I lie on the cool grass, wide awake, unable to make sense of what just happened.
After Marcus dropped the line, I didn’t know how to respond. His green eyes trained on me with a level of intensity I’d never seen before. He takes in my expression. Confused, but not angry. Distant, but not regretful. Minutes were spent in silence and soon we were walking back to camp. Dillon and Olivia were still asleep when we got there.
“I just wanted to let you know,” Marcus had whispered.
I push aside the confusion. What I’m left with is the grief that I had been suffering from all day. I sit up and move next to Dillon who had woken up about fifteen minutes ago and was keeping watch.
“Hey Skye,” he whispers. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Not after what happened today,” I sigh. I try to fight back my tears, but to no avail. Between hugging me and stroking my hair, it still takes him a good ten minutes to calm me down. But once he does, he asks me,
“Why do you think Marcus got so mad at me?” My first reaction is to claim that I don’t know, but I can’t lie to him.
“He told me he was jealous of you.” He pauses before answering.
“Well I suppose he has good reason to.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re a great girl, Skye.” I blush and give a faint smile. Suddenly, I think back to the dance.
“That night of the dance, what’d you mean when you said that you knew I’d come around?”
“Well that brings me back to one of the first times I saw you,” he tells me. I give a yawn. All of a sudden, I’m really tired, but I want to hear what he has to say. He lets me rest my head on his lap.
“I was fourteen,” he begins. “Besides on the train to the orphanage, and occasionally at meals, I never saw you much.” He was right. I spent most of my time shutting out everyone around me. I showed my face as little as possible. “Then one day, when I was sent outside to water the plants in the garden, I saw you there.” We didn’t have to work at the orphanage, but had to do chores like wash dishes from time to time. As I recall though, we weren’t supposed to go outside freely. “You were lying in the grass watching the clouds. I sat down next to you and tried talking to you, but you didn’t really answer. You’d nod or shake your head, but wouldn’t speak. It was when I asked you your name that I heard your voice.” He might have been the first person I’d spoken to there. “Then I asked you what you were doing and you said—”
“Finding my way,” I finish for him.
“I was about to ask you what you meant, but an official came out the door. When I looked back you were gone.” I remember that day now. It was my thirteenth birthday. Maybe it was special after all. “What did you mean?”
“Looking at the sky always helped me find my way. My purpose. It calms me.”
“I wanted to get to know you better, but never really had the chance.” I sit up and gaze into his eyes.
“Did you ever get you chance?” I whisper. His hand touches my cheek ever so lightly as he whispers back,
“Definitely.” He leans in closer and presses his lips on my right cheek.
I lie back down again. My eyes grow heavy and I drift off. Rose, the playful girl at the lake, appeared in my dream. Then, just like in reality, she was dead right before my eyes. I’m not sure what I did, screamed, cried, or whimpered, but when I wake up, not too long after I fell asleep, Dillon’s blue eyes are looking down at me with that sadness of his.
“What’s wrong?” he asks gently. My head still rests on his lap.
“Rose,” I whisper so softly I barely hear myself say it. He caresses my hair and tells me to go back to sleep. The sun hasn’t risen, but the moon has set so I figure I have at least an hour. Slowly, my eyes close and I fall asleep.
The sunlight warms my face while a gentle breeze wisps through my hair when I wake up again. When I sit up, I find that I still have a headache from yesterday. Another reminder of Rose. Why she came to my side. Why I couldn’t save her. Why I didn’t save her. We pack our meager amount of belongings and supplies and venture on.
This ordeal has started to take its toll on all of us. We’d been in the forest for over a week and the four of us have miraculously survived. My body aches and my wounds scream with too much exertion. I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep since we left (not counting when the man drugged me). Some of our injuries probably need more attention than a spritz of antiseptic and a small bandage. Once we run out of water, there’s no guarantee that a storm or lake will be there to replenish our supply. I’ve used more than half of my arrows and so has Dillon. Marcus and Olivia can reuse spears only so many times. There’s always throwing knives, but I don’t think it’s a skill any of us possess.
I hear a thud behind me. When I turn, Marcus is collapsed on the ground on his stomach.
“Are you okay?” I ask. I sink down to the ground beside him.
“Yeah I guess I stumbled or something,” he says, sitting up. “Can we stop for a bit?”
“Sure,” I say. Olivia and Dillon nod. I hold out my hand to help him up and we move under some trees.
Olivia rewraps Marcus’s ankle. I suggest to go hunt and even though I’d rather be alone, they all say it’s too dangerous.
“I’ll come,” Olivia says. I grab my bow and arrows and Olivia grabs a spear.
We travel a good distance from where Marcus and Dillon are. I can’t help but wonder what they talk about.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Olivia asks.
“How could you tell?” I question.
“Something in you expression, I guess,” Olivia says with a shrug. I’m not sure how everyone can always tell how I’m feeling. A squirrel scampers by in the distance and is soon the victim of my arrow. We sit on a log and I decide to tell her what’s on my mind.
“Well, last night Marcus told me something that kind of surprised me,” I tell her.
“What?”
“He told me he loved me.” To my surprise, Olivia doesn’t react beyond nodding.
“How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t love anyone right not. Not even Dillon.” It was true. Sure, I liked him a lot, but I can’t say I love him. “What should I do?”
“Maybe you shouldn’t do anything. Let this solve itself.” If only I could do that with all of my problems. Olivia moves closer to me and her eyes hold a sad, serious look. “Just please, don’t hurt him.” I think of the guy who confessed his love for me even after saying he wanted to protect me from losing Dillon out of anger. Then I look his sister who wants to protect him all the same.
“I could never.”
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