“How very evolved,” my father murmured beside me.
Mayor Klein flashed my father a smile. “Well, we do our best. In times such as these, there’s need for structure and routine more than ever.”
“When’s the next meeting?” I asked. I knew my ankle would be fine, but I was still curious.
“Next Monday.”
“What day is it today?” my father asked. When we still lived in North Dakota he had kept careful record of the days of the week and the seasons that never came, but once we started on the road, those details had become unimportant.
“It’s Wednesday.” Mayor Klein sat back on his desk. “In the meantime, I’ll give the good doctor a call and authorize you for a hot springs bath. The water here does miracles, you know. In fact,” he chuckled at some untold joke, “our town’s motto is ‘Limp In, Leap Out.’”
A kind of awkward silence fell over us until Mr. West broke the ice. “This is an impressive structure, Mayor Klein,” he complimented.
Steve Klein shoved his hands into his pants pockets and leaned back on his heels. “Thank you. We try hard.”
“To be able to rig up a generator that works off geothermal energy,” Nora's father continued to openly admire, “that's no small accomplishment.”
Mayor Klein settled back on his feet. “Are you familiar with such a thing?” he asked. He looked with interest upon our small group for the first time as though maybe he’d underestimated us.
Mr. West held out his hands. “The company I ran experimented with nontraditional and renewable energy sources. I know a few things,” he said without malice or pretension. It was one of the things I had come to admire most about Nora's father. He clearly was a successful, educated, and powerful man, but he never acted boastful or showy.
Mayor Klein regarded us for a moment longer while sucking on his teeth. He looked at my father. “And you? What did you do before the Frost?”
“I was a loan officer at a bank.”
“He’s gotten us this far and he saved those two from bandits,” I interjected. I felt the need to add to my dad’s resume. He was just as valuable and as good of a man as Jerry West. I glanced nervously at my dad, worried I’d spoken out of turn. The edges of his thin lips curled up.
“Bandits, hmm? Most unfortunate. But I suppose they’re to be expected when everything has gone to hell up there.” Mayor Klein shook his head. He clapped his hands, snapping us out of a melancholy that had seemed to slip over us like a fog. “Well then, I hope you’ll be happy here in Hot Springs.”
“You’re letting us stay?” my father inquired. “Just like that?”
Mayor Klein waved a dismissive hand. “There’s just the four of you. We’ve got enough space. Plus, I’m interested in your banking background. Perhaps we can talk about setting up some kind of economic system down here. The Council and I are keen to avoid people not pulling their weight.”
My father nodded. “I certainly can help with that.”
“And you, sir,” the Mayor added, looking to Mr. West. “Let’s chat technology. I’d love to pick your brain about some other ideas I have for our energy situation.”
Mr. West spread his hands open. “Of course. It’s the least I can do for you folks taking us in.”
“But, Dad,” Nora spoke up. “I thought we were –.”
“We’ll talk about it later, Nora,” Mr. West cut her off. Nora’s brow furrowed, but he gave her a pointed look that kept her silent. His voice was a little too loud and rushed for my liking, and that admiration I’d once felt turned into suspicion all over again.
+++++
After leaving the Mayor’s office, Nora and I walked back to the women’s bunks. My father had suggested we unpack our few possessions before meeting up again later at lunch. Mayor Klein had returned our backpacks, but they were significantly lighter. All of our food was gone and anything that remotely resembled a weapon had been confiscated – that included my hunting knife and, more obviously, Mr. West’s gun.
Nora had been conspicuously silent ever since her father had sharply reprimanded her in the Mayor’s office.
“So you and your dad are still planning on leaving?” I asked her.
She ran her fingertips along the smooth contours of the hallway wall. “I thought so – until just now,” she shrugged. “The plan was always to make it to Eden.”
“This place seems pretty nice though,” I noted, turning down the corridor and into the women’s barracks. “And what's to say Eden even exists?” The bunkhouse was relatively empty. Most people were still at breakfast or doing some assigned job, I supposed. I wondered when we’d be assigned something to do during the day.
“If my dad says Eden exists, then it exists,” Nora scowled. “Besides, it gives me something to believe in.”
We walked back to the bunk-bed where we’d spent the previous night.
“You could come with us?” Nora’s eyes fluttered. “You and your dad, I mean.” She started to unpack the few possessions in her backpack that hadn’t been confiscated. Each bunk-bed had a built-in shelving unit at the head of the bed and a small ladder at the foot.
“And give up a good thing for something that may not even exist?” I posed. Despite her insistence, I still wasn’t convinced Eden was real.
“This place isn’t going to stay ideal forever. It’s just going to get colder and more and more people will flock to this place.” Nora looked around the nearly vacant bunkhouse. “How long until this room is filled with desperate people? How long until the supplies run out?” Her eyes scrunched and she tilted her head. “And why haven’t they run out already?”
“They’ve obviously been planning this place for some time. It’s underground,” I pointed out.
Nora shook her head. “Maybe, but not as long as the government had been preparing Eden. We might as well be in a tin can buried beneath the ground. From what my dad’s told me, the government’s got thick walls of concrete and his company retrofitted everything to make the space as comfortable and livable as possible. They set it up for survival, not to just wait out the Frost.”
I scratched at the back of my neck. This place did seem like a comfortable haven compared to how we’d been living, even back in Williston. But how far ahead had those in charge planned? What happened when the temperature dropped so much that even the hot springs froze solid? How deep were we buried before the permafrost breached the walls? Would the practical thing be to keep looking for Eden while the temperature outside still allowed for comfortable travel? Or should we stay here until the situation grew dire enough that the existence of Eden was a last hope? Her words had a lot of truth to them.
“You look like the hamster wheel is working overtime,” Nora teased.
“I’ll talk to my dad about it,” I told her finally. “But I won’t go anywhere unless he’s coming, too.”
She regarded me, contemplatively. “You two are really close, huh?”
“Not particularly. Really only since the Frost,” I admitted. “I don’t think I appreciated him until then.”
She barely nodded. “I get that,” she said somberly. Her eyes had taken on a faraway look. I wondered if she was thinking about her mom or maybe someone else from her past.
I cleared my throat. “So, uh, what were you studying in college?” I wasn’t really curious, but I’d noticed she liked to talk about herself. Her sadness was contagious and I wasn’t in the mood to feel sorry for myself.
Her face brightened with the topic change. “Environmental sustainability.” She let out a bark of a laugh, but it held no amusement. “Ironic really.”
“How is that ironic?”
“I can make biodiesel and soap out of cooking fat, but I can’t make a fire without a lighter or matches. I could rig up solar panels to power an entire house, but I don’t know how to set-up a camping tent,” she went on. “Give me big, fancy, expensive lab equipment and I’ll cure world hunger. But give me simple tools and I’m useless.”
“Wow. You
can do all that?” I openly admired.
She shrugged and gave me a half smile. “Fat lot of good it’s done us so far though,” she remarked. “My dad’s SUV ran out of gas, and we got attacked by bandits.”
I smiled despite myself. We’d gone a long way since then.
“Hey, you!” Nora called out loudly. A girl who’d been walking past our bunk-bed froze in place. “Where are you going?” Nora demanded.
I felt the urge to jab Nora in the ribs. She was being weird and rude. That was my job.
The girl quirked an eyebrow. “I’m going to take a shower?” She was wearing a towel around her midsection and she held miniature shampoo and conditioner bottles in one hand.
“A shower?” Nora echoed.
“Yeah.” The girl, who couldn’t have been older than 15 or 16, self-consciously tightened the towel around her body. “You know that thing where you turn on a faucet and water magically falls from the sky?” I didn’t blame her for the snarky tone. She hadn’t expected to be interrogated.
“There’s running water?” Nora’s voice pitched an octave higher. Her excitement was palpable.
“Um, yeah, they’re right over there.” The girl pointed to the opposite side of the bunk house where I saw an entryway I had yet to explore.
“We can take a shower!” Nora practically tackled me. Her arms went around my neck and my body lurched from the force of her excitement. If she had been any taller and me any smaller, she would have tossed me straight onto my back on the bed. Even though we’d spent the night sleeping next to each other, I didn’t like the butterflies that attacked my stomach when I thought about us in bed together.
The girl, she told us her name was Maggie, led us to the shower room. It was nearly the size of the women’s bunkhouse and looked like a horse stable or something with all the individual stalls. There was a large bin full of clean towels and two other bins filled with various travel-sized toiletries.
Nora looked around the vastness of the room. “How did you guys harness the mineral waters to make electricity? You’re not just pumping hot spring water straight in here, are you?”
Maggie shrugged. “I have no idea. All I care about is when I turn on a faucet, hot water comes out.”
I could feel myself practically salivating as we stood there. The word “hot” had slipped from my vocabulary.
Nora turned to me. “Oh my God, let’s shower right now.”
I cleared my throat and hazarded a glance at Maggie. She stared back at me with unblinking eyes. Normally I admired good eye contact, but hers was too intense; it made me feel small and shrinking. “Thank you for showing us the showers, Maggie,” I said routinely. “I think we’ve got it from here.”
Maggie shrugged. “Sure thing,” she said before disappearing behind one of the shower curtains.
“You really want to shower right now?”
Nora already had a towel tucked under her arm and was digging though one of the bins of toiletries. “Why not?”
“We’re supposed to be meeting up with our dads for lunch soon,” I reminded her.
“They’ll be fine if we’re a little late.” She peeled off her thermal shirt, the one she routinely wore under her heavy winter jacket, and sprinted for one of the shower stalls.
Left behind, I could either waste some time before lunch or I could take my first real shower in nearly two years. It didn’t take long for me to make a decision. I fished out two tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a bar of hotel room-sized soap from one of the massive bins. It looked like someone had Supermarket Swept through the travel aisle in the beauty section of some store. Mini tubes of toothpaste were interspersed with the shampoo and conditioner bottles. I felt the urge to fill my pockets, but no hoarding seemed to be rule number one in this place. I hadn’t even been allowed to take back any leftover breakfast to our room; it had to all be eaten in the mess hall.
Clutching the twin travel-sized bottles and the tiny bar of soap, I shuffled from the corridor into the shower stall closest to me. I pulled the shower curtain closed behind me and fastened it to a few metal rings that served as the only barrier between the main room and my modesty. The shower stall was an open room with a shallow ledge at belly-button level upon where you could set your soap and other shower toiletries. There was also a fold-down ledge far enough from the showerhead to set your clothes on so they wouldn’t get wet.
I quickly stripped, now suddenly eager for this shower. I made sure to carefully fold my clothes and the ace bandage that was holding my ankle together and tucked everything far enough from where I imaged the spray of the shower would reach. My nakedness felt foreign. I hadn’t properly bathed since my family had been uprooted from Williston; when it’s sub-freezing outside, you put on more layers, you don’t take them off.
The shower knobs were an overly complicated system with one handle that controlled the water pressure and the other the water’s temperature. After a few episodes of trial and error, I found the perfect combination of heat and spray. The water pressure was underwhelming; a weak, tired stream trickled down on me and the water was lukewarm at best, but it was the first real shower I’d taken since everything had gone to hell.
Back in North Dakota the water had shut off earlier than other parts of the country, so we’d had to heat up buckets of snow if we wanted to get clean. My mom had had the foresight to get dry shampoo that required no water and we’d been using that to freshen up on our cross-country travels.
“I’m just standing here!” I heard Nora announce from a few stalls away. “I should feel guilty just standing under all this hot water, but I totally don’t!”
“How’s your water pressure?” I hollered back.
“It’s not too bad, actually. I’ve probably stayed at hotels with worse.”
“Lucky!” I loudly complained over the spray of water. “My shower sucks. And the water’s not even that hot.”
“You should totally try mine,” she called back.
I was sure it wasn’t an invitation to join her right that moment, but it still made my stomach turn somersaults. I chose to ignore her offer and concentrated on finishing my shower as quickly as possible.
The fact that I knew Nora was naked, like me, just a few feet away with only a flimsy barrier between us was torture. I needed to stop being so attracted to this girl. Life was hard enough without an unrequited crush.
I turned off the water when the last of the conditioner and soap was rinsed away. I twisted my hair over my shoulder and squeezed away the excess water. It was only then that I realized I’d forgotten to grab a towel. They were all sitting in one of the giant bins near the entrance. It was like I was living in a junior-high gym class nightmare.
I had two options. I could put my clothes back on without toweling off, or I could quickly grab a towel and hop back behind the cover of my shower stall, hopefully before anyone saw me. I was fairly confident that Nora and I were the only ones showering besides that girl Maggie, and I could still hear the water running in her stall near mine. I unfastened the metal rings that held my shower curtain closed and gingerly poked my head out like a prairie dog peering for predators. There wasn’t a person in sight.
I quietly tiptoed out of the shower stall. My swollen ankle still ached, and walking on my tiptoes seemed to heighten the pain, but the tub full of towels was close. I quickly grabbed one from the top of the pile. I suppose I’d gotten too cocky or had let my guard down; my ankle wasn’t quite strong enough for all this added stress. When I turned on my heel to return to my shower stall, it buckled beneath me and I fell hard to the tiled floor. My wet, naked body made an obvious slapping sound as it came into contact with the floor.
I laid still, staring at the whisper white ceiling mentally assessing if I was okay or not. Before I was able to take stock of all my body parts, the water shut off in Nora’s stall, and I went on high alert. I scrambled to my knees and tried to get back up on my feet, towel now forgotten. Nora’s shower curtain was crisply thrown ba
ck and when she stepped into the bathroom corridor, fully dressed, I froze.
Her eyes seemed to take their time traveling from the floor, up my naked body, before making eye contact.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a calm, even tone.
“I slipped,” I said lamely.
“I see that.”
“I forgot to grab a towel and my ankle gave out when I came out here to get one.”
She didn’t comment on my nakedness, for which I was thankful. I was sure she was saving this moment in her memory banks to tease me about later though.
“Do you need help?”
I was still halfway sprawled on the floor in a kind of sprinter’s stance as if I was waiting for the gun to go off and signal the start of the race. In other words, I looked ridiculous.
“No. I’m fine.”
She frowned and pushed wet locks made darker from her shower behind her ears. “Don’t be so stubborn, Sammy.”
To my horror, instead of leaving me to my shame, she swooped down. Her head went beneath my armpit, her arm wrapped around my waist, and she helped me right myself just as she had when we’d been startled by the group from Hot Springs. Only this time we were both damp and I was naked. Repeat – I was naked.
“This could only happen to you, you know.” Her voice echoed in the bathroom as she helped me stand up. She didn’t seem to mind that I was getting her clothes wet.
I frowned and tugged at my lower lip with my top teeth. “It’s not like I forgot my towel on purpose.”
“You should see Dr. Allyse again.” Her breath against my ear produced a warmth in my belly like no campfire could ever hope to recreate. “Your ankle must be hurt worse than she thought.”
“I need clothes,” I awkwardly pointed out.
“Oh, right,” she said absently as if she’d completely not noticed. “Which one’s your shower?”
I pointed to the stall with the curtain cast aside and she helped me hobble my way back. She picked up my carefully folded clothes, looking amused, and helped ease me down to sit on the fold-down shelf.
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