“Do you remember any of the other stories you read?” I ask.
“No. None of the songs, either. Just that one line… ‘All you need is love.’” He sings the notes again.
We lie in silence for a bit, and I begin to float in and out of consciousness. I am walking the shimmering silver ribbon of a river winding through the forest, wearing shoes that sparkle in the sun as though they are made out of coins…
I am passing under a branch and there is a tangle of leaves in my hair. I reach up and feel a warm hand—fingers…
I startle into awareness again. Julian’s hand is hovering an inch above my head. He has rolled over to the very edge of his cot. I can feel the warmth from his body.
“What are you doing?” My heart is beating very fast. I can feel his hand trembling ever so slightly by my right ear.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but doesn’t move his hand. “I …”
I can’t see his face. He is a long, curved shadow, frozen, like something made of polished wood. “You have nice hair,” he says finally.
My chest feels like it is being squeezed. The room seems hotter than ever.
“Can I?” he asks, so quietly I barely hear him, and I nod because I can’t speak. My throat, too, is being squeezed.
Softly, gently, he lowers his hand that final inch. For a moment he leaves it there and again I hear that quick exhale, a release of some kind, and everything in my whole body goes still and white and hot, a starburst, a silent explosion. Then he runs his fingers through my hair and I relax, and the squeezing goes away, and I’m breathing and alive and it’s all fine and everything will be okay. Julian keeps running his hand through my hair—twisting it around his fingers, curling it up and over his wrist and letting it drop onto the pillow again—and this time when I close my eyes and see the shining silver river I walk straight into it, and let it carry me down and away.
In the morning I wake up to blue: Julian’s eyes, staring at me. He turns away quickly but not quickly enough. He has been watching me sleep. I feel embarrassed and angry and flattered at the same time. I wonder if I’ve said anything. I used to call Alex’s name sometimes, and I’m pretty sure he was in my dreams last night. I don’t remember any of them, but I woke up with that Alex-feeling, like a hollow carved in the center of my chest.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask. In the light everything feels tense and awkward again. I can almost believe last night was a dream. Julian put his fingers in my hair. Julian touched me. I let him touch me.
I liked it.
“A while,” he says. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Nightmares?” I ask. The air in the room is stifling. Each word is an effort.
“No,” he says. I expect him to say something else, but the silence stretches long between us.
I sit up. The room is hot, and it smells. I feel nauseous. I’m reaching for something to say, something to bleed out the tension in the room.
And then Julian says, “Do you think they’re going to kill us?” and the swollenness deflates at once. We’re on the same side today.
“No,” I say, with more confidence than I feel. As each day has passed I’ve grown more and more uncertain. If they—the Scavengers—were planning to ransom Julian, surely they would have done it by now. I think about Thomas Fineman, and the polished metal of his cuff links, and his hard, shiny smile. I think of him beating his nine-year-old son into unconsciousness.
He might have decided not to pay. The thought is there, a needling doubt, and I try to ignore it.
Thinking of Thomas Fineman reminds me: “How old is your brother now?” I ask.
“What?” Julian sits up so his back is toward me. He must have heard me, but I repeat the question anyway. I watch his spine stiffen: a tiny contraction, barely noticeable.
“He’s dead,” he says abruptly.
“How—how did he die?” I ask gently.
Again, Julian nearly spits the word out. “Accident.”
Even though I can tell Julian’s uncomfortable talking about it, I just don’t want to let it drop. “What kind of accident?”
“It was a long time ago,” he says shortly, and then, suddenly whirling on me, “Why do you care, anyway? Why are you so curious? I don’t know shit about you. And I don’t pry. I don’t bother you about it.”
I’m so startled by his outburst, I nearly snap back. But I’ve been slipping too much; and so instead I take refuge in the smoothness, the roundness, of Lena Morgan Jones’s calm: the calm of the walking dead; the calm of the cured.
I say smoothly, “I was just curious. You don’t have to tell me anything.”