The sun mounted steadily outside, filling the barn with an amber light.
“What time do you think it is?” I asked.
“Are you saying time doesn’t cease to have meaning when we’re together?”
“Seriously.”
“I don’t know,” she said sleepily. “A little after dawn, I guess? Why?”
I turned so our faces were just inches apart on separate pillows. “I want to go back over to the Greens’ for a second. Before everyone gets up.”
“For what?”
“To see Dad. And get some books.”
“Books?”
I paused. I had said it without thinking. I knew the mocking that I was in for, but what could I do? “Some, uh, books Tuttle gave me.”
Jenny chuckled. “He totally got to you with the save the world thing, didn’t he?”
“He did not!”
“He did! You’re going to help usher in a new golden age of mankind.”
“I am not!” I said, and then, when her laughter had faded, “I don’t know. I was mad when I left, so I didn’t take them. But now I guess… I’ve just never had anything like that before. School and stuff, I mean. It’s kind of cool knowing things other than how to avoid dying.”
“No, I get that,” she said, then added with a smirk, “you’re coming back though, right? This isn’t some clever little ploy?”
I laughed, struck for a second by the strange sound of it and how easy it felt when I was with her. Once I got myself together I stood there at the edge of the bed, hands stuffed in my pockets.
How does this work? Do I kiss her before I leave?
Over and over again I was falling into worlds I didn’t know the rules for.
“So… I’ll, uh, see ya later.”
Jenny rolled her eyes at my awkwardness. I took a last look at her lying there in the half-light, then turned toward the door, knowing that if I didn’t leave right away, I never would.
“I want to come with you when you go.”
I stopped in my tracks inches from the door.
“When your dad is better,” she said. “I want to come. I was going to be all subtle about it. At one point I was even going to blackmail you, since I spied on you burying all that stuff of Violet’s that night, but now I thought I’d just come out with it.”
Jenny rose up out of bed and moved toward me.
“Look, like you saw last night, I’m kind of a tactical genius, right? And I know where all the good stuff in this town is, so I could help you pick up some salvage before we go. What do you think?”
Jenny’s face was inches from mine, but I was too stunned to say anything.
“You don’t want me to,” she said flatly. “It’s not that.”
“What? You don’t think I can handle it?” Jenny teased. “I could destroy you in a heartbeat.”
“I know.”
“Don’t worry, Stephen — it’s not like I’m asking you to marry me or anything.”
“No, I didn’t — I just mean…” I struggled, trying to come up with a reason her offer was so confusing. “Why would you want to?”
“Why? Because I can’t live in this stupid twentieth-century museum anymore. I don’t belong here, and neither do you! I want to be out there in the real world. With you.”
“Jenny, it’s not—”
“What? Easy? Safe? Uh, yeah, no kidding. We were out there for ten years before we came here and we saw all the same things you did. Worse, maybe.”
I thought of that morning by the stream. She and Jackson playing cards and all the blood that followed. Who was I to tell her what the real world was?
“I know it will be dangerous,” she said. “I just think sitting here in this barn playing dumb pranks isn’t living. With or without you, I’m leaving. I’d rather it be with you. And I think that’s what you want too.”
She was right. I knew it as soon as she suggested it. I knew exactly what Grandpa would think, what he would say, but right then I didn’t care. The idea of walking out of town without her seemed impossible.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “Nice! It’ll be great, you’ll see. And your dad is totally gonna love me. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I kind of have a feeling he might.”
Jenny popped up on her toes and kissed me again, holding it longer this time, slipping her arms around my back so our bodies pressed tight together. “Still want to go get those books?”
I smiled. Our foreheads met, making a close little pyramid. “Yep.”
“Jerk.”
“I’ll come back as soon as I get them.”
By the time I got to the door, Jenny already had her sketch pad in her hands, drawing, lost in it. Her dark hair was a tangled mess, and in the growing light of the morning, her skin glowed. Her sweater slipped away from her shoulder, revealing a tiny island chain of freckles. I watched her for a second and then slipped out the door into the cold morning air.
I stood for a moment in the barnyard, then made for a path that cut like an arrow into the woods. Everything seemed golden and crisp around me and I felt I was close to touching something I had never seen, or even hoped for. The future.
TWENTY-TWO
I avoided the main road, following the decaying perimeter fence as it wound through the woods before jumping it and heading toward Settler’s Landing. My steps felt lighter than usual as I walked through the bare trees. It was funny trying to imagine Jenny out with me and Dad on the trail. Somehow I couldn’t see her trudging along, donkey in tow, picking up scrap.
Maybe we won’t even go back on the trail.
I stopped dead in the middle of the woods, surprised by the thought. I rolled it around in my head like it was a jewel I had just discovered.
Was it possible? After all, Dad had been talking about it before the accident, and now with Jenny along, maybe we really could make a new start. Settle somewhere. Go west and see what there was to see. There was a whole world out there.
I laughed a little to myself. The idea would have terrified me just weeks ago. How had that changed? Was it Jenny? Was it Settler’s Landing? Did it even matter? Hope was hope and I’d take it.
I clambered down a hill and leapt over a stream. The trees opened up above me. The sky was thick with looming gray clouds. The way the temperature was dropping, I wondered if I might actually see snow this year.
Usually we were down in Florida by this time of year, since real winter storms could sometimes last for weeks on end. The last time I’d seen snow was during a freak storm years before. We had just gotten to the Canadian camp in early April, when the day suddenly grew cold and snow began to fall. It had seemed like a miracle. The trading camp had buzzed around us, everyone rushing to celebrate before it was gone. There’d been a bonfire and food roasting on spits and a three-man band whose music had floated above the camp.
Mom and Dad and I had stayed behind while Grandpa went out looking for tobacco. We’d gathered around our campfire in a semicircle of folding chairs, cooking a skinny chicken on a spit, a plastic tarp angled over us to keep the snow off. We knew from experience that several hours from that moment we would have to take refuge to escape the drunkenness and the fights that inevitably broke out after a big party, but that was later. Right then the air was full of laughter and music and the clean-smelling snow that had painted the muddy camp around us a fresh, brilliant white. I had The Lord of the Rings on my lap but was listening to Dad talk about his days as a theater usher in San Diego while Mom talked of wild party after wild party and teased him for being a nerd.