Only He Can Bring What They Need to Survive. In the year 2250, water is scarce, and those who control it control everything. Sixteen-year-old Luca has struggled with this truth, and what it means, his entire life. As the son of the Deliverer, he will one day have to descend to the underground Aquifer each year and negotiate with the reportedly ratlike miners who harvest the world’s fresh water. But he has learned the true control rests with the Council aboveground, a group that has people following without hesitation, and which has forbidden all emotion and art in the name of keeping the peace. And this Council has broken his father’s spirit, while also forcing Luca to hide every feeling that rules his heart. But when Luca’s father goes missing, everything shifts. Luca is forced underground, and discovers secrets, lies, and mysteries that cause him to reevaluate who he is and the world he serves. Together with his friends and a very alluring girl, Luca seeks to free his people and the Rats from the Council’s control. But Luca’s mission is not without struggle and loss, as his desire to uncover the truth could have greater consequences than he ever imagined. Jonathan Friesen is an author, speaker, and youth writing coach from Mora, Minnesota. His first young adult novel, Jerk, California, received the ALA Schneider Award. When he’s not writing, speaking at schools, or teaching, Jonathan loves to travel and hang out with his wife and three kids. Aquifer A Novel By Jonathan Friesen BLINK Copyright © 2013 Jonathan Friesen All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-310-73183-2 CHAPTER 1 Two Years Later Left, slight jog right, sharp right, left, left ..." I stand in front of the Australyan Sea and whisper the mantra that is mine alone to remember. Twice a day, I repeat the order, as I have for the last ten years, as I will until the day I die. "Veer left, lower your head, left again ..." My mind holds a mystery: directions to a land I've never seen. A land five miles beneath my feet. I kick at the sand. My journey there is inevitable, but I'm in no hurry to descend that far, to a world of blackness and shadow, where a race known as Water Rats scurry about. Father says that I cannot imagine what lies below, what manner of creatures extract the fresh water our parched planet needs, and pump it, with unseeing eyes, to the surface. This is good. My imagination provides many sleepless nights as it is, and if my nightmares are accurate, when it comes my turn to descend, I will die of fright. "Nine hundred forty seven paces straight away ..." The yearly transfer will one day fall to me, the Deliverer's son, as it falls to Father now and fell on his fathers before him. Every seventh day of the seventh month, Father gathers rods of light, descends toward the heart of the earth, and exchanges them with the Rats for a promise — one more year of free-flowing fresh water. For both Toppers and the creatures below, it's a life-giving trade. The Deliverer returns, and the Toppers rejoice. Father does not. A successful exchange should please him most of all because it means my father's work is done for the year. Instead, he slumps through the streets of New Pert, his gaze downcast. Citizens avert their eyes. A superstitious lot, they know he is Other and assume that the pained look on his face reveals the enlightened nature of his thoughts. They don't know he wanders our shoreline in the moonlight searching, waiting — for whom, I do not know. They don't share his burden or hear the forbidden sobs that shake him. That is mine alone to see. The slow death of a savior. One day, the territory of New Pert will treat me with the same grim reverence, once my schooling is complete and my childhood no longer extracts from them a greeting. I will then become Other. All because of the directions floating around my mind. I hope Father lives to one hundred and twenty. Tonight, Father and I are left to our thoughts and ourselves. A quiet shanty on the sea is our payment for shouldering the weight we bear, the peacemaker's way of rewarding us with just enough privacy to make living bearable. A gentle breeze crosses my face and heads toward Father's dock, where his boat gently sways. The dock stretches out into the Shallows, a natural gift created by the waves that crash over the reef. Without the sea's fury, water stills and pools in the rocks and coral. This evening it glistens pink beneath a reddening sky. Father sits on the edge, still as stone, his feet dangling off the dock into the water and his hands stroking his prized possession: hundreds of papers bound in leather. We don't speak of things illegal, but I wonder why he carries it and risks the Amongus's wrath. There are many things I don't understand about Father. His back is hunched and scarred; his memory is broken. But if I were to go to him, to drop down and place my head on his shoulder, I know what I would hear. "Left, slight jog right ..." Ten years ago, Father's debri