Rippler (18 page)

The sun snuck behind a low wall of clouds and the temperature fell a couple of degrees. I shivered.

“And of course I’m not going to tell her the truth,” I said. “Because then I’d lose you, too.

I’ve seen how fast Mickie can pack up a house.”

He looked at me as if to ask a question, but no words came out. I dropped my gaze,

confused by the intensity of his. A breeze passed over us, whispering of icy weather to come.

Will ran an arm around my shoulder. For comfort? For the cold?

“She’s observant, though.” Will’s voice was low and rough.

I turned to meet his eyes. “Observant? About . . . ?”

He dropped the basil and brought his other hand over onto mine, tracing the tops of my fingers with his own. I forgot about the cold. My entire world focused down to the space where his skin touched mine.

And I understood.

Will angled his face closer to mine. His cheeks were flushed, his dark eyes bottomless wells in which worlds could be lost. He wasn’t in a hurry and although I wanted his kiss more than I’d ever wanted anything, I didn’t rush either. Did I know how to kiss a boy? I wanted to kiss this boy right. So I hovered, and he hovered, and we inhaled each other’s shallow breaths, warm and sweet and salty with desire, and then when I knew I couldn’t stand it anymore, he leaned in a millimeter closer, like a runner trying to be first through the ribbon.

His lips touched mine. Soft and yielding, chapped on one side, tasting like every good thing. I felt his inhalations, soft and fast against my upper-lip, and heat spread out from my heart, undulating along my torso and through my arms and legs, fingers and toes, and me feeling better than running at sunrise.

My cell
thunked
out of my pocket onto the dirt, and we pulled apart for a brief moment, locked in each other’s gaze. Then like gravity, or maybe like magnets, our lips met again because they had to. And in that touch it felt like I was buried treasure he’d crossed seven seas to claim. I couldn’t feel the edges of my own body anymore; I was melting into his.

Oh
.

I
had
melted. I’d rippled.

My phone vibed loudly at Will’s solid feet. He reached down and grabbed it.

“It’s my sister calling you. I’m gonna answer, okay?”

I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. I stood and moved a few feet away and

rippled back solid. Will stood as well and was nodding, listening to his sister and grunting a series of assents. He clicked off. “That was Mickie.”

“Yeah,” I said, back in my body.

“She’s says my butt’s in a sling if I don’t get back home five minutes ago. For our dinner thing.”

We began the walk back through the garden, neither of us speaking. We passed through the house and to the drive. Will paused a moment before his sister’s Jeep. “It’s okay if you don’t feel that way. I just want us to be friends no matter what, okay?”

I couldn’t find the words to answer, so I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, hoping that reassured him.

“Right,” he said, all flushed. He climbed in the Jeep and started the engine. “See you tomorrow.”

“Hey!” I called out.

Will stopped, leaning his head out the window.

“My birthday’s next Saturday. Come over with your sister for chocolate cake and a

bonfire. It’s our tradition. It’s how we get rid of the burn pile every fall.” I hoped it didn’t sound lame.

“We’ll be there,” Will said as he took off, waving.

That night, I picked the black book up again. I’d left off trying to translate it for a couple of weeks because what little I could understand sounded pretty horrible. I settled down to attempt additional translation from where I’d left off.

Fam es le compan qui coljare amb les enfans cada noit.

“Hunger is the companion who—” and then something “the children” something “night.”

I thought back to the “math puzzles” where the children didn’t have enough food. So maybe,

“Hunger is the children’s companion at night?”

With this frustrating method of translation, I was confirming what Will and I had

suspected: the puzzles listed in English at the beginning of the book had actually been carried out as experiments.

I wanted to think of these children and their situations as imaginary, but I knew somehow they were real. I wanted to say I’d never find myself in such a situation, but if Mickie was right, there were those who wanted me dead or available for experimentation, too.

I didn’t want to think about hiding and suffering, about how long we could stay safe: me and Mickie and Will. I wanted to remember Will’s kiss—to hold it close and bathe the world in its glow. I set the book down.

That night I dreamed of Will. I was his cross-country partner, our feet beating out a rhythm on hot pavement beneath a blistering sun. This rhythm, Will running at my side, became the cadence to which my heart beat. Then we were small children and he was chasing me through piles of autumn leaves at the park. At last I was his lover, and I pressed him to my heart while snow fell silently around us. I sat up, suddenly awake in the soundless dark of a chill morning.

Excerpted from the private journal of Girard L’Inferne, approx. 1943

Experiment 56, control group C

Hunger is the companion who lies with the children nightly, calling them to rise every
dawn.

But thirst? The children have not yet encountered this newest adversary.

To one side of the room, a basin rests upon a small table. Light from the window, just
above, dances across the deadly surface, casting flickers into the darker corners at the far
side of the room.

One of the smaller boys moves toward the basin, stands on tip-toe to gaze at the contents.

“You needn’t bother, Pepper. They told us already, it’s not safe to drink.”

“It’s poison,” says one of the blonde-haired girls.

“Maybe they lied.” Blue-eyed Franz shrugs as he speaks. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

He whispers the last sentence, as if in fear of being overheard.

The dark-eyed boy moves to the garbage pail beside the room’s one door, opposite the
window and bowl. While the others speculate over whether the water is truly poisonous or
not, the dark-eyed boy finds something lovely. The core of an apple, eaten carefully down to
the seeds and stem, but still full of sweet moisture. The boy sucks quietly on this treasure.

“Hey,” calls Franz. “What’s that you’ve got?” His voice attracts the attention of the
others.

A scuffle breaks out as the remaining six boys, and two of the girls, fight first for the
apple core and then for the right to search the garbage pail. But it is no use. The dark-eyed
boy had already found the only source of wetness in the small bucket. Forgotten for the
moment, he huddles silently in the darkest corner.

The others pant. The brief brawl has increased their awareness of thirst.

Fritz, to whom the others defer, speaks. “We need to know if the water is good to drink.”

Several children lick cracked lips, nodding.

“Greta,” he calls to a small shivering girl who had not participated in the struggle over
the waste. “Come here and drink.”

A visible shudder runs through her small body as she rises. She knows better than to
resist Fritz. Her thick lashes, long and blonde, cover her eyes as she shuffles towards the
basin.

The large boy arranges his features into what he believes to be a sincere and adult
expression. “It is for the good of us all.”

“Not all,” whispers the dark-eyed boy in his corner. But no one hears him.

“No!” The cry is anguished, wrenched from a parched throat. A blue-eyed boy walks
swiftly to block Greta’s progress. “No, Greti,” Gunther says. His eyes plead with her. “I’ll
try it,” he says, running his small hand along the side of her face. His voice sounds brave, but
he looks terrified as he dips shaking hands into the basin and drinks.

Nothing happens immediately. The boy joins hands with the girl for whom he’s been
willing to brave poison. But within seconds, his frame seizes and shudders, and his blue eyes
roll back in his head.

It takes him a long time to die. Greta holds his hand, singing to his tortured body until
her voice leaves her. She does not cry; her body cannot form tears in its dehydrated state.

Three more children, driven mad by thirst, try the water in the darkness of the cold, dry
night. In the morning, four small bodies are exchanged for a large barrel of good water and
the children drink until they are sated.

n.b.: I suspected several would be unable to exert sufficient self-control in the face of the
tempting water. The loss of Gunther exasperates me. The boy was clever. Still, it is better to
be rid of a tender-hearted child now than to have a tender-hearted adult serving me in the
future.

This test has revealed much. I will certainly administer it to the other litter.

-translation by G. Pfeffer

Chapter Fifteen

BIRTHDAY

A week passed and my birthday arrived. Things had been strange between Will and me. I wasn’t the most experienced person when it came to boys and kissing, but it felt a little odd to me that Will didn’t so much as hold my hand after telling me how he felt. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became about what exactly he had told me. Sure, the kiss said
I
want you
. And that look in his eyes, like nothing this world had to offer compared to me, said
I love you
. But he hadn’t put it into words, had he?

Sitting alone in the kitchen, I wished for the millionth time that I could ask Gwyn’s advice. She’d be able to tell me what to do. What it meant if a guy wanted to spend every free moment with you but wouldn’t kiss you a second time.

Gwyn. I sighed. I’d made the decision to live without her friendship. I was going to have to figure this out without her.

I thought again of Will’s parting that evening after we’d kissed. His words had been all about staying friends.

Just friends.

Was that what Will
really
wanted? Maybe he was just trying out kissing me, kind of like trying out a new brand of running shoes, and he decided I wasn’t his brand after all.
Ouch.

The thought stung. My eyes burned and then blurred with tears.

So what did I want? I wanted Will. I loved him; I felt sure of it. But what earthly good would it do me to tell him that I loved him if he’d already decided he didn’t actually feel that way about me? If I was
Nike
and he liked
Brooks
after all?

I wanted Will in my life. I wanted it bad enough that I wasn’t going to risk scaring him off. He could be
Brooks
-boy and I’d be
Nike-
girl and everything would go back to where it used to be. Just friends. Will had to stay in my life, what with
rippling
and Sir Walter and all that mess. So did I want him to feel like he had to walk on tip-toe around me because he’d broken my heart? No. I didn’t want that. I wouldn’t let him know how I felt. I couldn’t.

But I wished I felt
sure
I was reading him right. I could talk to Sylvia. She and Dad would be back from the bakery with my cake in half an hour. But no, if Syl had any hint that Will had broken my heart, her inner lioness would come out, hungry for blood. Wouldn’t that make for a great birthday party? And I didn’t think she’d understand, anyway. She’d tell me about other fish in the sea or something when I already knew there was only one fish I wanted.

That left Mickie to talk to.

Yeah, right. The thought actually brought a smile to my face. She’d read Will the riot act for kissing a girl he didn’t love, and then she’d ask how he could even
think
of kissing when there were people who wanted all of us
dead
, for the love of Mike. No, I wasn’t bringing Will’s sister into this whatever-it-was.

I could do
just friends.
When I thought of the empty years, the years I’d walled off my heart from anyone, I felt grateful for
just friends
. I stared down at my running shoes, thinking of all the hours they’d logged with Will pounding the road beside me. A thought whispered across my mind, seductive.

If you became Brooks-girl instead, maybe he’d like you
.

I swallowed hard. That was an idea. How badly did I want him to like me? What would I be willing to give up, set aside, change? Could I buy a few magazines at the grocery store check-out and take a survey and—

I smiled, shaking my head. I liked being me—the me I was now. In fact, the great thing about hanging with Will, or Mickie, for that matter, was that I could be completely
me.
For the first time in eight years, I knew who I was. No way was I giving that up.

I looked at my Nikes again. “I like you. I’m not swapping you out for Brooks. This

conversation is officially closed.” I reached down to retie one of the shoelaces that had worked its way loose.

And as I tightened my laces, I had an odd thought. Why did my clothes and shoes come with me when I rippled? Why didn’t they remain behind? This called for an experiment.

I picked up our coffee pot, half-full. I rippled, and the coffee pot came with me. I rippled back and set the pot down. I walked to the pantry and picked up a bag of onions. Twenty-five pounds, the packaging said. The bag came with me. But then, when I tried placing my hand on just one onion on top of the pile, the bag didn’t come with me—only the single onion rippled. I could “sense” the onion in my hand. I
let go
of the onion, and after I rippled back solid, the onion was
gone.

Weird.

Good thing I hadn’t tried that with the coffee pot. My parents without access to caffeine in the morning? Not pretty. I wondered how big of an item I could bring with me.