“Saw you. Last night. Saw you run from them. Walkers. Men. Heard shots. Followed. Heard you last night. Crying. Talking.”
Benny cut a quick look at Nix, who avoided his eyes. Had this feral girl heard them kissing? Benny thought about it, then dismissed it. The kisses were hot, but they weren’t loud. On the other hand, he mused, she could have stood on this very spot and watched them kiss. As he thought it, he realized that Nix had already reached that conclusion, hence her avoiding his eyes.
“Lilah … last night, when you heard us talking. Did you hear everything we said?”
She considered, shrugged … then nodded.
“Did you understand?”
That small smile flickered over her lips again. “I … understand. Just not …” She waved a hand back and forth between them.
“You’re just not used to talking,” Nix said. “Not used to conversation?”
“Conversation.” Lilah repeated the word slowly, enjoying it.
Benny said, “We have to get out of here. We have to get back to town. Do you know about town, about Mountainside? Where we live?”
“Know. Some. Not much.”
“Can you take us there?” Nix asked.
“Can,” Lilah said. “Won’t.”
Benny frowned. “You won’t? How come?”
“Eat,” she said, and when they didn’t react, she looked irritated and mimed the action of picking up food and eating it. “Eat.”
“Yes,” Benny said, “I understand that we have to eat, but we also have to get home.”
As soon as he said it, the reality of that word—“home”—hung in the air, filled with ugly images and new meanings.
“Home to what?” Nix asked, turning sharply to him. “Home to who?”
“I …,” he began, but clearly he had no idea of where to go with that thought. She was completely right. Home to who? Her mother was dead. So was Tom. Both of them had empty houses back in Mountainside. Empty houses and wrecked lives.
“Eat,” Lilah said. “Eat first. Eat and think.”
“Eat where? Here?”
Lilah shook her head. “Follow.”
Without another word, Lilah turned and headed into the woods along a path that whipped and turned, snakelike as it cut around the shoulders of the mountain. Nix tried to talk to Lilah as they walked, but the Lost Girl shook her head and moved way out front, apparently liking to be in her own head when out in the wild.
Soon they heard the gurgle of water, and several times they glimpsed streams that cut downland toward Coldwater Creek. Seeing the streams was comforting, because Benny knew that he could use them to find the creek and from there, maybe find his way back to Mountainside. But just thinking of the creek reminded him of Tom.
Nix must have noticed a look on his face and asked him what was wrong.
“Thinking about Tom,” Benny said.
She nodded. “I know. I’m sorry for what I said about him. Mom … Mom really cared for him. I think maybe she was a little bit in love with him.”
“I think it went both ways, Nix.” He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “I used to think I was a reasonably intelligent person. Not like Chong—”
“No one is,” Nix said with a smile.
“And not like you.”
She said nothing.
“But I’m not completely dense.”
“Okay, but what’s your point?”
“I … I never told anyone about this,” Benny began, and then he told her about his memory of First Night, and of his mother in her white dress and red sleeves and screaming mouth. Of Tom taking him and running away. “It’s the first thing I remember,” Benny concluded, “and it’s how I used to see Tom.”
“As … what?” she asked, although Benny thought she’d already guessed where he was going with this.
“As a coward. I think he ran away.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe your mom told him to get you to safety.”
“She did. Tom told me that much, and I believe him, but he didn’t go back for her. He didn’t do anything to help her. All he did was run.”