now
It’s still raining in the morning.
I sit up slowly. I have a wicked headache, and I’m dizzy. Julian is no longer next to me. The rain is pouring through the grates, long, twisting gray ribbons of it, and he is standing underneath them.
His back is turned to me, and he has stripped down to a pair of faded cotton shorts he must have found when we scavenged for clothing and supplies. My breath catches in my throat. I know I should look away, but I can’t. I’m transfixed by the sight of the rain coursing over his back—broad and muscled and strong, just like Alex’s was—the rolling landscapes of his arms and shoulders; his hair, now dark with water; the way he tips his head back and lets the rain run into his open mouth.
In the Wilds, I finally got used to seeing men naked or half-naked. I got used to the strangeness of their bodies, the bits of curling hair on their chests, and sometimes on their backs and shoulders, to the broad, flat panes of their stomachs and wings of their hipbones, arcing over the waistband of their pants. But this is different. There is a perfect stillness to him, and in the pallid gray light he seems to glow slightly, like a statue carved out of white rock.
He is beautiful.
He shakes his head a bit and water pinwheels from his hair, a glittering semicircle: Happy and unaware, he starts to hum quietly. All of a sudden I am horribly embarrassed: I’m trespassing on a private moment. I clear my throat loudly. He whips around. When he sees me awake, he jumps out of the stream of water and scoops his clothes up off the platform lip, covering himself with them.
“I didn’t know you were awake,” he says, fighting to get his T-shirt on, even though he’s soaking wet. He accidentally gets his head caught in an armhole and has to try again. I would laugh if he didn’t look so desperate.
Now that he has cleaned away the blood, I can see his face clearly. His eyes are no longer swollen, but they are ringed with deep purple bruises. The cuts on his lip and forehead are scabbing over. That’s a good sign.
“I just woke up,” I say as he finally gets his shirt on. “Did you sleep at all?”
Now he’s wrestling with his jeans. His hair makes a pattern of water spots around the neck of his T-shirt.
“A little,” he says guiltily. “I didn’t mean to. I must have dropped off around five. It was already getting light.” His jeans are on. He hauls himself up onto the platform, surprisingly graceful. “Ready to move on?”
“In a bit,” I say. “I’d like—I’d like to get clean, like you did. Under the grates.”
“Okay.” Julian nods, but doesn’t move. I can feel myself blushing again. It has been a long time since I’ve felt this way, so open and exposed. I’m losing the thread of the new Lena, the hard one, the warrior made in the Wilds. I can’t seem to pull myself back into her body.
“I’ll need to get undressed,” I blurt out, since Julian doesn’t seem to be taking the hint.
“Oh—oh, right,” he stammers, backing away. “Of course. I’ll just—I’ll go scout ahead.”
“I’ll be quick,” I say. “We should get moving again.”
I wait until Julian’s footsteps are a faint echo in the cavernous space before stepping out of my clothes. For a minute it’s possible to forget that the Scavengers are somewhere out there in the dark, looking for us. For a minute it’s possible to forget what I’ve done—what I’ve had to do—to escape, to forget the pattern of blood seeping across the storeroom floor, the Scavenger’s eyes, surprised, accusatory. I stand naked on the lip of the platform, reaching my arms up toward the sky, as ribbons of water continue twisting through the grates: liquid gray, as though the sky has begun to melt. The cold air raises goose bumps on my skin. I lower myself to a crouch and ease myself off the platform, splashing into the tracks, feeling the bite of metal and wood on my bare feet. I slosh my way over to the grates. Then I tip my head back so the rain hits me square in the face and courses down my hair, my back, my aching shoulders and chest.
I have never felt anything so amazing in my life. I want to cry out for joy, or sing. The water is icy cold, and smells fresh, as though it has carried some of the scents of its spiraling journey past stripped branches and tiny, new March buds.
When I’ve let the water drive over my face and pool in my eyes and mouth, I lean forward and feel it beat a rhythm on my back, like the drumming of a thousand tiny feet. I haven’t realized until right now how sore I am all over: Everything hurts. My legs and arms are covered with dark bruises.
I know I’m as clean as I’m going to get, but I can’t bring myself to move out of the stream of water, even though the cold makes me shiver. It’s a good cold, purifying.
Finally I wade back to the platform. It takes me two tries to heave myself up off the tracks—that’s how weak I am—and I’m dripping water everywhere, leaving a person-sized splatter pattern on the dark concrete. I wrap the long coil of my hair around one hand and squeeze, and even this brings me joy; the normalcy of the action, routine and familiar.
I step into the jeans I took from the Scavengers, rolling them once at the waist to keep them from falling off; even so, they hang loose from my hipbones.
Then: footsteps behind me. I whip around, covering my breasts with my arms.
Julian steps out of the shadows.
Keeping one arm wrapped around my chest, I grab for my shirt.
“Wait,” he calls out, and something about the tone of his voice—a note of command, and also of urgency—stops me.
“Wait,” he repeats, more softly.
We’re separated by twenty feet of space, but the way he’s looking at me makes me feel as though we’re chest to chest. I can feel his eyes on my skin like a prickling touch. I know I should put on my shirt, but I can’t move. I can hardly even breathe.