Avian only nodded as he continued to watch the ground.
I might not have known what love was but I was sure starting to understand what hate was. I was getting well practiced with myself.
TWENTY-SIX
I felt too exposed, too open. I suddenly missed the mountains, the trees. Only then did I realize just how much they had protected us. Now in the open desert, I wanted to get out from under the wide sky and distant horizons as fast as possible.
The sun seemed almost blinding as it gleamed against the sand. Amazing how the Earth could change so fast, in just the eight hours we had driven, going from forest to stark desert. We had pulled off the road and into a patch of rocks and a plant Tuck had told me was called cactus for the day. There wasn’t anything else to hide us from being seen. It was poor camouflage but it was all we were going to get.
A married couple set to making breakfast, bottled pears and bread left over from the day before. I then realized why Avian had been so insistent on getting so much water. With every bite I took I felt like my tongue was sticking to the top of my mouth. I would have guzzled down an entire gallon if I didn’t know how precious our supplies were.
I helped to assemble three of our tents. Two were for anyone who was feeling overheated to go inside to get out of the sun. The other was for Tuck, Avian, and I to get some sleep whenever we felt tired. I was too on edge to rest though.
We split into groups, deciding it wasn’t safe for anyone to wander on their own. I had chosen West as my partner, dragging him with me to circle the perimeter.
“You sleep like the dead, did you know that?” I said as my eyes scanned the endless horizon. It looked like waves were rising off the hot clay.
“Do I?” he said, a smile trying to escape onto his lips.
“Yeah,” I replied with a chuckle. “I think I could have slapped you across the face and you wouldn’t have woken up.”
“Hum,” was all he responded. My stomach suddenly felt cold as the thought that maybe West had just been faking while Avian and I had talked last night. Had he heard our entire conversation?
“I kind of like this heat,” West said as he dropped the subject mercifully. “There’s something, I don’t know, comforting about it.”
“You mean suffocating, right?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I just kind of like it. I wouldn’t want to deal with it all the time but it’s kind of a nice change. Dry. Not like how it’s felt so humid all the time lately.”
“I’ll agree with you there,” I said as I glanced back at the caravan. Everything looked blurred from this far away. Maybe we would be better hidden than I had thought. They just looked like an extension of the rock outcropping.
West sat on a large boulder, patting the space beside him. I took one more look around before I joined him. We sat together in awkward silence for almost a full minute.
“Why didn’t you tell any of us that you had those notes? They could save us all.” My habit of blurting was becoming worse.
West looked over at me, his eyes hard to read. “Because I didn’t understand it all,” he finally said. “I’m not sure what it all is but I do know that the plans aren’t complete. Whatever makes it work at the core, the part that gives it enough power to do the pulse, is missing. My grandfather was infected before he could complete the plans.
“I didn’t want to give anyone false hope.”
“You still should have told us,” I said, looking back toward the caravan. So Avian and I had been right. It wasn’t complete. It was the vital heart of it all that was missing.
We fell into silence again after that. As the quiet settled over us I felt that there was something that West wanted to say, something was on his mind.
“What?” I simply asked.
He took a breath to speak then stopped. His eyes glanced up once before falling back down to his weapon in his hands. “You still don’t know what you want, do you?”
My eyes fell to the ground. “Why do you have to ask me that? When you already know the answer? It doesn’t make it any easier on me.”
“Because I have to know, Eve,” he said, desperation rising in his voice. “Because my head is all in the wrong places right now, not knowing and always wondering what is going on. What do I have to do to make you sure that you should be with me? What do I have to do to show you how much you mean to me?”
I looked up, finding his eyes on mine. My stomach felt like it was doing strange little spasms. “Tell me,” I said quietly. “I need to hear it.”
My reply seemed to catch West off guard, his eyes reflecting his sudden blank.
“I watched you every day for as long as I can remember,” he started. “I wanted to help you, to make them stop what they were doing. I wanted you to be a normal kid with me. And then you were gone and I had no idea where you were. But the entire time, these last five years, I never stopped hoping I would find you again.
“And then I did. You were, are, the most incredible being I have ever met. And it’s not just because of the things my grandfather did to you. You’re strong all on your own. You care about all of them, even if you don’t really know what love even means.
“Eden is a wonderful place but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the same without you. I know I don’t fit in there, that people still don’t fully trust me. But you’re there so it’s all okay. When I’m with you, I feel something I didn’t think it was still possible to feel in this world. I feel alive, like there is still hope in this world. Like maybe things will still be okay someday.”
My eyes fell as West finished, looking down at our hands where they rested side by side. I slipped my fingers into his, picking apart every little thing I felt.
I didn’t get to analyze for long because suddenly, everything went black.
I opened my eyes to the washed out color of canvas, having to squint because of how light it still was. Two faces leaned over my field of vision, both filled with concern and another emotion that surprised me. Fear.
“What happened?” I asked as I pulled myself up into a sitting position, shaking what felt like fog from my brain.
West and Avian glanced at each other and I became all the more concerned. “What happened?” I demanded again.
“You… passed out,” West said. I noticed the sweat that suddenly beaded on his forehead. I glanced at Avian who just looked at the ground to the side of me. He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“It’s pushing one hundred degrees out there,” West said as he sat back on his heels. “You’re not used to the heat.”
“And you are?” I scoffed. I didn’t believe West. I hadn’t passed out from the heat. He was lying about it and Avian knew it.
“Just drop it, Eve,” West said as he pulled himself to his feet. “You’re obviously fine now.”
The conversation we had just had came back to me with force. I remembered what I had been thinking about West’s words before I had “passed out”. He had said that I made him feel like there was still hope in the world. Like things were going to be okay.
As I looked back at Avian I remembered what I had been thinking. That that was how Avian made me feel.
West avoided me the rest of the day and Avian insisted I get some sleep before we left that night. He was covering up for West but I sensed he didn’t want to be.
Once everyone was asleep on the trailer again that night I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“What really happened to me earlier?” I asked quietly.
Avian looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly.