much more to green than the plain ol’ kind. I used to grow snap-peas in the nursery for experiments—“ I caught myself too late. I hated thinking of the past. “It has just the right shades of green. Not too dark. Not too bright. Just light enough. You?”  
    “Red-brown.”  
    “Like that makes sense either. Like rust?”  
    He stopped with his big boot landing on the small plank in front of him. It engulfed it— dwarfed it. “I like rust. It’s the color of your hair you know, like it can’t decide what color it wants to be. Be kinder to rust, rust-head.” He reached out and tugged a few strands of hair escaping my beanie cap and laughed. I swiped at his hand, and searched for the compliment he may have layered in there. It was hard to find. “So, you studied in a lab, huh?”  
    My jaw clinched.  
    “It seems to fit. I could see it now. Niko, president of the Genetic Engineering Guild.”  
    I hated the way he mocked me, and I hated how he picked up on the one dream I’d ever had. “What’s wrong with that, huh? I made some amazing discover—”  
    “You must have had something to prove if you slaved away in a lab as a kid. What’s wrong with your genes?“  
    “Nothing’s wrong with my genetics! I was going to be paired with someone named Par—“ I caught myself this time, before I said more than I could take back. Thinking of before made me think of what would never be. Plus, his question hit a different nerve, because, for the longest time, I thought I was a genetic anomaly. I’d been flagged, and my parents weren’t permitted to have another child. We went to doctor after doctor, but no one could find mutation risks in my genome. So we waited, and I grew up, but not taller. I grew out, but not upward. I figured that was the reason I’d never be paired. I must have had a hidden mutation, and I learned to accept it. Then one day, we got the notice and things changed.  
    With one question, Xavi brought up every insecurity I’d ever had and threw them on top of the most painful memory I carried— the reason I ran away.  
    “Par— hmmm. In your age group? Paramonos is my guess. That name was like the plague with your year. What does Paramonos mean anyways?”  
    I frowned. He guessed it. Paramonos was the name. I think it meant endurance or constancy, but I didn’t want to play Xavi’s game. He kept forgetting I was a Republic-kid too. Nikomedes even meant, to think on victory, although I hadn’t been feeling all that victorious lately.  
    In the Colonies, they watered names on their babies like the meaning was something they could one day grow into. The Genetic Engineering Guild suggested it was flawed logic, but the Politicians made the case that nurturing was just as important as nature. So, every name held weight and underlying meanings, and no one person could ever mean just one thing. There was always shadings and nuances and connotations to dig through in order to figure out the truth of a person. Paramonos? He was just a name on a paper. I’d never met him, and I never would. Who knew how constant he would have been?  
    “So, you were going to be partnered! Wow. To think. One day, in an alternate universe, you’d have had to fork!”  
    “Shut up, fungus brains.” I swiped at his back, and he turned to lunge at me. We ran after each other along the track, and the game of chase chased away memories of Mama and Daddy and the fire and the gunshots. There was just the here and now and laughter, since it was the only thing left to live on.  

    It was somewhere past midnight when we needed to stop. The dark made it hard to see, but I recognized a slight decline where the trees grew in and out of a ditch. “Where do we set up camp?” Flea asked.  
    “We don’t.”  
    “What?”  
    “Feel that? Temperature’s dropping. We