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Chapter 1

Milo

In the second year of the freeze, my family waited until I was too sick to stand before they took my food.

"How many are left in his bag?" my father asked.

"Four cans and the crackers," my mother said. "And the vitamins."

I was lying on a pile of flattened cardboard boxes in the corner of the basement shelter under the Fairview apartments, and I watched her empty my backpack onto the floor. Denise was fifty-four, small and neat even down here, with her blond hair tied back under the wool hat I had knitted for her the first winter. She lined the cans up in a row and never once looked at me.

"Mom," I said, and my voice barely came out. "Those are mine. I need them to get through the fever."

"You've had the fever for nine days, Milo." That was my father, Gary, sitting on the only folding chair with a blanket over his knees. He was a big, heavy man with a gray beard and a temper he had only ever used on me. "You're not getting through anything. Don't waste food on yourself."

"I went out for that food. I walked eleven blocks in minus fifty to get it."

"And Owen hasn't had a proper meal in a week," my mother said. "Do you want your little brother to starve?"

Owen was sitting on the good mattress by the kerosene heater, wrapped in two blankets. My younger brother went missing at a county fair when he was four and I was seven, and for sixteen years my parents blamed me for it, because I was the one holding his hand when he disappeared. Then, three months before the freeze, a social worker in Tulsa called, and Owen came home. He was twenty, thin and soft-spoken, and from the first day he slept in my room, wore my clothes, and spent the money in the savings account I had been filling since I was fourteen. Every time I said a word about it, my mother cried and asked me if I hadn't already taken enough from him.

"I'm fine, Mom," Owen said quietly. "Milo needs it more."

"See how good he is?" my mother said, and she put two of my cans in his lap.

Owen looked at me over her shoulder, opened my crackers, and ate one slowly while he watched my face.

My older brother Trent was by the steel door, lacing up his boots. He was thirty, tall and thick through the shoulders, and he had stopped going on supply runs the month I started bringing back more food than him. "Dad," he said. "If we're doing it, let's do it now, before it gets dark."

"Doing what?" I asked.

Nobody answered me.

Trent came over and hooked his hands under my arms, and my father took my legs. I grabbed at the cardboard, at the wall, at Trent's sleeve, but I had nothing left in my hands. They carried me up the stairs while my mother walked behind with the flashlight, telling them to be careful with my head.

Trent kicked the door open, and the wind came in so cold that my lungs locked and I couldn't even scream.

"Wait," my mother said. "Owen wants to say goodbye."

They dropped me in the snow at the top of the stairs. Owen came up after them, wearing the parka I had found for him on Mercer Street, and he knelt down beside me, took my left hand, and started twisting my grandmother's silver ring off my finger.

"Stop," I said. My fingers were too frozen to close.

"You won't need it anymore." He slid it onto his own finger and turned his hand to look at it. "I've wanted this since the day I walked into your house. Your grandmother's ring, your room, your parents. Thank you for keeping all of it warm for me, Milo."

Then he went back down the stairs, and the steel door slammed, and I heard the bolt slide across.

I lay in the snow and finally stopped lying to myself. They had never loved me. I was only the son who paid for the life they wanted to give Owen, and now that there was nothing left to pay with, they had thrown me away.

I hated them. I hated my mother's careful hands and my father's blanket and Trent's boots, and I hated Owen so much it burned hotter than the fever.

Somewhere out in the snow, boots were running. A man was shouting my name, hoarse and desperate.

"Milo! Milo, don't you close your eyes! I'm almost there!"

I didn't know his voice. I closed my eyes anyway.

"Milo, did you hear me? Sign it."

I was standing at the kitchen counter in my parents' house on Larkin Street with a pen in my hand. Rain was running down the window over the sink, and the heater was humming under the table. My mother stood in front of me in her pink bathrobe, holding a bank form flat with one finger.

My hand started shaking so hard the pen rattled against the counter.

I could still feel the snow in my back and in my teeth. I could still hear her on the stairs telling Trent to be careful with my head while they carried me out to die. And she was smiling at me now, the same sweet smile she gave me the morning she moved Owen into my room.

I looked at the clock on the coffee maker. October 31st.

The freeze started on November 10th.

"It's just adding Owen to the Hollis account," my mother said. "So he has his own card when he gets home today. You'd want him to have that, wouldn't you?"

I knew this form. In my last life, I signed it right here, and three days later Owen took twelve thousand dollars of my research bonus and bought himself a car. When I complained, my mother cried and told everyone I was jealous of my own little brother.

I wanted to throw the coffee pot at her head. I wanted to grab her by the front of her bathrobe and scream in her face that she had pulled the food out of my bag while I was too sick to lift my arms. I gripped the edge of the counter until my knuckles hurt, and I made myself breathe.

Then I put the pen down.

The ring was on my finger. I stared at it. When I touched it, something pulled hard behind my eyes, and I saw a huge gray room with no walls and no ceiling, completely empty. I looked at the coffee mug on the counter and thought about it sitting in that room, and the mug was gone. I thought about it coming back, and it was there again, still steaming.

My mother hadn't noticed a thing. She was tapping the form with her finger.

"I'm not signing it," I said.

She blinked at me. "Excuse me?"

Trent came down the stairs with his car keys, already dressed for work. "What's going on now?"

"Your brother won't sign the form for Owen."

Trent rolled his eyes at me, the same way he had every day of my life. "Seriously? Today? You lost him at that fair, Milo. You owe him every dollar in that account and then some." He dropped his keys on the counter in front of me. "His bus gets in at ten. You're picking him up. Take my car, yours smells."

This was the man who dragged me up those stairs. He did it fast, because he wanted to get back to the heater.

"No," I said.

"I'm not asking you."

"And I'm not your driver, I'm not your bank, and I'm not signing anything else in this house ever again." My voice cracked, and I didn't care. "Sixteen years you've blamed me for something a seven-year-old couldn't stop. I paid for it. I paid for all of it. I'm done. I'm moving out today."

My father came in from the living room with his newspaper. "You walk out that door, you don't come back."

"Finesse," I said. "Remember you said that."

I grabbed my backpack off the chair and went for the front door. Trent stepped in front of me and grabbed my arm hard, the same grip he used to drag me up the shelter stairs.

"You're not going anywhere until you apologize to Mom."

I yanked my arm out of his hand so hard he stumbled back into the coat rack.

All three of them stared at me. In twenty-three years, I had never once pulled away from any of them.

I looked at my mother, at my father, at Trent, and I smiled. I couldn't stop it. My face felt cold and stiff, and the smile came anyway.

"I wish you and your family a lifetime of happiness," I said. "But this time, I swear I won't make the same stupid mistakes again."

My mother's mouth fell open. "This time? Milo, what are you talking about?"

I didn't answer her. I opened the door and walked out into the rain.