Five stared at him for a few seconds, remembering that talk with Hazel about life post-apocalypse. What would you have done if you hadn’t left home and gotten mixed up with the Commission? He’d guessed ‘grow up into an emotionally stunted man child like everybody else.’ The reply had been So do that, grow up.

It was hard to grow up at fifty-eight, but it was what teenagers were supposed to do. And in this place at least, April 1st would come and go and the world wouldn’t end.

He shook his head. “It’s complicated. I’m sticking with thirteen for now.”