Chapter Two
Fellow Travelers
Her heart was pounding and she could not draw a breath, giving the pounding a desperate, dying quality. She went from hidey-hole to secret space, searching for any coin she might have overlooked before, no matter how worthless, but there was none. The tea tin was empty; the millet sack had very little millet left in it, let alone the little pouch of coins Ma had once secreted there. Still she searched the same places again and again fruitlessly, and her heart pounded, hard but empty.
She turned to tell Arturo that there was nothing left, no way to buy the medicine that Ma needed to live, but Arturo wasn’t there.
Valentina jerked awake with a gasp. Her heart really was beating hard and she gasped again, fearful that the station had run out of air, that she w
