Downtown Denver is considered a safe zone until 9:00 PM tonight or until further notice. Medical care and food distribution centers on the 16th Street Mall will remain open until that time. [Emergency Broadcast, Denver, CO 4/4/05]
'Shar, turn the AC up. It's getting' all sweaty in heah.' Charles wiped at the back of his neck. Nilla studied the small thin hairs there, the way they lined up where his hand had plastered them down. She could see his pores opening up in the heat, the tiny droplets of sweat gathering together, turning into rivulets that ran down into his collar.
'It's all the way up already,' Shar complained, but she played with the controls anyway.
In the back seat Nilla felt the heat but she stayed perfectly dry. Her sweat glands didn't work anymore. She tried rolling her window down a crack but the air that came pushing in felt like the exhaust from a blast furnace. Too much. She was tired of riding in the car, tired of being hot and cooped up.
The two of them shared a coke'the last of the sodas they'd pilfered from the motel'but they didn't think to offer her any. They had barely spoken to her since they'd started out that morning. When Charles had stopped to refuel at an abandoned gas station at a lonely intersection high in the mountains Shar had gotten out with him, as if she didn't feel safe in the car with Nilla.
She could hardly blame the girl, she supposed. Not with the kind of thoughts she'd been thinking. Mael Mag Och had told her the kids weren't her friends. She'd seen for herself the way the living looked at her'like she was something unclean. The enemy. Why should she think of them any other way? She didn't belong among them anymore. That should have been clear to her from the start.
Mael had said she should abandon Charles and Shar. That she should make her own way east. He'd said some other things that she didn't even want to think about but he'd been quite clear on that point. No more fraternization with the living. Something in her responded to that message and she longed to strike out on her own. No more dirty looks. It would be so much easier than the silent game the three of them were playing.
Still'he was who knew how far away. Hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. She could hardly walk across the country. She needed the kids. If she wanted her name back she had to have a ride. Surely he would understand. He seemed to have a pretty poor grasp on the English language and he had kept lapsing into what sounded a little like Gaelic, she thought. Maybe he wasn't from America originally. Maybe he didn't know how far his body was from her. He would have to understand.
Just to get out of her head for a while Nilla nudged the back of Charles' seat. He tried not to flinch. 'So when are you going to tell me?' she asked, intentionally cryptic, a little ashamed of what she was demanding when the two of them had clearly intended to keep it amongst themselves.
'Charles,' Shar said, as if she expected her boyfriend to lurch into violence at any moment. Maybe that was what Nilla expected, to, or even hoped for. It would be a great justification. The boy didn't say anything, though.
'Seriously, I want to know. Why did you run away? Were you getting beaten by your parents or something? That would make sense.'
'I know you didn't just say somethin' 'bout my moms,' Charles muttered. There was no force in the words, no anger. He was scared of her now. It angered her more than anything. She had turned to him for a little human contact and now he was scared of her. What the hell was up with that?