Four Times Blessed

  Chapter 27

  I can’t sleep. I sit up, not even opening my eyes, and pad out onto the back porch.

  It’s quiet and cool, and when I lay down the wood smells good. I guess I fall asleep, because I have to wake up to scratch the hundred mosquito bites I now have.

  I hear people nearby, talking quietly in the clear night. I go still, straining to hear if it’s the people from the other side of the island come to kidnap me.

  What can I say?

  I fall into muscle memory. At the academy, all academics had to be deemed satisfactory in stealth. Sometimes, we did field simulations where we had to move around campus without getting caught, pretending we were on a non-M.S.A. holding and we needed to do some mission. I always paid attention in those classes. You don’t want to be the one bumbling scientist that gets an entire team of elite soldiers killed. Plus, it was more of an art than anything, which I liked.

  I got Great Proficient in stealth every semester, but who knows. Maybe they just needed our grades to look good for fundraising.

  I did pay attention, though. I’m pleased when it comes back to me, smooth, as I circle around the voices. My eyes have already adjusted, too. I never enjoyed the drills where they’d put flashlights in our faces and then send us into God-knows-where to meet God-knows-what. My least favorite time was when I walked into a quiet room, only to realize it was covered half a meter deep with dead snakes, when I reached down on the funny carpet to feel it. The worst part was when I went to walk. I got caught on a poisonous fang at one point. They cured me after the drill was over, but it stung like hell.

  I wonder if I’m dreaming when I slink around to the front of the meetinghouse and find Eleni, Cassie, Hale, and Lium all standing there.

  “What are you guys doing?” I walk up to them, really wishing I was wearing more than a sleeveless shift.

  “Crusa,” Lium is the first of them to speak. He doesn’t sound happy.

  “Crusa!” says Eleni. “Come here, I have some news for you.” She takes my arm and hums, “Hale and I are leaving the island tonight.”

  “What?” I hesitate. Finish approaching, toes clenching in the damp tufts, ginger footfalls for unseen rocks.

  “Yes, I’m glad you’re up so we can say goodbye. And also there was something we wanted to ask you,” she indicates the boys, standing as if poised for a boat’s lurch. It makes me wary.

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “Crusa, we’re together. Didn’t you know?”

  “No,” I say, aghast. “You and Hale?”

  “Obviously. I don’t know where you’ve been, but we’ve been together for a while. Now, zizi doesn’t want me to marry him, but if we go off together for a while, they’ll have to admit we’re married. It’ll be done, she won’t have a choice.”

  “Eleni,” I gasp. How can she…? Grandmothers.

  “And I thought, since I was going, you might want to go too. Think of it. We could get off this island, Crusa, and see things. You and me, we always planned on going somewhere together. You loved it.”

  She pulls me closer, “It might be good timing for you, too. You won’t have to do the arrangement thing, unless you really want to. But I really want you to come with us. Please, I don’t want to go without you.”

  She pouts, and gestures at Lium, “He said he’s coming. He said he already offered to go with you, Crusa. And Hale told me you two are perfect together. So, you and him could entertain each other while we’re out there,” she whispers, and giggles close. “So why won’t you come, then? Please please please most favoritest cousin ever? Don’t make me go alone. I won’t forgive you if you do.”

  I’m stunned. Off kilter. And something else that comes from imagining them all going off without me.

  I shake my head, “This is insane.” If they would stop being insane, then I wouldn’t have to keep telling them no. Which would be so much better.

  Trying to be soothing, Lium speaks. “Don’t worry, honey, I’ll be there. I’ll look after you.”

  And for a moment, he has my attention. He makes it sound good. But there’s something wrong with it, and I’m angry.

  Flushing, I reply, “That’s generous, but I’m not some pet to be looked after.”

  He stops. “I didn’t mean that,” he says.

  “Sure.” I glare through the midsummer moonlight, then turn on Eleni, “So, you thought, because I told Lium I wouldn’t run away, and I told Hale tonight that I wouldn’t force his poor brother into marriage, that I’d tell you I would do both of those things, if you put them together?”

  She fidgets, and I honestly think she’s going to ignore what I just said. But she has one more argument, her voice springy and silky as her curls, “It’ll be fun.”

  My whole body scrunches. Because no. It won’t be fun.

  Out there, fun is calc bonus problems. And field training that ends with the losers lined up and shot point blank with fake bullets. And barbed wire on the backs of mess hall chairs. And Problem Solving Tuesdays and nighttime search and poor weather rescue practice with a swab in the water and go! and then you take turns telling the family you failed and he’s dead and the coffee hour they put on after inspections that go on and on. I blink. Out there, fun is a trick. And I hate it when people try to trick me.

  And tell me what to do. Which I already told Hale!

  “No,” I say.

  “Crus-”

  “No. I won’t run. I have to do this, and I will. You can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me even if I wanted it to!” I scream at them. Eleni starts to cry, and somehow we end up tussling on the ground.

  We’re not really trying to hurt each other. Smudged with dirt, grass and pebbles fall from me as I’m grabbed from behind. Eleni has my hair, though, so I kick her leg as it’s dragged in the opposite direction.

  Being hauled off by an arm that’s shoved up under your ribs is not fun at all, so I grapple around until I hook Lium’s neck and pull myself up. I don’t care what he thinks, so I finish the childish pose and wrap my legs snuggly around his middle.

  Somehow, he finds his way through the dark woods to the old graveyard. He pauses, and dumps me on the dilapidated wall. I slither down and drop my forehead to my knees.

  Of all things, he says, “You don’t want to do it.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Thank you for all your encouragement, but I think I do.”

  “No,” he says harshly. I jump. We’re both quiet for a minute, myself completely thoughtless.

  “You didn’t take me seriously, when I told you I’d take you.”

  I pause, “I didn’t think you meant it.”

  “I always mean what I say. You’re the one who doesn’t.”

  He’s right about that, so I don’t say anything.

  He tells me, “You’ve got a problem,” and he starts pacing. The third time he passes me, he says, “I don’t like it.”

  In a burst of energy, I yell, “I don’t like it either! Do you think I enjoy this? I don’t. But it doesn’t matter what I like. What you like. What anyone likes! It makes absolutely no difference. I have to do it anyways.”

  He does not like that. Just hulks over me in a giant shadow.

  “There’s always another way out,” he says low. “You just have to find it.”

  I gaze up. The way his eyes are glowing makes what I was planning on saying taste hysterical when it touches my lips, “Sometimes, the only way out is to stand it.” My own throat chokes me off.

  “Huh. Well, you’re a genius, right? Think harder.”

  Then he leaves me there, inside the walls with the graves and the trees and the moon.