Uprising (46 page)

I refuse to ask Merrick if that’s how it is with the girls because I’m afraid of his answer.

“Yeah, but it’s what the Takers do, most of them. I remember Malachi was extremely unruly about things like that. But the saddest part are the human woman lined up willingly to be his next girl. Just to be put on the list, to be next because he won’t keep the girls for very long, is such a privilege to them.”

“Ok. Can we stop talking about that? It’s making me sick thinking about it,” I whispered because I didn’t trust my voice.

Suddenly I felt as if I’d led a very sheltered life.

“I’m sorry.” He kissed my nose. “Let’s talk about something else.”

I racked my brain for
anything
else.

“So, he’s a Taker who’s done the job already but with a free education of the last couple centuries.”

“Yep.”

“Sounds great,” I said sarcastically. “Just great. I don’t know if I can handle much more of this. Things aren’t even really bad yet and I already feel so defeated.”

“That’s what happens when you lose people. But we can’t let that distract us. That’s what they would use against us, to take advantage. We always have to be diligent. In our watching and waiting and training.”

He pinched my ear gently when he said training. I couldn’t see his face in the dark but I knew what he meant.

“I know. I know. I promise I’ll make it to training lessons tomorrow. It’s Susan and Kay’s day to cook. I’ll be all yours.”

“Actually, you’ll be all Miguel’s. I’m just going to watch.”

“Why can’t you help teach me?”

“I don’t like the idea of practicing hits on you. Even if I accidentally hurt you, I’d have a hard time with that. It’ll be hard enough watching and not wanting to jump in to help you.”

Considering yesterdays events, probably more so now than before.

“But...I want you to. I want it to be you. Miguel is so busy already and Kay will be cooking tomorrow so you can take her spot in training. With me.” I smiled smugly.

“Hmmm.” A pause. “We’ll see. I’m not too thrilled about the idea. It goes against my whole nature to even think about placing a hit on you. It’s bad enough watching someone else do it. ”

“Well, I’m the one who needs to practice right? So I’ll be doing most of the hitting. Right?”

“I guess.”

“Please,” I said and bit my lip, for his visual benefit in the dark.

“Alright, pouter.” He laughed. “You win.” He leaned close until our noses were almost touching and whispered. “But be gentle with me.”

“Hmmm. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” I teased. “I guess it depends.”

“On what?” he said and ran his palm down my arm.

“On...whether or not you take it easy on me. I’d rather, not.”

“I know you wouldn’t but I think I’ll make that call. Like I said, we move faster than you and are stronger. I don’t want to hurt you by accident because I get caught up in the moment.”

“But, you let the other Keepers practice on everybody else. You’re not worried about them getting caught up in the moment.”

Sherry, you are not everybody else.

“Fine.” Subject change needed. I wound a piece of hair around my finger and eased into a more stressful subject I’d been wondering about. “So...how would you go home, if you wanted to? And the Lighters? Just think home and click your heels three times?”

He of course didn’t get my Wizard Of Oz reference.
“Uh, sort of. We have to mentally shed the body. It’s all about free will and personal decision. We have to mentally choose to shed the vessel and reclaim our true form and then decide to go home. It’s a process. It can’t be done accidentally and it won’t happen unless we really want it. It’s all very technical and precise.”

“Uhuh, so...technically, you could go home right now?” I asked cautiously.

“Technically? Yes. If I wanted to. Though there’d be no job for me there and with my Special and all the other Specials with deceased Keepers down here, running around with no guardian, my conscience would be buzzing like crazy. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

“Your conscience?”

“Yeah. When we are working, from where I’m from, when a Special is your charge or if a newborn Special needs a Keeper, we get a buzzing feeling in our head. A nagging at our inner conscience telling us that someone needs us and it wouldn’t stop at all right now. You’d get no peace. It’d be painful even. And when you are at where I’m from, it’s different. We don’t have all these human things to deal with, distractions, all you have to focus on is your charge. So, the nagging would literally drive us insane if we didn’t go to our Special.”

“What do you mean human things? You had emotions before you became human didn’t you?”

How could he have loved me if he didn’t?

“Yes. We had emotions, but on earth, human emotions are so tied into your body and actions and reactions and bodily functions and whether you’ve had food or not and all kinds of things we never had to worry about before. To never feel pain, to never feel exhaustion or hunger or...jealousy. If your body was perfectly content, humans would be a lot more mellow.”

“Yes, that is definately true. I know I get cranky when I’m hungry.”

“Yes, you do.” He tweaked my nose. “So...why are you asking me about all this?”

“Curiosity?”

“Is that a question or an answer?”

Just admit it Sherry.

“Ok. I was thinking about Piper.”

“Piper?” he said and I could hear the annoyance and shock in his voice.

That Keeper certainly ruined any chance she might have ever had to be close to Merrick.
“If she’s so unhappy here, why not just let her go home? It’s what she wants. But I see why not, now.”

“Why are you worried about Piper? You can’t think I’d ever be interested. Not now-”

“No. I don’t think that.”

He sat silently for a few seconds then blew out a long telling breath.

“You feel sorry for her?” he asked incredulously.

I didn’t even have to think about it.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you remember what she did to us? I say she deserves a little bodily prison after what she put us through, Sherry.”

“I know. And I’m angry at her too but, that doesn’t mean that I want to watch her suffer. Especially if there was something we could do to help her, short of divorcing that is.”

I snorted at my lame joke but he stayed serious.

“Sherry,” he breathed and cupped my cheek. “Why? Why after everything that has happened to you can you still be so sweet and forgiving?”

He asked me so softly. He wasn’t mocking me. He just genuinely wanted to know.

“Well. I choose to be, Keeper. Just like you choose your actions, so do I. Though I worry sometimes. I worry that I’m getting bitter. That one day I’ll snap and be epically bitter and nasty and mean and unlovable.”

“Won’t happen.” He pulled me closer into the warmth of his chest.

“I won’t be unlovable?”

“Well no, you won’t but you won’t be bitter either.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I just remembered that...I know you. If there was ever a reason to be bitter, it was at your parents for leaving you, it was for losing Mrs. Trudy, it would have been for what Phillip almost did to you and Marissa’s Muse vision on you and to the Lighters for everything else that has happened in the past almost two years. If that won’t make you bitter, nothing will, honey.”

I think about it. He’s right. I hate the Lighters and I hate to use that word, but I do. But would I want to sit and watch one suffer? Would I enjoy that? Absolutely not.

I think about the Lighter we interrogated and remember how I covered my face and flinched at Miguel’s tactics for information extraction.

“You’re right,” I conceded.

“I know,” he chuckles. “Sometimes it works out that I’m right.”

“You’re right a lot of the time. But mostly...” I tease him again.

“Of course, it’s you.” He smiles against my forehead, then snuggles me closer and rubs his scratchy chin on my hair as I tangle our legs together. “Now close those gorgeous brown eyes and let’s get a few minutes of sleep before Lily gets up.”

“Yes, sir,” I tease.

“I love you, honey.”

“I know.”

And we dozed off for a few minutes, me feeling a little bit better about my personal damnation.

Beckon Call

Taking Cain and my clothes off the drying racks in the laundry/ utility room, I remember the last time I was in this room. Mitchell confessed his feelings for me and kissed me.

I miss him, something fierce. His was my best friend. But, I have no doubt that someone is looking out for me, other than Keepers and guardians. God placed me with my parents after I was abandoned at a hospital when I was three days old, then with Michael right before my parents moved to Guatemala for a ten year mission trip, then into Mitchell’s care when I lost Michael, then Cain came along right before Mitchell died.

I’ve always been taken care of and loved by someone, even when I didn’t deserve it. But...this is making me wonder. I’m starting to wonder, if Cain will be next in the line of Lillian’s collateral damage. If by loving me or protecting me you are somehow destined to leave this earth too soon.

Maybe I shouldn’t get so close to him. Maybe we should just stay casual friends. Maybe that be safest for him. I’m not usually so superstitious but the evidence speaks for itself, no matter how much I’d miss the kissing.

I’m so confused and hurt but thankful. Is that weird? I guess so but it’s how I feel.

And Cain. He has definitely been good to me. It’s been one whole week since the fight where we lost Mitchell. It took me a couple days to muster up the grief I needed to let go. And when I did, it flooded me. I balled and sobbed and cried and ached inside. I felt guilty on more than one level and missed Michael and Mitchell and my parents and wondered why everything bad that every happened to me happened.

You know how those go. Those pity party sessions. Those indefinite feeling long drug out cry phases.

Well, I had a particularly bad one last night, which to be honest was my last. I think I’ve gotten it all out and it was all thanks to Cain. He sat in my room, every night this week and held me while I cried and talked and remembered. And last night, while I sobbed loudly and stained his shirt with my tears, was the worst one yet. And like I said, it was the last.

He was so sweet. Gentle and careful with me. He let me talk, asked me questions about Michael and Mitchell and seemed genuinely interested, not jealous. And I knew he had to be tired, he’d just gotten off work but he still came, every night and let me blubber on.

“I’m sorry this happened to you but I’m here. Whenever you need me,” he said one night. Then he said, “Don’t be silly. I feel honored that you trust me with all this,” another night when I apologized for crying yet again.

I won’t make Cain sit through one more tear of me crying for another guy or anything else. It’s gone. Their gone. It’s time to move on and just remember them sweetly. But what to do about Cain?

Our days were spent laughing and goofing off together and the nights were spent a sobbing mess. It was a strange arrangement but one I desperately needed. And while we was at work, I missed him. It’s weird. I barely know him but he has affected my life so thoroughly in these past couple weeks with his concern and gentle handling of me.

He hasn’t made any moves on me since I kissed him that day in the commons room either. Just sits with me, checks on me and watches me intently. We eat lunch together everyday and joke before he goes to work and then when he gets home from work, he comes to my room and checks on me again, until I pull him down to lay with me. So sweet how he never insists or assumes that I want him to stay until I make the move to do so.

Heck, he can stay with me every night for all I care but I doubt he will. He only stays because I ask him to. I needed him to. But with my new found revelation on the bad luck of being with me, I’m not sure I should do that anymore.

Of course, I could be jumping to conclusions. Maybe, like Mitchell, he just feels like I have no one else and wants to protect me or something. Maybe, that’s all he feels. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t kissed me. Not once since that night of the rally.

I take all my neatly folded clothes back to my room and stack them in the corner. Make my pathetic pallet and brush my hair out. Then take Cain’s pile to his room. I started doing Cain’s laundry this week as a thank you for him putting up with my neediness. I bit my lip as I held up a pair of black boxers and tried to imagine what he’d look like in them. Then I mentally chided myself for doing such a thing. If only I was certain of how he felt about me.

I then walked up the hall to the commons room. It was a Wednesday.

Since Polly and Pipers little stunt, they have been watched every minute of every day. We couldn’t very well make them stay locked up in their room forever, though most of us kinda wanted to.

We had a meeting. It was explained to everyone what they both had done, to a small degree to let Merrick keep his dignity, and why they were being watched carefully. We can not use our gifts on each other. It’s unacceptable. So... they stated that anyone else caught doing so, other than practice and training, would be removed from the bunker, including Piper and Polly, to fend for themselves. The good of the many has to outweigh the one. Now, whether they would actually kick someone out is left to be seen.