The gutter system caught a bit of dew from the air, and I gave it all to Raine. It wasn’t enough, though. It wasn’t near enough to keep her going. Every time I glanced over at her, I wondered what her eyes were going to look like when she was so dehydrated she couldn’t lift her head anymore. She had lost weight, and she had already been too small. She had to roll the hem of my boxers and tuck them in some elaborate, almost-in-a-knot way to get them to stay on her hips. The shirt nearly dropped to her knees, covering the boxers anyway.
It had gotten to the point where she wasn’t even completely coherent any longer. She talked about her dad sometimes as well as her friend Lindsay and other people she knew in school. She also had started asking the same questions more than once, which frustrated the hell out of me. I wasn’t a lot better off, though I was still with it enough to know how much she had deteriorated over the past few hours. I was used to extreme circumstances – I’d lived and killed in them. I was also a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than she was to begin with, so there was simply more water inside my body. I still felt like shit, and my head was starting to get dizzy when I moved around too fast. My arms and legs itched like a motherfucker, too.
Mostly, she slept, which was good. She talked when she dreamed, but most of it didn’t make any sense to me. Once she said my name. I didn’t know what to think of that and tried to ignore the little flutter of…something inside of me when she said it.
I reached over and ran my hand down Raine’s forearm, careful not to wake her as I pulled lightly at her skin. Normally, skin elasticity would have caused it to jump right back, but hers didn’t anymore. It stayed in a little upright, wrinkled pucker for a few moments before smoothing out again. I thought her heartbeat was a little faster as well.
Your body can survive in amazing situations; you just have to convince your mind to do what you tell it to do.
“Bastian?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it time for more water?”
I sighed and tried to keep myself from jumping down her throat. She had asked the same question an hour ago, and there wasn’t any water then, either.
“I have to find some first, babe.”
“There isn’t any, is there?” she asked after a moment.
“No, Raine,” I said. I moved backwards a little until I was in a good position to lie down on my back next to her. “It’s all gone.”
“Are you going to look for fish again?”
“I just did,” I said. “No signs. Now quit talking and rest.”
“Will you talk to me?”
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. I knew what her answer would be. She always said the same thing.
“Tell me something else about you.”
“Aren’t you tired of hearing about my fucked up life?”
“No,” Raine said. Her voice cracked, and I could tell it was taking too much effort for her to even talk. “I want to…understand you.”
“You be quiet and I’ll talk, okay?”
“Uh huh.”
I tried to think of something I could tell her that I hadn’t already talked about. I hoped if I just stalled long enough, Raine would fall asleep again.
“Tell me about Jillian,” Raine said.
“No,” I snapped. “I told you before, don’t say that name.”
“I told you about Andrew.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I snapped again. “Don’t say her name.”
“Well, what will you tell me about?” she growled right back at me, her voice suddenly steady again. I supposed I should have seen it as a good sign. She was annoyed, which meant she was more lucid than she had been a while ago. I also knew it was a fluke, and unless I found her water, it wasn’t going to last.
“How about telling me why you started drinking so much?”
“It helps me sleep.”
“Is it hard for you to sleep?”
I sighed and tried to relax the muscles across my shoulders and down my arms. I leaned back on my elbows and looked sideways at her.
“Can’t you just ask me something easy?” I asked. “Like my favorite food or something?”
“Okay, what’s your favorite food?”
“Pizza.”
“Okay, mine’s chocolate cream pie,” Raine said, smiling a little and looking up at me. “Now why do you have to drink in order to sleep?”
I growled and shook my head. She wasn’t going to give up. Stubborn bitch. At least I wasn’t calling her that out loud anymore.
“I have nightmares,” I admitted.
“I know,” Raine said. I looked over to her sharply, and she lifted her shoulders a little and dropped them again. “I could tell.”
It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but I guess I never thought about how it might look to someone else. I hadn’t had anyone with me when I slept for a very long time. I wondered what I had done or maybe even said. I decided I might not want to know.
“What are they about?” she asked. Her voice was soft and somehow warm as well. When I looked over at her, her eyes showed only concern, maybe curiosity, and a deep need for understanding, but no pity. If I had seen pity…well, I don’t know what I would have done.
“A lot of things,” I said quietly. “Sometimes fights, sometimes about stuff I saw in foster care or the group homes, sometimes I dream about being in jail. It kind of made me claustrophobic, being locked up all the time.”
“You were in jail?”