Rogue Touch

by Woodward, Christine

  All of a sudden I was myself again, grown-up, sitting on one end of a seesaw. Cody sat on the other end, way up in the air.

  “It’s time, Rogue,” he said. “It’s time.”

  I woke up with a gasp, sitting up in the bed of the blue truck, Touch sleeping soundly right beside me. A million, trillion, billion stars above my head. Everything quiet and still.

  The letters. I’d forgotten all about writing the letters to Cody’s folks. And what with the law on my tail, I couldn’t see any possible way to start writing them again. Which may actually have been a relief to them. Either way, it left me feeling the same, which was guilty. I lay back down, pulled my blanket over me, and stared up at all those stars for a long time, listening to Touch’s slow, steady breath and wondering which faraway ball of light might be his home. One thing I knew for sure, what had just happened had been no ordinary dream. That had been Cody, come to see me from another place. Being with him, seeing him whole, comforted me as much as it confused me. And I hoped against hope that he was dead wrong about how many worlds there were for me.

  Finally I got back to sleep, and by the time I opened my eyes Touch was already up, bustling around the campground, making a little fire even though we had nothing to cook. It was September now, and should’ve been cool in the morning, but the sun had already risen pretty high in the sky and beat down with ferocious warmth. Still Touch was all bundled into his padded flannel, rubbing gloved hands together like he needed to warm up. I wondered if I’d adapt to the temperature on his planet once I’d talked him into taking me there.

  “Just how hot are we talking about?” By now I’d brushed my teeth and joined him by the fire, wearing a T-shirt and the flowery skirt I’d stolen from Joe Wheeler’s wife. I had my sweater, the one with the built-in gloves, over my knee and was stitching up the hole made by the wildebear. The sweater was so dark that the bloodstain wasn’t too noticeable, and it was too useful a garment to just throw away.

  “By your temperature system? Probably an average of one hundred and twenty-five degrees Farenheit. One hundred twenty-five to one hundred fifty, I’d say.”

  “Good lord.” I couldn’t imagine being in a place that hot, what it would feel like. “Everyone must move very slow.”

  Touch laughed. “It’s what we’re used to. I’ll say one thing, we don’t have to bother with so much clothing, the way you do.”

  “What about sunburns?”

  “We’ve gotten pretty advanced with protection.”

  I pictured Alabaster’s pure, untouched skin. Pretty advanced was right, maintaining that look under a 125-degree sun!

  We ate some beef jerky—Touch could stomach that only marginally better than the peanut butter—while I looked at the map. “It won’t take long to get to the Grand Canyon from here,” I said. “Just about seven hours, I’d guess, with stops and so forth. Do you want to go down into it once we get there?” I was hoping he’d say yes. I’d always wanted to take one of those mules down into the canyon.

  “Definitely go down into it,” he said. With the daylight, the thoughtful look had come back over him. But he smiled at me, then tossed his jerky into the fire. “How much money do we have left?” he said. “Let’s get some real breakfast before we set out. Then maybe we should try an ATM.”

  I counted out the last of Joe Wheeler’s money. Back in Caldecott County five hundred dollars would’ve been a fortune. I’d run away from home with not much more than that. But life on the road was proving expensive. Between the motel, the boat rental, the campground fee, and the few supplies we’d bought, we only had about a hundred and fifty left.

  “Probably better to get more money here,” Touch said. “Then put some distance between us and the machine.”

  I nodded and handed the money to Touch. It would be safest in that inside pocket of his. He stood up and came over to sit beside me. “Let me see the wound,” he said.

  I hesitated a minute, then figured what the hell. Nobody else was around to see me. And he was wearing his gloves. So I just pulled the T-shirt up over my head, sat there in my bra and skirt, and turned my back to him.

  He pressed his gloved fingertips very gently around where the wound had been. It didn’t feel tender at all, just completely healed.

  “Amazing,” he said.

  I drew in my breath. Touch moved his finger from my scar to my spine. He ran it down very careful, almost all the way down to my backside. It sent shivers right through me, that gentle touch, and I concentrated on being grateful for it—even luxuriating in it—instead of wishing I could feel his real fingertips and not just leather. He let his other hand get into the act, touching my back in very gentle swirls, until I was a quivering mess there on the log. I couldn’t help it. I turned around to face him.

  As I turned, his hands kind of slipped off my back onto his knees. And then he lifted those hands and put them right on my breasts. It nearly startled me out of my skin. Then the startledness went away, and it felt not only amazing, but right. The shivers turned into a warmth that started at the very core of me. I closed my eyes, concentrating on his hands, and the warmth pulsing through them, from me and into me, and it was like the world’s strongest magnet was pulling me in, toward his lips, to kiss him. And he started leaning in toward me, too.

  I stopped us just in time, standing up so abruptly he nearly fell off the log. He righted himself, then shook his head real sharp, like waking himself up out of a trance.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just that I want to so badly.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. And headed over to the truck so I could drape and cover myself in all the clothing possible.

  By the time we sat eating eggs, toast, and coffee at Harvey’s Diner, I was sweating, back in my leather pants and flannel shirt and jean jacket. I guessed if I wanted to live on a 125-degree planet I’d better start getting used to it. Touch sopped up egg with toast, polishing the meal off in about two minutes flat, then ordered another plate with an extra side of bacon. He was a very big guy and had hardly been eating enough to keep a mouse alive these past few days. Between what had happened between us last night and this morning, not to mention all our days on the run together, I was feeling awful close to him. So I went ahead and told him my dream about Cody.

  Touch listened carefully. “Interesting,” he said. “It’s almost like he knows what’s going on with you, like he’s watching you from his hospital room.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it’s a dream. So he knows what’s going on with me because I know what’s going on with me. It’s happening in my head.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s communicating with you across an astral plane.”

  “An astral plane!”

  Touch said, “The Anasazi were very mystical people. They weren’t tethered to just one world, like the people who live here now. Maybe now that you’ve absorbed some of that warrior’s power, you’re not tethered here either.”

  Despite all the food, my stomach suddenly felt very hollow. All these things Touch was saying about the Anasazi, he hadn’t got them from any park service pamphlet. I put my toast down and stared at him. “That something you do on your planet?” I said. “Communicate with ancient Anasazi from Planet Earth?”

  He said, “I don’t know about that. But I do know about astral planes. Only very advanced mystics can get there. I’ve never done it. But if you have two people, both capable? They can visit each other. In dreams. Or elsewhere.”

  Elsewhere. Touch always talked so perfect and fancy. I loved the thought of elsewhere.

  “Maybe,” I said, “you and I could meet on one of them astral planes one day. And you could really touch me. No gloves. No clothes.”

  He put down his coffee and looked at me, long and deep. When I first saw Touch, I’d been impressed by his eyes on account of their color. Their shape. Their prettiness. Now when I looked at his eyes, I saw all those qualities, but I also saw something more. Sorrow, and kindness, and the weight of the whole world. Pl
us maybe—and it might’ve been wishful thinking—love. Maybe I saw love, too.

  He reached across the table and put his gloved hand over mine. “Just don’t let Cody touch you on an astral plane,” he said, and my heart leaped straight to my lips in the biggest smile ever. He loved me! He did. Why else would he say that? Touch loved me.

  I saw it as I held his hand and smiled right into his devilish eyes. Love. Plain as day.

  While Touch paid the breakfast bill, I went to use the bathroom. Soon as I closed myself into the stall, I saw it—a big, fat, brown leather wallet, sitting on the back of the toilet.

  Inside my chest, a thump thump thumping started. It was a sign! Someone up there wanted us to continue. I scooped up the wallet and sat down on the toilet. It belonged to Mary Ginsberg from Flagstaff, Arizona. She was twenty-two years old, and nothing about the wallet said she was rich—it was old and battered—except for the fact that she had three hundred dollars cash in there.

  I sat there long after I’d finished peeing, staring at her picture on the license. She looked like a nice enough person. Part of me just wanted to wait awhile, to make sure she wouldn’t come in looking for the wallet.

  By the time I came out of the bathroom, Touch already stood outside in the parking lot, waiting on me. I took a deep breath and marched that wallet right up to the front counter. “Someone left this in the bathroom,” I told the clerk, sliding it across to him, and hoping he wouldn’t pocket the cash himself.

  As I walked out into the bright sunlight, the fact that Mary Ginsberg’s driver’s license sat in my back pocket made me feel only slightly less virtuous. I’d done the right thing. Arcadia, here I come.

  Unfortunately, no good deed ever goes unpunished. Touch and I moseyed on into the convenience store that adjoined the diner, so we could use the ATM. We floated the blue ball into it. This time the screen didn’t say “Insufficient Funds.” It didn’t say anything at all. And it didn’t spit out any bills. Almost worst of all, when Touch tapped on the slot, the blue ball didn’t come back to him.

  I reached out and shook the machine as hard as I could.

  “Hey,” yelled the man behind the counter. “You there! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Just great. And me without my hat, too, just wild loose hair with white streaks. Couldn’t be more recognizable if I tried. Damn virtue, I thought, thinking on that three hundred dollars. Damn.

  Out on the sidewalk, Touch and I stood together in front of the blue truck. “Well,” he said. “We’ll just have to manage without it.”

  “Well crap,” I said. “What if someone else gets ahold of it?”

  “No one from your time would know how to use it.”

  “My time?”

  “Your planet.” He said this in kind of a rushed, distracted way, then added, “It might be a good thing, actually. Leaving it there. It might confuse the tracking devices.”

  Which was great news, but didn’t solve the issue of how the hell we were going to get by with no source of money. But still I tossed Touch the keys. I knew a hell-bent man when I saw one. It was Grand Canyon or bust.

  We made it to the Grand Canyon later that afternoon. That old blue Chevy truck, it was a gas guzzler. By the time Touch and I stood at the rim, looking down into a vastness I never could have dreamed, the truck was near on empty, and we had twenty-two dollars left, tucked into the back pocket of Touch’s blue jeans. How the hell would we get from the Grand Canyon to Mexico on twenty-two dollars? All my life I’d dreamed of a moment like this, looking out onto a natural wonder of the world, standing beside a man I loved. And all I could think on was how that pimply clerk had probably pocketed Mary’s cash so he could buy a new iPod, and here we were, dead broke.

  Touch looked like he had more lofty thoughts on his mind. He looked pale and shaky and filled with awe. I slipped my arm into his and tried to divert my thoughts from the practical and selfish to the larger wonder of the world, like a good girl from a perfect society would do.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole life,” I said, my voice full of honest reverence. When I looked into the canyon, I knew I wasn’t putting on the wonder, but felt it absolutely, in my gut. I felt it more than I’d ever felt any kind of nature, all the rocks and trees and water breathed in perfect concert with my new, darker skin.

  “I have,” Touch said. “I’ve seen something like this.”

  His voice sounded different than I’d ever heard it, it sounded shaken and gruff. I realized his arm was trembling against mine.

  “Rogue,” he said.

  I knew exactly what Touch was going to say before he said it. Part of me had known it for days. I just hadn’t been ready to say it. I squeezed my elbow tighter against his. He looked straight ahead, out into the greens and browns and blues, the endless width and descent of a crater that went on forever.

  “Touch,” I finally said. “You’re not from another planet. Are you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  “That time travel ring. It works better than just a few hours here and there. Don’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Rogue. It does.”

  I took a deep breath. Anything he had to say next seemed way more important than the fact he’d been lying to me all this time.

  “How far?” I said, impressed by how calm my voice sounded. “How far in the future do you come from?”

  “Ten thousand years,” he said, his voice real quiet, but still seeming like it echoed, on account of the wide world spread beneath us.

  “Ten thousand years,” I said, echoing the echo.

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t, just then. But I could feel him nod, staring way down into the void. And when he spoke, it wasn’t so much to tell me something new, but more like he just wanted to hear himself speak the truth after all these days of lying. A few feet below, a golden eagle swooped, graceful circles, making it seem like the two of us were standing right smack in the middle of the sky.

  “I’m home,” Touch said.

  In the space of a few minutes, Future and Planet Touch had become just Future. Touch and I stood there, staring over the rim into the canyon.

  “Ten thousand years from now,” he said, “this canyon is half-filled with water. You can hike down a long ways, and there’s a mesa that kind of juts out into the lake. I’ve gone diving there with… I’ve been there on vacation.”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Touch said. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on it. You asked me, remember? You asked if I was from another planet. And it seemed like you’d have fewer questions that way. I felt like the less you knew—the more oblique your information was—the safer you’d be. And honestly it didn’t seem too much like a lie. Ten thousand years from now, this really is like another planet in many ways.”

  I drew in a deep breath. My mind went into a kind of frenzy, trying to piece together the truth from what he’d told me. I guess Touch could tell this, because he said, “I haven’t been lying to you about where I come from, Rogue. Not really. Just think of everything I’ve told you and substitute the word ‘time’ for ‘planet.’ ”

  “So that means in ten thousand years, the earth will be ninety-five percent salt water?”

  Touch nodded. I tried to imagine it. All the pieces of the world that would drown. Mississippi, for example. Can’t say why, but the idea made my throat fill up with tears. Home, sunken.

  Maybe I should have been mad at him. Maybe I would have been mad at him if I hadn’t been keeping a secret of my own—what all my skin could do—till right about yesterday. As it was, I could hear Tawa inside me, telling me to pipe down with all my girlish feelings. There were more important issues at hand.

  “So what do you want to do now?” I finally asked Touch. It seemed we had been standing here half the afternoon, just staring, letting me absorb this new revelation.

  “I want to go down there,” Touch said, pointing into the canyon.

&nb
sp; At the Visitors Center we found out that the spit of land Touch remembered—what in ten thousand years would be the bottom of the canyon, at least as far as land—was called Horseshoe Mesa. It would take about three hours for us to hike down there, by which time it would be dark. We gathered everything from the truck that could fit into the frame pack, which Touch carried. Even though we’d filled that pack with blankets and clothes, when I picked it up to put it on his back, it felt like it weighed about two ounces. I guess on account of my new strength from the wildebears and Tawa.

  The walk was very steep downhill, with loads of switchbacks, so you had to watch your footing every step of the way. Still, Touch and I talked as we went. It was true that knowing he was from the future, instead of thinking he was from another planet, inspired about a million more questions. You can guess the first one I had for him.

  “So,” I said, “why did you travel back ten thousand years?”

  He was quiet for a few paces. Then he said, “There are a lot of gaps in our history. The history of our people. Archaeologically it’s complicated, because almost everything’s submerged. We don’t know much about what came before. The only thing we’ve ever been able to find are places like the one you and I saw yesterday, the Anasazi ruins, and so many of them are under water.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “When you say places like the one we saw yesterday, you mean buildings. Cities. Right? I mean, even if most of the world is under water…”

  Touch said, “I never saw a single piece of your world until I came here.”

  “You mean to tell me there’s nothing left from after the Anasazi? No cities or towns or buildings or anything?”