Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(19)

We remained quiet, listening to the sirens downtown rounding up the curfew-breakers, and the bursts of raucous laughter from a room at the end of the hall. He shifted, and the rustle of fabric reminded me of the last time we’d been alone together in the dark, of the distance that had settled between us since. I wondered with a pang if he was going to return to the chair or even leave, but instead he faced me, all of him now on the bed. The flashlight made his white socks glow.

“I know this story,” he said with some uncertainty. “Sometimes it helps me sleep.”

I nodded my consent.

“Okay,” he began, inching closer. “I was…”

“Once upon a time,” I prompted. He looked down and smiled, pulling at the strings hanging off the end of his pant leg.

“Right. Once upon a time there was this eight-year-old boy, who had to move to … this faraway town. This all happened a long time ago, when people had lots of junk to cart around, so they had to rent this big truck to carry it all.”

I thought of how all the things we owned could now fit into one bag. He turned so we were facing the same direction, and settled back on his elbows, two feet away. His feet hung off the mattress.

My clasped hands loosened.

“We … I mean they, drove for two days until they got to the place in the pictures his dad had shown them. It seemed all right; big at least. The boy got his own room. But the best part was that there was this old haunted house up the street.” He grinned. “Classic haunted. It even had an old cemetery outside. So he went to check it out but this other boy—in a pink shirt—jumped out of the bushes and told him to get lost, because, get this, the place wasn’t safe.”

Hazily, that shirt appeared in my memory—an artifact from another life.

He laughed dryly, collapsing farther and rolling onto his side so that his head was resting on his knuckles. Tentatively I mirrored his position, laying my head on my bent arm. He was still a couple feet away, but now looking down on me.

“Turns out he was a she; she’d cut her own hair. Something about falling asleep chewing gum. All I’m saying is it must have been a lot of gum.…”

I kneed him in the ribs without thinking. He winced. I’d forgotten they’d been broken during his arrest, but he began to laugh, so I didn’t feel the need to apologize.

His hand stayed on my calf though, holding my shin against his body. I swallowed. I could feel him, not from behind a sheet of glass, but here.

“Anyway, this girl was clearly crazy, out there all alone with her pink shirt and boy hair, so our hero let it slide that she was trying to boss him around, and told her she’d better let him in because obviously the place was haunted, and he needed to investigate or else … I don’t know, who knows what would’ve happened. So, they went inside.…”

I smiled.

“And it turns out it was the scariest damn place he had ever been in his life. Not safe at all for little girls. He was fine, of course. Perfectly fine. But it wasn’t right to make a girl stay there, so he told her he heard her mom calling. Just so she didn’t feel bad for being such a baby.”

A giggle bubbled up inside of me.

I’d never been brave enough to go into that old house alone, but when Chase had shown up, intent to see beyond the splintering white columns and broken shutters, I couldn’t say no. I hadn’t known that the sour smell was asbestos and the raised veins in the wallpaper were termite highways. You didn’t think of those things at six. You only thought about how fear could be split down the middle like an orange, so both of you could eat half.

He pulled me a little closer and I didn’t even tense.

“You’ll never guess where she lived.”

As our smiles faded I noticed that his hand had moved up to the outside of my thigh, and his fingers were drawing small, slow circles that seared through my jeans. It had seemed logical to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, but now I wondered what his touch would have felt like on my bare skin.

His fingers brushed the dark, cropped bangs away from my eyes, and his lips pressed softly against my brow.

“I remember who you are. Even if you forget,” he said.

My eyelids weighed down, and in my last conscious moments I felt the warmth of his hand on my leg, the pressure of his touch, making me real. Not just a shadow. Not just a memory.

*

I DRESSED alone in our room, facing the blank wall, wishing it would inspire a clear mind. My thoughts raced with anticipation of what the day might bring, always returning to the same image: the holding cell in the base. The sterile floor, the threadbare mattress that smelled of bleach and vomit, the overhead lights that buzzed and flickered. And Tucker Morris leaning in the doorway, his green eyes saying I knew you’d be back.

I reminded myself that I’d lived through his internment before, and focused on the mission.

My hands shook as I buttoned up the starchy blouse, as I zipped up the itchy wool skirt and tied the triangular scarf in a sailor’s knot around my neck. I wondered what Ms. Brock, my evil headmistress at the Girls’ Reformatory, would think if she saw me now, back—by choice—in a uniform I’d resisted so fervently.

Curfew ended with a sputtering of yellow light that had me jumping out of my skin.

Houston and Lincoln had already left with Cara, scouting our path for any positioned FBR. We would go next, followed by Sean, dressed as a soldier, and Riggins in street clothes. Sean would meet us outside of Tent City, the others would keep to our shadows and watch for trouble.