“There won’t be much of a line. Looks like Sharon’s gonna have to keep it going a few more years,” the boy joked.
“Leave her alone,” Lockwood snapped.
“Did you hear something?” the boy asked the girl in a mock-serious tone.
“No. But let’s go. I’m bored and break’s almost over,” she purred, running her fingers up his neck to his hair. The two sauntered off, their giggles echoing in my ears.
“People like those two know how to make us feel like we’re nothing. Like we’re not real. But I see you. You’re here. I just wanted to remind you.”
Lockwood was kinda weird, but I couldn’t help feeling thankful all the same.
I turned my attention back to the cow. I was ready to push the moment out of my mind and get back to work because it brought up other memories—memories of the different names people had chosen to call me, and how James had rushed me from their hatred. I wondered if a day would ever go by without a thought of James.
I looked over at Cow Boy and locked eyes with him. I wanted to make sure he heard me. “You know how you said that life here was entirely different than life in the compounds? I’m not sure it’s as different as you think.”
Late in the afternoon, as the bright orange sun melted into dark purples and violent pinks, the men and women who worked the farm began to file past me.
“Time to go. Do you mind grabbing the stool and I’ll get the last of the pails?” asked Lockwood. As I picked up the stool, I miscalculated which direction he was going to take and we collided. Both the stool and I fell to the ground, and to make matters worse, the pail of milk he was carrying sloshed over and spilled onto my blouse.
I looked up, drenched in milk. This was not a good day.
I could tell Lockwood was fighting the urge to laugh, and I wanted to tell him to go right ahead. It must have been hilarious—the sheltered compound girl can’t milk a cow.
Girl who is supposed to be able to produce—can’t.
But the smile fell from his face and he squinted his eyes. “What’s that?” he asked, bending down and picking up the object before I could react.
My book.
I bolted up. “Give me that back,” I commanded.
“Here. I wasn’t going to steal it,” he said, holding the book toward me.
I snatched it and held it to my chest. My heart was pounding. I had come so close to losing it.
Losing her story.
Losing mine.
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles. That’s a great one.”
I shoved the book back into my pocket. “You’ve read it?” I asked, unable to keep the disbelief from my voice.
“What, you think we don’t have books here? We’re not heathens. Have you read it?”
“No,” I mumbled, my cheeks tingling with embarrassment.
There it was. That grin. “Well, when you do, you’ll look at being a milkmaid in a totally different light.” And with that, he winked and walked off.
Chapter 9
The first time I got it, I thought it was a stomachache. When I’d arrived at the compound it took a while for my body to adjust to the heavily processed food. What we’d eaten before then had been gained through barter, and we’d never had any to spare, so if the food was chemically enhanced, I didn’t get enough of it to make much of a difference.
I guess that was one similarity I had with the people of this new place—we both knew what it was to go without. But that was before the compound. At the compound, though someone dictated our menu every day, at least we never went hungry. I’d gorged myself on food my first week there, and as a result, spent quite a bit of time sick as a dog.
So when the pains first came, I was sure it was just another instance of my body not agreeing with my new home. I woke in the middle of the night, my nightgown drenched in sweat. I pulled my knees to my chest and braced my body for another one—a sharp pain that seemed to radiate from the lower half of my stomach and shoot up my back.
I pressed my palm against my mouth in hopes of stifling my groans. I didn’t want to wake Emma or Louisa, and besides, my body embarrassed me, and I didn’t need my sisters to know I had to use the bathroom.
After a lapse in the waves of pain, I managed to get to my feet. I stumbled down the hall, but before I could open the stall door, another rush of pain ran through me. I squeezed my eyes tightly, refusing to let a single tear fall. This wasn’t something worth crying about.
There were far worse things in the world. Of that I was sure.
“Is that you, Tess?”
I braced my hand against the door of the stall and lifted my head up. I took a deep breath and managed to open my eyes.
My mother. Staring at me through the mirror.
She had been doing this more and more often. She would disappear at some point in the day, and one of us would find her in there—just staring at herself in the mirror.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she actually sounded concerned. I couldn’t remember the last time she pulled off that act. It was probably a few weeks before, when she cussed out a kitchen worker for not ordering her booze.
It was a ridiculous request. Booze wasn’t allowed. But she still wanted it all the same.
That was a family trait.
I tried to manage words but the pain was too much. I shook my head, praying that she would somehow understand that I neither wanted nor needed her help. If anything, I would have asked Emma, but I didn’t want to bother her with this. She already had too much to worry about.
My mother went back to staring at herself in the mirror as if I had suddenly stopped existing. Like she couldn’t see me. She ran her fingers gently over the wrinkles on her cheeks. She wasn’t old compared to many of the mothers around her, but despite being in her early fifties, life had taken its toll on her. Maybe she was trying to erase the lines on her face, or maybe they were like a map to all the places she’d never been—each one a reminder of what her life actually was.
I managed to get into the stall and close the door behind me. As I went to lift up my gown, I noticed it. Blood. Bright red blood. Something was wrong. Terribly and utterly wrong.
I was dying.
“Mama!” I squeaked. Somehow the word slipped out—a word I could probably count on one hand the number of times I had used in my whole life. But it came from me without a thought. My body demanded her presence—it needed her. Wanted her. Just as much as she wanted to drink.
To my surprise, the door came open in a matter of seconds. I held out a shaky hand toward my mother and her eyes went wide. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked, tears pricking. My knees buckled and I fell forward. My mother caught me in her arms before we both were on the ground. Her hands found my face, pushing the hair off my forehead. “Shhh, no crying, Tessie.”
“It hurts,” I managed.
“Of course it hurts. You’re becoming a woman,” she replied.
I stilled. No. It was too soon. I wasn’t ready. “I’ve started my cycle?” I asked shakily. My mother nodded. This was what the videos warned us about, how women ruined everything we touched with our natural repugnance and wantonness. According to the videos, the moment this happened, not only would my body change but so would my personality. I would no longer be able to think logically. The boys would notice, and I would want them to notice. I would want them to touch me, and I would want to touch them. It would be wrong. It would be deadly.
“Mama, I’m scared,” I admitted.
Her eyes narrowed and she grabbed my face by the chin. “You should be scared,” she replied, her voice cold.
Any pretense of motherly comfort was gone. I wanted her to be a mom then, to hug me and tell me everything was going to be all right. Insist that I would be different than the other girls. Even if it was all a lie.
“They’ll come for you now. They want to rip you apart from the inside. Twist you up till you won’t even recognize yourself. Make you a freak, just lik
e them. And you won’t exist. Not to them. Not to your own people. You’ll be different,” she promised.
“Go away,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Don’t be angry at me. It’s better you know the truth now. It’s important that you know—”
I slapped her hand away from my face. “ Get. Away. From. Me!” She didn’t wait to be told twice. She was gone before I could wish her back.
I would never wish for her again.
I stayed there in the bathroom until a few girls appeared in the morning. I held the door to the stall firmly closed; I didn’t want anyone to discover my secret. When one of them asked if I was all right, I called out for Emma. And once she got there, she became the mother I always wished I had. She helped me clean up and told me what to expect. She assured me change wasn’t always bad.
But I never believed her. Or at least not until it was too late to tell her she was right.
I stayed in bed that day. My mother never came to check on me.
It was the last conversation we had before she killed herself.
The night after my first day at work, I couldn’t help but stare at myself in the antique mirror that stood in our living quarters. I looked and looked and wondered how long until the lines appeared on my face. Would they tell the story of the things I’d never done, or would they be a map of the places I was brave enough to go?
How strange that us girls were defined so much by what others could see rather than the thoughts and feelings they could not.
“Um…what are you doing?” Henry asked, coming up behind me.
I turned away from the mirror and faced him. I pulled my book from my pocket and handed it to him. “Would you mind reading with me tonight?” I asked.
Henry’s face lit up and he nodded.
I wasn’t going to let anyone twist or destroy me. Maybe I was different. Perhaps even a freak. But they wouldn’t erase me. It was time I started living not in the past or the future. It was time to exist in the present.
Chapter 10
“I’m starting to think we smell or something,” I said dryly, throwing a glance to the group of teenagers huddled together as tightly as possible at the three tables to our right—sitting smashed against one other to avoid having to sit with us. Henry and I had our own personal table at every meal. Despite our having been there for days, we were still outcasts.
I wondered if we always would be.
Henry shrugged. “No worse than them.”
I twisted in my chair, stretching my body as much as I could. I was smarting and aching something fierce; I wasn’t sure if it was from the journey or from work, but I didn’t feel strong. The others, despite the thinness of their bodies and circles under their eyes, looked durable, like they could survive anything.
Unlike Henry, I had to admit it bothered me the way they still ignored us. Maybe I didn’t plaster on a smile and run up and introduce myself to each and every person, but I hadn’t done anything to deserve being shunned, either. I wasn’t rude. I didn’t ignore them. I had done these things to the people who loved me back in my old life, but not here. I pushed my meager plate of potatoes and some sort of dark meat away from me and crossed my arms.
Henry sighed. “Stop worrying about it. Who cares?”
I stared at them. They laughed and touched another so carelessly—the determination I saw etched all over their faces in the fields disappeared like a jacket discarded and forgotten the minute it turned warm. Every joke they made, I wanted to know the punch line. Every laugh that filled the hall sounded like some song I wasn’t allowed to join in on.
“You’re letting them get the better of you,” Henry commented, pointing his fork in my direction. “You’re letting them win. I don’t know why you care.”
“Why do I care? I care because this isn’t how it was supposed to be. I mean, what was the point?”
“The point of what?” he asked.
“Leaving. Why leave one life where people get to decide the way I live to go to another? Just because I wasn’t born and bred in some backwoods commune doesn’t mean I deserve to be put into some little cage where they all get to point and laugh at me like I’m some sort of freak!”
Henry put his fork down and reached his hand across the table. “Last time I checked, you weren’t alone.”
I gave his hand a quick squeeze before pulling mine back and nodding in agreement. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t understand. I wanted things to be different here.”
“Well, maybe they can be. What don’t you like? Your job?”
“No. It’s not bad,” I admitted, pulling my plate toward me. And it wasn’t. Lockwood had started to grow on me despite the constant feeling that he was poking fun at me. It wasn’t like I had any sort of romantic feelings toward him, but I did enjoy his company. In fact, it was nice to finally understand how a boy and girl could be just friends. And unlike the others, his jokes always seemed good-natured. Earlier in the day, I’d successfully milked my first cow. Lockwood was thrilled, jumping up and down and high fiving me until my hand hurt.
“Do you like your job?” I asked, realizing that most of the little time we shared together was spent reading and not discussing our time apart.
“Cleaning up horse stalls every day isn’t so bad. Have to admit I’m pretty sore at the end of the day. Wish I was a bit stronger, but I’ll get there,” he replied.
I nodded, pushing my food around my plate with my fork. Time. I didn’t have time. As soon as I worked out whom I could trust, I was going back for Louisa.
Henry reached over and stole a bite of my mystery meat. “So if you like your job, what don’t you like?”
“I hate feeling so dirty.” I’m not sure why, but I blushed as I admitted it to Henry. I didn’t want him to think I was shallow, but appearance had been of the utmost importance at Templeton. Crisp. Clean. Refined. Orderly. Controlled. I never thought I would miss it. Yet every morning when I glanced at my reflection in the mirror, my face streaked with dirt, my hair matted and tangled, and my clothes stained with sweat, I felt it: longing. I was already tired of the countless spiders I saw scurry across our floor at night, worried they would crawl on my body as I slept. I’d lost count of the numerous bug bites that covered my arms and legs from working so close to the animals. My skin had begun to burn and peel from so many hours in the direct sun.
And I wanted to tell Henry it was more than just feeling dirty. I missed the simplicity of my life before. But then I had to remind myself that it wasn’t really a life at all.
“You get a bath soon,” said Henry.
I smiled. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Positive?”
“I guess. Maybe this isn’t the life I’ve always dreamed of, but it’s better than what we had before. I like working outside, and it’s nice not to have to worry that at any moment some chosen one’s gonna come in announcing a deportation or wrangling. The people here don’t like us. So what? Last time I checked, most people didn’t like us back home, either.”
“We didn’t make it easy for them to like us back at the compound. We were sullen little brats,” I admitted. “We were scared and hurt, but we don’t have to be those people here. We can have friends. We don’t have to be afraid of feeling.”
“Didn’t you just say they were born in a backwoods—”
“I said I was working on changing. I’m not there yet,” I admitted.
Henry set his fork down and looked up at me, forcing me to meet his eyes. “I don’t think we need them. I get to be friends with you here. I missed that. I don’t need anything else.”
Before, his words would have terrified me, but now I saw the truth in them. Maybe our friendship wasn’t perfect, and maybe there were still things we were hiding from one another, but I had missed him. I took a deep breath. “I missed it, too. We can’t let them drive us apart again. Not anyone. I need you.”
The silence that fell between us unnerved me. Perhaps I had said too much. Neither one of us could ever be desc
ribed as earnest, but I’d learned life was too short not to say the things you meant. And I meant every last word.
“We won’t, Tess. Never again.”
“You two look so serious,” spoke a voice from behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see Lockwood. Without waiting for an invitation, he set down his tray of food and pulled out the seat next to me.
“You sure you’re at the right table, man? Don’t want your friends thinking you lost your way,” said Henry, nodding toward the many admirers who were now looking our way.
“Them? They’ll get over it. Besides, they’re not all bad. Just ignorant. If you grew up in this community, you’d probably act the same way,” Lockwood replied, taking a seat.
“Doubtful,” I mumbled.
“Us, act like of bunch of inbreds who don’t even know what the word decency means? I don’t think so,” Henry sneered.
“Inbreds? Wow, sounds like a pretty decent way to judge a group of people you don’t know,” said Lockwood.
“I don’t need to know them. It was pretty clear from day one what sort of people we would be dealing with,” Henry countered.
“Henry, please,” I said.
He took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m sorry. They just make me so angry sometimes. I don’t want—”
I could fill in where his words trailed off. I knew there was a part of Henry that didn’t want to be this man, the man who only saw the world for everything that was wrong in it. It wasn’t long ago that I was the same way, but then I met James, and my whole world changed. I discovered what it was to be happy.
I wondered if Henry had ever felt that way at all.
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? All right. Fine. I want you to imagine growing up in a place like this. There were some winters where we didn’t have enough. Not enough wood to keep us warm at night, no medicine to fight the most common illnesses, or even enough food to fill out bellies. There isn’t a boy or girl over there who hasn’t lost someone to one of those winters. They watched their family members slowly waste away, knowing there was nothing they could do about it. In fact, they were probably so desperate for food that part of them wished their loved ones would just die already so they wouldn’t take any more of the food the rest of us who still had a fighting chance needed.”
Naturals (Lost Souls) Page 8
