"Happy birthday, Eleanor."
My heart skipped a beat as I turned toward the voice. My smile fell when I saw it was Harold, not Milton.
"Thank you, Harold.”
He handed me a present, and I opened it.
"They are leather gloves specifically for the above world. There are plants with sharp leaves that will cut you if you touch them barehanded. Now, you can pick them."
I forced a smile. “This is a wonderful gift.”
Dion's song, “Take Good Care of My Baby” came on, and my chin quivered as I listened to the lyrics. Was this some weird sign from the universe? Had he ditched me in favor of someone more attainable? We both knew we had to keep our feelings a secret, but he’d made me think he liked me just as much as I liked him.
I asked Harold if he had seen Milton.
He perked up and looked around the table at my friends. "Yeah, he took Cal to get everything ready for, you know"—he leaned in to whisper."—the real party."
"The real party?" I shook my head in confusion. I looked around the table. My friends were grinning deviously.
"It's a tradition," Veronica said softly. Her bright smile and yellow dress contrasted beautifully against her dark skin. "You don't get to know until it's your time."
I was the youngest out of my group of Young Ladies, and they’ve never stopped reminding me. I crossed my arms like a child.
"Well, now I'm glad Daddy didn't come."
"Eleanor, didn't you notice no one else's Daddy is here?" Helen, the redhead, motioned around the room. I blinked in surprise when I didn't see a single Daddy in sight. She squeezed my shoulders. "It's a rite of passage. You didn't convince him of anything. He's letting you go with us."
"Go where?" Something about this didn't feel right. My nerves were on edge.
Pearl cleared her throat and smoothed her lavender dress. "Will you keep your voice down? We're going to the above world." She said it in a way that made it sound like a secret, but we'd all been there countless times.
"Tonight? Alone?"
Our Daddies would never allow us to go above in the dark, let alone without them.
Olive stood and lightly shoved me. "No, dummy, we’ll have the DITs. It’s just us, having fun for once."
My stomach churned. I'd never gone up alone before.
Not without my Daddy.
Chapter 5 - Riot
Don’t get attached to anyone in the wastelands.
Itook a long drag of my hand-rolled cigarette, and stared off into the orange, radiation blasted sky. The sun was just starting to set on another gloriously shitty day in the wastelands. I leaned on the ancient wooden fence and kicked the dirt. My boots were so scuffed and worn you couldn’t even see the extra dust.
Behind me, the front door to the house opened and Cherry, my sister, came out carrying her radio, ruining my peaceful contemplation.
"Atlas Adam, screaming into the void. The sun has set on another day. I'm fixing to go over to Scissors and get me a drink and some of Scissor's infamous beaver cleaver pie. I don't know if she's ever even seen a real beaver, but if you close your eyes you can pretend it's edible. Non-stop, commercial-free listening for the rest of the night. Enjoy, and stay alive."
‘Welcome to Paradise’ by Green Day started, and Cherry began to sing along.
"Can you not?" I inhaled the smoke and blew it out. "I was enjoying the quiet."
"There's no such thing," she teased, and set the radio at her feet, turning the volume down. "What are you doing out here, looking all sad?"
"I'm not sad." I shrugged and brushed my hair out of my face. "Do I look sad?"
