Cass eats standing up before dawn, because by the time the sun clears the Rattlesnake Hills food will feel like labor. They walk to the old railway depot in Toppenish where the compact keeps its records — water-use reports, grazing renewals, the institutional grammar of a basin that reorganized itself after the collapse. Their grandmother Della taught them that the record is what holds. Then a message arrives from family in Lapwai, asking about a filing Cass has heard about in fragments for twenty-two years and never read. The paper is one brick wall away. Both parents signed it.

Nineteen days into smoke mode. The building is sealed, the air monitors on the classroom walls get read about as often as the clocks, and the hallway is the only place to be between classes. Everybody's tired in a way sleep doesn't fix. And Kai has stopped sitting with her at lunch. In David Kern's "Smoke Day," a sixteen-year-old tries to understand why her best friend has asked for space, inside a building neither of them can leave.