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Her shoulders began to shake as the stress of her secret was finally lifted. Troy wrapped his arms around her and held her close, kissing her forehead as he whispered reassurances into her hair.

“It’s okay, Aire. There’s nothing wrong with me and as long as I’m around nothing is going to happen to you, okay? We’ll figure this thing out together. I promise.”

She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. “Thank goodness for you.”

He closed his eyes and leaned in to kiss her. His lips were warm with a tangy sourness still lingering from the lemonade he’d been sipping. Her tongue flicked lightly into his mouth, warmth spreading across her skin as he returned the motion. She reached up to stroke his hair, feeling the last remnants of his injury from two weeks ago as the gash on his
neck
faded into a scar. His arms pulled her in closer, sending her heart racing as his hand reached up to cup her breast. He eased her to the ground, his
strong
body covering hers. She could feel a hardness beginning to press on her lower stomach, her legs becoming a glowing inferno as his hand worked his way up her shirt to fondle her naked skin. Pure ecstasy
drowned her senses
,
and she yearned for his hands to touch every inch of her.

A loud clicking noise distracted her from the moment. She tried to ignore it, tried to focus on reveling in his touch, until something brushed down her calf. Through a half opened eye she saw the fishing rod jarring across the rocky shore towards the water.

“Troy, you caught a fish,” she said between kisses.

“If you want to call it that.”

“No,” she said, shoving his face back. “You caught a fish. It’s going to take your pole.”

He looked behind him to see the sun glinting
off
his new fishing rod, picking up speed as it jumped and jounced across the rocks towards the water’s edge.

“No,” he cried as he sprinted across the rocks to capture it. The handle had just disappeared below the surface when he snatched it from the water and reeled in a decent sized trout.

“You’re a terrible fishing partner,” he laughed as he walked towards their blanket. “You’re much too distracting for the
seriousness of the business
.”

Aire laughed and pecked him on the cheek. “You started it.”

The afternoon became one of the best of Aire’s memories. Never would she forget the warmth of the sun on her skin or the coolness of the sand soft on her toes as they talked until the sun sank into the horizon. The perfection and carelessness of the day would remain forever a bittersweet memory in her mind.

***

Troy dropped her off just before dinner. She heard her father tinkering with something in the garage while Mitch sat on the couch doing school work. No aroma of a cooking meal filled the house, and her mother was not in the kitchen at six o’clock as she had been every day of her life.

She went upstairs to find her mother’s closed door. Not bothering to knock, she opened the door to find the woman still in bed, now turned on her side to face the door. She’d changed her pajamas and a glass of water sat half full on the night stand, but her hair was greasy and a thin layer of oil covered her face.

“How was fishing?
” she asked, her voice flat and dull.

“Fine. Have you been in here all day?”

“No. I was up cleaning for a while. I’m just tired today, but don’t worry. I’ll be back on my feet tomorrow. I just needed some rest.”

“Okay,” Aire said as she sat down on the bed and began to scratch the dirt from under her fingernails.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Mom, where do babies come from?”

“People.”

“I know, but how?”

“When a husband and wife want a baby, the wife goes down to Dr. Caughlin’s to get an exam to see if she’s healthy. If the tests come back okay, then Dr. Caughlin signs their request to get a permit to have a baby. If the permit is approved,
then the ambulance takes the wife to the hospital in Parker and they give her a shot in the stomach and she comes home pregnant.”

“How do you get pregnant from that?”

Aire’s mother frowned, the fine wrinkles in her forehead deepening into crevices. “I don’t know, that’s just how it happens.”

“So
,
people don’t mate like animals?”

“Goodness no,” she shouted, a look of disgust sending more wrinkles spider webbing across her face. “People most
certainly
do not
do that. We don’t make babies that way. It’s a nasty, terrible thing people just don’t do.”

“So you’ve never done it?”

“No! People are above that.”

“Okay,” Aire said. Her mother grabbed her arm as she stood up to leave.

“Why do you ask?”

“I was reading a boo
k about apes. They’re the close
s
t
relative to us so I was just wondering if we did it the same.”

“No. We’re incapable of it. No one does it.”

“Do you remember anything about going to the hospital to have me and Mitch?”

The woman stared at her for a moment, her lip crinkling before her face went lax. “No. I don’t remember. I remember going to the doctor to get the shot…the shot at the doctor…” Her mother’s head lolled to the side, her eyes glazing over. Aire knelt on the floor at the edge of the bed to look at the woman’s blank stare at eye level.

“Mom,” she whispered. “What about the doctor?”

“The room…with the yellow man….shot…” She jerked her head back towards the ceiling, her face looking lost and frightened as she glanced around the room before she looked back to Aire and smiled.

“Hi dear, how was fishing today?”

“Good.” Aire’s eyes were wide as she struggled to control her breathing.
What happened? What just happened,
her mind raced as
her pulse throbbed in her temples.

“That’s good. I promise I’ll make pancakes next weekend, just so tired.”

“It’s okay
, M
om,” she said, taking in a dry gulp of air, her tongue feeling numb under her palate. “Get some rest.”

She shut the door
behind her
, returning to her room to sit at the window. Her mother had it. She had whatever was plaguing John’s Town. A thickness cloaked the air, churning her stomach and quickening her breath.
My mother has it.
Her head fell into her hands and she let herself cry out her sorrows,
let herself cry out her frustrations and the powerless feeling threatening to strangle her. She began to feel a bit better after her tears were purged, and she watched the waning moon rise higher and higher across the sky. The stars in the Orion constellation glimmered back at her, guiding her, just as they had since she was little. They made her think of Troy. A tiny smile crossed her lips as she thought of their afternoon together, of all the wonderful new sensations they were discovering in each other. Thoughts of him comforted her, and soon she felt her eyes growing heavy with the promise of sleep.

She lay in the darkness thinking of Troy and pondering her origins, not understanding John’s Town methods of conception. The afternoon with Troy felt amazing, so why was there such an aversion to an act that seemed like it would feel wonderful?  Maybe others in town didn’t commit the act, but one day soon, she and Troy would. Thoughts of her mother bombarded her fantasies, and she turned on her side to look out the window
,
alone
with her tumultuous thoughts
in the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Friday April 30, 2010

Population: 277

It took little cajoling to convince Troy to sneak out after midnight with her. The first time
an
anchor of guilt
almost
stopped her in her tracks as she tiptoed across the porch roof and shimmied down the tree next to her window. But once her feet touched the lawn
,
the chain to the anchor had been broken,
and elation sped
her through the shadows to his house. Excitement pulsed in her veins as she waited for him to meet her in the bushes. He took her hand in the darkness, smiling as they darted down the street for the safety of the woods.

He rolled out a blanket in a small clearing in the trees well past the edge of the
pond
. Their whispers in the night flowed easily into unspoken ones as their lips met. Trembling hands removed his shirt underneath the star filled sky. Her skin grew hot at the sight of him, yearning to become a part of him.

She sucked in her breath as his body pressed on top of hers. Her head swam as he kissed her and felt him press against her leg. She smiled as a small tremor of excitement ran through him, until it heightened to the point where his whole body shook. She turned her head away from him, forcing him to stop, and looked into his eyes.

“Why are you shaking?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

He gave her that lazy half grin and shrugged. “Just nervous, I guess.”

“Don’t be,” she said as she pushed her hips into his.

Troy closed his eyes and let out a groan as they connected.
It felt so right, so natural, the pain feeling pleasurous in a strange way as he became one with her.
His trembling eased when they began to fall into an instinctual rhythm.
He’d been soft and gentle, slowly
heightening
into the motion until their passions released into mindless bliss.

Their naked bodies lay sleek with sweat in the cool night air. She looked up at him, her eyes relaxed and glowing.

“This is going to change everything, you know,” she said.

“Yeah, it will.” He smiled back at her, his cheeks still flushed, his blond hair damp across his forehead.

“Do you think people will notice anything different about us?”

“No. They already haven’t noticed how much I think about you, how much time I spend watching you be your amazing self.”

“Watching me?”

“Figure of speech,” he said, pulling her in to rest in the crook of his
shoulder
. “I spend all my time thinking of you, dreaming of you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’d be surprised at how much my life revolves around you.”

“That’s sweet,” she said, and kissed his chest. “I still think we should be careful around other people. They might suspect something, and I’m afraid of what would happen if they found out we’d snuck away after curfew and, you know.”

“Nah,” he said. “They don’t notice anything. You know that.”

“True. Dingbats,” she laughed. “But I still think we should be careful.”

He kissed her head and began to stroke his fingers through her hair. “Alright. Anything for you.”

***

No one had noticed anything in the following days, including Aire. Her mind was consumed with her newfound pleasure with Troy, taking no note of the missing faces whose number increased each day. She took no note of the two dozen students recruited by the Army within the week, or the dozens more that no longer came to school. The roars of anger and cries of pain in the streets after curfew were muffled by echoes of the sweet nothings they’d whispered
to each other
after midnight in their secret place.