The New Order by Chris Weitz

Author:Chris Weitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2015-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

CHEERS,” SAYS the beautiful guy from the noodle place, setting down his pint of beer.

They say “cheers” for pretty much everything here—it means “hi,” and it also means “thanks,” and it also means “good-bye.”

And it also means “cheers.” So—“Cheers,” I say, for want of something better. I hold up my bottle of Bud. Clink.

True confession? I’m still only seventeen. So, back in the Old Country, this would have been against the law. Then again, the Old Country doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s the Young Country now. Anybody who would have taken away my fake ID is dead.

Anyhow, the drinking age is eighteen here, and since I look eighteenish, they don’t bother to check. And the craziest thing? I am in the college bar. They actually have an official drinking establishment inside the college where you can get effed up.

All around, kids are doing just that, pounding pints of uncarbonated, hardly-more-than-room-temperature brown swill that they call “bitter,” which tastes sort of like microbrew that somebody left open for days until it went flat. They love the stuff. When I ordered my Bud, the bartender said something about how American beer was “like having sex in a canoe—fucking close to water.” But I don’t drink it for the taste. I drink it to remind myself that the great American institution of Budweiser, shaggy advertising horses and all, has survived the apocalypse.

One gets the idea that Americans aren’t too popular in these parts, probably on account of the huge influx of the Diaspora—which is what they call the Americans who were out of country when the Sickness hit. It’s pronounced “die-ASS-poor-uh,” and means a group of people who have been scattered. So basically I’m one of “the Dispersed.” I’m a Disperson.

There’s a whole undertow of feeling that I sense every time somebody finds out I’m part of the Diaspora. Like, there’s some resentment, for sure. Like we’re stretching the population too much, or taking people’s jobs, or living off the government. Sort of the way people used to be dicks about undocumented immigrants back in the US. But beneath that, there’s a sort of guilt. Like, sometimes people talk about internment. And even further beneath that is a sort of fear—like it’s not just the Sickness that might be contagious, but also shitty luck, or a foul destiny. Like I’m some kind of monster.

With the result that I have not been able to Make New Friends that easily. It’s not just the American Cooties, of course. I’m still trying to get my head around Jefferson being dead. All my friends. It feels like a betrayal to just go and make new ones. I’m a passenger in a fast car called grief, taking me who knows where. How could anyone get up to speed with me?

Plus, I’m not exactly geographically desirable. I’m the only student who lives in Nevile’s Court. That’s the library courtyard where I woke up the first time. My rooms—that’s what they call it—and, in fact, I actually have a bedroom and a living room, it’s mad luxurious—are up L staircase.

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