by Tara Brown
I start to feel bad when I notice the burn on his face and annoyance he’s trying to temper.
I glance back at everyone else. Jake and Anna don’t hide their fury. Bernie gives me a weak look and Leo pants like I’ve never seen before.
I realize I bullied them. I made them feel weak. The feelings inside of me are bad. Only Star looks like me, slightly burnt but not dying. The rest look like they might melt any second. Jack struggles for breath but winks at me. I don’t know what that means but he laughs at my confused look.
Leo walks past me for the rain barrels. I follow him, but they’re dry. A slight panic starts to hit me. I need water and my pack is back at the retreat. I have what water they brought and we found along the way. I’m thirsty.
Will comes back with leathers of water. He hands me one. I feel bad. Somehow I’m always the bad guy with him. Everyone sucks from the leathers like there’s no tomorrow. I share mine with Leo.
“Hey, don’t give that dog that water. He can find his own or drink with the livestock,” someone shouts at me. I glance up to an angry man coming towards me.
He points at Leo.
No one points at Leo.
The man gets close to Leo, and maybe it’s the dehydration, or the exhaustion, or the fact I hate myself, but I punch him in the cheek hard when he reaches for the leather of water. My hand makes a cracking noise because of the angle and the fact I wasn’t really ready to smack someone around. Will has me in the air, giving me a good swing with my boot. I connect with the guy’s arm, sending him flailing back on the yellow, crispy grass.
Will wraps around me and Leo stands between the man and me. His back hair stands up. Jake runs to us, “That’s not a dog. He’s family.”
Bernie follows, “He’s our family.”
The guy wipes blood from his lip, “Crazy bitch.”
I try to free myself but I don’t have to. I get a blur of something as the man goes down. Anna’s arm comes up. Bernie grabs her, pulling her off the man. She’s whispering and kicking like a ferocious animal.
I snarl after the man, “He’s not a dog, idiot.”
Jake is laughing so hard, he can barely get his breath when he lifts the guy up, “Run…just run…” He laughs harder.
I smile when I see the way his dark face is scrunched in the laugh. He holds his stomach and shakes his head. I feel a vibration behind me, Will is laughing too.
The people in the camp are looking at us from their tents and the forest. The few people here are confused, but the group of us ignores them and all laugh. Anna’s is a high-pitch wheeze. I shove Will away as the guy flees for his life and wrap an arm around Anna and kiss her cheek. She hugs me back.
“I’m sorry I doubted you,” I mutter.
She shakes her head, “I know you meant to keep us safe. But we need to do that for you too.”
I could cry; I love her so much. I don’t know if there is enough room in my heart for the things I feel. I don’t think it’s the right kind of heart. I think it’s a mutant heart.
I look at my knuckles and wince. One of them looks funny, kinked maybe. Looking at it brings on the pain.
Anna follows my gaze and makes a face, “Is that broken?”
I shake my head, “I don’t know. I guess.” I look for the guy. I need to finish beating him for breaking my knuckle.
Will grabs my arm and spins me. He does it gently, like we’re dancing like in the old movies. He’s fighting the urge to start shit. I give him my bent finger in his face, “Don’t start with me.”
He growls, “Don’t start shit.”
Jake steps in the way, “Em, your finger’s bent the wrong way. Come on.” He grabs my wrist of my good hand and pulls me to the med tents. I watch the hurt look on Will’s face and grin at him. It's my bitter, twisted, I-hate-you grin. I don’t and I can't but I can pretend to.
Asshole.
Always grabbing at me and dragging me around. I lo,ok up at Jake. His dark hair and dark eyebrows make his blue eyes pop normally but being in the sun as much as we have, his skin has darkened a ton. He’s so dark reddish-brown that his blue eyes shine like there’s a light behind them. I think there might be a light. He is like a light.
“Stop staring at me like that,” he gives me his cocky smile, “Or I’ll give you the kiss you’re asking for.”
I look away immediately. I don’t think I want that kiss.
When we get to the med tents, I see my usual doctor right away. He gives me an exasperated look. He looks really brown too. “Seriously?” he asks.
Jake laughs and holds my hand up, “Yup.”
Doc looks at it and shakes his head, “This is gonna hurt.”
I sigh, “When doesn’t the shit you have to fix hurt?”
Jake laces his fingers into my good hand, holding me tightly.
Doc sits across from the stump I’ve sat on a few times now, and pats it. I slump into the chair with Jake still holding my good hand.
His slender, clean finger gently touches all the places. He sighs, “Well, I have good news and bad.”
“Bad first.” My dad always said get the bad outta the way so the last thing you remember is the good.
“It’s going to hurt really bad, in about…now” he snaps it back into place. I scream and Jakes pulls me off the stump. He holds me, “Calm down.”
I puff and give him a deadly stare. He chuckles, “Hey, I didn’t do it.”
I look at the doctor, “What the hell?”
He laughs, “The good news is it was only dislocated, not broken.”
It stings but I can move it. I wiggle it and stomp out of the tent. I hear Jake tell him thank you.
I stalk over to where Anna is smiling at Bernie. When I get there she whispers, “Marshall is at Bernie’s, they think.”
My eyes narrow, “He stole your house?”
Bernie sighs, “I think he might have. I was just telling Anna here, we should just let him have it. Who cares? I don’t. It’s my house and I don’t care. Why do we have to go to war with Marshall?”
Anna gives me the same smile she was giving Bernie. I grin at her, “What was your response to that?”
She shakes her head, “I wanna taste his goddamned blood in my teeth when I separate his head from his body.”
I nod, “Yeah, that’s about my feeling on the matter.”
Bernie looks defeated, “No. No. She’s gotten more intense this last couple weeks. She’s going to end up sick from the stress.”
I frown, “Who’s stressed? Besides you? She doesn’t get stressed. Who gets stressed in the world we live in? There’s no stress. It’s live or die. We just like to have some control over whichever one is gonna happen.”
I read that in one of Gramp’s books. It was a civil war book. I thought it would be like Gone with the Wind but it definitely wasn’t. It was more scary and harsh. I will say it suited the world I live in more than the romance ones. Although I’ve been finding those ones aren’t so far off either. Stomach flutters and boys who kiss girls who don’t belong to them, and men taking things they shouldn’t, and guys who are with more than one girl, and girls always losing their senses around boys.
I have a sneer on my face when I stumble upon Will. He sighs, “What did I do now?”
I shake my head at him and walk over to the ladies in the circle; Jake calls it the circle of doom. The Jake dog is there. He runs up, smiling and bounding all about. I drop to a knee, “Still here—hey there, golden Jake? You stayed?”
The one with the scar laughs, “Oh, he knows where his dinner is. He ain’t gone too far since he got here.”
I smile, “Sounds about right.” Him and Jake are so alike it’s frightening. I run my fingers through his fur and scratch his head. He slobbers and pants. Leo is there suddenly, giving me a traitorous look. It looks a lot like the one Will gives me. I smile and start to see the irony.
I stand and walk to Jake. I grab his arm, “Can I talk to you?”
He gives me a funny look, which I ge
t. I never ask to talk to anyone but it makes more sense to try to be humane about.
He follows me into where Will is standing. I grab his arm, like he always does mine and pull him with no explanation. We get into the cooler part of the woods and I start to pace.
“What’s up, Em?” Jake gives me a look.
I sigh, “I’m sorry for liking you both the way I do. I don’t know how to not like you both. Jake you’re so sweet and funny and you’re actually immature for your age, which is fun and no one has fun anymore. Everyone is so old and stodgy and annoyed and tired. The world is awful in a lot of ways, and yet, you’re always smiling and finding things that don’t make it awful. You laugh for no reason and remember the things we had before. I like all those things.” He smiles and gives Will a smug look.
I turn to face Will and press my lips together, “Will, you make me feel all the things I always daydreamed about. Granny had all those books, and when I got tired of the manuals and the survival guides, I started reading those books. They made remember things, like old movies and the way my friend’s parents would look at each other. They made me wonder what it felt like to have someone look at me like that. Then I met you. You looked at me like that the minute you met me. Cocky and sarcastic and kinda mean but in a sexy sort of way. I like that. You made my heart race, before you hurt me.”
I force my eyes from him, because I can't finish the most important part of the speech if he’s looking at me.
I fight my nerves and my screaming brain and just blurt it out, “I love you both. I can't stop. So if I can't choose one, I choose none. I can't be with either of you. Family is more important than anything in the whole world now. If you don’t have family, you don’t have anything. I see that now because of meeting you. I want you both in my life and that means you have to be in my heart as brothers and nothing else. I won't come between you two.”
I don’t look at them. I walk away fast. Neither of them moves. I break into a run. I can't face them. I need time to let the red blush across my face and for the tears in my eyes to settle. I've never said so many things before. I never had anyone to say them to.
Thinking about them not liking or loving each other because of me, breaks my heart. I never want Will to give Jake the look Leo gives the Jake dog.
Leo comes over, nuzzling against me. I run my fingers into his hot coat and nod, “We need to find a stream, buddy.” I walk to Star and nod, “Since I’m mending fences and all, I just want you to know I’m not mad you slept with them both.”
She gives me a strange look, “I never slept with Jake. He was strung out on you. When you and Will had sex he got so mad. He said he can't sleep with girls who have sex with his brother. So I guess that rules us both out, huh?”
I frown, “Really?”
She nods, “Yeah, we only made out a bit. I thought it might go somewhere but it didn’t.” She shrugs and pats me on the arm, “Who you gonna pick?”
I shake my head, “Both and neither. It’s the only way it can be.”
She snorts, “Emma, you gotta calm down. You’ve just spent too much time alone and you’ve never been around boys before. They mess with your head and your heart and your hormones. They make you want and think things and sometimes your body doesn’t listen to you. Sometimes that means you make a little bit of love to a fun guy. Yeah, maybe it's not the right kind of love, but look where we are. God gave up on us a long time ago. Have some fun.” She laughs and walks away.
I don’t feel better. I don’t dare look behind me. I know if I see either of them I’ll fall to pieces. I walk to the edge of camp in the opposite way from where I left them. I pull out my knife and start to cut branches that will make excellent arrows. Leo lies on the ground beneath me and falls asleep.
Anna comes over with a bunch more. She drops them at my feet and pulls out her knife. She starts; she’s slower than I am but she is getting good at it. She whispers, “You broke their hearts.”
I nod, “Yup.”
She nudges me like Leo always does, “You ever think that maybe they don’t know how to love you the right way either?”
I give her a sideways stare, “What?”
"Who have they ever liked as much as they like you? No one." A smile plays on her chapped lips, “You just don’t know how to be around boys, Em, and they don’t know how to be around girls.”
I stick my tongue out at her, “Says the girl who fell for the first guy she spent any time alone with.”
She laughs her high-pitch wheeze, “But I’ve been around boys my whole life. You never have.”
“I had Leo.”
He raises his head, making us both laugh. She scratches his ears, “I think you think that loving my brothers is like loving a man how a woman should. But there are different kinds of love. You never know who you might fall in love with if you stop worrying so much about it. Just relax and let nature take its course.”
"I don’t wanna talk about it." I whittle and wonder how it’s all going to work.
She sighs and I hate the sound of it, “You know Jake brought their guitars with him. I guess Will leaves them at the retreat. They’re too cumbersome to carry all the way here, but Jake brought them. He’s had them strung over his back the whole walk. He did it ‘cause he wants to get back to what him and Will used to be. They were best friends. Will was his hero. Two goofy brothers who spent their days playing and laughing.”
I frown, “I never even noticed them on his back.”
She laughs, “You never stopped for more than two minutes. We aren’t like you.”
I feel those words.
She nudges me, “You were made to survive this world, Em. We weren’t. You and Star were made to live through the bad and the worse, and now the new regime. That’s what Will calls it, a regime.”
I shake my head, “Maybe I can be like that fiery crow and burn up and be reborn from the ashes as one of you.”
“Why would you want to?”
I don’t have an answer. Not one I’m willing to say aloud.
I sigh and look at the pile of arrows. She smirks, “See, you are made for this.”
My pile is huge to her tiny one. The branches she brought are gone too. I shake my head, “I feel just as lost as everyone else.”
I see a tear slide down her cheek, in my peripheral. She smiles and starts filling my quiver with the arrows, “But you aren’t lost. Something is calling you all over these woods. Something is telling you what to do next to make it all end. You’ve been in the right place and the right time for everything so far. Maybe it’s like Meg says, maybe it’s God. Maybe he sees what your dad did and he knows your heart is good.”
I look up into the dark-green canopy, “Maybe.” The image of Jesus in the room with me, floods my mind. I haven’t thought about him much since.
She stands and offers me her hand. I look at the dark-brown of her skin and place mine in it. She wraps her hand around mine. Our skin almost blends, it's so dark. We look the same on the outside. I lift my bow and quiver and sling them over my back. Leo stretches and follows us back to the camp. Star comes up. Anna sighs but I smile at Star, “Hey.”
Star gives me a look. I think she trusts Anna’s scowl more than my attempt at being civil. “What’s going on?” she asks dubiously.
"Nothing. Just wondering what the story is with Marshall."
She presses her lips together and looks back.
“Just level with me about this whole Marshall thing.”
She nods, “Okay.” I see a blush on her cheeks as she turns and points to a group of men, “They said that Marshall left with about twenty people. Mostly men. They knew we’d abandoned Bern’s house and decided they could fortify it and take it over. It’s self-sustaining. He fed the people here a bunch of lies about creating the work farm commune there. Said they would send word when it was ready for these poor saps. They actually believe him too. So we’re good to fight twenty men?”
I nod, “I am. No one else fights.”
; She gives me a look, “I’ll fight with you. Marshall trashed my brother’s house.” She grins, “Our brother’s house.”
I look at Anna, “I can't worry about Jake and Bernie. I know Will will be okay but I can't risk it. Putting them in harm’s way, makes me sick. Can you just stay here and cover for her and me, so we can get down the mountain to a truck?”
Anna gives me a look and shakes her head, “I have a better idea.”
I hate the look in her eyes.
It’s ambitious.
Chapter Two