The Burn

  Chapter Fifteen

  We stay at the hunting ground for one more day of hunting and a day of getting the meat ready to take back. The others kill another deer and a huge bull elk. Almost everyone is occupied with dressing the meat, but I remain carefully busy taking painkillers on the sly and helping Jack around camp. I glance at Dave now and then, but he doesn’t look at me.

  The next morning, all the extra cargo is distributed among us. I carry one of the huge skins in my pack—it isn’t as heavy as the meat, apparently—but it still weighs me down, and I don’t know how much more my poor feet can take.

  As we follow the narrow trail back the way we came, I’m right about my feet. All the painkillers do is take the edge off, and I grit my teeth without realizing it. We come out of the feet of the mountains, back to the flatter regions that surround the hunting grounds. I tell myself it should be easier. The trees are still huge, but they aren’t huddled so closely together as they were further up. The ground is hard and dry. It should be easier. Some of the others around me grumble now and again. All of them know the return trip would be harder. Why hadn’t I counted on it?

  When the crops had fully matured on Field #3, we just used the harvester, then lowered the feed belt to transport the crops through the maze of tubes to land in Food Storage. I really don’t even know what path the belt followed or where Food Storage even is. I have never been there. I was supposed to have seen it at one point or another—you see just about everything in the colony so you know about where you live. But I think that was during one of my vocation stints that went south—cooking—and I avoided learning anything more than I had to. All I know is that we ended up eating what we had grown. Someone down there prepared it, though I hadn’t personally enjoyed talking to any of the food preps. I wasn’t the most social person.

  So what? How did I expect a huge hunk of meat to make it from the hunting grounds thirty miles away back to the settlement? We all carried, and we were all weighed down. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. I’ll get it, though. I’ll figure it out.

  I hitch up my pack with an awkward and grimace-inducing bounce. The change of balance sends daggers through my feet. The sweat on my back makes my pack slide around. As I carefully tiptoe over a crude log bridge, Jack tells me it will take us an extra day to get back with the weight. That’s fine with me, screaming feet and all. It’s an extra day to figure out the weirdness that suddenly wedged itself between me and Dave. An extra day to avoid Mary’s wary glances.

  The thought of Mary brings anxiety slamming full force into my gut. She’d seen me read the letter from Jessa, and she’d seen me put it away. Can I trust the sense of honor that most people in the settlement have? Can I trust her not to search my things? My instincts tell me no. Not Mary who has been scarred so deeply and is so fiercely protective. I should have never left it alone. But it’s too late now. A sudden crow call makes me jump. I am stretched so tight I feel like my bones might break through my skin.

  The next day the gray sky opens and misty rain floats down in wet veils. I wear a poncho, but I am too warm and sticky inside of it. I finally run out of painkillers, and my wet socks rub against my raw feet. It’s all I can do to keep from crying. That night instead of eating dinner with everyone, I retreat to my tent. After dinner, Dave stands outside. He breaks the uneasy silence between us.

  “Missed you at dinner, Terra. You okay?”

  I make some muffled, gurgling sound that I hope sounds like a yes. But Dave unzips the door and steps in.

  “Whatever, you’re not okay. You were too hellbent on the trail today, nothing but staring straight at the ground. And then you don’t eat dinner. Come on, what’s up?”

  I’ve hidden it for too long, and the pain in my feet screeches at me to come clean. Traitor feet. I point to my boots.

  “Something wrong with your boots?”

  I nod.

  He takes one boot and unlaces it, then unlaces the other. I squeeze my eyes closed and my breathing comes in shallow rasps. Even unlacing my boots is agony. He eases them off and I stifle a scream. I must sound like a dying animal. Then Dave takes a quick breath.

  “Oh, Terra.”

  His bleak tone makes me open my eyes. I look at his stricken face and then down to my feet. My socks are worn through in several spots and are bright red with blood.

  “How long have your feet been hurting?” he whispers. He’s unable to move, to take his right hand from my boot and his left hand from my heel. Now that my boots are off, my feet feel much better. I look at them with detached interest. I’ve seen so much blood the past few days, surely all this can’t be mine.

  “Terra? Do your boots not fit right?”

  My feet do slide in them. But I assumed that is the way boots are. They look too big on everyone else, with their thick soles and chunky laces. They’re nothing like the slippers I wore in the colony. Doesn’t everyone have boot problems? But no, they don’t. It’s just my boots that don’t fit right.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Because I’m an idiot that comes from the colonies, I want to tell him. But I shrug. He rolls his eyes at me. Frustration and anger side-step around the edges of his calm.

  “I’ll have to admit, Terra. That was pretty dumb to go for thirty miles with boots that don’t fit.”

  I nod. Dumb. Exactly how I feel.

  “We’ll have to peel these off so Jack can treat your feet. I’ll go get him.”

  I slump a little. Why does anyone else have to know about me and how stupid I am for hiking in boots that don’t fit? Dave notices the movement.

  “You’re seriously worried about your pride right now? You should be more worried about being able to make it home.”

  Of course. What would they do for a survivor that can’t even walk? I could never allow them to carry me the whole way. I nod him out the door.

  When they return, Jack sits down by my feet while Dave settles near my side. Jack opens his pack and pulls out a few knitted bandages and a small jar of brown salve. He glances at my feet now and then.

  “So Dave tells me you like to wear boots that are too big.”

  His conversational tone makes me laugh despite the pain. He has a good bedside manner. He would have made a good doctor in the colony. His thin lips grin impishly at me.

  “Okay, Terra. I’m going to peel off your socks. The rain soaking through loosened everything up, otherwise your socks’d probably be crusted to your feet. This will hurt. Just hold Dave’s hand or something. Try not to scream. We don’t want to scare the whole camp.”

  I can’t tell if he’s joking about the scaring the camp thing. Dave offers his hand and I squeeze it. He pats my shoulder.

  “Okay, here we go.” And Jack peels off my socks.

  I don’t scream. I’m proud of myself for that. But I can’t sit stoically through it. I clench both hands and arch my back. Dave is a rock, though. He sits and lets me crush his hand. I look down at my feet while Jack gently washes them off.

  “Not too bad, really. Just a bunch of blisters you didn’t take very good care of. I’ll put some of this on them.” He holds up the jar. “Nell mixes this up for me. Then I’ll bandage them. We’ll stuff your boots so your feet don’t slide around.”

  “Will she be okay to walk?” Dave asks. I can see the concern for me, but now that he knows I’m okay, the silence creeps back between us. He’s more concerned about dealing with me as extra weight when everyone else is already loaded down with meat.

  “That’s up to Terra.” Jack dabs the thick salve on my feet. “It’ll really hurt, but it’s fine to walk on.”

  The silence Dave gives burns me, and I nod briskly and turn away.

  “You sure you’re okay with it?” Dave says. “We can’t slow down.”

  I’ve come this far, haven’t I? And now my feet will be tended to and not slide around in my too-big boots. I can do it—I have to do it.

  Dave looks unsure for a moment, but then the leader side of him
nods. “Good.”

  Jack rolls up the leftover bandages and nestles everything neatly back in his pack. “It shouldn’t be a full day tomorrow anyway. We made good time today, despite the rain. And the trail eases up a bit once we’re out of the trees. No more rocks and roots jutting up.”

  Jack comes in my tent before everyone’s up and gently removes the bandages, his long slender fingers working deftly over my feet. He applies more of the thick goop, and then he wraps my feet in clean bandages and meticulously stuffs my shoes so my feet fit snuggly inside. My feet ache, but the pain doesn’t shoot up my legs like it had last night.

  Dave leads us out of the last of the trees and into the wide swathes of grass that mark the last few miles until we reach the settlement. Home. Jack offers a hand when I look unsteady.

  Something has niggled at the back of my mind since I arrived. The way Jack hovered near Dave and Mary that first day at the beach. I grab his hand.

  How do you fit in all of this?

  He looks at me quizzically.

  With Dave and Mary?

  He nods. “I wondered if you’d ask. Well, Dave’s been a good friend for a while. If you haven’t noticed, Dave’s a good friend to a lot of us.”

  I have noticed that. After the silence was broken between us after our kiss, I also wonder if he is just that—a good friend. Nothing more. I let my hand down to trace along the wisps of grass growing waist high. Jack watches the the ripples spread out around us.

  “He asked me for advice when things first started up with him and Mary. She was different then—softer, if you know what I mean.”

  He looks overhead. Sunbeams shine in translucent rays through a slit in the clouds. “Kind of a balmy day, isn’t it?”

  I look at the sky, at the way the sun shines down in ribbons. I strain my eyes to see if I can see the settlement yet. We’re still too far off. Jack clears his throat.

  “Anyway, I told him he should follow his heart. And he did. They were going to get married.”

  I nod once.

  “But Mary said she needed to go to Seattle first. See if she was needed there more than here. She invited Dave along, but I think he took it wrong. He thought she needed to see if Seattle was more important than he was. Or something like that. I think they were both confused. I don’t know why Mary took off the way she did. And then she was gone for so long and things were really different when she got back. I was there for Dave while she was gone, when he was so messed up thinking she wanted Seattle more than she wanted him.”

  I nod. It made sense, I guess, and I stumbled into the middle of it. To someone like Nell it probably sounds ridiculous. You’re either together or you’re not. I like Nell’s way of thinking better. And if I like that thinking better, where does that leave Dave and me?

  As we eat lunch, Dave sits by me, gnawing on a strip of salted meat, not really allowing himself to look at me.

  “Your feet alright?” he asks. I nod. He’s strangely distracted. I tap his hand, but he ignores it.

  “I think we’re about three miles from home. We should make it in about an hour or a little more.”

  Then the dread nags at me. I’ll see Mary; Dave will see Mary. That thought makes me either a little grumpy or a little brash. Whichever one, I grab Dave’s hand.

  Are you excited to see Mary?

  His eyes shift to me then.

  “Why do you ask that?” He looks confused and slightly angry. But I don’t think he’s angry with me. I can’t read the reasons for any of it. I take in other details—the peeling skin on the center of his bottom lip, the splash of freckles across his nose. His eyes bore into mine. I shrug. I just wanted to see what his response would be.

  “Look, I know you’ve been open with me, Terra.”

  How can he start any speech like that? The guilt fingers through me. I’ve been anything but open.

  “I know you have, and I’m sorry I can’t quite return it. Mary and I are...complicated. I’m trying to sort it out. Really I am. But it’s not easy for me.”

  I don’t want some fuzzy middle ground. I want all or nothing. So I do something completely stupid and I grab his face with both my hands and pull his lips to mine.

  He kisses me back hard, like he’s testing something out, finding an answer. The kiss is empty. He pulls back only when Jack walks up beside us.

  “You, um, almost ready to move out?” Jack says with a chuckle. But the laugh leaves me cold. He doesn’t approve of this.

  Dave rubs his hands on his knees and stands up. “Yes.”

  Jack stares long at me. I watch them walk away, and the burning in my heart tells me it won’t be the last time I’ll watch Dave walk away. It unsettles me, but I can’t do anything about it. We are either together or we aren’t. I keep reminding myself all the way to the settlement.

  When the school comes into sight, Dave straggles back to me. We walk past the fields blooming with white flowers. They look magical in the hazy sunlight, but I can’t bring myself to admire them.

  “A wonderful sight, isn’t it?” A broad smile spreads across his whiskery face.

  Then I look up and my heart freezes. Mary waits for us at the back of the school. I’m approaching the executioner. She stands with her arms folded, her rifle slung on her back. Her dark hair is pulled back in a tight braid, and her hostile posture screams at me. It softens when she greets Dave, and he gives her a warm hug, but as soon as he passes her, the mask is back again. She lowers her voice.

  “When you get a moment, Terra, I need to talk to you. In my room, if you don’t mind.”

  I nod. The unsettled feeling returns, stronger than before, and the dread mounts with each tender footstep.

  Even Nell’s sweet greeting can’t erase the weight in my gut. My eyes dart nervously to find Mary. But she talks to Jack, or Dave, or Red, or any of the returned hunters with a belying ease about her that does nothing but mock me.

  After our kills are hung in the smoke houses and the fragrant smoke rises in tendrils through the cracks, we all go through the school and close the drapes. I pull thick, itchy drapes over a window, and the beam of light that slashes across my skin dies.

  We gather in the cafeteria and eat. We celebrate our return. They weren’t as worried as when we were gone for the supply drop, but any separation puts a dim light on the group. No one likes to be the one left behind.

  I mechanically put the fork of oca greens and fish in my mouth, hardly tasting it. Jack sits by me and I don’t turn to him. It’s not until he says, “Terra!” in the voice of someone who’s been trying to get my attention for a while that I finally look at him.

  I can’t focus on his face. I look past him to where Mary sits by Dave, and Dave looks at me. My heart hammers, but the look on his face disappoints me. It is all cheerful friendship. I wonder if any of our kisses over the past days meant anything. Tears burn in my eyes. But I blink them quickly away. I hope Jack doesn’t notice.

  “Mary’s going to talk to you?” Jack asks. I start.

  “I heard her tell you she needed to. We can both guess what it’s about.” He nods his head at Dave. Jack puts a spoonful of strawberries in his mouth. They’re very dark and slightly mushy. There won’t be very many meals with strawberries left.

  If only Jack knew. I can almost guarantee that Mary wants to talk about something of much greater significance for all of us. I push my plate away, and it scrapes against the table.

  “Are you feeling okay? You didn’t eat very much.”

  I shake my head but offer no more explanation. My stomach roils. I try to will my legs to walk calmly as I leave the cafeteria. Jack watches me go, and I know concern is all over his face. I go up the stairs. I pause outside Dave’s room.

  I have to know for sure. I have to know if my life here is over. I open the door. My pack is still stashed underneath a desk. I bend down and open the pocket where I left that priceless piece of paper. Jessa’s letter is gone.