Julian’s not looking at me, but I can feel an alertness in his whole body, an absorption, and it makes me feel even more exposed than if he were staring.
“Your hair smells like roses,” he says, and before I can respond, he wrenches away from me and into the hall, and I am left alone, with a fluttering in my chest.
While Julian bathes, I set out dinner for us. I’m too tired to light up the old woodstove, so I set out crackers, and open up two cans of beans, and one each of mushrooms and tomatoes; whatever doesn’t need to be cooked. There’s salted beef, too. I take only a small tin of it, even though I’m so hungry I could probably eat a whole cow myself. But we have to save for others. That is a rule.
There are no windows in Salvage and it is dark. I turn off the lantern; I don’t want to waste battery power. Instead I find a few thick candles—already burned down almost to stubs—and set those out on the floor. There is no table in Salvage. When I lived here with Raven and Tack, after Hunter had gone with the others even farther south, to Delaware, we ate like this every night, bent over a communal plate, knees bumping, shadows flickering on the walls. I think it was the happiest I’d been since leaving Portland.
From the bathing room I hear watery, sloshing sounds, and humming. Julian, too, is finding heaven in small things. I go to the front door and crack it. The sun is already setting. The sky is pale blue and threaded with pink and gold clouds. The metal detritus around Salvage—the junk and the shrapnel—smolders red. I think I see a flicker of movement to my left. It must be the cat again, picking its way through the junk.
“What are you looking at?”
I whirl around, slamming the door accidentally. I didn’t hear Julian come up behind me. He is standing very close. I can smell his skin, soapy and yet somehow still boy. His hair curls wetly around his jawline.
“Nothing,” I say, and then because he just stands there, staring at me, I say, “You look almost human.”
“I feel almost human,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. He has found a plain white T-shirt and jeans that fit.
I’m glad Julian doesn’t ask too many questions about this homestead, and who stays here, and when it was built. I know he must be dying to. I light the candles and we sit cross-legged on the ground, and for a while we’re too busy eating to talk about much of anything. But afterward we do talk: Julian tells me about growing up in New York and asks me questions about Portland. He tells me about wanting to study mathematics in college, and I tell him about running cross-country.
We don’t talk about the cure, or the resistance, or the DFA, or what happens tomorrow, and for that hour while we’re sitting across from each other on the floor, I feel as though I have a real friend. He laughs easily, like Hana did. He’s a good talker, and an even better listener. I feel weirdly comfortable around him—more comfortable, even, than I did with Alex.
I don’t mean to think the comparison, but I do, and it’s there, and I stand up abruptly, while Julian is in the middle of a story, and carry the plates to the sink. Julian breaks off, and watches me clatter the dishes into the basin.
“Are you okay?” Julian asks.
“Fine,” I say too sharply. I hate myself in that moment, and I hate Julian, too, without knowing why. “Just tired.”
That, at least, is true. I am suddenly more tired than I have ever been in my life. I could sleep forever; I could let sleep fall over me like snow.
“I’ll find us some blankets,” Julian says, and stands up. I feel him hesitating behind me, and I pretend to be busy at the sink. I can’t bear to look at him right now.
“Hey,” he says. “I never got to thank you.” He coughs. “You saved my life down there—in the tunnels.”
I shrug, keeping my back toward him. I am gripping the edges of the sink so tightly my knuckles are white. “You saved my life too,” I say. “I almost got stuck by a Scavenger.”
When he speaks again, I can tell that he’s smiling. “So I guess we saved each other.”
I do turn around then; but Julian has already taken up a candle and disappeared with it into the hall, so I am left with the shadows.
Julian has selected two lower bunks, and made them up as best he can, with sheets that don’t quite fit and thin woolen blankets. He has placed my backpack at the foot of my bed. There are a dozen beds in the room, and yet he has chosen two right next to each other. I try not to think about what this means. He is sitting on his bunk, head ducked, wrestling off his socks. When I enter with the candle, he looks up at me, his face so full of open happiness that I almost drop the candle, and the flame sputters out. Now we are left in darkness.
“Can you find your way?” he says.