“Lip gloss,” she whispers. “A gift from my mom. I was going to use it, but looks like you need it more, you lucky, lip-biting brat.” She winks.
I’m glad Wesley’s still across the fire from me and that it’s dark. Maybe he somehow miraculously missed both the palm wipe and her wink.
I walk as slowly as I can toward the old shed, partially to avoid tripping, but also so I won’t look overeager. I try to hide my face while I apply the fruit-scented lip-gloss so that Wesley won’t notice. It’s dark, but I don’t want him to be put off by dry, scratchy lips, or worse, dried blood. Gemette’s a good friend. I feel guilty for overreacting earlier when I thought she might kiss Wesley. Not super guilty, but you know, a little.
Neither of us speaks a word, but I feel the eyes of the other teens follow us toward the shed. We’re only a few crunching steps away when the swinging door flies open and Tom and Annelise barrel out. I jump when it bangs shut behind them.
Tom looks as ruffled as I feel, his eyes darting back and forth. He ducks his head and reaches down to take Annelise’s hand. They walk out and away from the fire and the rest of Port Gibson’s teens. I can’t tell where they’re headed, but somewhere far away from here.
“Did you know almost a third of the couples in town trace their start to the Last Supper?” Wesley asks.
“No way.”
He shrugs. “We’ve only been an Unmarked town for seven years, so it’s even more impressive. Not all of them are matched up from a bottle spin, but I think the game helps people realize how they feel.”
A thrill rushes through me. Does Wesley feel the same as me?
My hand reaches for the door handle and collides en route with his. I’m wearing mittens, of course, and he’s wearing shiny, brown gloves, but a thrill runs through me when we touch, even through layers. He doesn’t move his hand away, but instead draws my hand in his and pushes the door handle back in one fluid movement. My heart skips a beat and time stops. When the door’s completely open, he slowly releases my hand. I lower my eyes and step over the threshold into the rundown little building.
Although there’s clearly no power, and consequently neither heat nor an overhead light, the walls at least cut the wind. It’s at once both warmer and quieter. Two tall candles burn softly on a pile of rusted metal boxes in the corner. Someone prepared this dump, I realize. I wonder whether it was Wesley. The flames provide enough light that I can see his face. His dark brows are an even more startling contrast to his dark blue eyes than usual, accentuated by his hair falling in his face.
“So,” I say. “Here we are.”
Wesley looks at me from less than a foot away. The shed’s small and crammed full of moldering farm implements. The air around us practically hums, but that isn’t new. It’s always like the moments right before a lightning storm when he’s near. Supercharged almost, like the electrons around my body might fly off at his slightest touch. The difference is that here, away from the town’s work projects, away from my family and his, it feels like anything really could happen.
Wesley’s so close I can smell him, the same citrusy, woodsy smell I’ve secretly savored for years. It’s even stronger tonight, like he put on more of whatever it is he usually wears. I breathe deep, and all the memories of him re-imprint on my brain. Scrubbing, sanding, painting, digging, cleaning, hammering. Projects his dad made him attend, but I suffered through to be near him. When I’m with him, I belong somewhere for the first time in a decade.
When we become adults next week, Wesley’s mandatory attendance at work projects ends. Wesley steps into his role as an administrator, and I’ll become part of Port Gibson’s janitorial crew. It’s now or never if I want to make any kind of permanent place with Wesley.
I never thought I’d be close to him like this, and I know I may never be again. I lean toward him and tilt my face upward, eyes closed, ready for what comes next. Maybe I’m even a touch impatient. I have waited for this for years.
Except I keep waiting, and then I wait some more.
Not a single thing happens. The trouble with being ridiculously small is that Wesley, who’s on the tall side anyway, towers over me. Even with my face angled up, his lips are pretty far away. I can barely make out his expression, but it looks guarded.
Maybe he doesn’t know how to do it?
No way. Wesley must know. I mean, it’s not hard, right? You just push your lips onto the other person’s mouth. Why isn’t he doing anything? This is the moment. THE moment!
Until it passes. And then another moment falls on top of it, and another. All passing. Even the butterflies in my stomach get bored and go look for flowers elsewhere.
I’m not sure exactly how much time has elapsed, but the seconds drag, heavy with my growing frustration. Soon, someone will bang on the door. “You’ve been in there forever,” they’ll say. “Make room for the next couple.”
I want to smack them in their eager faces.
I know I don’t have much time, and I want to say something, anything. I need to tell him how I feel, say the words, take a gamble. But like it always does, my tongue shuts down. My throat closes off. The words stick inside my throat. Why am I such a coward? Our perfect moment withers and dies. Tears well up in my eyes, and I can’t breathe.
Wesley isn’t similarly affected. He steps back and says, “We don’t have to do this, Ruby. It’s not safe at all. I don’t know why my dad even lets these dinners happen.”
“Why’d you spin the bottle in the first place?” I hear the desperation in my voice, but the words pour out in spite of myself. “I know you, and you know me. How’s it dangerous for us?”
He takes another step back, his expression registering surprise. “People get Marked, Ruby. It still happens. Every few weeks, in fact. Maybe I’m Marked. You don’t know. It happens, even here, even with all our rules. It may take years to die once you’re Marked, but it’s inevitable.”
I roll my eyes. “Well I’m not Marked, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I point at my forehead. “See? Clear.”
“We shouldn’t be taking these risks.” Wesley scowls. “Not now, not right before our real lives begin. This whole thing’s supposed to be a time to say goodbye to being a kid, not act like an idiotic five-year-old, breaking rules for no reason.”
Our real lives? Maybe he never thought it felt right, the time we spent, the way we are together. Maybe I never belonged with him at all. “Why’d you even come, then? Why follow me in here if you’re not going to kiss me?”
Was he hoping for someone else? Was he stuck with me and looking for any excuse to bolt? Am I Evan in this scenario?
I look up, but I’m too close. The hair cascading over his face obscures my view. I want to touch his hair; I want to kiss him; I want to tell him I love him, and that I always have. My fingers and toes and everything connecting them zings in spite of the bitter cold, in spite of the indifference of his words. Energy spins round and round in my body, a closed circuit with nowhere to go.
“Look, Ruby, I don’t know what to say . . . but the thing is . . .” He sounds torn, confused.
Suddenly, I don’t want to hear “the thing,” whatever it is. I’ve been talking to Wesley for years, talking and talking, and working alongside him, but I don’t want to talk to him anymore. I know what I want and I’ll never have a better chance to play things off as part of a game, if he feels like I now suspect he does. The notion of an excuse appeals to my cowardly heart. I can’t speak the words, but I won’t stand here and do nothing, not anymore, because he’s the real life I’ve longed for.
I stop thinking and step toward him instead. He tries to step back and slams up against the back wall. I quickly take one more step and use my gloved hand to pull his head down to mine. I push my lips against his. In my haste, I push too hard and pull a little too fast. Our teeth smack into each other and my tooth knocks against my own lip, splitting it wide open again.
It’s the opposite of magical.
I look up at Wesley
instinctively. He has blood on his mouth, but whether it’s his, or mine, I can’t tell. And if it’s not awful enough already, Wesley stiffens from head to toe like I mauled him, like I forced him into something torturous.
A tear rolls down my cheek and I inhale deeply. I won’t cry over this. I can’t, because there‘s no way I can play it all off as a game if I bawl my eyes out. I turn away from him. If I can’t stop the tears, at least he doesn’t need to see them. When did this go so wrong? I should be calm, cool, in control. I need to laugh it all off and tell him friends can’t be expected to kiss well. Whoops.
Except my heart won‘t listen to the screaming from my head. I’m not calm. I’m the opposite of cool. I’ve lost all control.
He grabs my shoulder and tugs me around. I turn, but my eyes stay glued to the ground, too ashamed to meet his gaze.
“Ruby, look at me.”
He puts two gloved fingers under my chin and lifts. His head comes down then, but slowly, too slowly. My heart stops pumping and I worry it might never beat again. His lips brush mine gently, then with more pressure. I ignore the discomfort of my torn lip and lean into him, connected to him in a way I can’t explain. I need more air, but I want less, because that means more space between us. If this never ends, maybe it’ll erase the moments that preceded it.
Suddenly, he lets me go and steps back. Emptiness fills the space where he stood. I reel again, sucking air in and blowing my breath back out to steady myself.
When I raise my eyes, our gazes lock. All my sorrow from before is gone, replaced with a feeling like I’m flying, soaring, floating on top of the world. His sapphire blue eyes reflect candlelight back at me. He’s breathing as deeply as I am; he’s as affected as me. I can’t look away from his strong, almost hawkish nose, his square jaw, his flashing eyes and thick black lashes. I continue to stare as Wesley reaches up and brushes his unkempt hair away from his eyes.
I almost faint.
Such a simple movement. Small in the grand scheme of things, but also vast, earth shattering, all encompassing. My dreams crumble. My world spins out of control. He moves his hair off his forehead, and suddenly things make sense. His reticence to touch me, his skittishness, but also his quick recovery. Once he knew it was too late, he didn’t hesitate to kiss me.
Because we’d already touched.
A tiny rash mars his otherwise perfect forehead. Before the world died, it wouldn’t have mattered. Before the Marking, no one would have cared about a few bumps. It would be harmless: acne, a bug bite, or a reaction to hair product. It shouldn’t matter that his forehead has a blemish. It shouldn’t terrify me, but it does. Because that small rash means Wesley is Marked, and in under three years, he’s going to die terribly.
And now, so am I.
Chapter 2
I can’t breathe.
I have so much to say that I don’t know how to begin. I spin around to escape the shed and reach somewhere with clean air, but Wesley grabs my mittened hand at the wrist, pulling me back, stopping me from leaving. Touching me, albeit through layers. Again. Except this time, there’s no zing.
Only dread.
The floodgates open and I yell. “Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.” I slap him. Then I slap him again.
His hand snaps up and catches mine by the wrist. “You kissed me! What’s wrong with you tonight?”
I shuffle backward until my legs hit something and I fall on my butt onto some kind of metal box. I finally open my mouth. “What’s wrong with me? You’re what’s wrong with me. You Marked me!”
His eyes fly wide and his hand goes to his forehead. “No, I couldn’t have.” His head shakes back and forth as if he doesn’t believe me, but that can’t be. He has to know. It explains everything.
I glance around the shed until I see something shiny. I grab the metal sheeting or whatever it is and rub it with the sleeve of my coat to clean it. I hold it up, angled from a candle so he can see for himself. “The Mark.”
He looks at the sheeting, and then he lunges for the candle, bringing it closer. He curses. “I had Perimeter Duty today.”
I look at him dumbly. “There wasn’t a raid. There hasn’t been in weeks.” I blink repeatedly, like my eyes are the problem. Maybe if I blink enough, if my eyes clear up, the Mark on his head will disappear. He shakes his head and his hair falls forward again, covering it up. If only it could truly disappear.
But it can’t, because there’s no cure.
“Not a raid, no, but a single girl.”
Jealousy, hot and quick, burns through me. Wesley’s Marked, and I’m jealous because it means he touched her. A girl who wasn’t me.
Focus, you idiot.
“A girl?” I repeat dumbly.
“She was so young and so very thin, obviously starving.” He turns away from me. “She was begging for food, scraps, anything. She stared at my roll with so much . . . longing.”
He sits down on a wooden crate behind him. It shudders from his weight and I hope it doesn’t collapse, which is a stupid thing to worry about at a time like this. Why do small details pop out when something momentous happens? It’s like my brain can’t process the problem, so it focuses instead on every other thing that happens.
When he doesn’t continue, I ask, “She just showed up out of the blue looking for food?”
He shrugs.
Marked kids’ begging is pretty normal, actually. We never have very much food, not anymore, but they have even less. What little extra we have, we leave for them at the designated drop spots. They pick up the food when they come for the hormone suppressants.
My next words shoot out. “Was she pretty?”
“Breathtaking,” he says.
My heart breaks a little more.
He looks up at me. “She only looked six or maybe seven, but she might have been older. It’s hard to tell when they’re half starved. Ruby, she looked so much like my little sister. Before.”
Before the Marking. Before the illness spread, killing almost all humans. Before the whole world fell apart. We all had people then, a time we now refer to as Before. I’m not sure how, but I can always hear the capital B.
“She was Marked, of course. The little girl, I mean. I knew she was Marked. I’m not a complete moron. She just looked so much like Adonnia that I had to do something. She wasn’t threatening me, or angry.”
He closes his eyes. “She sat on the riverbank a few yards from my location north of Mulberry Street, her bony elbows and knobby knees visible through her tattered clothing. I turned and went inside, abandoning my post. I filled a basket with food and took it to her. I set it on the ground and returned to duty. She picked it up with wide eyes, marveling, I assume, that kindness in any form has survived, after all the death and devastation, in spite of walls and barbed wire, guns and bombs.”
“Wait. You didn’t touch her?” My breaths become short and shallow. If he’s Marked without touching her, the virus has mutated. If that’s happened, we’re all doomed.
He’s quiet a moment. “No. I mean, I didn’t think so, but I guess I must’ve.” He turns toward the sheeting again, looking at his Mark in disbelief.
“Oh.” As I process that, I feel both relief that Tercera hasn’t mutated and become airborne and fury that Wesley touched a Marked kid, or at least knew he might have, and still came tonight, and infected me.
He sighs, long and deep and sad.
“How could you not know she touched you?”
“She grabbed the basket and slung it over her gaunt shoulder.” He looks up at me, his eyes haunted. “I should’ve considered how she’d crossed the river in the first place, but I didn’t even think about it.” He runs a hand through his now messy hair. “She climbed up an enormous tree, the one clinging to the riverbank before the cutback. She scampered all the way to the top and set out over the branches. She was so young, so small. She couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds. The branches, even the highest, could hold her weight, but the basket of food was too muc
h. She was too young to consider what would happen when she took it with her.”
“Wait,” I ask. “How could she be seven years old? That’s not a typical kid on the suppressant.” She must’ve come from the Unmarked. Maybe her family lives here in Port Gibson. I rack my brain for someone who lost a young child in the past few years. I can’t think of anyone.
Wesley shrugs. “I don’t know, but she was very small. Even malnourished, I don’t think she could be a normal kid stuck waiting for puberty forever. I doubt she was on the suppressant. She was younger than that, young enough not to consider that the branch would snap. She fell toward the river where the water was flowing fast. I wasn’t sure if she could even swim. I ran down the riverbank and finally dove in, desperate to save her, because it was my fault, all of it. I wanted to help her, and I killed her instead. I reached her, and I even grabbed for her hand, but she pulled my glove off and went under.”
I remember he’s wearing shiny gloves I’ve never seen, and now I know why. He lost his in the river.
He drops his head in his hands. “Now I’m Marked, and she died anyway.”
I understand breaking the rules to give her food. I might have done the same, but to risk being Marked when she fell? That I don’t understand.
“Why dive in the river?” I ask. “You didn’t know she’d go over the tree branches, so it’s not your fault.”
“It was stupid, obviously, but I felt desperate not to lose her too.” He stands and paces the width of the shed, two steps in either direction. Back and forth, back and forth. “My sister Adonnia was only five years old when my dad left her with his sister. Aunt Valerie was Marked too. We didn’t know. We had no idea what would happen, but that was no excuse. He shouldn’t have left her.”
Marked (Sins of Our Ancestors Book 1) Page 2
