The metal is thin, rusted, a dull shade of brown reminiscent of river mud. It’s small and bent, which is too bad. If it were larger, it’s strong enough that I could have traded it for a bit of food maybe, or a good jacket. After all, metal is rare and people will do anything to get their hands on something they think they can sell.

    Lazily, I twirl the beaten rectangle between my fingers, looking up at the night sky. As always, the clouds hang heavy with grey smoke--residual chemicals left over from the bombs--and the only glimmer of light is a small, yellowish crescent that Mama once told me was the moon. Before, the moon was a jewel, a diamond embedded in a sky the color of freshly-cut sapphires. Now it’s only another of earth’s many scars: a sign of damage, not beauty. I only have distant memories of the time before the war. I think this wasteland used to be a city, and some nights I wake from sleep, sure I can still hear the roar of cars on busy streets and the shouting of passerby.

    But in the end, it’s always just wind beating against the tent flaps and Carl and Jacob—blue-eyed twins always looking for a fight—blaming each other for the lack of roofing and the chilly night air.

    My finger stings.

    I look down. A small bubble of blood rises from the thick, calloused pad of my thumb, the dark red liquid merging with the grime and oil that perpetually coats my fingertips. I toss aside the shard of metal in disgust, and it clatters onto a nearby pile of rubble. That’s life as a scavenger, I suppose. Dirty hands and rotten luck.

    I press my thumb and forefinger together, hoping the pressure will stop the bleeding, but stop after a few seconds. Let it bleed. In a way, the pain is reassuring. Familiar. At least I know I can still feel something.

    For us--the living--the pain never stops. Most of us are used to it, numb to it, to everything, really. Pain is the only constant in the never-ending rollercoaster of life.

    “Hey.”

    I don’t need to turn my head to know who’s speaking. That raspy voice belongs to only one person in the camp. Jane stayed in the city when the war broke out. There was a weapon there, a new type of gas manufactured in some high tech lab—I don’t know specifics—something that damaged her voice box. Damaged everything about her really, except her untouchable optimism.

    I like Jane. Everybody does. We just about raised her, after her older brother carried her broken 3-year-old body through five miles of desert only to collapse at the camp border. I’d been young then, too busy complaining about the hot sun and the sour-smelling sweat on my forehead to notice the glistening eyes and clenched jaws of my companions, too young to see the severity of the situation and understand that the world around us had just been molded like putty in a toddler’s chubby fist.

    The older brother died. He gave all his water to his baby sister and passed out seven feet from the camp border.

    “Hey Jane.” I smile at her.

    Without seeing my smile—her vision’s been gone since the war—Jane returns it.

    “Looking for the lights?” Clumsily, after gently tapping the ground a few times with the old, splintered shaft of wood that serves as her cane, Jane sits down beside me. I touch her hand, letting her know she’s in the right place and that I’m really here.

    She’s not always good at that: telling what’s real and what isn’t. She used to see her family everywhere. Some days she’d talk for hours with the ancient birch tree that stands in the center of camp and then tell me that her brother was studying to become a scientist, or he was taking up wrestling again, or getting over his first break up. She’d tell me about her mom and dad, even though I know she has no memories of them: how they had come to her soccer game and cheered loudly enough that the other team complained to the referee, how they were planning to vacation on a small island in the middle of the ocean and soak up the sun the entire winter. Her search for the lights is the only illusion we never shoot down.

    Despite the scars that mar every inch of her sunburned skin, despite her clouded eyes and scratchy voice, Jane—the most unlucky of all of us—manages to retain hope. Because she can’t look herself, she asks us about the lights: are they on yet, can you see them, are you looking. She thinks that maybe, if the electricity ever comes back, there’ll be a light bright enough even her tired eyes will be able to see it.

    “Yeah.” I nod my head. “Just looking for the lights.”

    The truth is that I was searching for scraps, hoping for an extra cut of profits, but Jane doesn’t need to know that.

    “I’ll wait with you.”

    She takes my silence as agreement and twines our arms together. Overhead, the moon begins its dreary march across the sky, smoke and fog twirling around it like ribbons.

    The night stays still and the lights don’t come. After all, they never do.

    The war changed the shape of the earth: decimated its cities and tore up its forests, molded mountain ranges into valleys and plucked islands from the bottom of the sea. But maybe what changed most was us. Humanity. Change isn’t the right word really. Reminded, perhaps, reminded of our place.

    We weren’t meant to rule. We weren’t meant to possess the kind of power we nurtured in our labs, as we fought to see past limits that had been set for a reason. We know that now, because we made a perfect world and destroyed it because even perfection wasn’t enough to satisfy human arrogance.

    I untangle myself from Jane’s arm, knowing that soon she won’t want to be near me. She lays her cane down beside her and crosses her arms over her chest, shivering in the early morning air.

    Hope is an illusion. There is no better place for us, no lights to signal the return of the golden age.

    “Jane,” I say, the words rough as sandpaper on my tongue. Bitter, even as I understand their necessity. “The lights aren’t coming.”

    There’s no place for hope here. No point to anything besides reality and survival.

    A tear slides down Jane’s cheek, barely visible in the darkness. I try not to notice.

    “Go back inside. I’ll be there in a moment.”

    We all need to grow up sooner or later.