Chapter 2

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Lydia and Amata were playing Horses. All the kids in the Vault had to share all the toys, and today was Amata's turn with the animals, so she'd brought them over. They were old and the paint on them was wearing off, but they were still more fun than just pretending. The girls made the bed into a mountain, the sink into a lake, and Lydia's blankets into a series of tunnels. Not tunnels like in the vault. Tunnels like caves, outside. Like in movies. The horses slept in the caves at night and during the day they would come out and play in the sun.

"I don't think horses live in caves," Lydia pointed out after they'd been playing for a while. She had noticed that in movies horses usually just stood around outside. They didn't hide at night.

"Well...that's where they go to get away from the other animals outside, because, if they go outside at night they can't see when the other animals are going to eat them."

"Oh," Lydia said, bouncing her horse out of the blanket and up to the bed. She still wasn't sure that sounded right, but Amata seemed to know what she was talking about.

The door behind them slid open, and Lydia turned to see her father enter the room. He bent down next to them, looking very interested. "What are you up to, girls?"

"Playing horses," Amata replied, petting her toy.

Lydia's father played with them sometimes, but he was usually busy, and he didn't really know how to do it right anyway. Last time, he made his horse go under the bed because he didn't know there was a monster there that would eat you if you got near it. Then he tried to tell them there was a monster in the lake, too, even though there wasn't.

"Dad, wouldn't it be cool if horses were real?" Lydia said, trying to help him feel included.

Amata laughed. "Horses are real."

Lydia turned to frown at her. "No they're not."

"Yeah-huh. They're outside."

"There's no such thing as outside!"

Amata laughed some more.

"I never saw a horse," Lydia said, crossing her arms. She didn't know what was wrong with Amata—she didn't usually make jokes. She turned to her father. "There's no such thing as the outside, right, Dad?"

A strange look crossed his face. He didn't answer right away. "Lydia, where do you think the vault came from?"

Amata stopped laughing and listened.

Lydia didn't understand. Why should the vault come from anywhere? "The...Overseer?" she guessed.

"Vault-Tec," Amata said.

"The vault was built by people outside. They came to live inside when the rest of the world became to dangerous," her father said.

Lydia looked back and forth between him and Amata.

"That circle door goes outside," Amata added. "But we're not allowed."

"Dad, will you take me?" Lydia asked excitedly, her voice hushed. maybe Amata wasn't allowed, but no one said anything about her.

"No," he replied flatly, in a tone of voice that said he wasn't going to change his mind. It made Lydia even more desperate.

"But Dad—"

"No."

She began to cry. "Dad, I want to go..."

"Lydia, don't whine." He looked sad, but his voice was stern. Lydia pouted. She hadn't even done anything.

Her father got up. "Play with your toys. It's much nicer than the real thing, honey, I promise."

As he left, Lydia tossed her horse to the floor, not caring that it tumbled dangerously close to the monster under the bed.

"It's gonna eat youuuu," Amata warned in a sing-song voice. When Lydia didn't reply, she sighed. "Why do you even want to go outside?"

"Because I never went there," Lydia said, still brimming with disappointment. "And I want to find a horse."

Amata sighed, looking tired of the conversation. "Well, come on, let's keep playing. It's almost dinner.