The Wanted (37 page)

ROSA

Denis and Deshi chatted happily in the cockpit because they had those headphone things on. It was as noisy as a windstorm in the back, the blades ricocheting off the low clouds like they were made of rubber. Silence suited us anyway. After we found Orry, we were going to have to find time to talk. Just not now.

Rosa-May’s head lolled against my ribs. She’d slept for hours. I wished I could do the same. I sighed and looked down at our hands lying over each other’s like soft blankets. Calming.

I turned to the window and felt Joseph staring at me. But I liked being under his gaze, so I didn’t move my head for fear he’d look away.

Below, the wilderness stretched endlessly. Creeping up with fronded fingers as we ascended into the mountains. I chewed on my nails as I willed the chopper to move faster.

The chopper dipped suddenly, and we all gripped our harnesses as we flew out of our seats.

“We need to land!” Denis shouted over his shoulder.

It lurched and dove as if it were sitting in a sea storm. My stomach floated along with it. Finally, it touched down awkwardly in a tiny patch of wild grass surrounded by trees.

When it was quieter, Denis removed his headphones and explained. “The battery is flat. It needs to charge for the rest of the day. We’ll have to… camp?” He said it like a question, like he’d never used the word before.

The blades slowed, and we unclipped our harnesses. Joseph stood and stretched his back, raising his arms up to the ceiling and pushing on it. I bit my lip while I watched his arms flex.

His eyes twinkled as they gazed at the sleeping child at my side. Gently, he unbuckled her harness and scooped her into his arms, her dark hair splaying out behind her head as it swayed from side to side with his movements.

We shuffled out of the chopper and as soon as my feet crunched the earth, I felt small. The forests around the settlements were lush, dominating, but new. This world was old. The trees were elders, their gnarled, enormous trunks scored with age and experience. The air had a cold quiet about it, like through the gaps in the trees, eyes were watching us. I jogged to one of the trunks, hopping over ferns and mossy plants. Joseph’s chuckle pulsed through the air in fresh waves. My hand connected with the immense bark, deep cracks running through it like river canyons.

“Wow!” I said in awe as I craned my neck to stare up the branches spinning out and up, up, up.

Both Deshi and Joseph laughed.

Denis asked, confused, “What on earth is she doing?”

Joseph answered. “This is like Rosa’s idea of heaven.”

I wanted to press my whole existence to the trunk and hug it. It felt like it had been years since I was in the forest, even though it had only been about a month. One month of people trying to pull my spirit from my body. I rubbed my face on the mossy bark and breathed in the pungent smell of rotted wood.

Deshi coughed. “Ok, now you’re just being weird. Did that tree give you consent?”

I blushed and stepped back. Under the cover of the immense canopy, the air was warmer. We were protected from the wind and the sprinklings of snow. I gazed up at the small patch of winter-white sky. Unfortunately, we were also hidden from the sun.

“How’s it going to charge?” I asked, pointing at the leaves above. The whole clearing was in shadow.

Denis stared at the soggy ground, not quite sure which way to go. He decided to stand still. “Someone has to climb up there with the panels,” he said, pointing to a tree behind us. The branches were slightly lower but still really high.

Joseph balanced carefully on a stone, with a sleeping Rosa-May still in his arms. “Of course,” he grumbled. “Maybe we should make the Superior’s son climb up there.” His was voice terse with aggravation.

Denis’ face registered alarm at the suggestion.

“I would,” he mumbled, “but I’m injured. Besides, I think we all know who has to go.” His eyes swung to me, my moss-stained hands clasped behind my back.

I would have volunteered anyway.

“Is there any point in saying no?” Joseph asked, his hair shielding me from his annoyed eyes.

I shook my head. “Nope. You ready to throw me?” I needed Joseph to hoist me into the branches. I was smallest and lightest. It made sense that it should be me. He groaned in response.

Denis backed into the chopper like the squidgy ground scared him and sat on the edge, unraveling the wire that connected the batteries in the chopper to the foldout solar panels beside him. Deshi held out his arms for Rosa-May. Her body was still slack with exhaustion, and I started to wonder if maybe she didn’t want to wake up. When she opened her eyes, she would be met with more strange places and missing faces. I understood that feeling. Joseph handed her to Deshi.

Denis leaned over me, showing me how to unfold the panels and where to plug the wire in while Joseph hovered. Then, he rolled them up and put both in a backpack.

I took off my jacket, shoved my overlong sleeves to my elbows, and marched to the tree behind the chopper.

“You ready?” Joseph asked, his green eyes pulsing gold, his eyebrows drawn together in worry.

“It’s fine. It should be easy,” I replied, knowing nothing ever was.

He grabbed me under the arms and lifted me onto his shoulders.

I ran my fingers through his curls briefly before placing my hands on the trunk to balance and standing up on his shoulders.

“You’re lighter,” he remarked.

“She never ate much,” Denis said, and Joseph turned suddenly.

My hands scraped down the bark, and I nearly fell backwards before he grabbed my legs. “Sorry.”

The rich food they’d offered me had often made me sick. I ran a hand down my hip and noticed the sharpness of it, the way it almost pierced my skin. Was that why Joseph was being so careful with me? Did I look frail to him?

I glanced down at Joseph’s head. His shirt flapped open and a series of scars running down his chest shocked me.
Another thing to ask about.

“The food was fatty and gross,” I snapped in Denis’ direction. I reached out for the lower branch, but I couldn’t quite reach it. “Throw me,” I said to Joseph.

He put both hands under my butt, counted, “One, two, three,” and hurled me at the branch. I got my arms around it and scrambled against the trunk with my legs until I was up.

“You okay?” Joseph shouted breathlessly, staring at me from below.

“All good!” I said.

I tucked my hair behind my ears, it swung back out, and I climbed.

Each brush of leaves raises my skin. Each crumble of bark beneath my fingertips brings me closer. I’m climbing to the sky, yet I feel closer to home than ever.

The air cooled as I ascended. The old tree’s branches were so thick and sturdy it was an easy climb. Soon, I was in the canopy watching Joseph pace anxiously below.

Breathing in the frosted air, I let it woo me. I let it rescue me from the disasters, the wounding memories, and let my mind empty. The breeze crackled through my head and blew out the musty corners. They were huddled stubbornly and not easily moved.

Carefully, I unfolded the panels and nestled them in a branch that caught the sun, even in this late afternoon. I plugged the wire in and let it drop to the forest floor.

I straddled a branch and waited. Waited for the wind to pick me up and take me away, waited for the unease in me to blister and pop. I waited until someone yelled for me to get down.

Climbing down was harder. I was descending into a darker world and my eyes took time to adapt. That, and my feet were reaching out blindly, searching for branches, scraping the air sometimes and slipping.

Joseph swore as I reached the last few branches.

“You’re nearly there,” he said nervously, his hands out in front, ready to catch me. Taking the last branch slowly, my feet slipped on the slimy moss. I let go of the branch above to grab the next one when Rosa-May screamed. My limbs jerked in surprise, and I fell.

It was only a few meters but those seconds felt unending. My arms flailed up, still reaching for something to hold onto. My mouth clamped shut, my eyes scrunched tight, and I landed with a thump. Strong hands gripped my bare back.

I opened my eyes, my lips forming the words
thank you,
but rendered mute. Joseph’s face was white, his freckles standing out strongly against his horrified expression. His thumb brushed the ropey scar across my stomach like a kiss.
A terrifying kiss.
And then he dropped me to my feet, my shirt falling back into place. I gripped the material in my fist, tears scraping at my eyes like thorns. I didn’t understand his reaction.

He stared, his eyes wide but looking right through me. As he backed away, his head sweeping back and forth, he muttered, “I can’t,” before he turned and stormed into the forest.

Maybe I should have left him, but I couldn’t stand the look on his face. I couldn’t leave it like that and not try to change it. I chased after him, leaving Deshi attempting to calm Rosa-May and Denis standing still as a statue, so out of place in this world that he might have been one of Grant’s garden sculptures.

ROSA

Deshi shouted at me as I reached the tree line. “Rosa, take this.” He threw me a pack. When I shot him a confused look, he added, “Just in case.” I didn’t like the expression on his face. It was unfamiliar, frightening, because it was mix of disappointment and regret. It hit me like a plank peppered with nails because it wasn’t directed at me. His disappointment was in Joseph.

Joseph’s blond head bobbed through the trees, the distance between us stretching long as a highway. I called out to him, which spurred him on.
Was he running away from me?
It was a terrifying thought, which I shoved down as I picked my way over the dense vegetation. Shadows wrapped around every plant, trapping them in the dirt. The sun split its way between the trunks of the great trees as I used them to support me, warning me night was coming.

While I was staring at the sky, I lost him. Suddenly alone, with the dark, dank forest pressing around me, I shivered for fear of finding him. Because I felt there was a slimy, threatening truth waiting for me when I did.

My hands scraped along the slick trunks, the bark so large I could sink my whole hand between the gaps of the trees skin. Wrinkled like an old woman. Like Addy. God, I missed her advice. Her humor.

My breath formed mist that hung in the air too long. My sighs were heavy clouds floating to the sky. I paused at a tree, bracing my arm against it as my eyes ran in vast semicircles, sweeping the terrain in front.

Tree, tree, bush, tree split down the middle, Joseph, tree.

He sat restlessly, head down, leaning against the trunk of a stout tree plucked clean of leaves like a bird for the oven. It was dwarfed by the giants around us and by his own size. It reminded me of when I’d found him at the Classes, just before my assessment, talking to himself, huddled awkwardly under a Pau Brazil tree. It was a conversation he later explained as him choosing to tell me how he really felt.

It was too late then. It was not like that now.

He heard my foot suck out of the mud with a slurping sound. He looked up, and his face was a battering ram pushing me back. His eyes, the color of the bright green moss that crept up every trunk, were washed with a deep sadness. He was truly unhappy to see me. My heart tore like paper. Just a small edge at the bottom, which if he didn’t explain himself, would rip all the way up.

His head dropped down again and I stopped, midstride, several meters from where he sat, afraid to approach and equally afraid to walk away.

I brought my legs together and took one more timid step towards him. My eyes never left his hidden face, hair curtaining his eyes as he hung his head between his knees like it was just too heavy to hold up. A strand of blackberry dragged across my face as I said, “Joseph, why are you running away from me? Ouch!” I lifted my hand to my cheek, a small stain of red coloring my fingers. The branch stuck in my hair. I tried to move forward and couldn’t. Putting my hands up to my head, I attempted to pull it out, only to tangle it further.

Joseph stood up and sighed in exasperation.
Was he sick of me?

“It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m always hurting you.” His voice plummeted like a stone dropped down an endless abyss. There was more regret than I could understand in there. He came closer and helped me pull the thorns from my hair.

As we stood chest to chest, I gazed up into his face. “That’s not true.” My own voice wavered like a feather tossed down the same abyss. Falling, but slower, hoping the wind might still pick me up and save me.

“Look,” he said, running a finger under my eye and holding it in front of my face like proof. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing,” I whispered, knocking his hand away and forcing a smile.

He exhaled through his nose in frustration. “Yeah, it’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I have done, to what I’m going to do.” His sarcasm was pointed and tipped in bitterness.

My ribs clamored and braced my heart, tightening a protective cage around me. He went to put his hands on my waist but stopped himself, his hands hovering there, hopelessly.

I don’t want to ask. I have to ask.

“What are you talking about? If it’s about what you did after… after I died, I know it’s hard, especially for someone like you, but it wasn’t your fault. You would have died if you hadn’t defended yourself.” I hated the sound of my voice because it was pitched with fear, uncertainty, and panic.

He glanced up from the ground, the cool dawn of realization rising on his face. Words had slipped out. It was too late to collect them. “Wait, how do you know what I did after? How could you? You were, were…” He stumbled over his words like boulders in the road.

I placed a hand on his chest and felt his heart galloping. “I was dead.”

He shook once, all over, like the memory still shocked him. “So how?”

I swallowed, carefully picking out what I would tell him and what I would save for that nonexistent time—
later
.

“They made me watch the surveillance video.”
Over and over, until it was scratched into my brain with their perfect, clean fingernails.
“I saw it all happen. They attacked you, and you fought back. You need to know, I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone could blame you for what happened. It hasn’t changed the way I feel about you.”

My heartbeat stalled in my chest as those pictures flipped through the backs of my eyes. But as violent as they were, I knew he hadn’t had a choice. Hesitantly, he placed his hand over mine. A gold flash slapped me across the face and he withdrew, stepping back and throwing his hands in the air. Whatever he’d been holding back was rumbling and growing now.

“Jesus, Rosa!” His voice angled towards the sky, and he clasped his hands behind his head. “I don’t understand how you’re okay.”

I’m not… and you know I’m not.

He turned away from me,
stop turning away from me
, and I could see his ribs expanding, his back muscles tensed like they could barely hold him in any longer.

“Joseph, what’s wrong? You can tell me,” I pleaded, my hands limp at my sides, my body not daring to come closer. Electrified words piled up between us, jutting out of the mud like thrown-down axes.

He just shook his head over and over like the sad elephant at the zoo.

What did you do?

He faced me, his eyes throwing warnings, and I felt the need to cover my ears, to run before his words caught me. “I wish it were just about that night. God, Rosa, if only it was just that. If only I had known before, maybe I wouldn’t have... wouldn’t have…”

The ground softened under my feet, turning to quicksand that tried to swallow me.
Don’t ask him.
I picked my way over the obstacles between us. He stood like a statue, a Joseph statue carved from bleeding rock. I put my hand to his jaw, forcing him to look at me. “Wouldn’t have what?”

His head fell. He didn’t want me to ask either.

There were tears in his eyes, running hard like bullets, one, two, three down his cheeks. “Rosa, I was almost unfaithful to you,” he whispered.

I laughed awkwardly, my lips curling and catching on my teeth.
This was a joke, right?
I swept my eyes around the forest like I was checking to see if anyone was listening. The trees seemed to lurch backwards, splaying like I was a bomb that had already gone off. But I didn’t really understand him.

I attempted to calm myself, planting my feet firmly, and the ground steadied for a small second as I replayed the word
almost
,
almost, almost
. But it was such a brief reprieve. That second word swung around on chains strung from the clouds and blared in front of my eyes, bigger than the sky. I wished I could un-hear it, shove a cloth down its throat and throw it away, but it was too late. The bottom of the world slid away like a pullout tray, leaving me suspended in the air, my feet hanging limp below. My scrabbling fingers dug deep into the word
unfaithful.

My hand dropped from his face. He was stone, the color and the feel. I shook my head from side to side, as if I could dislodge this thing rattling around in my head. It had sharp angles, and it was wedged into the soft corners that were once his. Now, they bled raw.
Almost unfaithful.
I didn’t know what that meant. The sharp thing bashed at my thoughts. It was a box I didn’t want to open, even as I pried at it with desperate, chipped fingers, because I didn’t
want
to know what those words meant.

I stepped back and hit a tree with a thud. Little pieces of bark rained down my back and fell into my too-big shoes. My chest felt hollow; my heart and lungs had dissolved. I opened and shut my mouth, mechanically doing the things to keep me alive.
Breathe in, breathe out
. I didn’t know how to react because I never expected him to say that. I cycled through every emotion and came back to nothing. I felt nothing. Bloodless, aimless.

He stood in front of me, bewildered and waiting. The words pinned to his shirt like a note for the teacher.

I thought nothing would come out of my mouth until everything poured from my lips like an avalanche. Suddenly, the questions were in my hands and I hurled them at him:
When? Why? Who? With who?

He took each word like a spear to the chest, stumbling backwards until he was on the ground and I was standing over him, breathing hard. My legs trembled, and I swayed. I was going to be sick. Covering my stomach with my hand, I felt my insides twist like snake.

He knelt over, his hands pressed into the dirt, looking like he was going to be sick too.

He whispered her name into the tiny palm fronds that jabbed out of the mud, and when the name floated up to my ears, I couldn’t stand it.

When he told me he kissed her, that he almost… I actually screamed. The details were a knife that kept on stabbing, through, through, through to the other side of me.

“Stop,” I gasped, the bile burning a path up my throat. “Please. I can’t hear anymore.” His mouth clapped shut. His face was a broken bruise I shouldn’t have to heal.

The smell of lemons, detergent, and chemicals brought me back. I was wearing her clothes. I shrugged off my own jacket, and my furious hands started unbuttoning her shirt because her clothes were burning my skin. It was a stupid thing to do. It was freezing and only getting colder, but I felt stupid wearing her too-long pants and her shirt that left so much air between where my chest ended and what it allowed for. I bit my lip and stared at the darkening sky. There should have been black, angry clouds pulsing with lightning, but it was clear. Empty.

My eyes snapped to Joseph as he rushed towards me.

“I’m so sorry, Rosa,” he said, his beautiful, lying eyes tortured. He took both sides of her shirt and held them together, over my chest, in his fist. I tried to struggle out, but his grip was too strong. “You can’t. You’ll freeze to death,” he whispered sadly.

I shoved him, screaming, “I can’t wear her fucking clothes!” He staggered back in surprise. I’d never spoken to him, or to anyone, like that. I stood there, feral and angry, my shirt open, revealing my scars and frozen skin.

I started unbuckling my pants, but stopped. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore.

He removed his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt, calmer than he had a right to be. “Take mine,” he offered.

Scowling, I snapped, “Then you’ll freeze to death.” My teeth were already chattering.

He smiled sadly at my obstinacy. I couldn’t look at his mouth so I turned my eyes to his chest and the deep scars running down his skin.

“I guess we’re at an impasse then,” he said.

“What are those?” I asked, pointing at his scars. I needed to break the conversation in half, just for a moment.

“Polar bear attack,” he said, gazing down at the dark purple parts of his skin. He carefully removed his shirt and handed it to me. Snatching it, I ripped her shirt from my body, the sleeve snagging at my wrist. I tugged at it until the cuff tore and released me, letting it fall to the dirt. Stepping on it, I screwed my foot into the ground, just to make sure it soaked up plenty of mud. I put his shirt on quickly, my movements jerky from the cold, and then put my own jacket over the top. His clothes enveloped me in the warmth and smells I’d craved and wanted. It reminded me that I loved him.
I love him
.