by Amy Briant
An explanation was clearly what East was expecting now. I could see it written all over her face. It was kind of ticking me off that she was so thrilled to have figured it out. I wasn’t there for her freaking entertainment.
“Well?” she said.
“Well, what? Fine, I have a vagina. You solved the mystery, genius.”
She was brought up short by my curtness. “Well, I mean…” she started and then faded out. “I mean, do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.”
I finished washing my sweatshirt and laid it out on the flat rocky ledge next to her jean jacket. I brushed some dried mud from the cargo pants I was wearing, which only revealed the grass stains underneath. East took a seat on the rock next to my damp hoodie and carefully spread it out further on the rock ledge for maximum drying potential. The creek babbled happily along, accentuating the stark silence between us.
“You can take a bath if you like,” I said, not looking at her. “I’ll go in the tent. I won’t look.”
“Okay.” There was another pause. I was hoping she was done.
No such luck.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said.
I sighed, but it was only to be expected. I took a seat on the ledge, the wet garments separating us.
“I’ll give you three questions,” I told her. “Just like in the fairy tales. Then we gotta get moving, all right?”
Her face was serious, but her eyes were dancing. I’d only spent two days with her and I was already a little alarmed by her emotional swings. Depressed and traumatized one moment, angry the next, and now tickled pink by her Momentous Discovery. This is what I hate about girls—they always have to make such a big fucking deal out of everything. Plus they never shut up.
But maybe that was her way of coping. There’s only so much death and devastation our brains can handle before we have to take a break, even if it’s just for a moment. I’d learned that the hard way myself, when my Gran lay dying in her bed, coughing away the last days of her life.
“Three questions,” East repeated mischievously, her eyes sparkling, a curve to her lips that she was trying to fight.
If I’d thought putting a limit on her inquiries would make it less painful for me, I was apparently wrong. I so did not want to answer her questions.
Which didn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about how it would feel to touch her at that very moment. Those lips…that body…
“Okay,” she said. “First question—why?”
“Why did I let everyone think I was a boy?”
She nodded. She was leaning back on the rock on her elbows. Her dark brown hair tumbled down past her shoulders, gently stirring in the morning breeze. She was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. Leaning back on her elbows somehow made her breasts a focal point. I felt like she’d done that on purpose. Some women are like that, I’d noticed—only happy if they’re controlling the situation with their sexuality. She caught me looking and I glanced away, blushing probably. I’d caught a glimpse of her bra strap on her shoulder. I had no need for a bra—I was still as flat as I’d been at eleven and it didn’t look like that was going to change. Thankfully.
“Well?” she verbally nudged me.
Did I even owe her an answer? What difference did it make, considering the circumstances? My instinct was to tell her the truth—no, that’s not right. My first instinct was to keep quiet like I’d successfully done for so many years. But that was all out the window now…
“I always knew I was a boy on the inside,” I found myself telling her. “It never felt right to dress like a girl.”
“Or act like one.”
I looked at her sharply to see if she was laughing at me, but she merely looked interested.
“But you are a girl—physically, I mean. Right?”
“Right,” I said shortly. “And that was question number two.”
“Hey!” she said, dismayed.
“Rules are rules and they exist for a reason,” I quoted with a smartass smile—one of the many Settlement tenets we’d had bored into our brains.
“Fine. Question number three,” she said, drawing out the words as she thought about what to say. She was thinking way too hard. That wiped the smile off my face. A feeling of dread began to grow in its place. Surely, she wouldn’t dare. Despite the schoolyard heckling, there were certain subjects that simply weren’t discussed in the Settlement. Or maybe that taboo was the root cause of the heckling…I’d never really thought of it like that before. I looked back at East. She had one eyebrow cocked and that gleam was back in her eye. I could tell that question three was going to be a doozy, as Gran used to say. Whatever the hell that meant.
“Question number three,” East repeated, rolling the words off her tongue like they were delicious. There was something about the shape of her lower lip that very nearly undid me, when I allowed myself to look. “Do you like boys or girls, Kell?”
I’d halfway expected it, but still I was shocked. People just didn’t talk about that kind of stuff. Even Gabriel and I had never had that conversation, although we might have if she hadn’t had to leave. At least I liked to think that. Of course, Gran knew my truth—she knew everything.
She’d given me the basic “how babies are made” talk years before. Since we’d had goats and chickens at the cabin, the mechanics of it were pretty obvious to me and any other child who’d grown up around farm animals. Gran’s version of it was long on the mechanics—she’d been an engineer Before. Her speech was short on sentimentality (no surprise there), but she did throw me a few nuggets.
“Here’s the deal, Kell,” she’d told my younger self. “Some folks will tell you there’s only one way to be in life, but that’s pure horse puckey.”
“What do you mean, only one way?”
“I mean folks’ll tell you boys like girls and girls like boys and that’s all she wrote.”
“Who? Wrote what?” I asked, confused.
“No one. It’s just an expression. Never mind. Are you paying attention to me?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I’m not ever marrying a boy,” I told her stubbornly. “No way.”
I think I was eight or nine at the time. We were sitting on the cabin’s porch steps, watching our rooster scrabble in the dirt, his ridiculous puffed-out chest and fancy white feathers belying his low-down, mean temper. The chickens wisely kept their distance.
“You’ll find your own way, kiddo,” she said with a grin. “That’s what Duponts do. And don’t ever let anybody else tell you you’re wrong for what you feel in your heart.” She poked me in the chest with a bony index finger. “You remember that, Kell—love is the most important thing you can find in this life. And nobody gets to choose who they love. It’s fate.”
“What’s fate, Gran?”
“Fate is that beautiful girl you’re gonna meet someday who will make you very, very happy.”
“And then can we get married?”
“Shack up for a while first,” she said, sounding like the chickens as she cackled away. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Always best to kick the tires and take ’em for a test drive ’fore you make any big decisions.” She whooped with laughter, which ended in my pounding her on the back as she coughed and coughed.
Back in the present, I was shocked and not a little embarrassed that East had so brazenly asked me about my preference. I didn’t know what to say, so I did what I did best—I said nothing.
“Come on,” she said, teasing. Like that was an effective strategy. “We had a deal—three questions and three answers.”
More silence.
“Oh, come on!” she said, exasperated. “Just because the stupid grownups are too uptight to talk about sex doesn’t mean we can’t. Kids talk about it all the time.”
Really. That was news to me. Of course, the other kids didn’t talk to me, period. I gave her the look of death, hoping she’d take the hint and shut up.
“Okay, look,” she tried again, this time with her best per
suasive voice and facial expression. “You tell me and I’ll tell you. Hey, you can ask me whatever you like. Give me three questions, Kell. C’mon, I want to play too.”
I could tell she was not going to let it go. I could either tell her or listen to her garbage all the way to Segundo. And hadn’t I planned to start my Brave New Life after graduation anyway? I’d only kept my mouth shut in school as a matter of daily survival. Once I turned eighteen and graduated, though, I’d envisioned a whole different existence. An honest life—even if that meant I had to be alone.
I snuck a glance at East. She was now fully reclined on the flat rock ledge, lying on her side, with her head propped on her fist. I’d noticed before—in school—how at ease she seemed with her body. I envied her that. Must be nice to be a girl on the inside and a girl on the outside, I thought wistfully. My life would have been so much easier if I had been the gay boy they all thought I was.
But I wasn’t. I stole one more look at East, who met my gaze. I took a breath. I said to her three of the words that I’d never actually said to anyone. Never even said out loud to myself.
“I like girls,” I said. Then looked away from her, across the creek, away from that dark blue eye contact that made me feel like I was an electric circuit in danger of shorting out. The lights we’d used on special occasions at the Settlement were always arcing out with small but spectacular displays of red and gold sparks.
I felt, rather than saw, East ease herself off the ledge and walk over to stand beside me, her face on the same level as mine. Her bare hand brushed my arm. I couldn’t look. I struggled desperately to keep my focus on the opposite bank.
She said, “I like boys and girls.”
We both listened to the stream rushing by for a moment. A long moment. I didn’t say anything—there was nothing to be said. She had to be shitting me, I figured. So she was a mean girl after all.
What else did I expect?
I threw a pebble into the water, then stood, stretching past her to gather up my still-damp sweatshirt.
“Well, you’ll have your pick of both at Segundo, so let’s get a move on,” I said with no expression.
Nonchalance was also one of my best things.
Chapter Twelve
Welcome To Deadwood
We didn’t talk as we followed the creek on its winding northeasterly path. My compass confirmed we were headed in more or less the right direction. My plan—well, my hope—was that it would intersect 17 at some point. I hated to leave the water source behind, but at the same time, I was eager to find the highway again. Freestyling it off the road was an excellent way to get lost. The last thing I wanted was for us to end up on the west side of the bay, on the peninsula which ended in San Francisco. We needed to find the V that my sister had told me about and make sure we went up the right fork, not the left.
The silence was peaceful as we trudged along. It wasn’t total silence, of course. There was the creek and the birds and the wind in the trees. I loved the sounds of nature, the sights and smells. I much preferred the woods and the water to the company of my fellow human beings. If it weren’t for the nightmarish quality of the circumstances, I would have been having a reasonably good time.
We walked for hours. We hadn’t come across 17 yet, but I wasn’t too worried. Yet. I knew we were headed in the correct direction, although the creek was taking us more north than east. The sun was directly overhead, beating down on us warmly, but not unbearably hot. I was looking for a spot to stop for lunch when the creek took us around another bend. Up ahead the land rose sharply, forming a ridge that ran at an angle to our path, like the spine of some giant sleeping animal. 17!
I stopped and turned to East happily.
“What?” she said.
“We found the highway again,” I said, pointing and grinning like a fool. I hadn’t realized how anxious I had been. The relief was exhilarating.
“Didn’t know it was lost,” she said shortly. I’d already learned she got grumpy when she was hungry. My own stomach was growling.
“Let’s break for lunch,” I told her, still delighted with having found the highway.
She brightened at the mention of food, but there wasn’t much to be had. We were down to two apples and some jerky.
“That’s it?” East said, sounding outraged.
“At least we’ve got plenty of water,” I said, trying to make the best of it.
I got a little fire going, just big enough to boil some more water for the road. Food was definitely a concern. Once we found the V and headed up the right side of the bay, though, I had hopes of finding some sustenance along the shoreline—crabs, shellfish, something. I wished I had fishing gear with me, but no such luck. There were fish in the stream beside us, but they were far too quick and wily for me to catch with my bare hands. Although I might have had a shot with a sharpened stick…I decided to keep an eye out for a good stick as we continued our hike. With any luck, we’d be camping on the eastern shore of the bay that evening and enjoying a seafood dinner.
At least that was the rosy picture I painted for East after lunch. We were back on the highway and I kept thinking we’d find that elusive V any minute. But minutes and then at least an hour had passed and there was still no sign of it. The landscape looked the same all around us—the high coastal hills to our west with the ever-present fog starting to peek over the top. The flat plain extending to the north and east, where more hills awaited. No sign of the V, no sign of the bay.
But whereas we’d started our journey in the forest and then continued alongside a creek, we were now in an area that had formerly been inhabited. We could see the remains of what had been a town on either side of the highway. The Bay Area had, of course, been heavily populated Before. The stretch of 17 which ran through the forest was the exception, not the rule. I knew we would encounter the ruins of previously bustling cities and towns as we progressed along the highway, but I didn’t like it. I much preferred the woods to these ghost towns. I remembered some of their names from a lesson at school: Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Pacifica. Somehow only the pretty-sounding ones stuck in my head.
Not so pretty now. We might find some food in a town, though. Not in the burnt-out or toppled wrecks of buildings. I was sure those had all been thoroughly scavenged by whatever people still found themselves alive there during the Bad Times. I hoped those people were all long gone. In the residential areas, however, we might find the descendants of the fruit trees and vegetable gardens some of the Before people had in their yards. That kind of foraging required leaving the highway, though, and was not without danger. You never knew who or what might be lurking around those old buildings. Something as simple and stupid as stepping on a rusty nail in the urban rubble could spell disaster for us. Plus, the roving packs of wild dogs seemed to like the cities for some reason. Memories of better days? I decided we would keep going and find the V. That was more important than foraging for that afternoon, at least.
Although as soon as I made that decision, I wondered if it was the wrong one. I could hear Gabriel’s voice in my head with another of her survival lessons: “The time to look for food, Kell, is when you’re full, not when you’re starving. Remember, it takes time and energy to find food. Never leave it to the last minute.”
“Think there’s anything to eat in there?” East asked.
She was pointing at a building off to our left, at the bottom of a freeway off-ramp. It was an old gas station. This I knew from my ventures into San Tomas with my sister. Gabriel had pointed out similar structures to me there and explained their purpose. There were still some buildings standing in what had been downtown San Tomas and likewise in this nameless town, despite the passage of time and who knew how many earthquakes. This building appeared to be in fairly good shape. Of course, the windows were all broken out and the door was boarded up. A large sign teetered from a pole by a single screw, creaking as the wind rocked it. The elements had greatly faded it over the years, and some of the letters and numbers were mi
ssing, but it still proclaimed the price of super unleaded to be $57.99 a gallon. Cash only. What a deal.
It hadn’t been that long since lunch and already my stomach was grumbling again. Fine, I told Gabriel’s voice in my head—food it is.
I looked at East, eyeing her somewhat skeptically. She’d done all right with the hiking so far, but was she up for searching for supplies in the post-apocalyptic city?
“What?” she demanded. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem. Maybe you should wait here, rest for a little while and I’ll go see if I can find us some food.”
“Oh, hell no, Dupont,” she said, color surging to her face. “You are not leaving me here by myself. Wherever you’re going, I’m going and that’s that.”
She grabbed the straps of her backpack and shifted its weight to ease the burden, staring daggers at me, daring me to argue.
“Okay, okay,” I shrugged. “But if we’re going into town, we need to be really careful, all right? Watch where you step. Keep an eye out for animals. And we have to be very quiet. If there’s anybody else in there, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves, okay?”
She looked a little scared, but nodded.
“Gimme a minute,” I told her, reaching around to undo one of the external pockets of my pack. To her amazement, I pulled out the gun I’d taken off Lookout Dude.
“Where did you get that?” she said, her eyes bugging out.
“Never mind.” I made sure the safety was off. “Stay close. And be quiet, will you?”
We walked down the crumbling off-ramp toward the beckoning sign. As we drew closer, I saw that somebody had placed another old sign at its base. It too was faded but still legible—Redwood. Population 67,000. Someone had scratched a new name, though, with a knife or some other sharp implement: Deadwood. The scratches gleamed in the afternoon sun. They weren’t neatly done. They looked more like slashes, like someone had hacked at the metal sign in a fury. It gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach to look at that sign.