Chapter Sixteen. The next few days pass as days should, as they used to before well, just before

The next few days pass as days should, as they used to before…well, just before. I spend one more night in the farmhouse, just to be on the safe side, Buck says, but then I am deemed well enough to move back to the dorm. I have supervision, of course. Buck comes by to check on me, as does Margie. Dunk spends most of his free time lurking about, chatting up a storm. Then there are the others, people I have barely met or don’t know at all, knocking on my door and poking their heads in just to say hello. It seems like everyone has a vested interest in my well-being, and while part of me wants to be annoyed by all the attention, I can’t really say I mind it all that much.

They used to talk about paradigm shifts when I was in college, though to be honest, I never paid much attention. I had a bad habit of skipping classes and spending my days experiencing the non-academic parts of college life, going on road trips for no good reason, playing Frisbee in the quad, hanging out with friends in coffee shops and talking about all the things we would fix when we were finally running the world. Not that it really matters now, except that I have been wondering a lot about paradigm shifts over the last few days, and wishing just a little that I had paid more attention in school. The one thing I know is something has changed, both inside me and in the world around me. Something significant.

Among the parade of nursemaids and well-wishers is Kate. She left quickly after my performance on the porch, without a word but not without a smile. That smile had been a beginning. Kate is waiting when I return to room 39. Buck hands me off and excuses himself. I say nothing at first, unable to find anything close to the right words. Kate, too, is quiet, settling me into the bed, fluffing my pillow, putting away my extra clothes, tucking me in. I had forgotten what it feels like, being taken care of in such a way, and the devil inside screams at me to fight it, to shout that I am not a child needing to be taken care of. But there is this other voice, one which sounds strangled but vaguely familiar, telling me to just shut up and melt into the bed and soak up the gentle care that is being offered. I listen to that second voice, leaving the demon to fume and pout in his corner. Paradigm shift.

Once Kate is finished making me comfortable and has tucked me in just a little tighter, she drags the chair from beneath the desk over to the side of my bed. Out of a backpack I hadn’t noticed, she slides out a pile of paperback novels, setting them on the nightstand. The spines face her, and I can’t make out the titles. She studies them for a while, her head tilted in contemplation. My curiosity is muted by the fact that as she studies the books, she scrunches up her nose and purses her lips in the most adorable way. With a triumphant grunt and a nod of her head, she slips one of the books out of the stack and onto her lap.

Kate begins to read, and I burst out laughing before she finishes the first sentence. She has managed to pick one of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I choose not to consider the astronomical odds of her picking that particular book for fear of making my head explode from the math. She pauses, her eyebrow raised at me, questioning my interruption. I promise her I won’t panic. She grins and starts again.

She spends the rest of the afternoon and evening reading to me. It is surreal on many levels, not the least of which is she is reading to me, and I am letting her, and it seems perfectly normal to both of us.

She has a radio voice, mocha rich and marble smooth. It is hypnotizing, her voice. It cradles me, rocking me to sleep and then wrapping me in its care when I awake. I have no sense of time and no concern for the lack of it. Sometime that night, we finish the book and start another, the first story blending into the second like some wonderful dream from which you never want to wake.

Eventually, my napping gives way to real slumber. In the morning, when the light streaming in through the window finally grows harsh enough to light my world through my curtained eyes, I wake to find her still sitting in that rickety old chair. Her stocking feet are propped up on the edge of my bed, her only seeming concession to her own comfort the act of having taken her shoes off at some point in the night. Her head hangs down low on her chest, rising and falling in a deep rhythm, her neck bent forward in a way that makes me cringe in sympathy for the stiffness I know she will feel when she wakes up.

I want to make her breakfast in bed like they used to on TV, to carry back a tray laden with pancakes and syrup and juice and bacon, with a small flower, maybe a tulip, carefully arranged in a bud vase in the center. It is a ridiculous notion, and yet the urge is strong. I begin to slowly shift under the covers, trying to inch my way out of the bed so as not to wake her, despite the inherent clumsiness that has taken up residence in my still-recovering body. I choose to ignore the fact that I am acting like we aren’t on a farm in the middle of nowhere with an encampment full of survivors, where meals are prepared by the pound instead of for two. And that I can’t cook. And that breakfast in bed is far too intimate of a gesture for our situation, regardless of the peculiar intimacy we already seem to share.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Her eyebrow is raised at me, as I know it will be. I shrink back down into the mattress and pull the blanket up under my chin.

“Stretching?” I reply lamely.

“Uh-huh.” The eyebrow ticks higher. “Wanna try again?”

I decide to see how far into her hairline I can make that eyebrow go.

“Okay, fine. You caught me,” I say, my words laced with defeat. “I was going jogging.”

She stifles a laugh.

“Really,” she replies, more statement than question. She is apparently up for our little game.

“No, not jogging. Rock climbing.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Water skiing?”

She almost breaks with that one.

“Because there’s that big lake out back.”

“Okay, scratch the water skiing. I was making that up.”

“Really.”

“Yeah,” I say shyly. I hang my head a little. “I was covering.”

“Covering for what?” she says with a note of concern.

Nervously, I say, “For what I really wanted to do.”

I search her eyes, which have grown wide.

“You can tell me.”

I look away for a moment, gathering my courage.

She leans forward expectantly.

“What I really want?” I say, scooting up in the bed, my eyes once again taking hers. She leans even closer.

“Yes?”

“To go to clown school.”

Both eyebrows hit her hairline. She looks like an owl. I think she might hoot.

I let out an easy grin, savoring my victory. She knows she’s been had. I wait for her to retaliate. Instead, she laughs.

“I can see it now. You. Polka dot tie. Big red nose. Jumbo-sized shoes.”

“Don’t forget the suspenders.”

“I bet you’d wear the hell out of a pair of suspenders.”

I start to chuckle, but it dies in my throat. Her tone has changed. I feel a flush creep up my cheeks. She looks up at me through her eyelashes, all innocence and seduction. I swallow hard. My blood stirs. There is no longer any question about how I feel about her, and she knows it.

So she gets up and reaches for the door, leaving me sputtering on the bed.

“You’re leaving?”

She turns back to me, giving me most charming grin I have ever seen.

Damn.

“I’ll be back later.”

Then, with a wink, she is gone, leaving me alone with the knowledge that I am simply no match for her. But I like a challenge.

I shake my head, deciding to get up and test my legs in the privacy of my…well, privacy. Turns out they are stronger than I thought they would be. All of me feels stronger, actually. If I didn’t know better, I might actually think I had never been sick.

I get dressed, deciding to take my newfound strength out for a spin. A cautious, non-exertive spin—I’m not entirely crazy—but a spin nonetheless. I know I’m not yet well enough to resume my journey to Asheville. I try to ignore the guilt I feel over being relieved that I do not have to leave just yet.

I go down to the mess, thankful to discover I haven’t slept past breakfast. I gratefully gobble down a bowl of oatmeal, swirled generously with brown sugar and cinnamon. The few stragglers in the dining hall all wave or say hi before heading out for their daily chores and responsibilities. I feel a bit like some D-list celebrity, back when we still had those.

After breakfast I walk. I have no destination, no sense of purpose. I have forgotten what it is like to walk without need. It is exhilarating, albeit tiring. I ramble along, watch men and women working at the boundaries of the land, watch others tend to livestock and work crops, hear the children laughing under Kate and the other teachers’ loving guidance, feel the breeze touch my skin and simply enjoy the sensation, instead of trying to decipher what the air holds next for me.

I find a small cluster of trees and nestle in, watching the day slip by without me. Clouds billow and drift apart, like some unseen hand is playing with giant balls of cotton. I try to see patterns in the sky, dragons riding the wind before melting into bunnies and castles and ice cream cones. As a child I spent hours upon hours staring up at the sky, lying in the grass, seeing worlds of wonder in the clouds. It came easily to me then. It comes easily no longer. This sky is devoid of dragons.

“UFOs or signs of rain?”

Dunk really is a strange boy.

“What?”

He kicks at a stray stone in the grass, shoving his hands into the depths of his jean pockets.

“Around here, someone spends that much time staring up at the sky, they’re either trying to figure out when it’s gonna rain or they’ve recently had a close encounter with some little green men and are waiting for the mother ship to return.”

He slumps down beside me. The sky is beginning to trade its bright blue majesty for the golds and grays of early evening.

“You’ve been watching me, have you?”

I feel him studying me, trying to determine whether or not I am mad. I’m not, but I let him wonder.

“Just keeping an eye,” he says with deliberate vagueness. “You’ve been gone all day. Folks started to worry.”

“Folks?”

He shrugs. That means Kate or Buck, or both. Maybe my fan club. He is studying me again, now trying to figure out whether I’ll be mad they sent him. I’m not, but this time I tell him so. He seems happy about that.

“Did you get any work done today? Other than stalking me, I mean?” I banter.

“Hey, I’m no stalker. I was tracking. Totally different thing.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. It involves skill and stealth and it’s, uh…much more manly.”

“Manly, eh?”

“Sure,” Dunk says, apparently missing my sarcasm. “See, it’s about reading the land and opening yourself up to the world. You look for things other people don’t see and listen for things other people can’t hear. My daddy started teaching me when I was young, like his daddy taught him, and his daddy before that.”

He pauses, studying some thought in his mind, or maybe just remembering something he had forgotten he knew. He grins and shakes his head.

“I wasn’t good at it when I was younger. Daddy always said, though, that my time would come once I was older, when I was man enough to focus on what wasn’t there.”

“Well, you seem pretty good at it now. I guess you must be man enough.”

I think Dunk might actually burst. Clearly the idea of being a man is important to him. I can relate, if not to the gender then to the concept. I spent my whole life younger than most of the kids, and later adults, around me. My first-grade teacher was concerned because I was unengaged in the classroom, refusing to work on my reading with the other kids. Kids like that usually get shipped off to a remedial class somewhere, but thankfully I had a cussing and smoking nun for a principal who wasn’t content to assume I was incapable of success. She asked me why I wasn’t living up to my potential. I told her I was bored, that the work we were doing was way too easy. I was a precocious five-year-old. Within a year they had moved me up a grade. They thought about promoting me two years ahead, but decided it would be hard enough for me socially to move up one year. They were right. My new classmates never let me forget I was an outsider. From that moment on, I always had something to prove.

I know Duncan lost both of his parents to the plague. He doesn’t talk about it, at least not to me, but it is clear it still hurts. Of course it does. It is bad enough to have lost people you loved, but on top of everything else, Dunk was just a kid when his whole world was stripped away.

“I think your mom and dad would be proud of you, Dunk.”

He looks up at me, startled for a moment. Tears threaten to flow, and he works hard to hold them back. He seems to be fighting with himself, the need to be a man warring with the need to express his grief. I will him to let it go.

Whether he wins or loses his internal battle, I don’t know, but once the dam is breached there is no turning back. He sinks into my arms, sobbing for all that he has lost. I stroke his back and hold on tight, fighting back my own tears as his pain soaks into my shirt. It just won’t do for us both to be bawling messes up on this hill.

After a while, his choking sobs ease into softer sniffles, and he withdraws to sit beside me. He avoids my eyes, I am sure out of some sense of manly embarrassment. The notion that boys don’t cry, shouldn’t cry, is as stupid as it is destructive. Yet another psychological disaster for which we have football and beer commercials to thank.

“There’s nothing wrong with crying,” I say, taking care to keep my tone neutral. “But just so you know, no one else needs to know.”

He swipes away the last of his tears.

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“Nope. It’s just between us.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. And I don’t break promises to friends.”

I’m not sure what compels me to add that last part, although both the statement and the sentiment are true. I guess somewhere along the way, although I didn’t mean for it to happen or even know that it had, I started thinking of Dunk as my friend.

Dunk, for his part, does not miss the classification, and the dazzling smile that lights up his face makes his delight plain. It is my turn to be embarrassed, but I shake it off. Then I punch him in the shoulder.

“Ow. What was that for?”

I laugh and stand up, stretching my back.

“We should probably head back. I’m getting hungry.”

“Dinner!” he shouts, jumping up to his feet and setting a brisk pace back toward the barn. He might have manlike tendencies, but in the best ways, he is still a boy.

We arrive back at the dorm with just enough time to wash up before dinner. I meet up with Dunk in the dining hall and settle in for the best bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup I have ever had outside of my stepmother’s. The tables fill up quickly, and soon the barn is full of chatter and laughter.

“Hey there, you two.”

Just the sound of her voice makes me smile. I’m not the only one.

“Kate!” Dunk says excitedly, giving her a one-handed hug with his spoon still in hand. As excited as he is to see Kate, he is even more excited about his soup and quickly dives back into his bowl.

Kate sits down next to Dunk with her own bowl. Funny how I have suddenly lost interest in my dinner. I idly push my spoon around the bowl while stealing glances at her from across the table.

“Where were you guys all day?” she asks absently, although her eyes are directed at me from above her bowl as she swallows her first spoonful.

Dunk tenses, glancing up at me nervously. I shoot him a quick look.

Trust me.

“I decided to go for a walk.”

Kate’s spoon pauses in mid-air. “All day?”

“I know. Not one of my brighter ideas. But thankfully Dunk was there to bail me out. He nearly had to carry me back to the dorm.”

Dunk’s surprise is clear as he looks back and forth between me and Kate.

“He did?”

His mouth opens and he starts to sputter, but I cut him off.

“Absolutely. There I was up on this hill, practically in a coma, when Dunk spotted me. He pretty much saved me.”

I’m laying it on a little thick, but I figure the white lie won’t really hurt anyone. Dunk’s mouth hangs open, and I am sure he is going to blow the whole thing.

Kate looks between us skeptically, but finally seems to decide to accept the story. She pats Dunk’s shoulder. “Good job, Duncan.”

Dunk looks back to me, and I nod, trying to convince him to just let it drop.

“Uh, thanks?” he says weakly before returning to his neglected soup.

I feel slightly smug about my deft handling of the situation. Of course, that illusion is quickly shattered upon my next glance at Kate, who is discretely giving me that eyebrow of hers. She hasn’t bought a second of it, but she doesn’t let on for the sake of Dunk’s pride.

“So, Taylor,” Kate says, changing the subject much to my relief, “I was thinking you might want to join me for a ride tomorrow.”

Although I can’t be sure, I have a dreadful suspicion I’m not going to like whatever she’s talking about.

“Ride?”

“Horses,” Dunk says helpfully, having once again found his voice.

“Horses?”

My voice shifts about an octave higher than normal. No one seems to notice.

“Kate goes out for a ride every weekend. You don’t have to go for a long ride though, right Kate?”

“No. I suppose I could take it easy on Taylor, seeing as how she’s still weak and all.”

Somewhere I am vaguely aware that Dunk and Kate are still talking, that Kate is teasing me, but words have lost all meaning. All I can do is repeat them. That tends to happen when I’m petrified.

“Weak,” I say, nodding.

“How about it?” she asks. I force my eyes to regain their focus and look up at her, and see understanding dawn on her face. “Oh.”

“What?” Dunk asks, not comprehending. He looks at Kate, then at me, still not getting it. “You should really go, Taylor. It’s fun. Kate will go easy.”

“She doesn’t have to go, Duncan,” Kate says, trying to give me an easy out. She smiles to tell me it is okay, but I see the glimmer of disappointment.

“Sure she does! What else is she going to do all day?” Dunk presses.

“Duncan—” Kate starts to warn.

“No, it’s okay,” I interrupt, making up my mind as I speak. “Yeah, sure. Riding. Sounds…fun.”

Dunk nods triumphantly, pleased with his powers of persuasion. Kate smiles at me, concerned yet obviously happy with my decision. I smile weakly at both of them and wonder how I am going to convince myself to get out of bed in the morning, let alone ride a horse.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31