Munmun(39)

“Okay sure, I’m the best,” I agreed.

We didn’t really have space to catch up, instead Kitty toured us around the giant echoless rooms. Everywhere was tapestries and rugs, curtains, wallcarpet. My voice felt huge in my throat, but outside of my head it was still shadowless, flat.

The steps and furniture were middlerichscale obviously, but fitted out for middlepoor use also, middlesteps and stepstools and footladders off to one side of everything, pretty little pieces of mahogany, cedar, copper, glasstic.

“Is this all for us,” I asked.

“Oh no no, we’ve hosted middlepoors before,” explained Kitty. “Kids on scholarship for med school and tech school. My dad really tries to be a cityboss for all citizens of Almanac, not just the riches in Wet but also the poors down in Eat, so he spends lots of time down there, touring schools and giving prizes to kids who aren’t screwups.”

Immediately I felt a little less special.

“How long do you host kids for,” Prayer asked.

“Usually a year,” she said.

In addition to less special I began to feel panic.

“We’ll make it a good year for sure,” I announced.

“Oh hey, no no no, don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be here as long as you need. With you guys it’s my program too, not just my dad’s, he knows you’re different.”

“We really appreciate that,” Prayer said, wide real smile saying, bytheway, I mean it.

Again I felt gratefull for having the sis there, it took atleast half the pressure off to have the proper reactions, probably more than half really.

There were two dogs, huge fat saintbernards, Welfargo and Cittibang. We rode them like horses through the yard until they collapsed, then we lay with them in a deathheap.

Rules of the house were pretty simple:

—here’s your key, only your hand can activate it, that’s for security reasons

—familydinner is at seven and everyone has to be in their seats ontime, it’s been a problem sometimes for past houseguests, I would say even fiveminutes early is best

—you can go back out after dinner but curfew is eleven, we have pretty strict curfew too and that’s also been a problem for past houseguests, one had a secret career dancing in bellyclubs, Dad had to kick him out, actually he’s still doing it because I check his feed sometimes and he seems super happy, belly’s looking good too

—here are all the locations of the guns, extinguishers, bombs, floodhoses, panicdoors, backup generators, hey don’t look so worried, the last terrorattack in Wet was five years ago almost, we’re much more nervous about fires tobehonest

—Mom and Dad are on the topfloor, kids are on the secondfloor, you two are inbetween floors in this middleroom we had specially created for middleguests, kitchen dining hosting on the firstfloor, theater gym and practicerooms in the basement, bunker in the subbasement, we don’t give guests the bunkercode and I’m really sorry about that

—here’s a foldphone for each of you, sorry it’s so basic, limited dataplan but it’s not really an issue because a foldphone can’t really use most kinds of data, try not to open vids or gifs though, again I’m sorry, yours as long as you stay with us

—I know I already said about dinner but it’s a pretty bigdeal, we do take it seriously and you just don’t want my dad to start thinking you don’t want to be here, so, just remember, fiveminutes to seven

Surenough all four Hue Family Kids were in their seats a few minutes before dinner and so were Prayer and me, gazing around at these pictureperfect modelcitizens.

Older brother Hueagain was nineteen, in med school, a nice quiet strong guy waking up early to go for runs or lift weights. Studied hard, first in his class, rarely talked, usually just smiled a funny painfull smile, the smile of true kindness but also definitely a little fear in there.

Older sister Daisy was sevteen, highschool senior. Dawn liked to talk about the extreme genius Daisy used to be in her early years, doing advanced sciences, animating cartoons, threedee printing her own crazy dreamscapes. But mysteriously this superchild blossomed into a normal sullen teenager, always in her room being irritated by her terrible siblings.

Younger sister Kitty was fifteen, my age, sopmore. Kitty was dad Hue’s favorite for sure. Did Kitty love being dad’s favorite?, yup, bigtime.

Younger brother Tony was thirteen, wore suits, combed hair, clearly wished he was dad’s favorite and not stupid Kitty, modeled himself after dad completely but got the details a little wrong, a little exaggerated, told more nervous jokes than dad, laughed more when nothing was funny, worried more about whether you liked him. So actually for Hue it was probably like having a little clown running around the house, pretending to be you, except the dumb pathetic version.

But whatdoyouexpect, he’s a kid, maybe he’ll turn out okay, sure hope so because this kid needs to chill.

“I had a shallwesay refreshing exchange with some Oranges in class today,” Tony announced at my first familydinner. He meant kids with Orange Party beliefs, enemy of Hue’s party the Yellows.

“I bet you did,” said Hue, immediately also saying, “Warner, Prayer, thank you for being prompt, as you can perhaps tell it’s important to us to have familydinner together everynight, and here’s why. A major problem for bigger middles is that with all of our vids and tech, we forget to make time for each other. So familydinner is a time to check in, be together, and remember what’s truly important in life.”