by Lauren Esker
"So what—" Noah began in a whisper pitched for her ears alone, but she gave him a swift headshake. Everyone had taken their seats, and heads around the table had begun to bow. It was time for the prayer.
She'd forgotten to warn Noah about the prayer.
"Our Celestial Father in space," her father began, and led them in a long, rambling prayer that involved a lot of talk about peace and harmony with the universe and had way more to do with aliens than God. Peri slipped back into her childhood habit of keeping her head bowed a token amount while gazing in an unfocused way at the food, until she caught Noah sneaking incredulous glances at her as her dad's "prayer" began wandering farther and farther into crazyland. She made faces at him and stifled a series of grins as Noah struggled harder and harder not to crack up, all in total silence while her dad's light, scratchy voice rambled on.
Ramona frowned at them across the table.
"—and a speedy journey, in light and peace and brotherhood, back to our celestial home in the Orion Nebula," her father finished. "Amen."
"Amen," they all murmured—Noah was still wearing a What the actual hell expression—and hands began to reach across the table, passing dishes around for communal serving.
The food was good; it always had been. There was fresh-baked bread still steaming from the oven, vegetables from the garden, pot roast from beef that had almost certainly been butchered on the farm, and a scattering of miscellaneous dishes such as the casserole they'd brought over, which turned out to contain scalloped potatoes in a homemade cheese sauce.
The conversation, on the other hand ...
It wasn't bad. It was simply awkward. Casual dinner chitchat flew around her, people resuming conversations that had obviously started elsewhere about the status of the garden, the livestock, or repairs on the buildings. She didn't get any of the in-jokes or references. The occasional digressions into news and world affairs forced her to stuff more bread in her mouth to stop herself from jumping in. No, the government was not broadcasting mind-control rays using radio towers; no, an archaeological dig in North Dakota had not dug up a T-rex holding a cell phone.
To her cringing embarrassment, it turned out that her dad was an avid follower of her blog. He didn't ask her a single question about her life in Seattle, her schooling, or anything she'd done since she left the compound. Instead, all he wanted to talk about was the blog, mainly to correct her mistakes. The photo she'd posted as a blurry picture of a Western Bigfoot was actually the upstate New York variety (I faked that picture using Photoshop and a stock photo of a bear, Dad, she wanted to say); the main reason why she hadn't found any ghosts was because she was going about ghost-hunting all wrong. "You need to stop relying on technology and start using psychics, honey. I can get you in touch with a good medium in the Seattle area."
Meanwhile poor Noah had been roped into a conversation with Mrs. M about the sad state of "urban youth" in the big city. He went to Yale, you dink. The most "urban" his youth ever got was probably riding bikes with the neighborhood kids in suburbia.
The dinnertime gathering broke up gradually with people drifting out in ones and twos back to their own homes. The women began clearing away the table. Peri made her polite and not-so-polite goodbyes and escaped with Noah.
"Well, that was definitely interesting." Noah turned his head to look up at a bright light on top of the pasture hill, shining brilliantly between the trees. "What the heck is up there?"
"I'll show you tomorrow." The last thing she wanted right now was to explain even more of her family's weirdness. She leaned against his shoulder as they walked between the cabins. "I am so sorry about all of that. Er, was that lady holding your hand at the end there?"
"Reading my palm. She said she'd never read a—how did she put it? An African palm. She wanted to find out if it was different from, in her words, a normal palm."
Peri buried her flaming face in his shoulder. "I don't know whether to apologize forever," she mumbled, muffled, "or ask you what she found out."
"Apparently there is going to be some excitement in my future, and I'll meet a mysterious foreign person."
"Did you tell her all of that's already happened?"
"Didn't have the heart."
They stopped outside Ramona's kitchen door, holding hands in the shadows. It felt almost private here, with the darkness to conceal them as Noah leaned down to kiss her.
"I really am looking forward to getting out of here," Peri confessed against his lips.
"Same. Still, I keep reminding myself that they took us in despite the danger. Not everyone would've done that."
"I think the problem is, they don't believe in the danger. Or, I guess I should say, they think of the outside world as scary and weird enough that when we showed up with a story of killers chasing us, it didn't seem odd to them. It's not real."
She shivered and moved closer to him, folding herself into the warm circle of his arms.
"We'll be gone soon enough," Noah promised her. "As soon as the SCB gives us a new place to go."
"I'm not sure if I trust the SCB either, Noah—"
The kitchen door opened and lamplight spilled out into the night. Peri let go of Noah quickly; his fingers brushed her cheek as he took a step back, reasserting some space.
"There you two are," Ramona said. "I'm just about to put down Wendy for the night. Do either of you need anything before I go to bed?"
"You've done so much for us already," Peri told her. "Um, maybe toothbrushes, if you have any spare ones? I didn't think to pick those up when we went out today." The one she'd bought yesterday had been lost with her backpack in the house fire.
"Sure, not a problem. We buy them by the case. I think I have a spare case or two in the canned food storage room."
Of course they did.
They followed Ramona into the house, where she parceled out clean towels and toothbrushes before telling them good night and vanishing into the bedroom with Wendy. Peri and Noah tiptoed up the stairs.
"You're in the little bedroom?" Peri whispered, pointing.
"Yeah. You?"
"My old bedroom from when I lived here before. Let me brush my teeth and I'll show you."
It was pleasantly domestic, hanging out in the bathroom together while they brushed their teeth and Peri washed her face. By unspoken consent, they avoided resuming the conversation from earlier, leaving those questions aside for the moment.
"Mmm," Noah murmured after giving her a quick kiss. "Toothpaste."
"Dork." She ran her wet fingers through her hair. "I need a shower but I don't know if I feel like it tonight."
He made a show of sniffing at her neck. "You smell great to me."
Peri stood on tiptoe and draped her arms around his neck, hands spread out on the muscles of his upper back. "So, we're doing this. We're really doing this."
"I guess we are." He smiled against her mouth. "Say ... you wanna show me your room?"
"C'mon. This way." She couldn't help smiling. "You know, you'll be the first boy I've ever had in my room."
"I feel special."
"Don't feel too special. Keep in mind I haven't lived here since I was twelve."
She still remembered when the second-floor addition had been built onto the house. Before that, she'd had a closet-sized room on the ground floor; it was now the room that Ramona had retrieved the toothbrushes from, packed floor to ceiling with crates of canned food and toilet paper. Back then, it had seemed so luxurious to have the new addition with an upstairs bathroom, guest bedroom, and a new big bedroom for her.
As it turned out, she'd only had that bedroom for two years before she had her accident and went to live with her mother in Idaho. Now the bedroom that had seemed so huge to her as a child felt cluttered and small. Ramona had converted it into a sewing and craft room, but the bed was still where it had always been, under the big window looking out at the woods. A diffuse blue-white glow filtered through the curtains; the compound was brightly lit even at night. Using that dim l
ight to see by, Peri felt her way past Ramona's sewing machine, past shelves full of fabric and plastic stacking drawers, and turned on the lamp on the bedside table.
She'd left the bed rumpled and untidy that morning, but Ramona had fixed it neatly. The flowered bedspread might be the same one she'd had when she was a kid. Peri sat on it and looked around. One of the walls was still papered with pictures she'd cut out of calendars and taped up, landscapes and flowers and city skylines lit up at night.
Noah was still standing in the doorway, looking a little unsure. Peri met his eyes with a smile. "So here's my room."
"I like it."
"Oh yes. Straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine." She patted the bed beside her. "Well, now that you've seen the room, come over here and see the bed."
Noah laughed, closed the door behind him, and maneuvered carefully through the obstacle course of shelves and half-finished sewing projects. With his lean, rangy build, Peri didn't tend to think of him as a big guy—she was only 5'3", so most guys were taller than she was. But he was tall, and the room had been built with a teenage girl in mind. His head nearly brushed the ceiling.
Peri scooted over to make room for him on the twin-sized bed, which, come to think of it, also seemed a lot smaller than it used to.
Somehow, though, with the two of them side by side, it felt exactly the right size.
She met his mouth with hers, and for a long, quiet time, they necked on the bed in silence—little nibbling kisses, leisurely caresses, his hands in her hair and hers under his T-shirt. In the forest they'd rushed to sex, driven by urgency; now there was all the time in the world for slow, gentle lovemaking, mapping each other's bodies with hands and lips and tongues. They undressed each other one piece of clothing at a time, each new item an excuse for more playful nibbles and giggly delight.
"Hang on for a minute," Peri murmured when Noah started to pull her jeans over her hips, and he drew back immediately. She was on her back on the bed, naked to the waist, with her jeans unzipped. "Gotta take my leg off."
"Never had a girl say that to me before."
"Hey, I'm unique. It's easier to get the pants off with the leg off." She started to sit up, but Noah planted a gentle hand on her chest. "What?"
"Let me do it. I watched you at the car. I'd like to try, if you're okay with it."
A quiver passed through her chest, an emotion she couldn't name. "Sure."
She propped herself up on her elbows and watched him push up her jeans leg. No one else had ever done this before; even as a teenager, she'd been very insistent on handling it herself. It gave her an odd feeling to see Noah grasp the prosthetic above the ankle in one hand and place his other hand on her flesh-and-blood leg to steady it.
"I'm not going to hurt you, am I?"
"No. I do it all the time. But don't just start pulling." She pointed. "There's a locking pin there. When you push it in, it'll come right off."
The prosthetic took more effort to remove than most people realized, and his first, gentle attempt didn't budge it.
"No, you have to give it a firm pull. Don't want my leg to fall off while I'm walking, right?"
Noah gave a startled laugh. "Okay, yeah, that'd be bad." On the second try, his deft hands removed the prosthesis as if he'd been doing it his whole life. He probably worked on his car, she thought, which gave her a brief, pleasant mental image of those sure hands tightening down bolts and cranking socket wrenches.
He set her leg carefully on the floor, upright in its shoe, and started to pull down the edge of the silicon sleeve that hugged the flesh-and-blood part of her leg.
"You really don't have to do this part." She sat up and tried to push his hands away. "It'll be all sweaty and gross in there, since I put it on without powdering it at your car."
"I don't mind, but I won't do it if it makes you uncomfortable."
"Actually, you know what you could do? Fetch me a damp washcloth from the bathroom." She grimaced apologetically. "Super sexy, I know."
"Peri, there's nothing about you that bothers me." He smiled at her gently. "Nothing at all."
Standing up, he hastily pulled on his T-shirt—backwards, she was amused to note—and zipped up his jeans before leaving her room on quiet, bare feet. While he was gone, she peeled off the silicon cradle and stump sock. The brush of air on the stump was a relief; it had been starting to itch.
Noah tapped lightly on the door and came in with a wet cloth.
"Thanks," she said, holding out a hand, but he didn't relinquish it.
"Now, this I can do." He sat on the bed at her feet and waited for her hesitant nod before grasping her shin with a gentle hand.
The touch of the warm, wet cloth made her breathe out slowly. "Okay?" Noah asked, pausing. "Let me know before I hurt you."
"You won't. It's not terribly sensitive. It's just ..." She swallowed and closed her eyes, fighting back tears. "I'm not used to someone doing this for me."
She lay back on the bed and slowly, one bit at a time, relaxed into the unaccustomed touch. As she let her inner barriers ease down, the only thing she felt was a vast, overwhelming relief.
Other boys she'd dated had been okay with the prosthetic, in a general kind of way. Sometimes they'd asked intrusive questions, but none of them had been super weirded out by it. But no one had ever done what Noah was doing. The soft swipes of the warm cloth felt like being licked by a big cat's tongue.
"Better?" he murmured, brushing his hand over her shin.
"Much." She was as relaxed as if she'd just had a massage, the tension and stress of the last couple of days seeping out of her.
"You look like you're falling asleep there." His voice was warmly amused.
"Mmmm. I hope not." She opened her eyes, blinking against the soft lamplight, as he draped the cloth over a chair back. "I think you're still wearing too many clothes."
Noah grinned and stripped out of his T-shirt, dropping it to the floor. Peri raised her hips and started to push down her jeans, but he reached down and did it for her, stripping off first the jeans and then the panties.
"My turn," she murmured, sitting up and reaching for the button on his jeans.
By the time they joined together, she was wet and ready. The bed frame, they discovered, had a tendency to creak, forcing Noah to keep his strokes slow while Peri braced her hand against the wall. It was, by necessity, slow and gradual, building stroke by slow stroke to a final shivering climax that took her apart.
After, they lay together, sweaty and content and tangled up in each other's bodies. Sleep came stealthily, creeping over her, and her last thought was that she'd never known she could feel so happy in a place she remembered with so little fondness. It was good to have new, pleasant memories to wash away the old ones.
Out with the old, in with the new, she thought, and slept.
Chapter Eleven
Noah was awakened in the first gray light of dawn by someone prodding at him. Dazed with sleep, he had to claw his way back to consciousness before he understood that he was curled in Peri's narrow bed with a naked, lovely, and very awake Peri poking him.
"You should get back to your room before anyone's up," she whispered.
"Why?" he asked, blinking up at her as she leaned over him. In the dim light, her nipples were two little dark points in the lighter blur of her chest. "I'm sure they've caught on that we're together. This isn't the nineteenth century, even if it kinda feels like it out here."
"Remember the Dad-with-a-shotgun jokes we were making yesterday? I've never brought a serious boyfriend home before, and I don't want to find out how far the limits of his tolerance actually go. If they wanted us to be in the same bedroom, they would've put us there."
He couldn't argue with her logic, so he peeled himself reluctantly out of the bed, not without a few kisses and caresses of Peri's naked skin that she happily returned. Dressed again, his jacket slung over his arm, he leaned down to give her a long, heated goodbye kiss. "See you soon," he murmured.
&nbs
p; "Not that soon." Peri snuggled down in the covers, still warm from their combined body heat. "I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to do chores anymore. I'm not budging from this bed until noon."
With a last regretful glance, Noah let himself out of her room. The house was very still and quiet, but outside he heard a distant rooster crow and a dog bark, followed by someone snapping at the dog to shut up. The compound was already stirring.
In his room, Noah found the clothes he'd been wearing two days ago, clean and folded on the chair by the bed.
The rooster crowed again. Noah pushed back the gauzy curtain over the window to look out. He'd never heard an actual rooster crow before, at dawn or any other time. For a city kid, it was a sound that belonged in the movies.
He couldn't see the rooster, but the partly cloudy sky was beginning to flush blue and pink as dawn gathered behind the mountains. A halogen yard light, mounted on a utility pole, illuminated the area around the barns, its light seeming to fade as dawn brightened the yard. Up on the hill above the compound, whatever they had up there was lit up brightly, a clear white glow through the trees. Trees and the hill itself made it impossible for him to see what was so important, but the blue-white flood lighting made him think of a transformer station or outdoor ballfield. He thought he could see something sticking up above the trees, some sort of structure, but he couldn't tell what it was.
Someone walked between two of the outbuildings carrying a bucket, far enough away that Noah couldn't tell if they were male or female, young or old.
He'd intended to go back to bed, but now that he was waking up, he was more interested in the morning routine of the compound happening around him. Besides, he was hungry again. He took a quick shower before getting dressed—it felt great to be back in clothes that fit him—and checked on the progress of his healing injuries in the mirror. The fire damage had faded almost entirely, leaving behind the slight roughness of scar tissue, visible only when he tilted his head so the light shone across the side of his face. He hoped no one at the compound had looked at him closely enough to notice that he'd had visible burns a day ago and only the slightest hint of scar tissue now.
