Crossed

CHAPTER 51 KY

I run. Sleep. Eat a little. Drink from one of the canteens. When it empties I throw it to the side. No point in filling it with poisoned water.

I run again. On and on along the bank of the river, keeping to the trees when I can.

I run for her. For them. For me.

The sun shines down on the stream. The rain has stopped, but the broken pools are connected again.

My father taught me to swim one summer when we had more rain than usual and some of the holes in the land became pools for a week or two. He taught me how to hold my breath, stay afloat, and open my eyes underneath the blue-green water.

The pool in Oria was different. Made of white cement instead of red rock. You could see all the way to the bottom in most places, unless the angle of the sun blinded you. The water and the edges met in neat lines. Kids jumped off the diving board. It seemed that the whole Borough came to swim that day, but it was Cassia at the side of the water who caught my eye.

It was the way she sat, so still. She seemed almost suspended while everyone else called and screamed and ran. For a moment — the first time since I’d come to the Society — I felt clear. I felt rested. When I saw her there, something in me felt right again.

Then she stood up and I could tell from the tightness in her back that she was worried. She stared at a spot in the pool where a boy swam deep underwater. I walked over to her as fast as I could and asked, “Is he drowning?”

“I can’t tell,” she said.

So I went under to try to help Xander.

The chemicals in the pool burned my eyes and I had to close them for a moment. At first the pain and the way the bright light made it seem red behind my eyelids made me think that I was bleeding and going blind. I put my hands up to check but I only felt water, not blood. My panic embarrassed me. Fighting the pain, I pulled my hands away and opened up my eyes again to look around.

I saw legs and bodies and people swimming and then I stopped looking for someone drowning. All I could think was—there’s nothing here.

I’d known the pool was clean and neat but seeing it from below was so strange. Even in the rain pools that only lasted for a little while life took hold. Moss grew. Water bugs skittered in the sun along the surface until the pools dried up. But there was nothing along the bottom of this place but cement.

I forgot where I was and tried to breathe.

When I came up choking I could tell that she saw the differences in me. Her eyes rested on the scrape on my face from the Outer Provinces. But it was as though she was a little like me. She noticed the differences and then she decided what mattered and what didn’t. She laughed with me then, and I loved the way the laugh reached her green eyes and crinkled the skin around them.

I was a kid. I knew I loved her but I didn’t know what it meant. Over the years everything changed. She did. I did.

I hide the tubes and the papers in two different places. It’s impossible to know if the tubes are still viable outside of their cases in the Cavern — but Eli and Cassia trusted me. In case of flood, I put the tubes up high in the knot of an old cottonwood tree.

The papers won’t have to stay hidden for long so I bury them low in the ground and mark the place with a rock I carve. I’m pleased with the pattern. It could be waves in the sea. Currents in a river. Ripples in the sand.

Scales on a fish.

I close my eyes for a moment and let myself remember the people who are gone.

Rainbows glimmered in the stream. Golden grass tangled along the bank where Vick ran and thought about the girl he loved. His boots left unnotched prints in the earth.

The sun set over a land that my mother found beautiful. Her son painted next to her with his hands dipped in water. Her husband kissed her neck.

My father came out of a canyon. While he was inside, he’d seen people growing and harvesting crops of their own. They knew how to write. He wanted to bring all of that to the people he loved.

The lake is only a few hundred yards away. I leave the cover of the trees.