The Map of Stars, page 24
They wouldn’t have liked what they heard.
On a gray and gloomy morning in the fall of 2025, this was what Tess Biedermann heard: “Listen, are you going to buy any of those oranges, or are you just going to manhandle them all?” The grocer stood in the doorway of his shop, hands on his hips. He was a fire hydrant of a man, with tan skin, black-furred slashes for brows, and a stained white apron, a man whose barrel chest and hawkish expression intimidated most people.
Theresa was not most people. She continued her inspection of the rather sad-looking fruit on the stands outside the shop, thinking about the Big Orange but not finding it here. “I’m not manhandling them, I’m woman-handling them. People-handling.”
“Yeah, well, stop all the handling, Handsy-Hands. Buy or go, capisce?”
She picked up the best of the worst and held them out to the grocer. “I’ll take these two.”
The grocer grunted, bagged up the fruit in wrinkled paper sacks by the register just inside the open door. Most of the oranges grown in Florida had been decimated by weeks of freezing temperatures that had killed vast groves of trees. What was left of the harvest were these dry, shriveled things, barely recognizable as the large, succulent oranges Tess had eaten as a child, juice running down her chin.
“How much?” she asked, and then winced at the answer. She winced again at the price of the two hot coffees she added to her bill. She and Theo could just take caffeine pills like so many people did, but she hated taking pills when the real thing was still available. Like the oranges, the smell of freshly brewing coffee in her parents’ kitchen had marked her mornings when she was little, even though she hadn’t drunk a drop of the stuff herself until she was sixteen, during her first year of college, seven years ago now. She didn’t want to give it up until she had no other choice.
She sipped the drink as she walked home, savoring the bitter taste. The morning was growing warmer and more humid by the minute. At noon, the day would be almost as hot as the coffee in her cup. At least, it would feel like that. Air as heavy as a drenched comforter, comforting nothing.
“Stop being so glum,” she muttered to herself.
A man passing by with a thin, nervous greyhound overheard her. “Hard not to be glum,” he said. “It’s supposed to rain again.”
She knew that. Everyone in the city knew that. Listening to the hourly weather updates was a ritual that no one could escape, not if they wanted to know how to dress or which subway to take or which roads were blocked off or whose grandparents with a house on the bay might be underwater in a matter of hours. It wasn’t always like this. But, after Adam, the citizens who prided themselves on their resilience were shaken, wary as the stray dogs and cats that roamed lower Manhattan still.
Adam was named Adam because he was the first of his kind. At least, he was the first that people had ever recorded. For years, the severity and frequency of hurricanes in the Atlantic had been increasing, creeping farther north, but nothing like Adam had been seen before: a Category 5 storm so fast and so powerful that he obliterated all wind and rainfall records as he smashed into the northeastern coast of the US, leveling everything in his path. And then he turned into the ocean and came back to do it again, just to be sure everyone understood his message, his unbelievable and unrelenting wrath. Subway tunnels flooded. Whole neighborhoods were swept into the sea. Boats and docks and boardwalks simply vanished as if they had never been there in the first place. Swaths of Long Island peeled away from the edges like old paint. Battery Park was submerged for weeks. Water lapped at the feet of skyscrapers. Manhattanites rode boats and canoes down Wall Street, looking for the trapped and desperate and hungry. Staten Island, well. A mere shadow of it was left, but the people weren’t, not anymore, evacuated at the first signs that Adam was coming, most of them still bunking in the Bronx or Jersey. Now, a year after the storm, the earth and the water and the wildlife were reclaiming Staten Island for their own purposes, whatever those were.
Maybe it was to get away from all the people. Maybe it was to plan to overthrow them altogether.
Theresa didn’t blame them.
She finished off her coffee and tossed the empty cup into an overflowing trash can on the street. The garbage already stank in the heat, but the garbage truck was blocks away and wouldn’t pick up this particular can for hours. There had to be a better way, she thought. There had to be a better way to collect the garbage, there had to be a better way to predict the weather, there had to be a better way to establish a city, there had to be a better way to inhabit the planet, there had to be a better way, period.
“You can’t fix everything,” her brother, Theodore, would remind her every time she said it.
“I can’t fix anything,” she would reply.
“Yet,” he would say. “We’ll just have to keep working.”
They were working on a small solar cell that would capture the energy of the sun and an even smaller battery capable of storing that energy for months, even years. They had finished their doctoral dissertations on this work this past spring, and both hoped to get funding to continue the project at a decent research university. When she was feeling glum, which was all too often, Theresa wondered what in the heck they were thinking. No one wanted to fund solar energy projects, now that the Arctic had been opened up for oil drilling. Just a few weeks ago, US and Russian and Chinese warships, all spearheaded by the world’s largest energy companies, had squared off in the first clear channel through the once majestic icebergs, each threatening to destroy the others if they didn’t give way. Everyone wanted to be the first to tunnel into the deep and bring up the stuff that powered the world, that burned it all so hot.
Too hot, thought Theresa, a trickle of sweat making its way down her back. Walking this morning felt like wading through soup. Just ten years ago, this kind of weather only made an appearance in the late summer, just before the heat broke and something like autumn, however brief, would set in. But even the seasons were addled now, all tumbling over one another, scrambling for other parts of the country that had not previously known them, and weren’t exactly pleased to make their acquaintance.
“What’s in the bag?” a small voice said.
She looked down to find two small, pale kids sitting in the doorway of a dingy building. A boy about six, a girl maybe eight or so. They were clean and well-fed, but they had a starved look in their gray eyes. Not for food, but for attention. Parents getting ready for work, or already there, the grandparent or babysitter perched in front of a screen, shooing them away with an absent hand.
“It’s fruit,” said Theresa.
“Oh,” said the girl, disappointed.
“What kind of fruit?” said the boy, his hair shorn almost to his pink scalp.
“Oranges.”
“Oranges!” the girl scoffed. “You don’t have those. They cost a million dollars each.”
“Not quite.”
“My dad said they do,” said the girl. She had long, silky light hair, the kind of hair that Theresa used to wish for.
“They’re expensive,” Tess said. “But they still exist.”
“Can we see?” said the boy.
“Why not?” Theresa opened the bag.
The two peered down inside it. “Oooh!” they said, as if the fruit weren’t so bruised and sorry looking, as if they were seeing something else entirely, something out of a fairy tale—a bag full of butterflies, a bag full of spells.
“Here,” Theresa said. “You take them.”
“What?” said the girl, wary now. “Why?”
“I just remembered that my brother doesn’t like oranges anyway.”
“Is he weird?” said the girl.
“Depends on who you ask,” Theresa said.
The little boy wasn’t as cautious as his sister. He took the bag and cradled it in both hands. His sister elbowed him, and he bleated, “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” Theresa said, feeling a little lighter as she continued the walk home. The feeling didn’t last. She turned the corner and had to shield her eyes against the light beaming relentlessly from a billboard atop the nearest building. The city didn’t have enough money to improve bus service, their corrupt mayor yammered, but it had enough money to build these LED billboards on every surface of the city, blinding everyone with ads. On this billboard, a forty-foot-tall laser-eyed blond woman in a slinky dress stood with her arms crossed next to a picture of her latest book: LASHBACK: A Return to Traditional Values in Our Troubled Times.
“Traditional values like women not being able to own property or get an education?” Theresa snapped before she realized she was speaking aloud. “Traditional values like polio and body lice and tuberculosis? Smallpox-infested blankets and manifest destiny? Those values?”
Some tourists, who were taking photos of the billboard, frowned at Theresa. One woman said, “I’ve read her books and she makes a lot of sense, you know.”
“If she made sense,” Theresa said, “then she wouldn’t be writing books at all. She’d keep her mouth shut and stay home to bake pies like a ‘traditional’ lady should. Or order her servants to do it.”
“What are you talking about?” said the woman. “Who said anything about servants?”
“Forget it,” Theresa said. It wasn’t even nine a.m., and she was already exhausted. Think of the children, she told herself, think of how they were enchanted by two sorry pieces of fruit. Think about the sun that grew the fruit in spite of the killing frost.
She reached 354 W. 73rd Street and punched in the combination, pushed open the glass door with her shoulder. She stopped to fetch the mail from the bank of boxes along one side of the lobby. She didn’t have to open the envelopes to tell that they hadn’t received any good news about jobs or funding. These envelopes were too light for good news. But she tucked the whole bunch under her arm anyway, because you never knew what might surprise you. She headed for the stairs—elevator was broken again—and took them at a run, careful not to spill Theodore’s coffee in the process. By the time she burst into the apartment she shared with her brother, she was winded, but just barely. She tossed the mail on the table.
“Took you long enough,” Theodore said, his face bright in the light of his laptop.
“Got you coffee,” she said, plunking it next to him.
He moved the coffee cup a safer distance from the precious computer. “You shouldn’t have. Too expensive.”
“I’ll drink it, then,” she said, reaching for the coffee.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want it,” he said. He took a sip from the cup. “Did you hear about this?”
“About what?” she said, her gut twisting in alarm.
He turned the laptop so she could see the article he was reading. On the screen was a picture of a grinning black man seated at a drawing table, stylus in hand. The headline read: Lionsgate Nabs Film Rights to Online Comic Series in Eight-Figure, Multipicture Deal.
She let out a breath in relief that it wasn’t news of another storm, another political nightmare. A good surprise this time.
“He looks familiar,” she said. “Who is it?”
“Jaime Cruz.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, leaning in farther to examine the man’s face. “We haven’t seen him since . . . when was it?”
“His dad got transferred to Houston when we were in fifth grade.”
“Right,” Theresa said. “I remember his drawings. He was hilarious, but in that laid-back way? You never really knew what he was thinking?”
“I remember that he carried that hedgehog in his pocket for weeks. He called it Thor, or maybe it was Loki.”
“Until it escaped and crawled up Mr. Jenkins’s pants and then left green poop all over the classroom.”
Theresa laughed. “And all over Mr. Jenkins.”
“He was a nice kid. I wonder if he wants to finance some poor PhDs from the old neighborhood,” Theodore said. He stood and moved to the window, sipping his coffee. The view from their grandfather’s old apartment was better than the one from their parents’ apartment, a few floors below—or it would have been, if the sky weren’t so gray. “Anything in the mail?”
“I don’t think so,” Theresa said. She flipped through the thin envelopes, wondering why they bothered to send paper responses instead of email when all they wanted to say was no. No and no and no and no and no. No, we don’t have a teaching job for you, No, we don’t care about your little projects. No, solar energy isn’t of interest to us, haven’t you heard about the Arctic drilling? No, we don’t care about the penguins or the polar bears, or any other bear, for that matter. Bears, schmares. We’ll turn them all into burgers. Everybody loves burgers.
“You forgot one,” Theodore said, pointing to the last envelope on the table.
She picked it up. Where the address should have been, someone had written TRUST NO ONE. She turned it around and showed it to Theodore.
“That’s curious,” Theodore said. “How could that have gotten into our box with no address on the envelope?”
“The mailman,” Theresa said dryly. But she tore open the envelope and pulled out the pages inside. They were creased and crumpled, as if someone had crammed them in rather than folding them. On one of the pages was a hastily drawn but detailed schematic; on the other was a handwritten letter. Theresa read through the note once to herself, and then out loud to her brother:
I couldn’t think of who else to turn to, who else to trust, and so it will have to be you. I’m sorry for that. Truly and deeply sorry for the choice you will have to make, both of you so young, as young as—
I’m desperate. And someday, you will be, too.
I’ve enclosed the schematic. Once the machine is built, you will note the date on the meter, right before the Industrial Revolution. It’s absurd, I know, to think you could reset everything, but you’re all the hope I have left. Please believe that if I could have done it any other way, I would have. Please believe. Believe.
Oh God, they’re coming.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m
“That sounds awfully dramatic,” Theodore said, standing and taking the pages from Theresa’s hands. He examined the drawing. “I wonder what this person wants us to build.”
“I don’t know,” Theresa said.
He shrugged and laid the schematic on the table. He sipped his coffee and read the article about Jaime Cruz aloud to Theresa. It was a good story, a happy story. In a world with so much unhappiness, Theresa was glad for that.
After he was finished reading, however, Theodore again picked up the schematic.
“What?” Theresa said.
“I don’t know. I’m curious. Aren’t you?”
“I’m more curious about who wrote the letter.”
“Maybe we can solve that mystery if we figure out this one.” He shook the schematic at her. He pulled his laptop closer and started tapping the keys, eyes darting from the plans to the screen and back to the plans.
While he typed, Theresa entered all the recent rejections into the spreadsheet on her own laptop where they kept track of such things. She tossed the pile of empty envelopes into the trash with the other paper recycling. Which was an exercise in futility, because she’d read that the city simply dumped the paper and cans and glass and plastic that people had so carefully collected in with the rest of the garbage. But she couldn’t bring herself not to do it.
“Huh,” said Theodore.
“What?”
“Some of this math. It . . . works.”
“Works how?” Theresa stood behind him and tried to make sense of what she saw on his screen. “Wait. Wait. Is this supposed to be a schematic for a . . . ?”
“No,” said Theodore. “It couldn’t be.”
Together, they scoured the pages. “This must be some kind of joke,” Theodore said.
“Doesn’t sound like a joke.”
“It has to be. Because this is impossible. Scientifically, physically, logically, and in every other way impossible. It’s—”
“—absurd,” Theresa finished. But even as she said it, she could feel the fear of the letter writer, whoever it was. She wished she could help, but . . .
Theodore made the decision for them, as if there were an actual decision to be made about an anonymous letter with an utterly ridiculous idea. Theodore folded the pages and stuffed them back into the envelope. He tossed the envelope into the trunk where they kept all their rejections and other junk. “Come on, we have some more grant proposals to write,” he said. “And then we have to get back to the battery. Energy retainment is still dropping below seventy percent within twelve hours of initial charging.”
“More juice,” said Tess, thinking of the oranges. “More juice.”
They sat down at the table—the iron-gray sky behind them, the city churning below—all too quickly forgetting about the envelope and the pages inside.
They thought they understood desperation, you see.
It would take years for them to realize how very desperate a person could become.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tess
Tess had been in trouble before. When she and Theo were two and counted how many things they could flush down the toilet, which included several stuffed animals, seventy-nine cents in pennies, and their dad’s underwear. When she and Theo were three and a half, got onto their dad’s computer, and ordered more than six hundred dollars’ worth of Star Wars Lego sets and a whole bunch of lightsabers. When she and Theo were five, woke up before their parents one Sunday morning, and took themselves out for brunch. In Brooklyn. (As it turned out, you couldn’t pay for Belgian waffles with Monopoly money.)
But Tess had never been in this kind of trouble. The kind of trouble that makes your parents so upset that they can’t even speak. The kind of trouble that means your parents have a hard time being in the same car or the same room or the same country as you without shaking their heads or even tearing up. The kind of trouble that means you could be spending the next few years of your life, maybe the rest of your life, trying not to disappoint them again, even though you’re sad and angry and frustrated that they were so disappointed in the first place.
