“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.
“I’ve never been able to look before,” Julian says simply, and takes one more step toward me. The light falls differently across his face, and now I can see a softness in his eyes, a blur, and it makes the roaring heat in my body melt away into warmth, a steady, wonderful feeling. At the same time, a tiny voice in the back of my head pipes up: Danger, danger, danger. Beneath it, a fainter echo: Alex, Alex, Alex.
Alex used to look at me like that.
“Your waist is so small.” That’s all Julian says: in a voice so quiet I barely hear him.
I force myself to turn away from him. My hands are shaking as I wrestle the sports bra, and then my shirt, over my head. When I turn around again, I feel afraid of him for some reason. He has come even closer. He smells like rain.
He saw me topless, exposed.
He looked at me like I was beautiful.
“Feeling better?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, dropping my eyes. I finger the cut along my neck carefully. It is about a half-inch long, and clotted with dried blood.
“Let me see.” Julian reaches out and then hesitates, his fingers an inch from my face. I look up at him. He seems to be asking permission. I nod, and he slips his hand, gently, under my chin, tipping it up so he can look at my neck. “We should bandage it.”
We. We are on the same side now. He is refusing to say anything more about the fact that I lied to him, and the fact that I’m uncured. I wonder how long it will last.
Julian moves over to the backpack. He rummages for the first-aid materials we stole, and returns to me with a large bandage, a bottle of peroxide, some antibacterial ointment, and several cotton puffs.
“I can do it,” I say, but Julian shakes his head.
“Let me,” he says. First he dips the cotton balls in the peroxide and dabs the cut carefully. It stings and I jerk back, yelping. He raises his eyebrows. “Come on,” he says, hitching his mouth into a smile. “It doesn’t hurt that badly.”
“It does,” I insist.
“Yesterday you went head-to-head with two homicidal maniacs. Now you can’t take a little burn?”