“No!” She brushed his hand away. “I’m not going back to town.”
“Nix, c’mon,” prodded Benny, who hovered over Tom’s shoulder like a worried aunt.
She gave him two seconds of a lethal green stare and then refocused on Tom. “You’re not my dad, Tom, and I-”
Tom made a face. “Oh, please, Nix. You’re not a petulant little kid, so don’t try that act on me. Benny still tries it and it never works.”
“It works sometimes,” Benny said. They ignored him.
“We can be home in four hours,” Tom said. “The doc can stitch you up, we rest up a day or two, and-”
“No.”
“Would you rather have a bad scar?”
“If it’s a choice between going back and that, then I’ll take the scar.”
“Why?”
It was Chong who asked the question, and they turned to look at him. He was pale and still looked badly shaken by what had happened. His eyes were dark and filled with guilt.
“Look,” Nix said slowly, “if we go back because of this, then what will be the next thing that takes us back? I know how things work with people. If something stops us this soon, then all we’ll find out here are reasons to stop and start over.”
“No way,” said Benny.
“No,” agreed Tom.
She picked up the first aid kit and thrust it toward Tom. “You do it.”
“Please,” whispered Chong. “Don’t. This is my fault. I… I can’t be responsible for you being all messed up.”
“Let’s not add more drama,” said Tom. “I’m not that bad with a needle.”
“Nix is beautiful,” said Chong. “She should always be beautiful.”
Benny held up a hand. “Um… going out on a philosophical limb here, but scar or no scar, Nix is always going to be beautiful.”
“No doubt,” agreed Tom.
Nix flushed, but her expression was still hard.
Chong gave a stubborn shake. “Please. I can’t deal with it knowing that it’s my-”
“As God is my witness,” snarled Nix, “if you say it’s your fault one more time, Chong, I will beat you unconscious and leave you for the zoms.”
Chong’s mouth remained open, the sentence half said but now dead on his tongue.
He turned away and stalked to the edge of the clearing, then squatted down in the grass and laced his fingers over his bowed head.
The first aid kit was still in Nix’s hand. Tom hesitated, but then Lilah suddenly leaned in to snatch up the kit.
“She will die of old age before you make up your mind,” she said coldly. “I’ll do it.”
“Whoa,” yelped Benny, making a grab for the kit. “Do you even know how?”
Instead of answering, Lilah pulled up her shirt to show her midriff. There were three healed-over scars, one at least nine inches long. The scars were as thin as threads. Benny stared. Lilah had a flat, tanned stomach and the curved lines of superbly toned muscles. She was also holding the shirt a little too high for comfort, and Benny could feel his hair starting to sweat.
Tom, quietly amused, reached up and pushed Lilah’s hand down a few inches.
Nix gave Benny another of those deadly green stares and fired one at Lilah, who was oblivious to it. Her understanding of personal modesty was entirely from books and not at all from practical experience.
“You stitched those?” Tom asked.
“Who else?” She dropped the hem of her shirt and turned to show other scars on her legs. Benny hoped that an asteroid would fall on his head at the moment. It wasn’t that he wanted to look, but he didn’t know how not to look, because he thought that would be even more obvious.
“That’s very good work,” said Tom. “Better than I can do.”
“I know,” Lilah said bluntly. She squinted up at the sun. “Better to do it now. Light’s good but careful takes time.”
Nix turned to Tom. “If she can do it, then can we stay out here?”
Tom sighed and stood. “One step at a time. Let’s see how you feel when she’s done.”
“I feel fine.”
“We don’t have anesthesia, Nix,” Tom murmured. “It’s going to hurt. A lot.”
“I know.” Her eyes were hard.
Benny tried to read her expression and all the unspoken things it conveyed. Over the last year Nix had learned nearly every kind of hurt there was. Or at least every kind of hurt Benny could imagine.
Without saying another word to Tom, Nix turned to Lilah.
“Do it,” she said.
23
BENNY COULDN’T BEAR TO WATCH, BUT HE COULDN’T LEAVE NIX ALONE, either. However, she threatened him if he didn’t leave, so he slunk away to stand in the shade of a tree with Tom.
“Heck of a start,” Tom said softly.
“I’d say ‘could be worse,’ but I’m kinda thinking that it couldn’t. So… basically this blows,” observed Benny.
“Yes it does,” agreed Tom.
They stared out at the endless green of the forest.
“She’s strong,” said Tom after a while.
“Nix? Yeah.”
Minutes passed, and Benny tried to think about anything instead of how it must feel to have a curved needle- like one of Morgie’s fishhooks-passed through the skin of your face, followed by the slow pull of surgical thread. The tug at the end to pull the stitch tight. The tremble in the flesh as it waited for the next stitch. And the next.
Benny was pretty sure he was going to go stark raving mad. He kept listening for Nix’s scream. And with each second he could not understand why she didn’t scream. He would have, and he made no apologies for it. Screaming seemed like a pretty good response to what Nix was going through.
There were no screams.
After what seemed like five hundred years, Tom repeated what he’d said.
“She’s strong.”
“Yeah,” Benny said again.
His fingernails were buried into his palms hard enough to gouge crescent-shaped divots.
“Girls are stronger than boys,” Tom said.
“Not a news flash,” Benny said.
“I’m just saying.”
They watched the forest.
“If this goes on any longer, Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“Shoot me.”
Tom smiled.
Benny looked at him and then over to where Chong still sat in the tall grass.
“Is this all really Chong’s fault?”
Tom shrugged.
“No, tell me.”
