The next day tasted of stale cereal. Handsome tried not to let it get to him. Just yesterday, stale cereal had seemed like a good thing—hopeful almost, but today it was a disappointment. What would he do when Egret asked him? He could say it was a broccoli day, but then the day would play out like cereal and she'd know he'd lied. That would be worse than the look of disappointment he was sure to see when he told her straight off.

When they'd returned from Treasure Mountain yesterday afternoon, his parents had been happy with their find, just as Handsome had anticipated. The needles would fetch a decent price, he knew. But the pills were the big score. His mom's heavy-lidded eyes had opened wide at the site of them. Having attended school for several years, Mama was the only one of the family who could read. Mama and Da exchanged a knowing glance and Da slipped the container into his pocket.

That night as they'd waited for him to return, Mama had been so hopeful, she'd bought a small loaf of bread from a neighbor and shared it with them. Hands shaking with nervous energy, she ran a comb through Egret's hair, tying it back with pieces of string used to wrap up the dark red bricks Da delivered for Boss.

The three of them sat up late, staring at the splinters of wood breaking up the bottom of the door, knowing any minute, Da would be coming through it with good news.

Da never showed, not with good news or any other kind. Mama went to bed first, her back turned away from the disappointment the rest of the house signified. Soon Egret slumped against Handsome, her breath grown even. Gingerly, he lay her down in the bed, scooching her over so there was room for him too. Giving the door one last look before blowing out the candle, he climbed in next to his sister.

It seemed no time passed at all before the next stale cereal day had dawned.

Da returned soon after the family woke, his expression difficult for Handsome to read. His brow was creased in anger, but it had been set that way so often, those lines were permanent etched there. It was impossible to determine if this was a new layer of anger or just the same old one.

He kept his gaze down at the floor. "Everyone, come with me."

#

Much to his relief, Egret didn't ask Handsome if this was the broccoli day they'd been waiting for. She knew better. Just like she knew better than to ask Da where they were going and why. The children trailed silently behind their father, Mama taking up the rear of the group as they traipsed through the narrow streets. Even Mama seemed hesitant to ask what was happening. She'd been hoping for a broccoli day just as the children had.

Mama grew up just about all broccoli. She'd been a hoverer, like her daughter, only her family started off richer so there'd been no need to turn her out for work. She'd done her three years of school and then her parents pulled her out so she wouldn't be too educated to make a suitable wife. Her hovering ability made her desirable, but it wasn't an ability that carried through to adulthood. Most hoverers stopped floating by the time they were thirteen, and mama's parents knew she'd be no different. They'd had no choice but to offer her hand early on.

When Mama heard she was to wed the owner of a line of kitchenware three times her age, her dreams of becoming a teacher died, and with them, her broccoli days. Three nights later, she left her parents' house in the middle of the night, crossing over the wall from Green Terra into the Maze, and that very night met Handsome's Da as she wandered the tangle of streets wondering what to do next. Da was already working for Boss by then; he knew what she could do. She was almost twelve after all. Old enough. When they found out she was a hoverer, though they put her to use doing the same sort of work Egret did now. But her abilities didn't last and neither had her job.

Mama was one of the lucky ones, really. Da had taken a liking to her straight away. By the time Handsome came along, he'd set her up in their humble little abode and made sure she didn't do the sort of work most girls in her situation did. It was the rare fifteen-year-old girl in the Maze who could claim to have such security.

Mama didn't take it for granted. She was a good mother and kept the house spotless. She made sure Da ate well. For years, theirs was one of the lucky homes, with cooked grain smells and even the occasional round of laughter. Compared to the house she'd grown up in, perhaps she wouldn't have considered this a life of any sort of luxury, but for Handsome, those early years were bountiful. Broccoli was the first taste day he'd known and for a while, he'd assumed they were the taste of life rather than the taste of fortune.

Egret floated for the first time the day she turned one year old. Mama cooed with pride, recording the event on her phone while Da sat at the dinner table measuring his bricks on metal scales. It was the decision to send the video to her own mother that changed everything. Mama hated her father, but she missed her mother and always had. The video of Egret was her way of reaching out. She couldn't have known how Da would react when he found out several months later. The video showed up online and even though it was dark and grainy and baby Egret was the clear focus, there was Da in the background, weighing and counting. Da was not pleased and neither was Boss.

His parents' arguments kept him awake for many nights after that. Mama wanted to leave, go back to her family, take him and his sister with her. Da was angry at her but not angry enough to let her leave. What—did she think she was better than him just because she'd grown up in a two-story home with a stone fountain in the center of its courtyard? Did she think she'd do better than him? Her own father had been willing to sell her, after all.

Handsome expected any night to find himself whisked away by his mother as his father slept off another one of his drug-fueled evenings. But it never happened. Instead, his mother's protests ended. Her eyes began to bare the hollowness he'd grown used to seeing in his father. He made it a habit to pick up the needles they left scattered around the room so Egret wouldn't poke herself with them.

By the time his sister turned three, they were working Treasure Mountain for their parents. He never heard Mama speak about going home to her parents' house again. Da took away her phone so she couldn't contact them and made sure she had enough to fill a needle every morning so she wouldn't want to. Things calmed down and sour milk turned to stale cereal. They could all live with that. But it didn't mean they were happy about it.

Mama was a different person now. She'd barely cried when their baby sister died just a few months into life. Her pain was instead measured by the track marks on her arms and the sunken hollows of her cheeks.

Along their path to who-knows-where, Handsome turned back every few steps to make sure Mama was keeping up. She was tired these days; tired from the moment she rose to the moment she went to bed. This morning was no different. Her breath labored as Da put them through their paces, but her expression remained determined. Even though she didn't have to come, she'd insisted on it. She wanted to know what Da had planned for her children. Handsome had to keep reminding himself that it was a stale cereal day. Just like yesterday, it wouldn't end in disaster, no matter what Da had planned.

It took twenty minutes for the family to make it beyond the familiar pathways of the Maze to areas Handsome had never been to. He let his mouth go slack so that he could taste the air around him. A line of rusting train cars filled with squatters—raw fish, which gradually made way for the cinnamon taste of a storefront church. So on and so forth, as they walked, Handsome tasted. He absorbed the shape of the city on his tongue, its pathways etched into the rivulets between taste buds.

The sun had shown its face over the tall stone wall diving the Maze from Green Terra by the time the family arrived at Da's intended destination, a large wood framed building with white columns and a porch larger than Handsome's entire house. This manor had been built in the years when the Maze wasn't a maze but only another part of the city, with straight, orderly streets and people as presentable as the homes they kept. It was a remnant, a reminder that things had been different once.

Da motioned for his family to stand to the side. He lifted a large brass knocker and gave it a reverberating thwack. The door slid open. A man a head taller than Da, head shaved bald, muscly arms bulging out of a tight t-shirt, sized them up, eyebrow raised.

"Well?"

"I brought them. Just like Boss wanted."

Rough hands shoved him and his sister inside. Mama gave a surprised yelp, but Da quickly silenced her. "It's about time they started working directly for Boss. It will be better for them this way. You'll see."

The door closed, cutting the children off from their parents. Egret wrapped her hand around his and clung to him. The inside wasn't at all what he expected. They were in a room that seemed to have no other purpose but to lead to other rooms. Doors stood open to his left and to his right, and facing them, a wide staircase with a railing carved to look like vines wrapped around trees lead to the building's upper floor. There were no beds or hotplates for cooking. No dishes or clothes shoved into corners. The only piece of furniture that existed at all was a small semi-oval table pressed to the side as though the wall had swallowed its other half. A fancy vase with spiky orange flowers balancing on tall stems stood in its center. It occurred to Handsome for the first time that this home was big enough to have different rooms with distinct functions, like one for making food, for instance. That one he could smell—the last door on his right. He had never imagined this sort of home was possible before.

The muscly man motioned them forward. Egret pulled on Handsome, shaking her head no, her eyes round and fearful.

"Boss has work for you two." The man took the arm that wasn't clinging to Handsome and dragged her forward, and Handsome with her. "You don't think you have a choice about this, do you?"

They didn't. Handsome knew that. He kept the taste of stale cereal on his tongue. It wouldn't be bad, it wouldn't be bad, it wouldn't be bad.

Instead of going into one of the rooms attached to this one, they were marched past the staircase, past rooms with tastes like lavender and copper, through to the back of the house and out of a door leading to another large porch. Beyond the porch was a wide expanse of grass—more green than Handsome realized existed in the Maze. A tall hedge enclosed the lawn.

Handsome was so captivated by the lushness around them that he almost missed the presence of a second man sitting with his feet propped up on a table in front of him. A cigar stub hung from his lip. Upon seeing them, he set the cigar onto a tray and then beckoned them over.

The muscly man once again pushed them forward until they were standing right in front of the cigar man. Egret sniffled.

"There now, little girl." He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. His lips spread into a wide tar-stained grin. "You don't need to be afraid of me. You know who I am, right?"

Both children nodded.

"You're Da's boss." Handsome swallowed, hoping Boss didn't catch the waver that ran over each word.

Boss removed his hand from Egret and stared Handsome in the eye. Handsome stared back unblinking.

"I'm your Da's boss, and I'm your boss now too." He got up from the table. Handsome was surprised to find he was an average sized man. He'd always pictured Boss as a looming figure—a giant, even. What he lacked in height, he made up in an air of authority. Handsome sampled the tastes around Boss. There was nothing but cigar, noxiously sweet and smoky. He wondered how the man could taste anything besides it.

"Your Da's been wasting your talents, making you scavenge on Treasure Mountain like you're the children of beggars. I had a talk with him last night. We decided you won't be doing that anymore."

Egret's grip eased a little. Boss' words seemed promising, but Handsome had his doubts. "What should we be doing that won't... waste our talents?"

Boss said nothing, but instead walked down the porch steps to his back lawn. Urged on by the muscly man, the children followed him until they had crossed the back yard and come to a gate hidden behind a row of tall hedges.

Punching a code into a control panel next to the gate, Boss waited for the gate to slide open. Once on the other side, the rush of the Maze nearly swallowed them. Handsome had forgotten they were still in the city, but there it was, spread out in zigzagging directions throughout the valley below. Boss led them down a narrow footpath and over to a fenced enclosure only slightly shorter than the wall separating the Maze from the Green. The fence was topped with several feet of barbed wire.

"This is your stop." He motioned to Egret. "You can float over that, right?"

She nodded.

"That's what I thought. "This is where the city hospitals dump their medical waste. I need you to find more of what you found on Treasure Mountain yesterday. Do that, and you and your brother get your pie holes filled and a place to sleep every night. You understand?"

She nodded again. Handsome was the one now to show confusion. "What about me?"

Boss shrugged. "Stay here and keep Lev company." He motioned to the muscly man who rolled his eyes. The two men shared a chuckle.

Handsome shifted his gaze back and forth between them. "Really?"

Their chuckles turned into belly laughs. Handsome could barely taste the stale cereal over the cigar smoke. Even the muscly man, Lev, smelled like it. When Boss had gotten himself under control, he answered Handsome. "You think I don't know about you? Hoverers are like asthmatics in a coal factory, not that your sister can't make herself profitable. But you—you we don't see too often. You I want."

He poked a sausage finger in Handsome's face. You're going to tell me when I need to increase my security, Day-Taster. Starting now."

Author's Note: Handsome and Egret are not in a good place, people! And Boss knows about Handsome's unusual power. Will the siblings go along with Boss's orders?

Thank you for reading! Chapter 3 is coming your way by next Monday. 

Hope you have a broccoli day!