"I don’t want you to see me."
He smirks, "I won't peek. I swear." I don’t trust the glint in his eyes.
I hesitate for a second and decide I care less about him seeing me than I do about having the remnants of the garbage truck on me.
I wince when I lift a small pale of water. It's cold but I can see straight to the bottom. It's clean. I pick up the soap off the shelf where it's dried. I can smell the lye. It stings my skin as I lather and start to scrub.
"How bad was it?"
I am trying not to fall over as I peel the bandages off my feet. The sores looked mostly healed. I scrub everything.
"Bad." The lye stings the blisters on my feet. My eyes water. I rinse my feet quickly to get the soap off.
"How bad."
"What did Anna say?"
He peeks over the sheet, "Nothing. Why the hell do you think I'm asking you?"
I blush, "Hey turn away." I sigh and start scrubbing my arms and chest. I have to keep rinsing the soap because it gets caked easily in blood and filth.
"It was scary bad. The place is so white that you feel like a ball of dust and dirt walking in there. The nurses and doctors are all shiny and clean. Like the fall never happened. They glisten and seem like they want to help you. The rooms are clean, the food is amazing."
"Doesn’t sound too bad."
I peek over the cloth, "It's not real. It's an illusion. They're fattening you for the slaughter. They get you pregnant three times and then they kill you. We rode out in body bags in a garbage truck full of dead women and girls."
I watch his face. His lip curls into a sneer, "You're positive?"
I nod, "The bags tore when we were scrambling in the truck trying to get away."
His mouth betrays very little emotion but his eyes are full of it. I pour a pail over my body and rinse off. I don’t get my face wet and when I rinse my hair I tilt my head back. My arms tire easily from the scrubbing. I'm not looking forward to making the trip to the other camp. I force myself to focus on Leo and Meg.
"Can you get Anna? I need my back cleaned." I don’t normally wash it, but I want every bit of the garbage truck off of me.
"No. I'll do it." I want to argue but I don’t. I'm not sure why.
I just try not to think as he bends and picks up the soap and a pail. I close my eyes. His hands drag the soap softly along my back and then the soap is gone. His fingers are creating heat trails up and down my spine where he touches me, bare skin to bare skin. His strong hands knead my shoulders, relaxing me.
"Relax." He whispers into the tent. I don’t look at him. I ignore him and enjoy the feeling of another person touching me. I imagine my granny cleaning me.
The cold water is shocking where he has touched my back. He tilts my head and rinses my hair again. My hands don’t move. They cover my breasts. I'm frozen like a statue.
His huge hands stroke the long locks. I can feel myself thinking things, things I've read about.
He squeezes my hair, "Emma what happened before with you and Jake."
My stomach clenches.
I feel a towel wrap around my hair and twisted up.
I don’t turn and face him.
He wraps a thick towel around my shoulders. I wrap myself quickly.
He turns my shoulders, "Is that what you want? Do you want to be with my brother?"
I shake my head and his eyes light up. I open my mouth to speak but he bends and presses his lips against mine. His kiss is soft but hungry. I push on his firm shoulders but his arms have pulled me into him. I finally get my face away from his and gasp, "I meant I don’t know what I want."
His grip tightens. His blue eyes sparkle with anger, "You shook your head. That means no."
I feel intimidated by him still. My lips tremble. I clutch the towel.
His lips turn into a bright smile, "Don't look at me like that Emma. I can't be mad when you look like that."
"Why are you mad at me?" I sniffle. I want to shout things at him. I don’t know how to be around him.
He pulls me in again and kisses me softly. His hot breath makes me shiver again. "I'm not going to stop fighting for you."
I nod into his face. "I need clothes."
He kisses my forehead beside the bandage, "You need that tended to before we go."
He walks to some huge trunks in the corner. He opens one and pulls out a pair of khaki pants with pockets on the sides and a long sleeve black t-shirt. He throws them at me.
I miss my underwear and sports bra. I had kept it for years. I miss my mother's jewelry.
I pull the t-shirt on and try not to notice the pain in my body.
"You are black and blue you know that?"I look down for the first time and see my skin is all bruised.
"I was clean and shiny. My hair was glossy."
He nods, "I saw the girls at the breeder camps. They looked like people did, before." I wiggle into the pants without revealing my naked body to him. That doesn’t stop him from watching.
His blue eyes are scaring me.
Anna pokes her head in and smiles, "You guys ready?"
Will speaks but doesn’t take his eyes off of me, "Yeah, just need Emma's head re-bandaged."
Her grin is annoying. I glare at her. She puts a hand out for me, "Come on, I know the way." I give him a wide birth and take her hand. I look back at him watching me like a predator.
She smiles, but I frown. "He scares me."
She laughs, "He is different. Let me tell you. He used to be such a dork." I grip her hands tightly.
An hour later, a new bandage, and a shot for tetanus and antibiotics and we are on our way. I chew a leg of turkey Jake found for me. I gobbled a bowl of oats when the first aid guy was redoing my bandages. Sarah has apparently eaten them out of house and home. I tried to explain she is used to a lot more food. That earned me a cruel grimace from the cook.
The trail doesn’t seem familiar. I see the broken branches and want to smile but I don’t. I touch one with the tip of my turkey free hand and glance back at Jake. He grins and winks at me. He's so easy to be around. I love his carefree smile and worry free ways.
I slow down and toss the turkey leg into the bush. I miss Leo. He would have eaten it.
"How the head?"
I look at Jake who's waiting for me.
"Good. Sore. How's the leg?"
He nods in the direction of the turkey leg, "Better than the turkeys." I laugh. Meg is going to love Jake. I know this.
"Did you miss me?" He asked and nudges my shoulder. I feel my face light up instantly.
I nudge him back, "Yeah. I missed everything. Anna missed you a lot. She was pretty excited when I told her you made it to the camp."
He nudges me back, "I missed you."
I feel my lips curl up into a smile, "I miss Leo."
He laughs his hearty loud laugh that will one day get us all killed, "I miss that wolf more than I missed my own brother." I see Will's eyes glance back at us. He doesn’t look impressed, "Hurry up you two."
Jake laughs again and nudges me harder, "I think he likes you."
I smirk, "I think he likes girls in general. Did you meet the one in the tiny shorts and barely there tank top?"
Jake laughs, "I did. She is uhm, interesting. She's a masseuse actually."
I raise an eyebrow, "What's that?"
He snorts, "She rubs your skin to relax you. It's called a massage."
I roll my eyes, "Big shocker there. I know about massages. I just never knew the people who did them were called that." I think about her touching Jake or Will and I want to stab her in her pretty blue eyes with a fork or a spear, which ever was on hand. Hopefully the spear.
"Did you get a massage?" I ask.
He laughs, "No I saw the line up of dudes going in and decided to wait for you to come back."
The smile on his face makes me feel like we are the only two people in the world.
I bet Will has had a few massages. I want to break things. Instead I focus on Jake and a funny story he tells me about killing the turkeys.
Will is making a fire when Jake and I crest the hill. Sarah is helping him and listening to every word he says. Kids love Will. It's weird. The little white haired swine who attacked Leo liked Will too. Thinking about the little brat at the camp makes my skin crawl. I'm grateful Sarah is a good kid. Her and Meg are my kind of kids. Not really kids but still young enough to be called a kid.
Will gets the fire going quickly.
I take my bow and quiver that he kept safe for me while I was away, and head into the forest.
The quiet of the forest fills me. I relax and feel the bow in my hands. Everything is relaxing. I can feel the tension leaving my shoulders as I roll them a few times. I pull out an arrow and pull it back. I hold it taut and ignore the pain in my arms or the tremble of my line.
I listen. I hear a crack on the forest to the right. I see something beige. I hold my breath and narrow my eyes. I see the tail of a huge cougar. It's a female. I don’t kill cougars. I don’t kill cats. It's a rule I have.
I wait for it to leave the area. I know nothing is going to move or make a sound while it's there. It stops and looks at me for a minute.
It's beautiful eyes meet mine and we stare for a second. It sees the bow and leaves.
After about a half an hour of just listening to the forest I hear another noise, beyond the birds that have returned. I pull the arrow and wait. I see a spike deer. It's more meat than we can eat but it will be good to bring meat to dry into venison jerky. I focus on its soft brown eye. When it takes its next step it senses me. It turns its head and instantly the arrow is let fly. The arrow pierces the eyeball and the deer drops. I wait a few seconds. Just in case. Nothing moves beyond the odd twitch of the deer.
I pull my knife out and squat next to it. I gut it. I split the back tendons and hang the deer from a branch. It's heavy, even gutted.
"Wow."
I look back at Will standing watching me.