Chapter 14In the morning, while I was getting dressed, my mother knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m almost ready,” I hollered.
“I just need the trash bin,” she told me.
My heart lurched. The trash bin?
Where I threw away my blue and white pills every night?
“Why?” I asked.
It wasn’t Collection Day again. She never emptied it unless the Collection Crew was scheduled to come by, and they had already come the day before. Once a week they slowly circled the Colony, and everyone came out to empty their trash bins into a large container loaded onto the monorail track. During collection, rail service was suspended, so it was usually scheduled for an odd hour like ten in the morning or one in the afternoon. Trash was incinerated at the Collection Center which, like the Elder Center, was outsi
