“Ready to go again?” he said.
“You bet,” I told him.
I couldn’t remember a happier day in my whole life. We dragged our little sleds all over the sand dunes, hardly running into another living soul. Most of the day it felt like the whole world had up and left the planet. Like Touch and I had inherited the whole place lock, stock, and barrel. If that had been the case, I would’ve been glad to stay just exactly where we were forever, climbing to the top of different dunes and screaming all the way down. By the time we made it back to our campground, my legs ached from all that hiking, and my skin glowed pink from all that wind and sand.
The cooler sat full of hot dogs and sodas and potato salad. I sent Touch off to find sticks for roasting the hot dogs, and I lit the paper on the fake log. Here in Colorado it was awful hot—almost as hot as Missouri had been—but at the same time the air was so dry I didn’t mind it near as much. And now that the sun was on its way down, the air got about fifteen degrees cooler. Nice. I felt a little guilty thinking it was nice, as I saw Touch shivering his way back with two sticks, nice and green like I’d told him. But then the fire would take care of that.
He sat down on the log next to me. Not too close, but just close enough. I smiled at him, and he smiled back, and handed over the sticks. I set up our hot dogs and handed one back to him, and showed him how to turn it round and round over the fire.
“You know,” I said to him, “if that was my last day on Earth, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it. I don’t think I ever had more fun.”
Touch had finished cooking his hot dog and was blowing on it so he could take his first bite. “We have a place like this at home,” he said. “It’s called the Sledding Sands. I always thought I’d take my son there someday.”
When he said that, I thought he was speaking metaphorically, futuristically. The way I sometimes used to think that when I had a daughter I’d name her Lily and take her to Disneyland. So I just kind of nodded like I understood what he meant. I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was maybe one day he and I could take our kid back here. It didn’t worry me in the slightest, in my happy haze, that we couldn’t touch. Who needed to touch to make a baby in these modern times? Hell, all we’d need is a thermometer and a turkey baster.
Touch loaded up another hot dog and set to roasting it. I’d barely taken my first bite. “It makes me sad being here without him,” he said.
“Wait. You have a son? A real, live, actual son?”
He nodded. “He’s six. His name is Cotton. I couldn’t help thinking about him all day. He’d love this so much.” Touch kind of gestured with his hot dog to show he wasn’t just talking about the sledding, but the camping, the fleetdeer, the fire. All of it.
It hit me in that moment that no matter how many strides the science of fertility had made, a mother couldn’t take care of a child she couldn’t touch. Who knew if a baby could even survive inside my body?
“Touch,” I said. “I know we haven’t discussed the culture on your home planet. But here on Earth? When a man has a son? Generally speaking, he also has a wife.”
I waited for him to get that foggy look, with the wrinkle between his eyes. Wife? he would say. What is this word, “wife”?
But no. Judging from the look on El Creepo’s face, he knew exactly what the word “wife” meant, and it meant the same damn thing on his planet. I stood up, threw my hot dog into the fire, and marched on over to the car.
“Wait,” he said. “Rogue.”
I slammed myself into the Prius and crawled into the backseat. Soon as I found myself lying there, I wished I’d taken the time to get a pillow and sleeping bag out of the tent. Damned if I were getting out now.
Touch peered in through the window. He actually looked a little relieved, like he’d thought I was going to drive away, and now he realized I just planned on sleeping in there instead of in the tent. Thinking on how happy our sleeping bags had looked lined up next to each other, I almost let myself dissolve into a good, long cry. But hell if I’d do that while he stood out there watching me.
He banged on the window. “Come on,” he said. “It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, what is it?” I yelled. “Doesn’t she understand you?”
Wendy Lee’s thoughts and memories filled my head. She’d had a whole lot of arguments exactly like this one. I put my hands over my ears, like that would drown out the sound of them. Then I closed my eyes, and felt the most powerful rush of sadness, remembering what it felt like to lose a baby.
Damn, damn, damn. My most perfect day of my whole life, ruined.
Finally Touch gave up and walked away from the car. After fifteen minutes or so I peered out the window to make sure he’d put out the fire. It was totally dark. I guess they had wildfires where he came from, too. Of course they would. Apparently it was just like here—with sand dunes and mountains and sons and wives and cheating husbands.
Don’t ask me how I fell asleep, but finally I did, just unfortunately not for long. I woke up about an hour later with my teeth chattering together, the first time I’d been cold in what seemed like forever. I hunted around the car for some kind of blanket, with no luck. Everything had been hauled out to the tent when I was playing house. Like a good little extramarital girlfriend.
I took one last, hopeful look in the way back of the Prius. Nothing there except the plates we’d taken off a car at the Pueblo junkyard. We’d have to remember to put them on tomorrow and get rid of the dealer’s tags. Just thinking that word, “We,” made me powerfully sad. I shivered. My breath came out in a thin little gust in front of me. If I didn’t get into that sleeping bag, I’d freeze.
Touch hadn’t slept a wink. I could tell that as soon as I unzipped the tent flap. He just lay there, with his hands under his head, staring at the nylon ceiling. Mad as I was, I still had no wish to kill him, so I moved around the small space with a whole lot of care. I didn’t say anything, just zipped the tent back up and crawled very gingerly around him. I fished the balaclava out of my duffel bag, pulled it on my head, and crawled into my sleeping bag.
“You cold?” he asked. He sounded surprised, like he didn’t think it was possible for me to be cold.
“Freezing.”
“Here.” I could hear him more than see him, taking his arm out from behind his head and setting to wrap it around me.
“Don’t,” I hissed. “Don’t touch me.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “I’m wearing gloves and—”
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
“Oh,” he said. Those hurt feelings again. “OK.”
He pulled his arms back and put them in his sleeping bag, maybe to show he respected my wishes. For a while I just hunkered down in my sleeping bag, working on getting warm. When my teeth started chattering, I found myself wondering about his wife, what she looked like, how old she was, what kind of mother she made. Did he like her cooking? Now that I had all Wendy Lee’s abilities, I bet I could cook better than her. I wondered what kind of job Touch’s wife had, if she made a lot of money—or whatever the thing in his world would be that was the same as making a lot of money.
The only thing I knew for sure? Whoever his wife was, whatever she did, whatever she looked like, whatever her faults and failings, she could touch him, and she could let him touch her. They had a child to prove it.
“Rogue?” he said. By that time he must’ve figured I was never going to talk at all. “It’s not what you think.”
“That’s what married men always say.” I’d seen my share of soap operas, plus I had all Wendy Lee’s experience bundled up inside me. He didn’t answer, so I said, “What’s her name? Mrs. Touch?”
“We’re not together anymore.”
“Oh.” I hated to admit it, but this sounded promising.
“She’s not… I can’t explain it thoroughly enough. It’s not safe.”
“Anytime you don’t want to talk about something,” I said, “you say it’s not safe. That’s getting
old, Touch. Mighty old.”
Our tent was light blue, and through the ceiling I could see shadows of tree branches. The trees here were pretty, a lot of them looked like little birch trees, but with these tiny green leaves shaped like circles. I’d noticed them shimmering in the daylight, and now their shadows shimmered, too. In Mississippi, there’d be about a million bugs gathering on the outside of the tent. But here I didn’t see any bugs at all, just the shadows of branches, and I felt like if I squinted I might see the stars, too.
“I like it here,” I said, after a bit. “It’s pretty. And it feels like… I don’t know. Good spirits or something.”
When I let myself look over at Touch, he was propped up on one elbow. His eyes looked darkly blue and troubled.
“I really wish I could tell you everything,” he said. “Eventually I’m going to find a way to do exactly that. But for right now, let me tell you this. Where I come from, there’s this thing, like I told you, called Arcadia. Nobody goes hungry. Nobody gets sick. Nobody has more than anyone else. You know how you asked me if I was rich? The truth is, I am and I’m not. I have everything I need, but so does everyone else. It’s all equal. But it wasn’t always like that. And some people—people who’re descended from the people who ruled in the time before Arcadia—they want to make things the way they used to be. They want to bring us back to a time when some people had more than they needed, which meant that other people didn’t have enough.”
“So those men in the Chevy dealership?”
“They’re working against Arcadia. It’s the first time in five hundred years anyone’s opposed it.” Touch lay back down, but on his side, still looking at me. By now he had a few days’ worth of stubble across his jaw. Even in this light I could see how sharp and sculpted his cheekbones were.
When he spoke again, his voice sounded very low, and also very matter-of-fact. It was a voice that conveyed simple truth. “If you could translate my wife’s name into your language, it would be Alabaster. She’s very fair, with pale skin and white-blond hair. Blue eyes. She’s small. Like a pixie, I used to think. I’ve known her since I was a child. But we’re not together now. And the reason for that is, she’s one of the people working against Arcadia. That’s why I don’t want to know her anymore.”
Inside my head, all Wendy Lee’s memories told me not to believe him. She’d heard it a hundred times before and it never did turn out to be the truth. But there lay Touch, all earnest and so damn handsome. Besides which, my choice in the world was pretty much to forgive him—trust him—or be completely alone for the rest of my livelong days.
“What about me?” I said. “Do you want to know me?”
He smiled. A slow, sexy smile that just about melted me from the neck on down. “I certainly do,” he said.
I pulled that balaclava over my mouth. Then I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Hard. It mostly tasted like wool. But beyond that I could feel his lips, and smell his breath, like being held just one step away from the most wonderful thing in the whole wide world.
I kept that balaclava up over my face, only my eyes showing. He threw his arm over my sleeping bag. And the two of us fell asleep, the first time in my life I’d come close to sleeping held up in someone’s arms.
Rogue. As of yet I hadn’t given much thought to the name Touch gave me. But the next morning in the tent, it was the first thing that came into my head when I opened my eyes. Touch still lay sleeping beside me, and my heart set right in to thumping happily at the sight of him. He had his hat pulled down almost over his eyes and his sleeping bag up to his chin. We’d gone ahead and bought him the most expensive one at Walmart. It cost eighty dollars and the tag said it would keep a person warm down to ten degrees. His sleeping face looked so dear to me in this morning light. I wished I wasn’t so dangerous, so I could wake him up just by covering him with kisses. I ignored Wendy Lee’s voice in the back of my head, warning me not to forget about his pretty, blond, extraterrestrial wife.
Back in school, in biology class, I’d learned that a rogue gene was some chance strangeness that nobody could trace. That’s how Touch had meant it when he gave me my new name. Probably he had no way of knowing the word could also mean just a plain bad person. Aunt Carrie used to use it for horses that spooked easy. To my ears “Rogue” sounded a whole lot more like what I’d become than Anna Marie, that harmless and obedient country girl I’d left back in Caldecott County.
Touch had very long lashes, especially for a guy. I lay there looking at him for a while, until they finally fluttered open. He looked like I was about the best thing in the world anyone had ever seen.
“Hey,” he said. He took his arm out from his sleeping bag and wrapped it around my waist. Pulled me close to him, but not before I had a chance to slip the balaclava up over my face.
“Hey yourself,” I said. It sounded kind of muffled on account of the hat. This time Touch kissed me. On the other side of the wool I could feel his mouth open just the tiniest bit. I had never even French kissed before (Cody and I didn’t exactly have time to get to that level), and I knew that if I was normal, that’s what we would be doing right at this moment. But Touch was mostly getting a whole lot of wool on his tongue. He pulled away and picked off a strand or two.
“Sorry,” I said.
“That’s OK.” He pulled me close again, but this time just kissed the top of my forehead in a brotherly kind of way. The way he pressed himself against me, though, through our many layers of sleeping bags and clothes, was decidedly not familial. I could feel the outline of his body against mine, and I knew he could feel me, and all I wanted to do was press against him, here in the tent. It felt amazing for about one full minute, before I thought I’d probably go crazy from wanting to feel his lips on my neck. Hell, wanting to feel his lips everywhere… I sat up. Touch said, “Are you OK?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just hungry.” I crawled out of my sleeping bag and out of the tent, then stood up in the crisp morning air. There was still a tiny chill left over from last night, but the sun was on the rise and I could tell the day was going to be hot.
The truth was Touch still didn’t know what all could happen if he did touch my skin. It hardly seemed fair to keep letting him get so close when he didn’t know the consequences of slipping up. Hadn’t I already taken two innocent people unawares? To say nothing of that poor little kitten.
I put the new plates on the car, then lit a fire. I threw in my driver’s license and library card for good measure. If the FBI really were looking for me, it was better to have no identification than the real thing. And as for that Prius, I figured we should make it look like it had had a few years on the road, not so shiny and new, so Touch and I went to work, rubbing sand all over the car, trying to muck it up and make it look dingy and old. I dented it up with a rock and scraped the paint clear off in places. We worked on it about an hour, and it sure did look like a different vehicle than the one we’d stolen back in Napoleon.
After that we ate some of the granola bars we’d bought at Walmart and went off for a hike. I carried a little backpack for water, plus I figured we’d want to shed some clothes along the way when the day warmed up. Or I’d want to, anyway. We walked all through the dunes, till I worried we wouldn’t be able to find our way back, everything looked so much the same.
Sure enough, it got hotter and hotter, and I found myself shedding clothes one piece at a time, till I was hiking in my leather jeans and tank top, everything else stuffed into the little backpack. I tried taking my shoes off, but the sand was too hot to go barefoot. Touch, of course, kept most everything on, even his hat.
“Where’s the nearest ocean to here?” he asked me.
“Not for a thousand miles, at least,” I said.
He shook his head like this was beyond belief. “Where I come from, there’s no place that’s a thousand miles from the ocean.”
“Really?” I said. “Would you believe I’ve never seen it? The ocean, I mean.”
Touch look
ed over at me and smiled, and though he didn’t say anything, I could tell he couldn’t wait to show me the sea. Kind of funny, if you think about it, that he could show me something in my very own world that I’d never seen before. I wondered if that’s why he wanted to head west, then had to remind myself that he didn’t know which coast was which, or where.
Around lunchtime we came to a very pretty stream, kind of flowing through the dunes. There was only an inch or so of water, but after we followed it awhile, we came to a spot where it kind of spread out into a little pond. The water rippled across it, almost like waves.
By the time Touch and I headed back toward our campground, I was starting to feel like Colorado—the Sand Dunes in particular—might just be paradise. Staying here forever and ever seemed like a perfectly grand idea. It wasn’t like we had any place to go, anyway.
“Sounds good to me,” Touch said, when I told him this plan. Then I thought of something I didn’t have the heart to share: how cold it would get here, at this high altitude, once wintertime rolled in. But for now it was summertime, and everything felt just perfect. Hot enough for Touch, at least with his extra layers, and dry enough that I didn’t feel like I was about to melt into a puddle at his feet. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel anywhere even close to lonesome. And all of our various pursuers seemed worlds away—some of them literally.
What in the world could ever go wrong?
And dang if I didn’t know better than to ask a question like that. If it had been dark, we would’ve seen them sooner. As it was we barely had time to dive behind a juniper bush and crouch down low. Spinning, whirling police lights, parked in our campground, one officer giving that car a careful inspection and the other one on his hands and knees, getting a good old eyeful of everything that was in our tent.
Rogue Touch Page 10