Strikers (15 page)

Behind me, Cassi asks, “Well?”

I like the lake better but I don’t want to dampen her pleasure so I plaster a believable smile on my face—not too big or too small a smile—and say, “I never could have imagined it like this.”

It’s true, because I imagined something far grander, but she takes it like I hoped she would and beams at me through her chapped lips. Grand or not, I’m grateful Jordan knew of this place. Even I can see how good a place it is to hide and cross from. I turn to ask him but close my mouth when I see him with his head pillowed on crossed arms braced by his knees. It looks terribly uncomfortable but his face is slack with sleep.

Maddix and Connor are braced against the back wall, leaning against each other, their heads touching and fast asleep. Only Jovan, Cassi and I are wide awake.

“I’ll take first watch,” Jovan says. “You two sleep.”

Cassi says, “Deal.” She scoots back enough to lean on Connor and just like that, her eyes are closed while she waits for sleep. I know she can still hear us, but it gives the illusion of privacy between Jovan and me. It feels incredibly uncomfortable, like I’ve just discovered my pants are unbuttoned and I’m wearing old underwear. Very exposed. Mostly, because we still haven’t even acknowledged that he spent hours holding my hand the day before. He saves me from finding some way to start the conversation.

“Karas,” he says. His voice is rough in his dry throat. I wish I had water to give him. The sound of it makes me swallow but there’s no spit to work up and my throat clicks loudly. His face is no cleaner than mine, but it takes nothing from his looks.

In the light through the crack where he’s been looking at the river, his hair has strands of gold in the brown and his eyes remind me again of a bird of prey’s. They are a nice, warm brown most of the time, but when the light strikes them just right, they are the precise amber color of the hawk that hunts my garden and stares at me from atop the safety of our fence.

“What?” I ask, avoiding his gaze by turning my face back to the crack. I stretch my cramped legs out into the space between us and give a sigh as the muscles stretch.

“I know you didn’t sleep much yesterday. Go sleep. I’ll watch,” he says. Then he surprises me by leaning over the gap and touching my calf to get my attention. It does that and more. It stops my breath. Not because it hurts or anything, but because it’s him and he’s touching me in a place most people don’t touch me. I find myself staring at his hand on my leg.

He takes it wrong, of course, and jerks his hand back like he’s offended me. “I promise, if anything happens, I’ll wake you first,” he says, but the moment has passed and they’re just words.

At least sleep will make the time go quickly and stop me from thinking about how much I want to stick my whole head in that muddy river and drink my fill.

The smell of smoke wakes me. Smoke is a two-edged sword so I wake confused as to whether I should be afraid or eager. Fire is always a danger in this part of Texas where the rain is fickle, but it is also a sign of fun, food and warmth. It might means camping, or it might mean my house is burning to the ground. Confusion is entirely understandable.

“Hey, hey,” Cassi soothes. Her face looms before me, glowing white in the dark. “It’s okay. Time to wake up.” She darts out of the gap before I have a chance to do anything other than blink myopically at her. I hear a few harsh whispers and the clank of a pot, then she clambers back in with a broad smile on her face. Her clean face.

“You’re clean,” I say. I sound surprised and that’s rude. “Uh, I mean…”

“Thirsty?” she asks, cutting me off with a wink. In her hand she holds one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. A canteen. Water drips off her fingers and dots the outside and I swear I can smell the water inside.

The water is still hot and it burns the cracks in my lips as I drink. Cassi yanks the canteen down when I keep gulping and I groan as some of the precious water splashes into my lap.

“Hey! Slow down. I don’t need you puking it up, too. We’ve had enough of that already.”

“Who puked?” I ask, after I’m done gasping down the sheer bliss of that long drink.

“Oh, Connor,” she says and ticks off the name by extending a finger. “Then Maddix and Jovan did a little harmonious puking.” She demonstrates it for me until I’m laughing in my corner.

“Glad I missed that,” I say when the laughter dies away. I hold out my hand for the canteen and she hands it to me with reluctance, so I reassure her. “I’ll go slow.”

“Come out when you can. If you hurry, you can get washed up,” she says and then she’s gone again, as quick as if she’d not been panting from thirst and whimpering in her sleep not too long ago. The sunshine in Cassi has returned, just like that. I wonder if she knows what a gift that is. I wonder if she knows how much I love that about her.

I’m sore yet again and I’m starting to wonder when I’ll just stop recognizing it as something unusual and begin to accept that as my normal state of being. My feet feel like sausages stuffed into my boots and my leg muscles are as hard as old wood. I pull out the band holding my ponytail and run my fingers through my hair. It feels sticky at the crown, sweat, dirt and oil having made a mess of it. To say that I could use a wash is a mighty understatement.

In the shelter of the clustered rocks they’ve built a tiny fire and contained its light by stacking smaller rocks around it. The pot is already steaming with a new pot of water but this time I see chunks of beet floating around in it. That sight wakes up my stomach, or else the water did, because it grumbles loudly at the sight. No one else seems to hear it, for which I’m grateful.

“Why did you let me sleep so long?” I ask Jordan, who’s carefully stirring the pot and poking at a beet to check for doneness.

It’s Jovan who answers, poking his head over the ledge above us. “Because you needed it. I think you’re the only one who didn’t sleep enough in the ditch.” His smile looks funny from this angle, all upside down, but it still brings out a return one from me. He ducks back over the ledge and out of sight.

“Go have a wash in the river. Just keep your clothes near in case we have to hurry. So far, we’re clear,” Jordan says and pokes at another piece of beet. “Oh, and drink another canteen.”

We swap canteens, my empty one for his mostly full one, and I take off down the slope toward the sluggish river. The water has revived me in ways I find hard to believe simple water could. I feel alive down to the deepest parts of my body. And tingly. Of course, the tingles could just be the layers of grime shrinking on my skin. The jury’s still out on that.

The moon is only just up and the night is incredibly dark. I should be more careful with my steps but I’m in a hurry to get clean. My flashlight needs a charge so I plop down and wind it while I look around as much as I can. There’s not much to see, just darkness broken by darker shadows. The firelight behind me is well shielded, but the little bit of light that leaks out does wonders for showing the shape of the slope.

Once the light is charged enough to last the length of time it will take me to wash, I cup my hand around the lens and find the water. It’s more than murky and not very inviting. If I weren’t so dirty, I’d wonder if it could even get me clean. However, there’s no time for daintiness and I’m not going to be the only one left wallowing in my stench.

It’s takes mere seconds to strip down. Sinking into the mud and water feels like a special sort of bliss. I should be cold—the water certainly is, and the air definitely is—but I’m enjoying it too much. Scooting around in the shallow water to find a deeper spot, I get lucky and find one almost two feet deep.

I shove my flashlight into the sand and pile a bit of it against the lens so it’s not so bright. The water may be shallow but who knows what might be living in it and making its hungry way toward me? Better to see bad stuff coming before it gets here, I always say. A few handfuls of the sand from the sandbar work perfectly for scrubbing and I start to feel a little more human as the layers of dead skin and grime come off.

I lean back and let the slow current sweep over me. My hair wants to stay in clumps next to my scalp at first. It just reinforces how disgusting it feels. But the water feels so good now that I’m not looking at it that I relax, spread my arms and let it do its thing. Tickles touch my skin as the dirt loosens its hold and my hair streams above my head with the current. It’s glorious and I just want to enjoy this feeling forever.

The cold starts to get to me and my forever is apparently measured in short minutes. I hear the patter of falling pebbles and look up, thinking someone might be coming down, but there’s no one there except the disappearing shape of Jovan at the top of the ledge.

That makes me lunge up, knees to my chest. Was he just looking at me? Could he even look at me? I put my arm in the water as a test. It disappears from view the moment it’s covered and the tiny bit of light coming from my flashlight does nothing more than cause a shine to reflect back from the water. No, he couldn’t have seen anything even if he was looking. He was probably just doing his duty, keeping the watch. Still, it’s past time for me to get out.

Back at the fire, the beets are done and Jovan is with the group. I look at him, but it seems like he’s avoiding my gaze. Wonderful. More awkwardness.

They’ve waited for me. My butt barely hits the spot they kept open for me around the fire before the spoon dips in. It’s all I can do not to snatch the spoon when it’s my turn or just stick my head into the pot and fish the beets out with my mouth.

I’m not a huge fan of beets as a general rule. I grow them because they do well in the early spring and by the time I can harvest them, we’ve usually been out of vegetables for a while. They grow fast and I can snip some of their greens even before the beets themselves are ready. So while they aren’t my favorite, they are familiar.

Except that now they’re not. How did I not know they were this sweet? That they felt this good to chew? How did I not recognize that when they hit my stomach they feel like I just ate a steak?

“Oh, this is so good,” I moan. Laughter greets my pronouncement but it’s a laugh of recognition and fellowship. When I look around me, I see the others feel the same way. “I guess I’m not the only one who’s decided they love beets.”

We cross the river while it’s still pitch dark, using just the cupped lights to aid with our footing. We take a quick stop afterward to put on our boots and we’re off once more. Officially, we’re out of Texas, in a place called Oklahoma, but that means almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. This is a sort of no-man’s-land where no one lives and patrols wouldn’t give a second thought to coming for us if they saw us here.

When the moon rises, I think it looks fatter than before, which is both good and bad. Good because we’ll stumble less and bad because it means anyone out here will be able to see us better, too.

The pace Jordan sets is brutal, just short of a jog, and the night is broken by the sound of harsh breathing within an hour of our crossing the river. We’re not paralleling the river but veering away from it toward the north, where a line of trees breaks up the flat profile of the plains. They look lush to me, new leaves shining in the moonlight. It’s smart. We can take cover under them if we need to and have a ready place to spend the day.

I hear the tinkling of water a few times from within the trees, which explains why the trees are so lush. Eventually, we cross a stream that’s clear and deep over the rocks in its bed. Its path meanders toward the river. I’d like to stop at it, but we have to keep moving so I just listen to the sound of it fading behind me.

There are plenty of patrols to keep things lively and send us running into the tree line. Their lights sweep over the bank but they hardly seem to be looking, more like making a show of having looked. Again, I’m grateful for their aversion to risk.

There are no bridges over the river that I know of. There are the remains of bridges, but the bridges themselves are long since destroyed. We have no trade north of the river, even if there were anyone to trade with, so a bridge would just offer an easier path for the smugglers or the wild people who decide to take a chance on raiding.

Dawn finds us snug and well concealed near an old deadfall grown all over with brush. It’s a perfect spot. The loam beneath the trees is as soft as a bed. Once we settle down enough that the birds don’t mind us, their songs let us know that no one is nearby. My heart feels lighter and the ever-present fear of being found has retreated for the moment, leaving me ready for sleep.

It isn’t just the woods, a thing of beauty I’ve only seen surrounding the lake, or the cool moist earth that sticks together when I grab a fistful instead of crumbling to dust. It’s everything. I’ve just spent hours walking with Jordan, hearing about River Oaks and the boy who is my brother. I’ve been listening to details of our trip to come and what lies beyond even the distant place he lives, further east where an ocean so vast it makes the Gulf look small stretches endlessly.

He spoke to me in such a familiar way, comfortable and glad to listen when I spoke in my turn. The way he looked at me, with such fondness, was enough to make me shy at times, but he smoothed over the awkwardness each time. And then, when we found this spot, he ran my dark ponytail through his hand—which seems to be his way, like another person might squeeze an arm or cup a cheek—and told me, “I always dreamed you’d be wonderful. I just didn’t dream you as wonderful as you are.”

I can feel the others all around me now that we’re all settled in. I hear the scrape of Maddix’s shoes on old leaf litter as he keeps watch and the small sound of Connor breathing through a half-clogged nose. I feel the presence of Jordan nearby, between me and any clear path so that I’ll be safe against the trees. And I can feel Jovan, too. He gave me space last night, but I could tell he was keeping close and listening to Jordan talk, just as enthralled as I at what he heard. He’s next to me now, a scant foot of space separating us.