“Amity, what was that last night?” said Collie in a low voice.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, you do.”
I wasn’t capable of whipping off my towel in front of Collie – it didn’t seem to matter in front of anyone else. Furious, I grabbed a clean pair of underwear and struggled them on under the towel. No, this wouldn’t do. I snapped the towel off and kept my back to him as I put on my brassiere, feeling his gaze warm on my skin – but when I looked, he wasn’t watching; he was pulling on his flight trousers with a frown on his face.
“I was playing poker with my friends,” I said. “Then you came in, and felt the need to tell everyone about—” I broke off.
“What? That stupid story about when we were kids? Is that so taboo here?”
“You don’t understand,” I said tightly. “You’ve barely been here a week.” I stepped into the green dress I’d brought; I was leaving for my appeal straight from here. “Why did you even come to Harlan’s, anyway? What happened to it being best for us not to spend much time together?”
Collie turned then. “It is best – for more reasons than you know,” he said quietly. “And fine, maybe it was stupid to just show up, but I can’t do this any more, Amity. I can’t not talk to you.”
“You managed it just dandy for over four years.”
“I told you, I had my reasons!” He saw the photo in my locker then, and his face changed. Before I could bang the door shut, he stepped close and pulled the sepia image out from behind my mirror.
My father’s right arm was around me. His left arm was torn off. The person he’d had that arm around had been ripped away.
Collie stood gazing down at what remained of the photo. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse. “You really hate me, don’t you?”
He still had his shirt off. I could smell the warmth of his skin.
I took the photo and shoved it back into place, hiding the torn edge. I got out the rest of my things and closed the locker door. It gave an echoing clang.
“I don’t hate you,” I said. “I just…missed you a lot, after you left.”
Collie didn’t move; he was standing only inches from me. “I missed you, too,” he said.
I turned away and sat on the bench. I started pulling on my stockings and didn’t answer.
The room was quiet; for a change, there were hardly any other pilots around. “Are you going home for a visit?” Collie asked finally.
“No,” I said. “I went home just a few days ago.”
“You did?” He sat on the bench next to me. “How are Rose and Hal?”
“Fine.” I stared down at my legs as if rolling stockings up them was the most fascinating thing in the world – even more interesting than doing a loop-the-loop.
“Did you tell them I was here?”
I started to snap at him and then saw the look in his eyes. They were pure green under these lights, and full of longing. Ma had been more of a mother to him than his own ever was.
“Yes, I told them,” I said.
His throat worked; he looked down at his hands. “Maybe…maybe I could go with you sometime.”
“Collie, what do you want from me?” I burst out. “You didn’t write. For four years! What was I supposed to think? You might as well have died, just like Dad!”
“I know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.” To my surprise he gripped my hand. “What if I told you where I was?” he said, his voice intense.
“I don’t want to know any more. It doesn’t matter.” I pulled away, trying to ignore how his skin had felt against mine.
“I want to tell you.”
“Collie—”
“We were in the Central States.”
I stared at him, my hands frozen on the flimsy stocking. “What?”
He smiled grimly. “Want the details?”
“No,” I said after a long pause, even though this explained everything. Gunnison didn’t let letters out of his country, not without a lot of rigmarole. A schoolboy’s letters to a girl back home wouldn’t have had a chance.
Collie hesitated, then held out his hand. “Here,” he said.
A small tattoo marked the base of his thumb: a circular blue swirl. “What is it?” I asked, chilled. It reminded me of those charts of Ma’s at home.
“The glyph for my sun sign. Leo, the lion. I was trying to fit in. You have to pretend to be nuts about astrology.” Collie studied the tattoo with a sour look; his hand closed into a fist.
“Anyway, I managed to escape,” he said. “I didn’t tell you that first day because seeing you threw me so badly. Then I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m still a Central States citizen. I couldn’t be a pilot for the Western Seaboard if that got out.”
I felt locked in place. “What did you mean about not writing being ‘for the best’, then?”
Collie let out a breath. “I don’t know. We didn’t go to the Central States right away, and…I guess at first, it did seem for the best. I was fourteen, Amity; who knows what I was thinking? It just seemed too hard. But then once we got there, I—” He stopped; his jaw tightened and he looked down.
“I did write you a letter at the border,” he said finally. “You probably didn’t get it. I had a feeling the guard wouldn’t send it.”
No. I hadn’t gotten it.
“Are your parents all right?” I asked at last.
“I don’t know. They’re still there.”
My desire to take his hand again shook me. I pushed it away, along with all my questions. To get answers would mean getting close to him again.
I couldn’t do it. Not any more. Not here.
I went back to rolling up my stockings. “Well, I’m sorry to hear it.” My voice sounded odd, stilted. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Collie studied my face. I’d never felt so thoroughly seen before. “Amity, you asked what I want from you?” he said in a low voice. “I want to pick up where we left off. I missed you, don’t you know that? It was like part of me was gone. I don’t think a day went by when I didn’t think, Amity would like that, or, I’ve got to tell Amity.”
I stood up and fastened my stockings to my garter belt. I smoothed my skirt down over my thighs to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. “We can’t pick up where we left off. We’re different people now.”
“We could try!”
“What if I don’t want to?”
He rose slowly. His eyes scanned mine. “Is it Stan?”
The name lashed at me. “No, it’s you. It’s me, it’s the two of us here – it’s impossible, and…and I can’t talk about this now. I’ve got to go.”
I yanked on my heels and snatched my handbag up from the bench; I strode from the locker room.
Collie followed, shrugging into his shirt. “Amity, wait!”
He caught up with me as I stepped out into the corridor; he took my arm. “Can’t we at least talk? Please?”
“No. I’m not going to get close to you only to—” I broke off.
Collie’s shirt hung open over his chest. His gaze stayed locked on mine. He shook his head. “Only to what?”
I took a step away, gripping my handbag. It was just a clutch, and I knew the way I was holding onto it, my fingernails would leave dents in the shiny black leather.
“Stan’s dead,” I said. “He died the day before you got here. You’ve got his locker.”
“Oh,” said Collie softly.
“It’s not like you think! But you could die too, any day, do you realize that? You’re a new pilot, you’re inexperienced—”
“I just went through six months of training school!”
“New pilots die more often,” I said. “Why do you think hardly anyone talks to you? People here aren’t mean; they’re not unsociable – it just hurts to get close to someone and then lose them.”
The words hung in the air – and I knew we were both thinking of the four years of silence.
Collie’s jaw took on the determined lines
I knew so well. I had a sudden image of him the day we’d built the bridge to nowhere, splashing through the river, holding a rock as big as his head.
“All right,” he said. “How long?”
“How long what?”
He moved aside as Levi went into the locker room, ignoring Levi’s sidelong stare. “How long before you decide that I’m not going to die in my next fight, and that it’s safe to let me in again?”
I started down the hallway. “You could die anytime. We all could. Stan had been here almost a year.”
He darted in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you saying never, then? I won’t accept that.”
“I’ve got a train to catch, Collie.”
“I’ve been here over a week already. Two more weeks? Three? A month?”
I jerked away, wishing he’d button his shirt. “Are you listening? I have to leave; I’ve got to be someplace in an hour.”
He let go of me then and I headed for the doors, wishing I knew how to walk better in heels – wishing Collis Reed had never taken it into his head to be a Peacefighter – wishing I could go back in time to when he’d first arrived so I could stare at him blankly and pretend I had no idea who he was.
“A month,” Collie called after me. His voice echoed through the corridor…deeper than I recalled but still Collie.
Chapter Ten
When I was growing up we lived out in the country, in a town called Gloversdale up near the Lassen Mountains. In the summertime it was so hot that the fields caught fire sometimes; in the winter, snow covered everything, gently muffling all sound.
Our house was an old place that had belonged to Dad’s great-great-grandfather. Hal and I loved it. Ma didn’t. She was always buying antiques and experimenting with new wallpaper, trying to make the rambling rooms look like the sleek ones in the magazines she read – the ones that came all the way from New Manhattan in far-off Appalachia.
On rainy days, Collie, Hal and I would play hide-and-seek in the house and it could take hours to find each other. Outside was better still: over twenty acres filled with fields, a small patch of woods, even a river. The fields were deep green in spring, and when they were full of golden hay bales in summer it was like living in a painting.
Flying was our main love, though.
Dad had retired from being a Peacefighter when I was five, but he still worked for the WfP. He trained new pilots, gave talks, made sure everyone knew the importance of fighting for peace. By the time I was ten he wasn’t home very much, but I understood. Everyone needed him.
I lived for him coming home. I lived for being taken up in one of his planes. He had two: a MK3 Firedove and a biplane, a Gauntlet Jenny. The Gaunt was a two-seater, and as soon as I was big enough to see over the control panel, he’d sit beside me in the cockpit and say, “Let’s see how you do.”
I remember sitting up straight, so determined to do well, excitement pulsing through me like an extra heartbeat. Dad would let me do the take-off and fly it, sometimes putting his hand over mine if I needed to throttle back a little.
“Good,” he’d say. “You’re a natural pilot, Amity.”
And I’d scowl because I was too happy to trust a smile, and I’d dream about flying for a living someday.
Collie was crazy about flying, too. He lived next door, though that was a good quarter of a mile away. We met when I was six and he was seven, when we were both walking to school and realized we lived on the same road. It turned out that Collie had spent a lot of time hanging out at the fence that divided our two properties, peering in and wondering about who lived there – though I’d never seen him, and he’d never gotten up the nerve to climb over. He said later he was afraid we’d chase him off. I guess our house looked very grand to him, though to me it was just ordinary – I loved it, but didn’t know it was anything special. Collie’s house was small and cramped, nothing like ours.
It took me a long time to understand that this meant his family didn’t have much money.
From the second we became friends, Collie practically lived at our house. My parents both loved him. Everyone loved him. He was like bottled sunlight: a thin, scrawny boy with a smile bigger than he was and mischievous eyes.
The first time he saw my room, he’d stared in wonder at my books and board games and model planes. “Amity, you’re so lucky,” he’d breathed, gently touching a toy Firedove.
“I am?” The thought had never occurred to me.
He gave me a look that said maybe I was the stupidest person on the planet but he liked me anyway. Then he’d swooped the plane through the air, buzzing it close to my head. “Come on. Let’s take it outside!”
It also took me a long time to wonder why Collie’s parents never seemed to miss him.
I only went to Collie’s house a handful of times. Once was when I hadn’t seen him for a few days. There’d been no Collie knocking at our kitchen door just in time for breakfast, and he hadn’t been in school, either. So I went to his house. I took Hal with me, even though my little brother was only six then – I felt more apprehensive than I wanted to admit.
Collie’s house was small, darkly shadowed by the yew trees that flanked it. The front porch sagged, and I stepped onto it nervously. No doorbell. I knocked on the screen door’s weathered frame. There were holes in the screen, and I stared at them, thinking, But how do they keep the flies from getting in?
The inside door flew open. A woman smoking a cigarette stared out at me. She had Collie’s golden-brown hair, though hers spilled wildly past her shoulders. She slumped a hip against the door frame and blew out a stream of smoke. “Yeah?” she said.
“Is – is Collie here?”
“Collie?”
I squeezed Hal’s hand. “I mean…Collis.”
“Collie,” she said, as if remembering who I meant. “Yeah, he’s here. You his little friends?”
I nodded, terrified. There was something wrong with the woman’s eyes. She kept peering at me, then drawing her head back as if she couldn’t quite focus.
“Isn’t that nice – Collie’s got little friends,” she said. “C’mon in, Collie’s little friends.” She held the door open.
Hal was tugging at my hand. “Amity! I don’t want to go in there,” he hissed.
“Shut up,” I whispered fiercely. I didn’t want to either, but we stepped over the threshold.
It was like no place I’d ever seen. There was hardly any furniture, but there were piles of things everywhere: magazines, empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, those novels Ma called “trashy bodice rippers”. I stared at a stack of old newspapers with dust on them. The walls were grimy with cigarette smoke.
Hal jerked at my sleeve. “Let’s go,” he pleaded.
“I’m Goldie,” announced the woman, rummaging for something on a table. “On accounta my hair. Like mother, like son, huh?” An ashtray fell off and she swore.
I felt tight inside. Collie had hardly ever mentioned his mother, but I’d thought… I swallowed. I didn’t know what I’d thought.
Goldie found a lighter and lit another cigarette; she puffed a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. She took a sip from a small brown bottle and offered it to me. “Want some? I won’t tell.”
“Where’s Collie?” I blurted. “You said he was here.”
“Oh, sure, he’s here.” A battered-looking telio set sat in the corner. Goldie snapped it on and started swaying as dance music drifted out. “Oh, yeah, this one’s my favourite,” she murmured. Humming, she spun, then peered at Hal. “Hey, wanna dance, little boy?”
Hal shook his head violently.
Goldie giggled and ruffled his hair. “Aw, too bad. Bet you’ll break some hearts one day.”
“Where’s Collie?” I repeated.
But Goldie was off in her own world, dancing with an invisible partner.
I looked around wildly and spotted a door. “Come on,” I hissed to Hal, and dragged him across the room.
“Amity, I want to go home!”
br /> “We have to check on Collie,” I snapped, fear making my voice sharp. I was trying not to notice the filthy kitchen I could see through an archway, or the smell coming from it. I knocked at the door and pressed my ear against it. “Collie?”
No answer. My heart beating hard, I edged open the door and we slipped inside. We were in a tiny, dark bedroom. A huddled figure lay in the bed.
“Collie!” I was beside the bed in a heartbeat. “Are you all right?”
He rolled over and stared blankly at me. “Amity?”
“You’re sick!” I realized. I sat beside him. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes glassy.
Collie struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. His pyjamas were at least two sizes too small. “What are you doing here?” His fierceness took me aback.
“Hal and I came to check on you. We were worried.”
“Well, I’m fine.”
“You’re not!”
“You’ve got to leave, Amity.”
I started to rise. “I’ll go get Ma. She’ll know what to—”
“No!” He grabbed my wrist with hot fingers. “I’m fine. Goldie gave me some aspirin. Please, just – just go away, all right?”
To my dismay, I realized he was close to tears. Collie never cried, not even the time he’d fallen off his bike.
“But…” I hesitated and stared around his room, knowing I was making things worse yet helpless to stop. It was cleaner than the rest of the house, but with hardly anything in it. A scarf my mother had knitted for him – blue-green, to go with his eyes – hung neatly over a chair, though it wouldn’t be cold enough to wear it for at least another month.
When I looked back at Collie, his cheeks were still flushed in a feverish way I didn’t like, but his mouth was hard.
“Go away,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t want you here. Can I say it any clearer? Get out.”
I felt dizzy. “You’ll – you’ll come for breakfast again as soon as you’re better, right?”
Abruptly, he rolled away from me. His shoulder blades looked thin and sharp against the worn fabric of the pyjamas. He shrugged.
My chest felt tight with all the words I didn’t know how to say to him. I grabbed Hal’s hand – he’d been staring frozen at Collie as if he didn’t know him – and we left.