by Tracey Ward
The BFG.
I want to touch it. I want to pull it out and run through the pages, to get the scent of book in my nose and the feel of the paper beneath my fingers. To read the words and hear my mother’s voice in my warm, darkened room at night as I lay bundled up trying not to fall asleep. But I don’t because it’s dumb. It’s a mistake. It’s crying waiting to happen and I’ve shed enough tears in the last twenty-four hours to last me a lifetime. I’m all tapped out on sad today.
So instead, I close my eyes and I fall asleep.
***
“He’s coming.”
I jerk awake, my arm screaming in pain. I don’t know when I fell asleep or how long I was out, but Trent’s deep, quiet voice snaps me out of it immediately. I sit up in the bed, pressing my back to the wall so I’m facing the door. Outside it I can hear footsteps and a loud, laughing conversation. It’s Ryan. The other voice may be Bray, but I only heard it once before. It’s too long ago and too muffled now to tell for sure. Trent sits at the edge of his bed facing the door. Waiting. It takes me only a moment to notice the knife ready in his patient hand.
“What are y—“
“Shhhh,” Trent shushes me quietly, his eyes steady on mine and his finger pressed to his lips.
With his creepy, all seeing eyes the gesture is just about the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.
“I’ll get you next time,” someone says from down the hall.
“You say that every time,” Ryan replies, his voice laughing, “and every time, who wins?”
“I will beat you.”
“Every single time.”
“Jerk,” the other person grumbles.
“See you at dinner.”
“Yeah.”
The doorknob turns with a creak. I watch Trent’s hand clench on the handle of his knife, the knuckles going white. Every other inch of him looks completely calm. I look around for a weapon of my own. Something to attack Trent with before he can get to Ryan. There’s nothing. Dirty, holy socks and a worn out muscle tee. Worthless. Who doesn’t sleep with a knife by their bed?!
As the door swings open, I hold my breath, my body going rigid on the bed.
Ryan steps into the room. His face is flushed like he was just running. His hair is standing at odd angles, wet around the edges from his sweat. He looks a mess. A vibrant, broad, beautiful mess.
“Hey, Trent, you’re back. Where did you go—“ Ryan’s voice dies out the second he sees me. Then it bursts to life again, far too loud. “What the f--!!! How did--?!?!”
He cuts himself off both times, biting down on his knuckle and dropping into a crouch in front of the door. He isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s staring at the ground, reining himself in.
Hurried footsteps run back up the hall, heading toward us.
“Ry, you okay?” someone asks. They try the doorknob but Ryan quickly throws the lock. He presses his weight harder on the door. “Open the door, man. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Ryan says, his voice tight. “Trent scared the hell out of me, that’s all. You don’t want to come in. He’s naked.”
I frown, glancing at Trent. He’s grinning.
“Why is he naked?”
“To mess with me. Seriously, it’s fine. I’m good.”
“Alright,” the voice replies. He sounds relieved to be kept on the other side of the door. “Tell Trent to put his gear away.”
“Yeah.”
Ryan stays crouched down, his back to me, as the footsteps fade. When they’re gone, when we all hear the click of a door closing down the hall, he stands up slowly. I watch his shoulders rise and fall quickly with a sharp breath, then he turns to face me. His brown eyes lock on mine.
“How are you here?” he whispers roughly.
I grin, feeling myself glow inside just seeing him again. “It wasn’t easy. Your buddy here got me most of the way.”
He looks at Trent, his eyes falling on the knife and ignoring it. I relax a notch. “You saved her from the Colonists?”
“Just the Risen,” Trent corrects. He lays the knife on the plastic crate serving as a nightstand beside his bed. It makes me more nervous unattended than it did in his hands. “She did the rest herself.”
“And the Eleven,” I correct him.
Trent nods slowly in agreement. “But the Colony, that was all you.”
“You escaped from the Colonists alone?” Ryan asks incredulously.
I shift in the bed, wincing in pain from my arm. Ryan takes another step closer to me. It’s a small room. Two more and he’ll be sitting on the bed with me. I hope he has the sense not to do that.
“Did they do that to you?” he asks, gesturing to my arm, his eyes tightening in the corners. “The Colonists, did they hurt you like that?”
I shake my head. “No, I did this to myself while I was running from them. They gave me pie.”
“What?”
“Pumpkin. It was really good.”
“Then why’d you run?” Trent asks.
I look at him, not sure if he’s making a joke or not. His face is stone.
“You are painfully hard to read,” I tell him.
“Maybe you’re not a strong reader.”
“Is that an insult?”
“It is if you take it as one. Perception is—“
Ryan groans loudly. “Trent, come on. It’s not a great time for a philosophy lecture.”
“Or it’s always a good time and you think otherwise due to your perception.”
“No, just stop. Joss, we need to do something about that arm. It looks rough.”
I nod, fighting the urge to look at it again. If I puke, there’s nowhere to do it in this room where I won’t saturate something he owns. Something he uses on a regular basis and no matter how many times he washes it he’ll remember, always and forever, that this was the thing Joss vomited on.
“I don’t know what can be done,” I tell him. I’m trying not to sound like I’m terrified of the idea of him touching it. Of anyone touching it or moving it, even breathing on it. Why can’t we all just pretend it isn’t there?
Ryan comes closer, closing that meager gap between us. I’m aware of his smell and his heat, the same smell in the bed only stronger. Closer. Warmer.
He frowns at my arm.
“It needs to be set or it will never heal right. We should splint it too.”
“What do you mean by ‘set’ it?” I ask. I know the answer and I know it’ll hurt like crazy, but I have to ask.
He meets my eyes. They look sorry. He’s apologizing already for this thing he hasn’t even done yet. This things that’s going to make me cry again.
I nod my head in understanding.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I lie. I’m angry at him that he’s going to do this to me. It’s not his fault, but I’m still angry.
“I’m also sorry we can’t do it here.”
“Why not?”
“I doubt you’ll be able to keep quiet.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath, but I don’t flinch and I don’t look away. “It’s going to be like that, huh?”
He grins but it looks more like a grimace. “Yeah, it’s gonna be like that.”
Chapter Three
Trent has to go to work up in the Crow’s Nest overseeing the world, so it’s just Ryan and I leaving the building. We go the same way Trent and I came in. Ryan is efficient and agile leaving out the window, like he’s done it a hundred times, and I start to wonder if these guys even use the front door to this place.
When we first start walking, Ryan puts his arm around my waist, pulling me in close to him to either support me, guide me or just remind himself I’m really there. Whatever his motives, it makes me nervous and a little scared. I feel trapped. Small and broken beside his strength. When I gently shake off his hold, he doesn’t say a word. In fact, we both stay silent the entire trip to my home.
Although when two Risen cross our path I get a taste of how Ryan fights. I saw it once bef
ore, but it was brief. I was too busy doing my own thing to really worry about his. But now that I’m tucked away in a doorframe again, just as Trent did to me, I get a chance to really see him.
It’s impressive.
He has a weapon I’ve never seen before. It’s like brass knuckles with a spike coming out the middle. When he holds his hand up with all of his fingers curled into his palm around the handle, the spike stands up proudly over his middle finger. Like it’s flipping the entire world the bird. There are only a few spots on the body that this weapon can be used for an instant kill, but Ryan knows them all. He doesn’t hesitate, not one second. He dances around the Risen, looking for the opening he needs, then he strikes like a viper into the eye, the ear. Fast, accurate, brutal. He’s like Trent, quick and efficient, but there’s something so much more fluid about him and his fight. It’s almost like watching a dance.
When he’s done, breathing heavily surrounded by a circle of rotted, mutated bodies, I give him a small round of applause. It’s faint and frail, the best I can do with the hands I have at the moment, but he smiles and bows theatrically. It’s an ugly scene; all death, blood, gore and everything macabre. But there in the middle is this boy. This vibrant, living, breathing, resilient, relentless boy – and he’s smiling. At me.
I cannot help but smile back.
When we finally reach my building, I nearly collapse with relief at being there. I hurry up the steps, jostling my arm painfully but unable to stop myself. I want to see if it’s okay. If all of my things have disappeared or been destroyed. I can’t imagine they’ve been left untouched. Not with Ryan and probably Trent knowing where I live. Something’s bound to have gone missing.
I push inside quickly, Ryan close on my heels. What I see stops my heart. I gasp in shock, unable to understand.
“What?” I whisper to myself.
It’s nothing I expected.
It’s perfect. Everything is in its place. From my bike to the water canister to the Hello Kitty bag I keep my veggies in. It’s all there. Even the blankets that I usually toss onto my makeshift bed are folded neatly. Like they’re waiting for me.
“I came here almost every day,” Ryan says quietly from behind me. “I knew where you were, but I always hoped you’d be here when I came in. Or that one day I’d go to open the door and it’d be locked.”
“How did you know where I was?” I ask, too scared of him and myself to turn around.
“Trent said he saw a girl taken. A girl with long red hair. That would have been enough to convince me, but then he told me she fought like an animal. That she stabbed a guy and broke his nose.” I hear him chuckle softly. “After that, I knew it was you. And I knew that if anyone could get away, it was you.”
“So you waited,” I whisper.
“And I hoped.”
I spin on my heels and I kiss him soundly. I press my body as close to his as my arm will allow and I sigh when his hands slide around me. He’ll never know what that means to me. How much it hurts me to hear him say he hoped I’d come back. That someone out there knew I was gone and wanted me back. It’s what I wanted while I was trapped; for him to remember me and carry me with him in the wild under the free open sky. I’ve been alone for too long, been running from those feelings for years and now here they are staring me in the face, straightening my world and waiting for me to come home. I hate it and I love it and when I think of what I wrote on the wall in the Colony, I whimper quietly in the back of my throat. I missed this. This kiss, these hands, this voice that knows my name, this heartbeat clamoring inside his chest, pushing against mine.
Then I whimper in pain as my arm is crushed between us. Ryan releases me immediately, holding me at arm’s length.
“I’m sorry, Joss,” he mutters, his breathing uneven. “I forgot about your arm. We need to deal with that right now.”
I groan, letting my head hang back. “This is gonna suck so bad.”
“Sorry,” he repeats.
He heads for my bathroom. I’m not surprised when he comes back out with my bottle of vodka.
“Here. Get to work on that. It’ll take the edge off. It’s still going to hurt, but it will hurt a lot less.”
I sniff the open top of the bottle, my lips curling back in disgust. “I’ve never drank it before.”
“I’m a little jealous.”
“Good God, why? It smells like acid.”
Ryan chuckles. “It’ll taste a lot better than the stuff at the markets. Drink too much of what they sell there and you’ll go blind.”
I cringe at the thought of going to the markets. I’m going to have to, though. How else am I going to get an audience with The Hive? I can’t exactly walk up to the door and knock. I’ll be shot or shoved into their stables, no questions asked. It’s something I need to talk to Ryan about, but not yet. One painful thing at a time and right now my arm has soundly called dibs.
I take a swig of the vodka. It’s not bad, not at first. Then the burn hits. I double over, coughing and grabbing at my chest where the heat is coursing through it into my stomach.
“Why?” I gasp, not really sure what I’m asking. Why do people drink this stuff? Why does it hurt so bad? Why are my insides on fire?
“You okay?”
“Ugh!” I groan. I stand up straight, my face frozen in a tortured grimace as the burn just keeps on going. “This is terrible.”
Ryan shakes his head. “That’s the good stuff. And you’ll need more of it than that. Better keep drinking before you lose your nerve.”
I glare at him, thinking of the rooftop. The jump. The fall.
“I never lose my nerve.”
He silently makes a drinking motion with his hand before crossing his arms over his chest, watching me patiently.
I take three more good, long pulls off the bottle before I hand it back to him. It was easier doing it all at once. I still want to die, though. Ryan stows the bottle back in the bathroom before coming to stand in front of me again. He doesn’t say anything, just watches me.
“What?” I ask, feeling antsy being under the microscope.
“Now we wait. It’ll hit you soon.”
“What’s it going to feel like?”
He smirks. “What does drunk feel like? Uh, good, I guess is the best way to describe it. You’ll be a little dizzy, feel a little flushed. You might vomit eventually.”
I frown. “So it’s like being sick.”
“Kinda, yeah. But in a good way. You’ll laugh more, which will be nice.”
“Do you have a problem with my attitude?”
“Asked the girl frowning at me,” he retorts, pointing at my furrowed brow. I try to relax it, but I don’t know if it works. Ryan grins. “Nah, I like you’re attitude, Joss. But I like your laugh too.”
“You’ve barely heard it.”
“Exactly. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Why do you like me, Ryan?” I mumble quietly. “I’m not nice.”
“Oh good,” he says, taking my shoulders, “it’s working.” He sits me down on my bed, pressing my back against the wall. I’m glad to be sitting because the room has started to tilt. “You haven’t eaten recently, have you?”
“Not for hours and hours and hours.”
“This will be fun,” he mutters.
He leans in close. I think he’s going to kiss me, but his head passes by mine as his fingers get to work on the knot of my sling. When it releases, I’m not ready and the pain explodes through my entire body. I grit my teeth hard, willing myself not to make a sound. He sees it when he sits back.
“Are you okay?”
“Uh huh,” I grunt.
“Joss, it’s okay to—“
“I said I’m fine.”
“Alright.”
What happens next is a waking nightmare. Fixing the damage done to my body hurts worse than the damaging did. Tears stream down my face as Ryan methodically cleans, sets and splints my arm. Because the bone pushed through the skin, I’m in danger of getting an
infection. I’m also in white hot agony because Ryan had to realign the bone before he splinted it to make sure it heals right.
That. Hurt.
I’ve never sworn so much in my life. I curse Ryan up and down, sideways, forward and backward, but he never flinches. Never hesitates. He’s calm and collected, completely methodical through the entire thing. He ignores the sweat pouring down my forehead, the shaking in my limbs, the tremble in my voice. At one point, I grab onto his shoulder with my good hand and clench down on it with all my strength, but he keeps right on working. I’ve bruised him, I know it, but he never complains.
When it’s done, when I’m shaking with exhaustion, he finally looks up at me. I expect to find pity or sadness, but there’s nothing. He’s gone numb inside. To do what had to be done, to hurt me to help me, he’s tapped out entirely. Based on his skill at cleaning and splinting my arm, this isn’t his first time. He’s done this over and over again and in order to stay sane, he’s gotten good at not feeling it.
I take a deep, shuddering breath then manage a meager grin.
“Thanks,” I breathe.
“Ha,” he laughs shortly, not sounding at all amused. “I don’t think that deserves gratitude.”
“It wouldn’t heal right if you hadn’t done this,” I mutter, feeling suddenly too weary to live, “and I’d die without it.”
He looks at me long and hard, his expression still carefully blank. I wait, wondering what he’s thinking. Eventually I can’t take it anymore.
“You wanna take a hit of that vodka with me?”
“Hell yeah,” he mutters, already heading for the bathroom.
He sits down beside me, just a breath of space between us, but it’s enough. It’s enough so that I don’t feel overwhelmed with how close he is. That I don’t feel boxed in and afraid. It’s close enough that I know he’s there and the loft doesn’t feel so huge. So empty.