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I’m not sure what the right answer is, whether telling them the truth will hurt or help me. For now, it seems better to go with the easiest explanation, the one that they’ll immediately understand. “Yes,” I say, with a pang that surprises me. I didn’t realize until this moment that I was hoping once I left Westfall behind, shed my old life and all the people in it, that my sacrifice would at least leave me free to be honest. Free to end a lifetime of lies and pretending and weighing every word. It’s exhausting to know all that deceit has followed me, hundred-pound baggage I can’t seem to put down.
Ash tells me that we’re going to head out as soon as I’m up and ready to go and then leaves me for a few minutes. “I left some extra water in the bathroom,” she says on her way out the door. “If you want to wash up a little bit.” She glances at my filthy tank top. “We can find you some clean clothes when we get back to camp.”
When I finally roll out of bed, I have to clamp my mouth closed on a groan. My whole body aches, head to toe, as though someone has taken a fist to every inch of flesh. I’m thankful for my long pants, just so I don’t have to see what my legs look like. My arms are bad enough, covered with bloody scratches and deep purple bruises. And although my shoulder no longer throbs with pain, I can tell it’s still swollen and tender. I clench my jaw and shuffle into the bathroom across the hall, close the door on a screech of rusty hinges.
There’s no running water, of course, but true to her word Ash has left a canteen of water balanced on the edge of the chipped porcelain sink. The mirror above the sink is smashed, but a single shard of glass remains, bisecting my face when I peer at my own reflection. It’s the first time I’ve seen myself since I was put out, and it’s hard to comprehend the changes that little more than a week have made. My eyes look huge, staring from a sunburned face streaked with dirt and dried blood. My lip is still swollen from Mark’s beating, my right eye puffy and dark. Freckles I never knew I had dot my nose and cheeks. I’ve lost weight, my cheekbones stark and angular. I look older, harder already. What once was soft has been carved away, leaving only what’s abso
lutely necessary behind. I barely recognize myself and find I’m okay with that. I’m not the same girl I was when I believed in my family, when I was Bishop’s wife. It’s only right that my outside should alter along with everything beneath my skin.
It seems impossible that only miles away Westfall still stands. People right this minute buying jam in the market or feeding ducks in the park. It feels like a different lifetime from where I am now. I close my eyes, my throat muscles fighting a sob. My hands tighten on the sides of the sink. Grief surges through me, memories flowing against my eyelids. Westfall. My family. Bishop. I don’t want to think about any of this, any of them, but once the door in my mind is open I’m overcome with fear about what might be happening in my absence, whether Callie has managed to get close to Bishop, whether my father has come up with a new plan to take down President Lattimer, if Bishop is safe and how long he can remain that way. They are questions I will never find answers for; just the asking of them is a type of torture. Be safe, I think, wishing there was some way Bishop could hear me across the distance between us. Be strong. Be happy.
I open my eyes, push away my thoughts along with a few escaping tears. I give my head a little shake, remind myself that the past is gone for good. Here and now is all that matters.
“You almost done?” Caleb calls from the hallway, making me jump.
“Give me another minute,” I call back. I take a deep breath, focus on trying to clean myself up. My hair is caked with dirt and blood, matted into knots I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to pull free. I leave it alone and instead take the piece of graying rag Ash left next to the canteen and go to work on my face and hands, scrubbing off as much filth as I can. I’m moving a little easier by the time I let myself out of the bathroom, blood rushing to my cramped muscles. I gather my bag from the floor of the bedroom and join Caleb and Ash where they wait in the stripped-down kitchen.
“I’m ready,” I tell them. Ash scrambles up from where she’s sitting on the floor, grabs her knapsack off the kitchen table. Caleb is already at the back door, probably annoyed it took me so long. I follow behind Ash, let the screen door bang closed behind me. The sun warms my face, my nose full of the scent of dirt and dry grass on the wind. I step off the back porch and into the next chapter of my life.
Chapter Five
We head west, back toward the river, negating every hard-earned step I took away from it a few days ago. I tell myself my journey east wasn’t wasted; at least I found other people, ones who allowed me to join them. Caleb takes the lead and Ash has fallen back to allow me to walk between them. But strangely, I don’t feel boxed in the way I used to when my father and Callie made sure I was always in the middle. Maybe because I sense Caleb would be only too glad to see me break away and disappear forever.
We walk in silence, other than Ash whistling a four-note melody over and over.
“Jesus,” Caleb says finally, “give it a rest, would you?”
In response Ash whistles once more, almost a screech, before falling silent.
“Are you guys related or something?” I ask, glancing behind me at Ash. “Siblings?” Although they look nothing alike—one dark, one light—their interactions have the love-hate tone of family.
Caleb grunts something unintelligible, but Ash shakes her head. “Sort of. Not technically.”
I’m about to ask what she means when Caleb says, “Her dad found me wandering around out here when I was a kid. Maybe seven or eight?” He hooks a thumb back over his shoulder without turning around. “She was just born.”
“So your parents raised both of you?” I ask Ash.
She’s pulled abreast of me, and her mouth tightens briefly before she answers. “Just my dad. My mom died having me.” I know that giving birth is dangerous, even in Westfall. Women die more often than people like to acknowledge, so it makes sense it would be riskier out here. Ash’s father must have been very determined if he managed to keep a newborn alive without her mother.
“Is your dad back at the camp?” I sidestep a hole in the ground, bumping Ash’s shoulder as I do.
“No,” Ash says. She keeps her eyes on the ground.
“He died.” Caleb’s voice is quiet, his shoulders and neck stiff. “Last year. Infected leg.”
“Oh.” I sneak a glance at Ash. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” Caleb says, which is probably the nicest thing he’s said to me so far.
“So you’re on your own?” I ask Ash.
Caleb stops so quickly I almost slam into his back. “She has me,” he says. “She’s not alone.”
“I didn’t mean—”
Ash cuts me off, pokes Caleb between the shoulder blades, hard. “Lay off her. God.” Once Caleb starts walking again, Ash rolls her eyes at me, making me smile. It’s been so long since I’ve smiled that the stretch of skin feels foreign, like learning a new language.
“You’re, what, about sixteen?” Ash asks. “That’s still the age they make you get married, right?”
