Caleb guided the horse back down the path. “So what happened to him?” I finally asked, when we were halfway to the woods. “To Leif?”
Caleb’s agile body moved with the horse’s, as if they were one. I watched the back of his gray T-shirt, focusing on a spot where the cloth split at the seams. I had the sudden urge to reach out and touch it, but I kept my hands firmly on Lila. “Leif had a twin brother then. Asher. Anything you said, they would always glance sideways at each other before responding, like Leif was checking what Asher would do first, or Asher was deciding whether to laugh.” We started back through the woods, down to the rocky shore. “We went to work one day and Asher was sick. Looking back, I don’t think it was anything major, it couldn’t have been. But the guards were terrified. It was only a few years after the plague.” He buried his hand into his brown hair. “When we came back his bunk was empty. He was gone.”
“He died?” I asked. The horse shifted beneath me and I stroked her side, suddenly thankful for her calm, warm presence.
“No.” Caleb shook his head. “They took him into the woods and left him there.”
“Who?”
“The guards. They pinned his legs down with rocks. We could hear them bragging that night, about how they’d saved us all from the return of the plague.”
I brought my hand to my mouth, imagining one of the boys at camp, alone in the woods, sick, with his legs pressed to the ground.
“It was like something inside of Leif broke. I never saw him—the old him—again. He was a different person after that night.” Caleb dismounted and drew his bow and arrow, moving slowly toward the deer at the shore. A few raised their heads, but seeing Caleb, so calm, so still, they turned back toward the water.
He took a few more steps before aiming at a doe off to the side. The arrow left the bow and a moment later plunged deep into the deer’s fleshy neck. The other animals scattered as the doe staggered back, stunned. Within seconds, Caleb released another arrow, which hit her in the side. Panicked, she ran into the water, then struggled back up the shore, a trail of blood in her wake.
“Stop!” I cried, scrambling off the horse, my eyes fixed on the wounds in her neck and side. “She’s in pain.”
Caleb approached her, his steps unhurried. “It’s okay,” he said softly to the doe. He took the animal’s neck in his hands and unsheathed his knife. “It’s going to be all right.” Then he whispered something to her, over and again, which seemed to ease the panic. He brought his knife to her neck. In one swift motion he slit her throat, and the blood spilled out onto the pebbled shore, clouding the lake water red.
The tears came hot and fast, my body shaking as I watched life leave the animal’s eyes.
I had grown up with death. I’d seen it all around me in the faces of neighbors, hauling sleeping bags into their backyards for burial. I’d seen it beyond the car window, in the lines of people rioting outside the pharmacies, their skin mottled and red. I’d seen it in my own mother, standing on the front porch, blood dripping from her nose.
But for twelve years, inside that School, I had been safe. The walls protected me, the doctors were there to cure us, I wore the warning whistle around my neck. As Caleb cradled the deer’s head in his hands I wept harder than I ever had. For here it was, waiting for me all along: death, inescapable death, everywhere. Always.
Chapter Fourteen
THE NEXT MORNING, THE MEMORY OF THE KILL RUSHED into my thoughts before I could raise my head from the mattress. The boys had been waiting for the deer to arrive, and had carried it into the dugout, roping its limbs to a broken branch. I retreated to the cavern quickly, back to a sleeping Arden. I couldn’t stand to see it opened up and the skin peeled back, the tender meat exposed.
I turned on the lantern by our bedside, filling the room with a soft white glow. Caleb had brought us a pile of clothes, freshly washed in the lake. I stood and pulled on a button-down shirt. I still didn’t know where the owner of the children’s books was, or why he’d abandoned his room. On the side of the desk sat a notepad. I pulled it out, taking in the four simple words: My name is Paul. The handwriting was wobbly, the letters unevenly spaced. I thought of what Caleb had said about the boys, how in some ways they’d had it worse than the girls. I closed my eyes and imagined Ruby being herded into that room with the narrow beds. I heard her question the doctors, in the innocent way only she could. Where are our books? When is our first trip to the City of Sand? Why are we being strapped down? They had taken so much from us, but we’d been given one thing at least. I would always know how to read, to write, to spell my own name.
Behind me, bare feet smacked against the mud floor. I turned just in time to see a tiny person dart toward me and yank the notepad right out of my hand. The boy had matted, light brown hair and wore mud-caked overalls with no T-shirt underneath.