Page 6

The morning passes as yesterday did—sitting in the back of a pickup for miles, looking for danger, broken only by brief stops to scavenge. Maybe to someone else it would get tedious after a while, but it doesn’t to me.

After days and weeks and months of seeing nothing but the old Walmart and the barren landscape surrounding it, everything feels new and interesting. I’m alert and watchful all morning, and I do the best I can to help search for abandoned provisions whenever we stop.

By the midday break, I’m more tired than I realized.

Yesterday several in the group found quiet, shady spots to take naps, and that sounds like a good idea for me today.

So when I climb out of the back of the pickup and bend at the waist to stretch my back and thighs, I’m ready to search out a suitable napping spot.

Deck climbs out right after me and immediately disappears—I assume he’s peeing, but I don’t know this for sure—so I take the opportunity to get some distance, moving to the other side of the clearing and searching for an out-of-the-way corner to settle.

Others are lining up to grab the bread and jerky for lunch, but I’m not hungry. I’ve had more to eat these past two days than I’ve had for a year. My stomach simply doesn’t have room for it all.

I’m eyeing some grass under a tree—it’s almost green, not like a lot of the struggling, half-dead grass and foliage that’s most common now—when a presence moves to my side.

With a sigh, I turn toward Deck. “What?”

He hands me my lunch portion.

“You can have it,” I tell him. “I’m not hungry.”

He thrusts it at me again.

“Deck, I said—” I break off my objection because he heard exactly what I said. He simply doesn’t care. I accept the bread and jerky, break both in half, and hand him one section of each, making myself take a bite of the other.

This is apparently acceptable. He eats the part I gave him in a couple of big bites and stands watching until I get my portion down. It tastes fine. That’s not the issue.

The problem is I’m simply not used to eating.

When I’ve finished, I drink the water he hands me.

Finally finished with these duties, I ask, “Can you leave me alone now?”

He shakes his head and gestures to the right. I know exactly what he means. He wants us to practice self-defense like we did yesterday.

“I was going to get some rest,” I tell him .

He narrows his eyes and gestures more emphatically.

I could argue. I should argue. This man is obnoxiously bossy, and he has no right to act that way with me.

I’m my own person. I’m the one who decides what I do with my break. Not him.

But I’m tired. And I’ve been weirdly upset since that vulnerable conversation with Burgundy this morning. I simply don’t have the energy to argue with him.

Maybe if we do a short round of self-defense training, he’ll let me rest after that.

So I relent, rolling my eyes and mumbling complaints to myself as I follow him away from the others.

We end up in a good spot. I’m not sure how he found it so quickly. It’s surrounded by trees and thus isolated, but it’s shady, the grass is thick, and the dirt is soft.

I put down my water bottle and face him, waiting for him to tell me what to do.

He has a towel draped around his neck. He pulls it off, winds it around his hands, and holds them up.

When I just stare, he makes some grumpy nods toward his hands.

He wants me to punch him there—as if he were wearing boxing gloves or holding a punching bag.

Obediently I aim a few punches at the wrapped towel.

He makes a sound in his throat, which surprises me. It’s soft and guttural but an actual sound. His expression tightens in frustration as he gestures with his head back at his hands.

He’s getting annoyed. He wants me to hit him harder.

Sighing, I try. But the impact on my knuckles doesn’t feel great. And he’s so much bigger than me. I’m around a foot shorter and half as broad as he is. My punches aren’t going to have any sort of impact.

He keeps urging me to try harder for about five minutes until he makes another throaty sound and unwraps his hands.

Hopeful that he’s giving up for today, I say, “I’m sorry I’m not any stronger. But what the hell do you expect from me? You’re like a mountain compared to me.”

He frowns fiercely and pats one of his shoulders with his opposite hand.

I stare, my mouth falling open.

He pats again. More insistently.

“I’m not going to punch your shoulder like that! I might be small, but I could still bruise you.”

Through a series of gestures and grimaces, he soundlessly yells at me. Ordering me to punch him in his shoulder.

After a minute, I’m so frustrated and annoyed that I do it. I aim a sharp, upward jab at his shoulder. It’s harder than I expected myself to be capable of. It hurts my knuckles so much I gasp and jerk backward, but it doesn’t move him at all.

He nods approvingly and pats his shoulder again.

I rub my knuckles, checking to see if they’re damaged.

He takes my wrist and straightens my fingers, moving my arm so that I’m connecting his shoulder with the heel of my hand. Then he drops my wrist and waves toward his shoulder again.

I groan out loud. I really can’t help it. What the hell is he even trying to accomplish here? I can’t defend myself by hitting a big man in the shoulder. My best punch didn’t hurt him at all.

He glares and points one more time, so I step closer and pull my arm back. I hit him hard in the shoulder with the heel of my hand.

It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as with my knuckles, but it obviously doesn’t faze Deck. At all.

“See? I can’t hit hard enough to do anything.”

He makes a face at me and raises both hands, slamming one of his hands into the other fiercely.

“Fine,” I tell him, sounding as impatient as I feel. “I’ll try to do it harder. But there’s only so much harder I can get.”

He drops his hands and waits for me. I change my stance, pull my elbow back, and then throw my hand forward and upward, hitting his shoulder so hard it makes a loud smacking sound.

He nods and gestures for me to do it again. So I do. Then again.

Then he raises his hands and counts out ten on his fingers.

“Fine. Ten times, and then that’s it. This is a ridiculous exercise.”

He lets out a breath and waits.

I hit him once as hard as I can. My palm hurts, but I do it again and again, letting out a little grunt each time.

On the fifth hit, something weird happens. That twisty tension that’s always lurking, always pushing at the edges of my selfhood, suddenly rears up. Swells. Grows. Starts lashing out. Until I’m hitting him fiercely with helpless, choppy sobs of effort.

He takes it. Stands motionless. When I’ve gotten to ten, I’m so out of control I almost keep going, but he moves out of my reach and leans over to pick up the towel. He winds it around his hands again and holds it up, nodding toward it like he did before.

So I hit there and keep doing it. And with each blow all the brewing anger that’s been trapped inside me finally has an exit point. An escape hatch.

It feels so weirdly, twistedly good as I unleash blow after blow on Deck’s wrapped hands that I can’t stop. I let loose, getting louder and louder as I hit him.

He stands motionless, braced on parted legs with his hands up defensively, and he takes it. All of it. Even as it feels like I’m attacking him.

Even as his big body becomes everything that’s wrong in this world. The unknowable force that’s stripped everything away from me. My family. My friends. My community. My future. My safety. And finally Hal, the one person I had left who knew me. Loved me.

Only a few years ago, I was happy in college. Taking classes. Hanging out with Hal and my friends. Taking spring break trips. Planning to be a lawyer. To have a good life.

If Impact hadn’t happened, I could have had it. All of it. A career I loved. Success. A man who loved me enough to marry me. Maybe children. Or even grandchildren.

I could have had what millions of other people had who had the good luck of being born a few decades earlier than me.

But it was all ripped away from me, and I have absolutely no one to blame for it. To hate for it. Call it fate or reality or the brutal will of God, it’s done this to me, and it remains completely inaccessible.

And I hate it. I hate all of it. I throw everything I have into lashing out, as if I might somehow beat a merciless world into compliance.

Eventually I’m sobbing for real as I flail out at Deck. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, and my nose is running.

And it’s that—that small detail of a runny nose—that triggers a sliver of recognition. Because I’m not somehow battering cruel reality. I’m lashing out at Deck.

A real man. Who might be annoying but who has also been good to me.

I jerk backward, sniffing and shaking my aching, tingling hands.

His expression is completely composed, and his eyes are far too knowing. They see far too much. He gestures back toward himself, urging me to keep going, but I shake my head.

I turn my back to him and work on composing myself, sucking all the emotion that got unleashed back inside where it belongs.

And it’s strange.

So strange.

There doesn’t seem to be as much of it now to fit inside my too-small self .

When I’ve controlled myself, I turn around to see that Deck is still standing there. He’s dropped the towel on the ground, and he’s just watching me.

“I’m going to lie down and get some rest,” I tell him, so self-conscious I have to fight not to simply run away. “Is that all right with you?”

He nods soberly.

He’s still standing motionless, and it’s deeply disturbing. But I like this quiet spot. It’s out of sight of everyone else. So if I feel like crying, I can do it with a semblance of privacy.

I step over to pick up the towel and then lie down on the grass, using the towel as a pillow. It smells like Deck, but I don’t care.

It’s not that bad.

I turn on my side with my back to him and pull myself into a loose fetal position.

I work on not crying out loud. I work on it for only a few minutes. Then I can’t work on anything because I’ve fallen asleep.

I wake up when someone nudges my leg.

At first I have no idea where I am or what’s happening or what hour or day or year it is. But then I breathe in the scent of Deck and turn over to see he’s still there.

He’s sitting down, leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree. Close enough that he can reach me with his foot, which is how he woke me up .

I sigh and sit up, sore and exhausted and oddly lighter than I was. “You provoked me into losing it on purpose,” I say bluntly.

He meets my eyes.

I blow out another breath and stretch my arms above my head.

“Well, I do feel a little better for some reason. I don’t even know why.

” A lot of hair has slipped out of my braided ponytail, so I pull out the elastics and start from scratch, smoothing it down to secure it tightly and then braiding the tail.

“I guess you overheard what I was saying to Burgundy this morning, didn’t you?

About me feeling trapped. Frozen. When it counts. ”

He nods slowly.

“And that’s what the whole thing was about? Proving I’m not actually trapped. That I’m able to lash out if I need to.”

He makes a series of gestures. One that looks like he’s grabbing someone. Then a repeated punching of his own palm with his right hand. He nods at me a few times.

“Yeah. I get it. I still don’t like my chances of overpowering a much bigger man, but I do want to fight back. I really do.”

I’m about to get up when he stops me. He hooks a couple of fingers into the neckline of his T-shirt and pulls, stretching it far enough to expose a lot of his shoulder.

There’s a red, angry blotch on his skin. From where I repeatedly hit him.

“Oh shit. I did hurt you. You shouldn’t have let me do that to you. ”

He raises a finger to stop me, touches his shoulder, and then gives me a thumbs-up sign.

For no good reason, the sight of huge, shaggy Bigfoot giving me a cheesy thumbs-up makes me snort in amusement. Then I start to laugh. Then I can’t stop.

He’s shaking his head bemusedly as he stands up and then leans over to extend a hand to me.

I let him help me to my feet, still laughing a little.

I really don’t know what comes over me, but I giggle on and off for the rest of the afternoon.