“And Moss?” I asked. “Where is he now?”
Caleb led me through the dim tunnel. “There were murmurings that he was inside the City, but nothing is certain. For the most part he keeps his location secret and he’s moving around the Trail so much it’s impossible to track him. He’s still sending out messages, but we haven’t seen him in over a year.”
I wished I had known about the radio communications and the Trail before I’d left School. Before I’d walked out of our room, leaving Ruby and Pip in those narrow beds, in their last pleasant sleep. Maybe there would be a chance to send them word from Califia. A chance to reach them.
I felt the soft give of Caleb’s hand as we reached my doorway, the sweet smell of sweat and smoke on his skin. I noticed the freckles that spread out over his nose and forehead, where his skin was browned by the sun. Neither of us spoke. Instead I just ran my hand over his, circling my fingers over the knuckles and his nails, for once not minding that they were caked with dirt. He rested his chin on the top of my head and I breathed in, aware of the mere inch that stretched between my nose and his chest.
“You did great today,” Caleb said after a long while. He squeezed my hand in good-bye.
“Thanks again for teaching me.” I strode into my room, but I couldn’t stop myself. I turned back. He was still standing there, filling up the doorway.
I had listened to what Teacher Agnes had said. I learned about the Illusion of Connection and the Dangers of Boys and Men, and read through the Subtle Manipulations. But beneath all that, somewhere inside me, there was a deeper knowledge. It held a place that even fear and a carefully crafted education could not touch. It was the way Caleb had sung out of tune that day in the woods—just threw his head back and sang, his voice echoing through the trees. It was the food that was set out for us every morning and every evening, the awkwardly folded towels and shirts, the bathwater he dragged in for Arden, without anyone ever having asked.
I knew, perhaps with more certainty than I knew anything else, that this was a good man.
“Good night, Eve,” he said. He lowered his eyes, almost bashfully, and then disappeared into the dark.
Chapter Seventeen
“I BET AARON SWIMS THE FASTEST,” BENNY SAID, SQUEEZING my hand. “He’s like a fish.”
We stood together on a landing just north of the dugout, our eyes scanning the lake for any signs of the new Hunters. Arden’s fever had broken and the color in her cheeks had returned. Her legs were still weak but she’d insisted on joining and I was glad to have her there, by my side.
Arden squirmed free of Silas’s tiny hand. “Your skin is sweaty,” she told him, wiping her palm on her frayed denim shorts. “It’s like holding a slug.” She wiped it again and again, her pale nose scrunched in disgust. “What?” she asked me. “What’s so funny?”
“You really are feeling better.” I laughed. She had been out of bed for less than an hour and her patience was already ground down to nothing. I took that as a good sign.
All day, while I was inside teaching the remaining boys, Caleb and Leif had searched the woods for troops. When the area was declared safe they rode the new Hunters to the other side of the lake, where they began their arduous trek. The new Hunters were to run ten miles around the rocky shore, plummeting finally into the cool depths of the water. Now, at any moment, they would swim around the tree line and run up the beach to where four spears waited for them, their stone blades bone-white in the last of the day’s sun.
I watched that spot onshore where the trees leaned over the water, the spot where Caleb had taught me to swim. Last night, I dreamed that we were in the lake again, the water holding us, his hands in mine. All day, as I walked Arden around the dugout or corrected the words Benny spelled in the mud, he filled my thoughts. His smile, his fingers touching the small of my back, the smell of his skin on my sweatshirt . . .
Kyler, a tall boy with orange curls, ran toward the cliff’s edge. “There they are! I see them!” he cried. He was holding cracked binoculars, and Benny and Silas jumped up, trying to grab them, desperate to look. There, where the water kissed the sky, was a moving speck.
Soon after, the boys came into sight beyond the trees, their bodies heaving in and out of the water like great leaping fish. Michael was out front, his Afro visible even from the rocky landing.
“They’re superfast!” Silas said. His face paint had smeared, leaving golden streaks on his hands. “Look at Aaron go!”