Hannah and Kinsey

It all started when our house got broken into. And of course I blame Kin, for leaving the window open— I mean, it’s fucking 2039. The poverty level is higher than ever, and our neighborhood in particular is so close to the encampments. Once upon a time, it was Blue Hills. I’d give anything to open my front door and see trees again, or a blue sky, or a car driving through the neighborhood. Anything but the vast sea of concrete that extends to the east and south of our apartment, with no end in sight. But cars were outlawed years ago, after the trees started going. I don’t even remember when the smog rolled in and settled over us like a blanket, but I’m confident that it’s here to stay.

Kin and me were biking back from the convenience store, where we’d picked up some prerolls and boxes of pasta, a glass jar of tomato sauce. God, the things I would do to even look at a fresh tomato again. I used to slice them and eat them plain, with just salt and pepper and maybe a dash of olive oil, or with mozzarella if we had any in the fridge. You can still get “mozzarella” now, but it’s vegan and factory made. No matter how they tweak the recipe, it’ll never taste the same. They’re trying to start growing everything hydroponically again, trying to breed livestock from frozen DNA samples, but during the riots half the country was burned down or destroyed. It’s been seven years and still no labs are yet ready to mass produce most vegetables, or at least that’s what they say. Nothing grows outside, not even weeds squeezing up through the cracks in the pavement.

We were so excited for a fun night in— get high, eat spaghetti, maybe watch old cartoons on the DVD player we’d salvaged over ten years ago that miraculously still worked. You could still get vintage DVDs if you knew where to look, and we’d racked up quite the collection. But before I even locked up my bike I looked up and saw that there was a giant hole cut in the screen of one of the windows, and a step stool underneath the sill. Jesus, they hadn’t even bothered to take their fucking stool with them on the way out? Or had they left through the back and forgotten? I turned to Kin, seething. She had a defeated, almost frightened look on her face, like she already knew exactly what I was thinking. And she should’ve, after fifteen years together.

“FUCK!” I shouted, and ran towards the front door. Then turned back to Kin. “Lock the damn bikes.”

It was worse than I could’ve anticipated. It was a disaster area. The DVD player— gone. The TV— gone. I raced over to my dresser, where all the drawers had been ripped open and torn through. All the jewelry was gone. All the vestiges of our old world that we’d curated over the years: slips and stockings, framed lithographs, colorful Fiesta plates and mugs, a blanket crocheted by my late mother, a bamboo plant and a grandfather clock… smashed, ripped, stained with boot prints, dirt… splayed out all over the floor… I broke down and wept.

“Hannah…” Kin’s worried voice came from directly behind me.

“What!” I snapped.

“Gnocchi.” Shit. “Where’s Gnocchi?” The cat. Oh, my God.

“Gnocchi!” We both cried in unison. I yanked our closet door open; she ran into the kitchen.

“The back door is open!” Kin shouted. We ran down the back staircase and into the courtyard. A pang of guilt rippled through me, not because Gnocchi was potentially lost but because of the reason it was so troubling. Kin stole a glance at me and I knew she was thinking the same thing: the locket attached to the collar around Gnocchi’s neck. If we lost that, we lost everything.

The courtyard was enclosed by a rusty chainlink fence. It had never been properly staked into the ground, so half of it tilted sideways towards the barren dirt on the other side. It had been like that even when we moved in here eleven years ago, when there had still been scant grass and flowers around the back of the property instead of cracked earth and dry dirt. Inside the fence, dusty plastic lawn chairs were arranged around a crude fire pit made of cement blocks. Obviously, there was no real wood to burn anymore. Everything was artificial and created acrid smoke when lit. We never used it, because being outside after dark with only a broken fence for protection isn’t safe. I know what it’s like to be broke, homeless, hungry and desperate. I would have done anything to change my circumstances, and I did. And now that Kin and I have made the best life possible for ourselves, I would do anything to protect that. And her.

I cannot begin to describe the relief I felt when I saw Gnocchi curled up under one of the chairs.

“Fuck, Han,” Kin whispered, grabbing my hand and squeezing. She let go and I ran over to snatch Gnocchi off the ground before he could run off. He fussed in my arms and hissed mildly as I felt my way around his collar, to the metal loop where the heart-shaped sterling silver locket always hung.

There was no locket.

“Kinsey.” I never called her by her full first name, and she was by my side immediately. “Kinsey, take the fucking cat.” I passed Gnocchi into her arms and watched as she anxiously felt his neck.

“Han.”

“I know.”

“I’m so sorry, Han.”

“I know.”

“What do we do now?”

For once, I didn’t have an answer.

That was the beginning of the end of our carefully constructed reality. We had to leave our apartment, Gnocchi in tow, plus whatever we could fit into our hiking packs. We pumped up our bike tires, filled our water bottles, and waved good-bye to the house and the neighborhood we’d inhabited for so long. Time was of the essence— whomever’d ended up with that locket was bound to be far away by now.

But together, Kinsey and I would find them.