8. HUSK
Through two more abandoned neighborhoods and up a rise to a third, Lawson prowls behind me. He’s so bloody distant that I hold my newly-wounded arm close for comfort. I alternate between the urge to give apologies I don’t mean and I know won’t be accepted, and the desire to point out that it’s all his fault for refusing to leave the weapons. Halfway up the hill, I realize I never asked him to leave them, and I spend the rest of the hike wondering how things might have gone if I had.
At the crest of the rise, I blurt his name.
Silence.
The houses here have been left to bleach out under sunlight and acid rain. I cross a faded lawn to a washed out pink house and pick the locks, while Lawson stands guard. He keeps a white-knuckled grip on his backpack strap. His other hand hitches his shirt to rub the butt of the gun hidden in his jeans. I keep having to start over on the lock-picking.
Inside, a charred banister hugs the stairway to the upper floor. The fire seems to have started at an electrical socket. He stops, staring at the black smudges on the wall around the outlet, so I pass him.
On the way upstairs I learn that it’s possible to miss someone who’s following close behind me. Body heat radiates from Lawson, but I have to set my teeth so they won’t chatter.
Just shy of the top, he warns, “Watch the glass! You don’t want it poking through the holes in your shoes.”
True enough, splinters of blown-out light bulbs shimmer under the thick carpet of dust ahead. I glance over my shoulder, to see if he still cares. Lawson stands almost against my back, so near I can’t make out the whole picture of his face. I get an eyeful of pale pink mouth, pulled flat at the corner. One startled hazel eye. His lids drop like shutters.
“I’m trying to avoid your blood.”
The tension in his voice stops me from turning away. That’s what A guys sound like when they don’t want to hit me anymore but can’t seem to stop. It’s a macho tone.
Lawson is trying to hurt my feelings.
But why? He can’t be with me. I get that. Maybe he thought he could, but now he knows better. I will always stand in the way of violence and so will always be in his way. He hates that, but does he have to hate me?
Lawson shoulders past. When he speaks from the other room his voice is bland, like nothing at all just happened, ever happened between us.
“This looks like a good enough place to wait.”
I follow and blink in the dim light of what used to be a child’s bedroom. Blank photo frames sit on the dresser, batteries long dead. Dust-soaked clothes lie here and there like discarded husks of old-world kids. Broken glass glimmers in the unmade bed, deadly and beautiful in the sheets. Then the silence spills over.
Sound without sound rushes into my heart like warm honey and overflows to cascade down my limbs.
Once, after an overseas trip to the yearly FOLM gathering, Mom and Dad had jet-lag. The three of us played video games all night in our candlelit living room. We crowded together on the couch under one blanket, me in the middle. An Aidan sandwich, Dad called it.
When the pulse hits, it’s like my parents are alive and they’ll come through that door any minute now. It’s that kind of glow—buttered popcorn, hot chocolate, and togetherness.
Except my parents are still dead. But that’s okay, because they’re in a better place. Tension flows out of my muscles. My injuries hurt less and less and then not at all.
This bliss isn’t mine. I didn’t earn it. It changes me all the same.
Lawson stands, looking like someone watching the most beautiful sunset imaginable, but with his eyes closed. I feel my face from the inside. My eyes stretch wide. My jaw hangs slack. Then it calms. I’m still full of honeyed happiness, but the rush of wellbeing has stopped. I can move, can entertain a thought. Like how Lawson’s hair has gold highlights. He opens his eyes and smiles.
That grin isn’t real either, and that’s okay too.
I step around him, open the closet door, and set to work rummaging through moldering laundry. The room seems to have belonged to someone shorter and wider than I. None of the clothes will begin to fit Lawson, but I find a few polyester shirts that will do for me and step into the closet to change. It takes a bit longer because of my hurt arm and when I come back out, with the extra shirts tied around my waist, he’s gone.
There’s a row of sneakers lined up in front of the closet. Those weren’t there before. And his backpack slumps in the corner. He pops back through the door minutes later with an armload of socks.
“Here you go. All the pairs that might fit you.” He’s obviously pleased with himself.
“Thanks.” I smile, imagining him hurrying through the house on a sock-finding mission, even though I have no intention of hiking all the way back to D-town with my arms full. Two or three pairs of socks are plenty.
“I do have an ulterior motive,” he announces as I untie the first shoe.
I glance at the single bed. I can’t help it.
“Yup.” Sunlight sparks the amber in his eyes as a boyish grin takes over his face. “I want to jump on this bed with you.”
So after I pick the best pair of sneakers, we carefully untuck the sheets and lift them, keeping the glass in the center. He sets the bundle aside, and we climb up onto the bare mattress and start to bounce.
Our bodies brush and bump together. The room catches and holds our giggles, the hitches in our breaths. It’s our own private world, where dancing dust motes and broken glass almost pass for glitter, until I land on Lawson’s booted foot. I lose my balance, reach out, and catch a handful of him in the front of his jeans. His pained sound makes me let go.
“You okay?” I’m exquisitely aware of the pads of my fingers, how he was soft and squishy at first and then—then I let go.
“Yeah, sure—I—uh, steel-toes.” He scrambles back, and we go down on the mattress, feet tangled and his hand on my hip.
We land—oomph—with me in his lap. Lawson makes the strangled sound again.
“I’ll just—” My skin burns as I scoot up to the head of the bed. I lean against the headboard and wrap my arms around my knees.
His warmth spreads all down my side as he settles beside me. The back of his skull hits the headboard with a dull thud. His shallow, erratic breaths even out a few moments later. I’ve always meditated on my own breathing, but now all I can hear is the tide of air rushing in and out of his lungs. Maybe it doesn’t matter what I focus on just so long as I focus on something?
Choppers and emergency vehicles come and go with their whop-whop and their sirens as waves of calm joy wash through me at random-seeming intervals. The daylight coming through the window fades, and my chin drops to my chest. My breaths go soft and quiet—perfect deep meditation.
Oh, crap!
Lawson falls over onto my wounded—ow—arm, almost knocking me off the bed. That helps me wake up.
“Lawson!” I maneuver to support his head. “Don’t sleep!”
He shifts, snuggling against my side. The sleep pulse has definitely hit. I almost missed it, almost got sucked under without Kylie here to wake me. Cringing inside—but what else can I do?—I dig my fingers into a knot in Lawson’s shoulder muscle and call his name.
He mumbles noncommittally, so I shake him, then drag my nails down his arm. He still doesn’t wake. His shirt has shifted to the side and my fingertips brush his hipbone.
“Mmm,” he sighs.
Tell me about it…Oh! That’s how I’ll wake him.
I fumble with his shirt and reach for the waistband of his jeans, feeling around to the small of his back until my fingers brush his most precious possession. For a breath I touch the butt of Lawson’s gun. Then I’m on the floor with the full length of his body on top of mine. His strong hand crushes my wrist against the dusty carpet and glass pokes through my shirt.
Even though this reaction is what I aimed for, a shocked breath puffs out of me. Lawson scrambles off. A moment ago he moved with deadly precision. Now he c
an’t seem to find solid footing as he stumbles backward.
“Adrenaline,” he gasps. “Good call.”
My shirt is askew. I pull it down with halting movements. He turns his back and folds his arms.
“How long til the next pulse?” I mumble once I’m on my feet. I shake the hem of my shirt to loosen stubborn particles of glass.
“I don’t know!”
“Okay, it’s okay. Neither do I. Let’s just go then.”
We feel our way through the house. I stub my toe on a doorjamb and back into Lawson. He knocks something over and curses. We step out into the still night, and he plants himself in front of me.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Stay awake through the sleep pulse. No one does that.”
I shrug. “I was meditating.”
I pull the door shut behind us, and we stand on the walk, as if we live here, together. Lawson does a few unsteady jumping jacks. I hover, arms half-open in case he needs catching, until he glares at my hovering hands like they offend him.
“When we first left D-town, looking for the weapons, you knew exactly when the pulse hit. Were you meditating then too?”
I blink, remembering. “No, not exactly. I was just being mindful, I guess.”
“Mindful?”
“Observing my inner state. It’s, like, a side effect of meditation…” I trail off because Lawson’s whole body has gone rigid.
His eyes narrow with predatory focus. “Can all Bees do that? When you leave D-town with other people do they react the same way?”
“I guess so.” I roll my shoulders and regret it when pain lances down my arm. “Kylie is better at it than me.”
“I doubt that,” Lawson mutters. “What if GeeGee citizens were immune to the pulses like that?”
I frown. “I don’t think I’m immune, really. I just don’t take it too seriously.”
Lawson shakes his head like he knows something I don’t.
“Nah,” I say. “I doubt any of the GeeGee really know how to meditate. Why would they bother, when the pulses take away all their bad feelings? And besides, what would they meditate through?”
He rocks back and bites out, “You mean like you meditate through the pain of getting beaten?”
“Through the pain of living,” I correct.
He looks away. The boundary between us snaps back into place, more impassable than the brick and barbwire separating D-town from civilization.
We slog back home and Lawson speaks only when necessary to coordinate our route. I put one foot in front of the other, hugging my aching arm and biting my lip.
He kissed me. Did it mean anything? That moment is gone, shattered and scattered like glass. I’m the one who broke it. I would destroy the weapons again, but I can’t bear the thought that he wants to take back the kiss.
“Lawson?” I begin.
His steps barely falter. “Let’s just get this over with.”