Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)(46)

“He said the inside of his head feels like spaghetti,” says Toby.

“It was always like spaghetti anyway,” says Lotis Blue. She laughs.

“You knew him?” says Toby. She’s aware that there was a connection between Jimmy and Ren in the early days, and then between Jimmy and Amanda. But Lotis Blue?

“Yeah,” says Ren, “we figured it out. She did.”

“I was his lab partner at HelthWyzer High,” says Lotis Blue. “In Bio. Intro to Gene Splicing. Before I took the bullet train out west with my family, that time.”

“Wakulla Price. He told me,” says Ren, “that he had such a crush on you! He says you broke his heart. But you never came across for him, did you?”

“He was so full of bullshit,” says Lotis Blue. Her tone is fond, as if Jimmy is a naughty but adorable child.

“And then he broke my heart,” says Ren. “And God knows what he told Amanda, after he dumped me. Most likely he said that I broke his heart.”

“I’d say he had a commitment problem,” says Lotis Blue. “I knew guys like that.”

“He used to like spaghetti,” says Amanda: more words than Toby’s heard her speak since the night of the Painballers.

“At high school it was fish fingers,” says Ren.

“Twenty per cent real fish, remember?” says Lotis Blue. “Who knows what was really in them.” They both laugh.

“They weren’t all that bad, though,” says Ren.

“Labmeat goo,” says Lotis Blue. “But what did we know? Hey. We ate them.”

“I wouldn’t mind one of those right now,” says Ren. “And a Twinkie.” She sighs. “They were so retro-nouveau revival!”

“You felt like you were eating upholstery,” says Lotis Blue.

“I’m going over there,” says Amanda. She stands up, straightens her bedsheet, pushes back her hair. “We should say hello, see if he needs anything. He’s been through a lot.”

Finally, thinks Toby, a sign of the former Amanda, the girl she’d known at the Gardeners. Some of that energy, that resourcefulness: backbone, it used to be called. It was Amanda who’d been the initiator, the transgressor of boundaries. Even the larger boys had given her space, back then.

“We’ll come too,” says Lotis Blue.

“We’ll say, Surprise!” says Ren. The two of them giggle.

So much for broken hearts, thinks Toby: Ren’s doesn’t appear to have anything fractured about it any more, or not in connection with Jimmy. “Maybe you should wait a little,” she says. What will it do to Jimmy’s state of mind if he opens his eyes and sees three of his former beloveds bending over him like the three Fates? Demanding his everlasting love, his apologies, his blood in a cat food saucer? Or worse: the chance to baby him, play nursie, smother him with kindness? Though maybe he’d like that.

But she needn’t have worried, because when they get there Jimmy’s eyes are closed. Lulled by the purring, he’s gone back to sleep.


The gleaner team has moved off along the street, or what used to be a street. Zeb first, then Black Rhino, then Swift Fox, with Katuro bringing up the rear. They’re moving slowly, carefully, in and around the rubble. They’ll be scoping out possible ambushes, taking no chances.

Toby wants to run after them, like a left-behind kid – Wait! Wait! Let me come with you! I have a rifle! – but no point in that.

Zeb hadn’t asked if there was anything he could bring for her. If he had, what would she have said? A mirror? A floral bouquet? She should have requested at least the paper and the pencils. But somehow she couldn’t.

Now they’re out of sight.


The day moves on. The sun travels up and across the sky, the shadows flatten, food appears and is eaten, words are spoken; dining table objects are gathered together and washed. Sentries take turns. The cobb-house wall rises a little higher, the fence around it gains a coil of wire, weeds are removed from the garden, laundry is deployed. The shadows begin to stretch again, the afternoon clouds gather. Jimmy is carried inside, and the rain rains, with impressive thunder. Then the skies clear, the birds resume their contests, the clouds begin to redden in the west.

No Zeb.

The Mo’Hairs and their shepherds return, Crozier and Beluga and Shackleton, adding three hormonally charged males to the in-camp population mix. Crozier is dangling around Ren, Shackleton edging up to Amanda, Zunzuncito and Beluga are both eyeing Lotis Blue: the intrigues of love are unfolding as they do among the young, and as they do as well among the snails on the lettuce and the shiny green beetles that plague the kale. Murmurings, the shrug of a shoulder, the step forward, the step back.

Toby proceeds through her tasks as if in a monastery, steadily, dutifully, counting the hours.

Still no Zeb.

What could have happened to him? She blots out the pictures. Or she tries to blot them out. Animal, with teeth and claws involved. Vegetable, a falling tree. Mineral, cement, steel, broken glass. Or human.

Suppose he were suddenly not there. A vortex opens: she closes it. Never mind her own loss. What about the others? The other humans. Zeb has valuable skills, he has knowledge that can’t be replaced.

They’re so few in number, so necessary to one another. Sometimes this encampment feels like a vacation of sorts, but it isn’t. They aren’t escaping from daily life. This is where they live now.