Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only problem I ran into.
Eating or, rather, the absence of it, was yet another difficulty. The group stopped twice for meals; once when everyone woke up and again near dawn when they set up camp. Rations were simple: half a can of beans or a few strips of dried meat, whatever they had scavenged or hunted or gathered. Mealtime was easily the most anticipated part of the day, and after a night of forced marching without a break, everyone was starving.
Except me. And I had to get creative with ways to dump food without anyone noticing. Strips of meat or dried foods were easy; I hid them in my sleeves or pockets until I could toss them later. Canned beans, fruit and stew in bowls were a little trickier. When I could, I gave it away or dumped it into other people’s bowls, though I could only do that so many times before people got suspicious. Sometimes I lied, saying I’d already had my share, and once I even ate a few spoonfuls of tomato soup in front of Zeke and Jeb, managing to keep it down long enough to walk calmly behind a tree and puke it back up.
I felt a little guilty, wasting food when it was so precious and scarce. And the Fringer street rat in me cringed whenever I threw perfectly good meat into the bushes or dumped half a can of corn down a dark hole, but what could I do? If I didn’t keep up the appearance of being human, people would start to suspect. Like Ruth, who already had it in for me. I could hear her, sometimes, talking about me to the rest of the group, spreading suspicion and fear. Most of the adults—Teresa and Silas and Dorothy—paid little attention to her; they had bigger concerns than the jealous accusations of a teenage girl. But some of the others—Matthew, Bethany, even Jake—started eyeing me with distrust. As infuriating as it was, I couldn’t do anything about it.
Despite that, it was Jeb who worried me most, the silent judge, whose sharp gray eyes missed nothing. But even though he was the leader, he seemed apart from the rest of the group, separate. He rarely spoke to anyone, and everyone seemed afraid to approach him. In a way, it was a good thing he was so detached from the rest of us; he didn’t seem to care what anyone did or said as long as they followed his lead. If it wasn’t for Zeke, relaying his orders back and forth, he wouldn’t interact with the group at all.
In fact, I would’ve bet that I knew more about the group than he did. I knew Caleb loved sweets and Ruth was terrified of snakes—something I took great pleasure in when I found a garter snake on the road one night and snuck it into her tent. The memory of her screams made me snicker the rest of the evening. I knew Teresa, the old woman with the bad leg, and Silas, her husband, had been married thirty-nine years and were getting ready to celebrate their anniversary next fall. I knew Jake had lost his wife to a rabid attack three years prior and hadn’t spoken a word since. These facts and memories and snippets of their lives trickled in and stayed with me, even though I did my best to remain aloof. I didn’t want to know about their pasts, their lives, anything about them. Because with every passing day, I knew I was going to have to pick one of them to feed from, and how could I do that when I knew Dorothy fainted at the sight of blood, and eight-year-old Bethany had nearly died one winter when a fox bit her?
But it was Zeke who continued to fascinate and confuse me. It was clear that everyone adored him; despite being Jebbadiah’s second, he was always helping, always making sure people were taken care of. Yet he never asked for anything, never expected any help in return. He was respectful of the adults and patient with the kids, making me wonder how he and Jeb could be so different. Or maybe, Jeb could be that way because of Zeke. That hardly seemed fair, to dump so much responsibility on Zeke’s shoulders, because Jeb himself didn’t want to get involved, but who was I to say anything?
One night, when we made camp a bit earlier than usual, I wandered toward the campfire and was shocked to find Zeke sitting near the flames, reading to Bethany and Caleb. Stunned, I crept closer, hardly able to believe it. But he was reading, his low, smooth voice reciting passages from the large black book in his lap, the two kids perched on either side.