The Burn (14 page)

After Dave and I leave the fire, I hear footsteps
behind us, and see Mary shadowing us. I stop. I can’t let her just
follow us upstairs, see us both go into the same room, and then
seethe herself to sleep. When I turn, she freezes, the anger and
surprise etched in deep furrows between her eyes.

Dave puts a hand to the back of his neck and clears
his throat. “Um, well, did you have fun, Mary?”

He hadn’t seen her hovering on the edge of the
firelight, watching us. I saw the hurt in her eyes, all the while
trying to appear stony. I feel bad I cause her so much pain, but I
am Dave’s friend. I can’t just walk away from him.

“What do you think?” She crosses her arms.

“Look, Mary, I’m sorry for whatever it is that’s
going on here that’s hurting your feelings. Really, I am. But that
was so long ago—”

Her hands clench. “And what? So easily forgotten?
You’re such a jerk.”

She whirls around, back to the dying fire. Tears
glitter on her cheek in the dim light. How much do I really need
Dave? If I don’t have him, would I hurt as much as she does?

Dave reaches for my hand and leads me up the stairs.
In his room, he flops down on the small, dusty mattress by the door
and gestures to his bed by the windows. I lie down and look at the
ceiling. I can’t look at him just now. If I do, all the second
thoughts that Mary brings on will be forgotten. I need those second
thoughts. I need to stay grounded.

The mattress creaks as Dave shifts his weight. I can
feel his eyes on me.

“I’m really sorry Mary is making this hard on you.
She’s not the easiest person to get along with right now. She has
this black and white sense of morality, and there’s no middle
ground. She can make things difficult.”

He really thinks that’s the problem? I prop myself up
on my elbows. I roll the stump of my tongue around in my mouth.
There is so much I need to tell him about how confused I am.

He looks like a lost boy. “That’s not what you were
thinking?”

I fall back on the bed with a dissatisfied
whump
. He growls in frustration. Then he brings me a paper
and pencil.

“So tell me what it is you’re feeling.”

I clutch the pencil. Telling him the jumble of
thoughts in my head doesn’t seem like a very good idea. But I
promised myself honesty from here on out. Where I come from is the
only lie I’ll tell. I scribble on the paper, wad it up and chuck it
at him. He irons it out and brings a candle close to it.

“You really think she’s still in love with me?”

I raise an eyebrow. Is he really that dense?

“But she couldn’t be. Not after being away for so
long and everything that happened. No—she couldn’t still be. I’m
positive.”

What does he think happened in Seattle? From
everything Nell told me, it wasn’t pretty. I motion for the paper
and he tosses it back.

Then why is she so angry at me?

“I don’t know—she doesn’t trust you. Nell did say she
had a rough time in Seattle. Maybe she just doesn’t trust strangers
any more.”

You just don’t see it. It’s more than that. She’s
jealous of me. For nothing, though. We’re only friends.

His eyes shoot up. I can’t tell if he’s hurt by the
last sentence or just realizes the truth about Mary. I’m afraid to
ask.

“So did you have anyone back in Arizona? Anyone that
tempted you to stay?”

My first thought races to Jessa. If I knew she
wouldn’t be okay without me, I would have sacrificed my dream for
her. I ache to know if she and Brant are okay, if they’re on the
Juice Deck kissing or down on Field #3 tending the corn. If they’ve
found some new place to go on a date that no one has thought of
yet. If she is happy.

But that isn’t what he’s asking. I grab the pencil.
Unexpected regret twinges in my stomach as I realize Matt would
have loved to make me happy. But why in the world am I thinking
about this now? My perfectly happy day is turning into confused
mush.

“Matt? Doesn’t sound like you guys were too
serious.”

No, he was definitely more enthusiastic than I
was.

Dave laughs and sets the paper aside. Then he coughs
and the mood deepens like the dark around us. I lie down and pull
the thin blanket up around me.

“The supply drop will be dangerous,” Dave says. “I
don’t want to take you, but I think Red’s right. Just promise me
you’ll be careful.”

I grunt to him, and stagger into sleep with worry
lines etched on my face.

The next day Red finds me behind the school, melting
wax from the beehives to make candles. All the power stations are
government operated, and the settlement doesn’t want to draw
attention by sucking electricity, so all their light comes from
candles. I stir with a big paddle the way Nell showed me. She is a
few feet off, trimming string she found in some blinds in one of
the town’s houses.

“You ever shot a gun before, Terra?” Red asks,
watching the paddle go round and round the big pot of wax.

I shake my head.

“If you’re coming tomorrow, I think you should learn.
Everyone else here at least knows how to fire a gun, even if they
don’t do it on a regular basis. You got to learn to be careful with
a weapon, and got to know how to protect yourself.”

I understand the reasoning, but I’m not so sure I
trust myself. Mr. Klein told plenty of stories about how dangerous
guns are. I thought of him that first day on the beach when I saw
Mary throw hers to the ground. Guns are delicate weapons, easily
misused. I shudder.

“I can understand if you don’t want to. Lots of
people feel the same way. But it’s necessary, you see. Everyone
needs to know how to use a gun to defend themselves and get food.
And everyone going on the supply drops needs to be ready to use
one.”

His gray eyes study me very closely and very deeply.
I’m not comfortable under his gaze. He, more than anyone else here,
could figure out the secrets I’m hiding just by looking at me long
enough. Even though I don’t feel it, I nod my head resolutely.

“Good then. As soon as you’re done helping out my
Nell, why don’t you meet me on the steps and I’ll teach you a few
things.”

He saunters away, slightly favoring his left leg.
Nell watches him go with a fond smile. She ties the strings to
several long sticks.

“He’s a good man.” She brings the sticks over to the
pot.

We slowly dip one stick of strings into the pot and
raise it up, then balance it on the backs of two chairs. The first
layer of about a hundred for this set of candles.

“He wants to keep us all safe, and I know it’s
getting harder on him as he gets older. He still has that same
sense of chivalry he had when he found me near Seattle.”

We dip another set of strings. I look at her and
raise my eyebrows.

“What happened in Seattle?”

I nod. More importantly, I want to know what happened
to Mary in Seattle, and I hope the conversation leads that way.

Nell’s eyes glaze for a moment, and she lets the
strings sag. I motion that it’s alright. If this is too painful a
memory, she doesn’t have to tell me.

“No, no, Terra. It’s fine. I just haven’t talked
about it for so long. I was twenty when I decided to leave Seattle.
I had lived there almost my whole life with my mother and father
and two older brothers. We lived in an abandoned apartment building
with a few other families. The scanners recorded our movements
every day. If someone didn’t report to work in the morning, an
agent collected them and took them to a camp. All the
watchers—”

I held my breath. They called the cameras watchers
too.

“—were rewired from local law enforcement. The feed
goes directly to the capitol. No one trusted each other. Not even
the families who lived together. No one knew who was an agent and
who wasn’t. Food was scarce. If you happened to scrounge up more
food, plant more food, catch more food—however you came upon it—in
the morning it might be missing if you weren’t careful. Everything
was looted and windows were smashed. The military did very little
about it. They didn’t care about buildings. They just cared about
people’s loyalties. And hungry people were dependent on the supply
drops.

“It was quiet because there weren’t very many people,
not like when the city was alive. But it wasn’t a peaceful quiet,
not like here. Cars were left in the middle of the street,
abandoned, doors and windows hanging open. It was an unfriendly,
scary kind of quiet. You never knew who was watching you. You felt
nervous just walking down the street, no matter what time of day it
was. My father never let any of us go out by ourselves. We always
had to go out together.

“One night my father and brothers came home with big
sacks full of food. They had found a basement under one of the
buildings that hadn’t yet been looted. They had found all kinds of
canned food. We hid it away in a corner like we always did.

“That night, I woke up to the smell of burning. Our
building was on fire. I couldn’t see through the smoke, and it
filled my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. All I could think of was
finding a way out. I finally managed to escape, and when I got
outside, I saw another of the families that lived in our building.
They had stolen all of the food from our hiding place and lit the
building on fire. They thought we should have shared our find with
them. But they had never shared anything with us! Their oldest
daughter saw me crawl out a window. She pulled out a knife and came
after me with it. I managed to scramble away and escape. But I was
never able to come back and try to help my family. They all died in
the building that night.”

Nell sits down for a minute in one of the chairs that
holds the dipped strings. I kneel down on the ground beside her and
put a hand on her knee. But she isn’t crying.

“I have no more tears for that night. They ran out a
long time ago. But my heart still aches every time I think of
it.”

I lay my head on her knee and she runs her fingers
through my hair.

“I decided to leave Seattle and find somewhere else,
someplace where the quiet was peaceful. I was terrified to leave. I
had never been alone before, and I knew if I got caught, I would be
better off dead. The first thing I did was cut out my tracker. Red
found me that way, covered with blood and carving my tracker to
pieces. I was so scared of him. His hair and beard were flaming red
and long and wiry and sticking out in every direction. I thought he
was a demon. But he saw how spooked I was, like a cat, and never
came nearer to me than we are to that pot. He started slow. He
could see it was something that would take time. But he would talk
to me for hours, telling me stories. I wouldn’t say, couldn’t say
much to him. It was still too fresh. But he didn’t seem to mind. It
reminds me a lot of you and David.” A smile tweaks the corners of
her mouth.

“And so we wandered together. And by the time we
found ourselves at this settlement, I had fallen in love with him.
Dear man.” With those words, a tear slips from the corner of her
eyes and down her cheek to fall on mine. She can cry tears of
happiness now. I squeeze her leg, letting her know how much I enjoy
her happiness. She laughs and shoos me off so we can finish another
few rounds with the candles.

“We can’t hope to get these done today, but I’m sure
someone else will help me with them while you’re gone.”

I stir the pot again.

“And Terra? Please be gentle with Mary. She went
through a lot in Seattle. I think she had romantic notions of
helping establish the city back to the way it was. And if it was
just the city, maybe she could. But that’s not where the problem
starts. She found out it’s not much different from when I was
there. She’s lucky to be back here.”

Unexpectedly, I feel sorry for Mary. I don’t know the
details of her wounds, but I can’t blame her for being angry. Dave
is the one thing she trusted, and things just haven’t been quite
right between them since she came back.

After several more dips into the pot of wax, Nell
says I should go see Red. I groan as I walk around to the front
steps of the school. I really don’t want to learn to shoot a gun.
If everyone around here learned at one time or another, then there
are more than enough people to cover the bases.

Red sits on the steps, sipping a glass of water and
looking to the horizon where you can just see the thin ribbon of
the Sound through the trees.

“So you’ve never even held a gun?” he asks as I sit
next to him. I shake my head.

“That by your own choosing?”

I look at my mud-caked boots. Not really, there are
no guns in the colony. But if I had been given the chance, I would
have turned it down.

“I can understand that you’re nervous about it. I can
respect that. But guns are important to survival around here.
You’ve got to understand how to handle one. Especially since you’re
coming tomorrow. We’ll each have one, including you, and you need
to know how to use it.”

I will carry a gun? He watches me, studying my face.
He looks back east and takes another sip of water, and then stands
up slowly, his joints popping. There is a rifle on the steps. Red
grips it and starts south.

“There’s a field a few hundred yards off where we can
practice. Follow me.”

Not a request, an order. I know Red can feel the
anxiety rolling off of me, and he takes deft control of the
situation. I have to follow him. My limbs feel wooden as I plod
after him through the waist-high grass and scrub.

The sun settles toward the west, and the only
salvation I can hope for is dinner in an hour. Until then, I am
stuck out here with Red and a gun.

The grass in the field is shorter and the trees are
sparse. Targets hang from the branches and shells litter the
ground.

“We come through and clean those up once in a while.
We can manage to repack ’em. Found a few tools for it in a town not
far from here. Boring, tedious job. But sometimes that’s just the
thing you need around here. Now watch. You’ll only get one chance.
We don’t want to draw attention with too many gun shots.”