Demolition Love

22. GUTS

  I wake on the floor of the Haven and reach out. Lawson no longer curls around my back, and my open hand meets air, then floor. Where is he? I sit in a rush.

  There’s a puppy pile to my left, and I scan the sleeping faces for Kylie and Sam. Until I remember.

  The kids in the snuggle puddle have dark bruises under their eyes, gaunt cheeks, stringy hair. I was wrong last night; this is not The Dance, just a room in an abandoned building where gang members crash. My insides feel stripped bare, my outsides grimy. I rub my cheeks with my fingers, feeling less like I just made love for the first time and more like I banged in a crowded room amidst dirty, swirling bodies, some of them belonging to people who want to beat me, have beaten me, will beat me. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  When I lower my arms, Lawson is walking toward me with two plastic cups. He raises one in a half-wave, half-salute, and his cheeks flush pink. Answering warmth rises in my face as the night rushes back.

  “Heh—” I breathe.

  “Hey, yourself. A little out of breath there?”

  I take the cup he hands me and swirl the muddy brown liquid. “Yeah.”

  “Me too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” he says, and it’s more than a word; it sounds like a promise.

  My lips curve up, and I sniff the contents of my cup. Lukewarm coffee with a hint of mold. I tip back my head and down the whole thing. “Good.”

  “So...?” Lawson asks. “What do you say to a supply run?”

  Something should have gone wrong by now. Lawson and I get to the top of the first Boundary wall with no trouble. As he helps me over the barbwire, the favorite saying of my godfather Pete repeats in my mind.

  Thank luck, and quit while you’re ahead.

  But with guards on the Boundary, everyone’s running out of everything. And staying would mean facing Karen and the rest of the Bees. That thought curdles the coffee in my stomach. I need a little time to breathe, to think about what Lawson and I shared last night and what it means, to decide what I’ll do if my tribe kicks me out.

  I reach the bottom of that first wall ahead of Lawson, step onto the tracks, and stop. No, it’s not the coffee. Nor fear of trying to survive in D-town without a tribe. Unease has been swelling with every step, and I’ve been ignoring it.

  “Something’s wrong,” I mutter.

  Lawson, just starting down the chain-link behind me, is too far away to hear the words. A soft humming rises in the air, vibrating my sneakers.

  He hears that. “Go! Go!”

  He should be climbing back over the way he came. He probably has time. My weight shifts—toward the second wall, back to the first. I’m right in the middle. And Lawson keeps advancing.

  “Go back!” I shout, frozen between the rails.

  Wind rides out ahead of the train, blowing leaves and dust. I turn for the second wall a moment before Lawson hits my back, smashing me against it. He must have jumped from quite high.

  “Up, up, up,” he pants.

  The hum and the wind join into a rushing sound.

  “Too late!” My lips move, but I can’t hear my own shout.

  We both hit the ground, on our bellies on the narrow strip of gravel between wall and track. All I can see of him are the soles of his boots. Then the train is rushing by, the air pressure trying to suck me toward the wheels. I dig my fingers into the throbbing earth even though, with my body weight spread out, the increased pressure of the moving air around the train probably can’t lift me. It feels like it can.

  I have the peculiar sense of watching myself from outside—from nowhere in particular, just apart. I could reach out and brush the train with my fingers. The temptation to do so is almost irresistible. Just to find out what it would be like.

  Instead I press my chin into the grit, focusing on Lawson’s boot soles.

  By the time the final car rumbles past, I’m soaked with sweat and shivering. I suck in what feels like my first inhale since stepping onto the tracks. It takes a few more measured breaths to convince myself its safe to get up.

  “Well.” Lawson rolls onto his back. His eyebrows have climbed to his hairline. “Maybe we should go back now. I don’t care to do that again.”

  “Yeah, me either. But someone’s got to go, right? And we’re halfway there.”

  I offer him a hand up, which he ignores, climbing to his feet unaided and dusting himself off. He nods his agreement, but as we start up the second wall I notice I’m still queasy.

  We’re almost to Three Street when Lawson motions me into an alley. “Wait here.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to get us some different clothes.”

  “What? From where?”

  He hitches his shirt, flashing the gun.

  “Are you serious?”

  He makes a lower-your-voice motion.

  “No guns!” I whisper. “It hardly matters, anyway. I’m never going to pass.” I duck my head around the corner.

  There are a few passersby on Three Street, all wearing multi-colored hemp tunics, leggings woven from bamboo fiber, stuff like that.

  “Hmm. Good point,” Lawson says. “I’ll get you a hat.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll still look like an in-between.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He pats my shoulder. “They’ve got a word for you here too. It’s just not a very nice one. I’ll be right back.” He strides away before I can argue.

  I lean against the wall and try to look like a GeeGee waiting for…I don’t know what. A cleaner change of clothes? And not like a skulking genderless gang member from D-town. After a few minutes, a pulse hits, stealing my tension.

  Lawson jogs back looking completely different—and just the same. He’s ditched Real Dealer black and red in favor of GeeGee-wear. The farm boy demeanor I noticed when he first introduced himself is back full force. Even stronger than usual, actually. He could almost be on his way home from volunteering at a gardening center. His hands are dirty enough, but his clothes are too clean.

  A pastel blue tank top displays his powerful shoulders. The light fabric, probably bamboo, hugs the planes of his chest. The fresh scratches on his arms from the barbwire look out of place.

  He catches me staring and shifts his feet, then stretches his arms over his head, muscles cording. The shirt rides up, exposing the tanned skin between his hipbones. Gray drawstring pants hang low on his narrow hips. My fingers flutter in the air, remembering the way his abs flexed when I unbuttoned his jeans.

  He smiles and walks to the corner to keep watch, pulling on a pair of gloves as he goes. I scramble out of my torn clothes and into the slacks, top, and knit cap he stole for me. The outfit makes me look like I’m headed to a Three Street yoga class, but at least I’m not bleeding too badly from the barbwire. My skin feels filthy, but oh well. I look good—and that’s the pulse talking. I mop my face once more with the rag of my old shirt before stuffing it and my jeans into the crack between two walls.

  “My ass is on full display in these pants,” I say. “Is that why you picked them?”

  Lawson twists his hips to show me that his are as tight and raises a brow.

  I smirk. “In that case, lead the way. Where to now? You gonna steal us those little cars?”

  “No cars. We’re taking the bus.” Lawson links his arm through mine and tugs me out of the alley.

  We merge into the sparse foot traffic on the sidewalk.

  “With what?”

  “Got these too.” He palms me a transit pass.

  I pocket it, and we stroll along, our feet stepping in sync.

  The bus door jerks open, and frigid air blasts in. Clouds have descended during the ride, and I shiver as I follow Lawson down the steps. He’s different than usual, sliding among the enemy like a shark in dolphin’s clothing, and I almost miss the violent, on-edge guy I’m familiar with. Must be the pulse again, disconnecting me from my emotional center, making the bad seem better.
/>
  Just like Mara. Just like Lawson.

  A handful of GeeGee disembark with us, chattering among themselves about the latest in hydroponic-at-home-veggie-gardens and low-maintenance-compost-systems. Lawson and I hang back, letting them get ahead.

  The houses here are green retrofits. Old-world-style mansions turned community homes. There hasn’t been a moment of privacy since the alley for me to ask Lawson his plan, but now that we’re here I’m sure I don’t want to know. But I don’t want to argue, either, not after last night.

  I stamp my feet to warm them. “Looks like snow.”

  “Yeah. I wish the guards on the Boundary would freeze out.”

  “It never sticks.”

  “I know.” Lawson’s muscles are tensed against the cold, making them visible even as the GeeGee fabrics make him seem softer.

  We start down the sidewalk. The buildings loom, full of peace-loving GeeGee citizens, not guards, and words press against the back of my teeth. No guns. No threats.

  “No violence,” I blurt.

  Lawson’s steps falter, one hand checking the small of his back even as he says, “Don’t worry, I never need violence out here.”

  Tension flows away. I smile; he smiles.

  The next thing I know, we’re kissing. His hands slip into my back pockets; mine twist in the hair at the base of his skull. My whole body remembers last night, wants it to happen again, and who cares about the weather or the clothing in the way. Our hips dip and circle, building friction, seeking an escape from the cold. Until the snarl that was in my stomach all morning, muted by the effects of the pulse, pops back to the surface of my awareness.

  I stiffen.

  “Okay?” Lawson asks after a second, more of a movement of his lips against mine than a spoken word.

  I nod, trying to pin down what’s bothering me. Lawson eases back, and we stand sharing breath. The calm from the pulse is like a fluffy purple cloud, obscuring the feeling twisting beneath it, but it’s something like…

  “Don’t take me for granted,” I murmur.

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t know. I just…I don’t know. It’s like, for me, life isn’t great. I mean, it’s up to me to make the best of it, but—” I pluck at his shirt. “—things come so easy to you. It’s like, for me you’re this amazing blessing, and for you I’m just one more good thing.”

  “It’s not like that.” Again that look, like he’s promising...what?

  “You…two want to come inside?” a femme voice intrudes.

  Lawson and I jump apart, adjusting our stolen clothes. I half expect the grownup to panic like the kid at the outhouse, but she just smiles. Like inviting strangers inside is normal. Here, it probably is.

  There’s a twinge in my chest. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world like this, where everyone is a friend? The A guy’s voice filters back to me. You’re just like them.

  But I’m not. I know the difference between the way things seem to be and the way they are.

  “I have hot cocoa.” The stranger’s blue eyes say she’s old in D-town years; she’s seen more than her unlined face would suggest. She wears a colorful scarf and a knit hat like the one Lawson got me. “My name is Bekah.”

  “Blessings of the cycle,” Lawson says.

  The GeeGee greeting takes me by surprise, coming out of his mouth, and my foot slips on the frosty sidewalk.

  He catches my hand, steadying me. His gloved fingers warm mine. “Your hospitality is most welcome, Bekah. I’m Lawson and this—” He lifts our linked hands. “—is Aidan.”

  “Well met.” She looks at me for a second, then turns up the walkway. “Come on.”

  “What are we doing?” I whisper to Lawson.

  “Supply run.”

  I dig in my heels. “Lawson, no.”

  But he’s already striding forward, leaving me with the choice of releasing his hand or keeping up. I hold tight.

  “Blessings of the cycle, and welcome to my home.” Bekah ushers us into a tidy coatroom, shuts the door and unwinds the scarf from her neck. “Phew. What were you doing outside?” She rubs her arms. Like most GeeGee, when confronted by someone like me who doesn’t fit into their yin-yang, Bekah focuses on Lawson, angling her shoulders away from me like she’s trying to block me out.

  Or maybe it’s just that Lawson, loose-shouldered and smiling, seems friendlier than I do with my arms plastered to my sides. I try to relax.

  “Well, we were going to go camping.” Lawson pulls a face. “I know, the cold snap, but we’ve been planning it for weeks. But this one’s little brother—” He bumps me with his shoulder, then his eyes widen as he realizes what he’s said, but he’s good at this; he keeps talking. “—got into our supplies and you know how kids are. All our camping rations, out of their wrappers. It was just a mess. We decided to take a car, head to the supply depot, but all ours are out. I guess someone knew about the weather. Anyway, we went for the bus. We live just over there—” He gestures southeast. “—but everything took so long, and it was getting cold, and well, then you found us.”

  “Are you sure you still want to go camping?”

  “Oh yes,” Lawson says. “We have a really good tent.”

  She nods. “What all do you need?”

  “Pardon me?” he asks.

  “For your camping trip. What do you need?”

  No. It cannot possibly be that easy. No!

  But apparently it is that easy, at least for Lawson, because Bekah’s already ducking through the beaded curtain at the far side of the coatroom, beckoning.

  “The cellar’s just this way.”

  “I figured it out,” I say as Lawson and I walk back to the bus stop, carrying canvas sacks full of lightweight, high-nutrition food. I’ve fallen a few steps behind. “They want to kill us with kindness.”

  I’ve got one bag of supplies and he’s lugging two, but still we barely put a dent in Bekah’s cellar. That place was crammed with non-perishable food as if in preparation for complete civilization meltdown. I’ve never been inside a community house before, but the stash seemed excessive.

  I guess the quake left a mark on GeeGee minds and hearts too, even if they feel like everything’s fine.

  “Who?” Lawson asks.

  “The GeeGee kids with the pamphlets.”

  Lawson stops walking in front of me, blocking the sidewalk. “How so?”

  “They’re hoping we’ll learn the error of our ways and join them.”

  “And have you? Learned the error of your ways?”

  I’m looking at his back, so I don’t know what he’s thinking.

  “I won’t,” I say. “You?”

  He sets out again with a long stride, and I still can’t see his face as I follow.

  “I’m with you,” he says.

  Then we’re off for D-town, the shadow of the Boundary looming in my mind. I wish we could skip it and just be home, but the A have a saying for that.

  If wishes were guns, we’d rule the world.

  The first thing Lawson does when we reach the Boundary is yank off his gloves. He drops them and reaches for me, crushing our lips together. We stumble against the wall. It’s different now that we’ve gone all the way. A steeper slope, a faster fall. There’s no memory of dropping my supplies, but that must have happened because I squeeze his ass with both hands, kissing along his jaw. After this morning’s close call with the train, being back at the tracks makes me frantic. I slip my hand down Lawson’s pants, and he gasps.

  “Cold!”

  “Oops.” I tuck my chill fingers against my neck to warm them.

  “Not here…now. I can’t look out for us.”

  “Right.” I step back and try to get myself together, focusing on the faint beat from the New Dance. “I’ll go up first, and you can hand me the food?”

  “Yup.”

  That one word fills me up, and my skin breaks out in gooseflesh. He trusts me with his food.

  Lawson spots me while I scramble up,
then passes me the sacks one by one. I hold onto the chain-link with one hand, the weight of all the supplies dragging on my other arm, while he scurries up, over the barbwire, and down to the tracks. Then I lower each bag into his outstretched hands, and he catches and sets it aside.

  He spots me again, while I climb down. I’m getting better at this, and for fun I drop the last few feet, letting him catch me around the waist. The first snowflakes I notice in the fading light are the ones clinging to his eyelashes as the wind rises.

  I look both ways, but there are no trains, yet. Just the incoming storm.

  The flakes fall harder as we repeat the process on the second wall. The bricks shelter the lower portion, but at the chain-link the wind slants in, driving wet snow. My fingers and the soles of my shoes slide repeatedly off slick metal and my hands cramp with cold.

  At the top, Lawson stops and reaches for my bag. “It’s getting dark. You go ahead.”

  “Come on,” I say. “Hurry up.”

  He lifts the bag from my aching fingers and, not wanting to waste more time, I go ahead and let him help me over into D-town. He’s lowering the last sack to me when the hum starts.

  “Hurry!” I yell.

  He looks painfully exposed up there, balanced above the tracks, clinging to wet metal. He lets go of the food, but I miss the catch, too busy focusing on him as he swings a leg up to the top of the chain-link. The canvas sack hits beside me, spilling its contents over my feet as barbwire catches the leg of his jeans.

  He panics, yanking at it. I try to calculate whether his body weight and the air pressure around the speeding train will combine to break his grip on the slippery chain-link. I don’t know the math for that. All I know is how it felt to lie beside the tracks, the bone deep sense that if I moved I might be swept away.

  And Lawson hates being out of control even more than I do.

  “Don’t worry, just hang on.” Of course, I sound petrified.

  He continues to struggle. With a last downward jerk of his leg, his jeans tear free of the barbwire.

  He’s used too much force. He falls toward the tracks.

  “Lawson!”

  An audible smack, followed by a groan. I’ve backed up to see him above me, and now I rush the wall.

  “Lawson!” I fly up the wall until my fingers twist in the chain-link, and my chin tops the bricks.

  He’s lying on his back on the tracks, a paler shadow against the rails and gravel.

  I grasp the links in front of me. “Get up!”

  But he doesn’t. He must not be able to. It’s too dark to tell if he’s even trying to get away. Too dark to lock eyes, but it still feels like we do as the hum of the oncoming train turns to wind and Lawson shouts his death cry.

  “Mama!”