“Not a wink.” I desperately wanted a hairbrush or toothbrush, or something else to make me feel less gross and dirty. My clothes were filthy, and I probably still had last night’s beef stew stuck in my teeth. Maybe he was smiling like that because I looked like crap and it amused him.
“Worried?”
“I’m always worried. Look at my life.”
“I meant, are you worried about Teresa coming out here to speak with Landon and Bethany?”
“Of course I am. Bethany’s powerful and impulsive. She’s also got all the wild cards and she knows it. She doesn’t have to play nice with us, and sometimes I think the only reason she does is Landon.”
“So you’ve noticed that, too?” His eyebrows furrowed into a deep V. “He steadies her. This Uncle was smart in pairing them together.”
“Or lucky.”
“I’d put my money on smart. Something tells me the people who oversee this whole operation don’t rely much on luck.”
“Good point.”
He glanced down the road toward town. “Would you like to take a walk? See what this place is about?”
I met his gaze, and I saw something kind and understanding in his eyes. I tried to ignore it. “Sure. I was going to, anyway.”
We wandered down the road like the previous night: him on my left, a walking protection from the platform. We didn’t cut through the park this time. The road meandered into a residential area of old homes and sagging front porches. The windows were dark everywhere, no signs that folks were awake yet.
The town looked like any other small town I’d visited or seen in pictures—quaint, dirty, poor, and falling apart at the seams. The residents had survived here when the government turned its back on them, but at what price? At physical torture over a minor crime? At supporting repeated felonies for the sake of food?
On the northern side of town, we stumbled across a trio of people standing in the street. They surrounded a pickup truck, which had a fifteen-foot flat-bottom boat attached to a hitch on the back. Two older men carried a few fishing poles apiece. A young woman had a tackle box and a bucket of something. The woman gave a start when she noticed us, then waved.
Thatcher walked over like he belonged here, and I had no choice but to follow.
“Good morning,” he said.
“You the folks staying up with Bethany and Landon?” she asked. Like we could be anybody else. I did
“Yes, we are.”
“Welcome, then.”
“Thank you.”
We all introduced ourselves, and I made the acquaintance of Evelyn Bogart, her father Sydney, and her uncle Floyd.
“We’re heading up to the river to fish,” Evelyn said, as if the fishing poles and boat hadn’t given that game away. “You wanna join us?”
“No, thank you,” Thatcher said. “I’ve never been, so I’d be useless.”
Evelyn’s eyes brightened up, and I swear she batted her eyelashes at him. “Oh, but it’s easy to learn. As long as you aren’t afraid to hook a night crawler.” She gave me a pointed look that clearly said I was too girlie to manage such a task.
This time I did roll my eyes. “Night crawlers are easy,” I said. “It’s hooking a cricket without breaking it in half that’s the trick.”
She blinked hard.
Thatcher smiled, amused. “What do you catch?”
“Smallmouth bass, usually,” Sydney replied. “Sometimes catfish or walleyes. Canned chicken and dried beef aren’t the same as fresh fish on the supper table. Plus, we all gotta do our part for the town.”
“So you’re the town’s fishermen?”
“Not all, but some. We rotate weeks with a few other families, so’s there’s always fish around.”
“Do you hunt, as well?”
“The Schulbergs do most of the hunting. They bring in a lot of venison, plus some ducks and raccoons.”
I really didn’t want to know what a raccoon tasted like. Ever.
Landon had told us the town also had a vegetable garden and springwater. They were fairly self-sufficient, so why continue to steal groceries?
Of course, toothpaste and multivitamins didn’t grow on trees, now, did they?
“Our family’s been fishing these banks forever and then some,” Sydney said. “Got six generations of Bogarts buried in the town cemetery. I’ll be the seventh, one of these days, but Evvie there’s already working on the ninth.”
Evelyn ducked her head and blushed. I glanced down at her belly, which didn’t look swollen. Sydney’s words were pretty clear, though. “Congratulations,” I said with the faintest question attached.
“Thank you,” she replied with a subtle nod. Yeah, it was good news.
Thatcher had gone silent, his expression intent. Maybe even a little intense. He got that same look whenever kids were mentioned, like his sole goal in life was to make sure every child was taken care of and happy. Big job for one guy. He’d already failed a couple million. What were a few more? I could see him getting protective over Evelyn’s unborn baby, and the kid wasn’t even the size of a walnut yet.
“You have any kids, young folks?” Sydney asked.
“No,” I said right away. Partly because I knew my answer, and partly to give Thatcher a moment to consider his. “Don’t have any, and I can’t say I’ve ever wanted any of my own.”
“Motherhood’s a blessing,” Evelyn said.
“Maybe so, but it’s not for everyone.”
Evelyn shook her head like I was a dumb student she’d work one-on-one with later (as if), then turned to Thatcher. “And you, Mr. Thatcher?”
“I have a son,” he replied with a fondness in his voice I’d never heard before. “He’s grown now, though, and we don’t see each other much.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Yes, it is.”
We made small talk a while longer, and then Thatcher and I excused ourselves. The sun was fully up and at least an hour had passed since we’d come into town. We wandered around a little more in silence before heading toward the shack. Bethany would be up at some point, and I didn’t like the idea of leaving Ethan alone with her for too long.
Once we hit the dirt track, Thatcher broke the pleasant nontalking we had going on. “You don’t believe things will ever get better for Metas, do you?” he asked.
“Do you?” I countered. Not terribly mature, but whatever.
“I don’t know. I want to believe it will, for Landon and Caleb and Andrew. I’m not psychic, though, so I can’t know for sure.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a realist. And no, I don’t think things will get better for us. We’ll never be accepted, and it will never be okay to walk around in public with blue skin, or bat wings, or whatever freakish deformity prevents some of us from blending in.”
He stopped walking, and I made it three more steps before I clued in and turned around. He stared at me with his lips parted, his thick eyebrows once again furrowed. His eyes blazed with intensity.
“What?” I asked, challenging him with my tone and hands on my hips.
“Do you think you’re deformed?”
My insides rolled unpleasantly. “Don’t you?” Before he could answer that, I steamrolled him. “I look like an alien from some cheesy sci-fi show, and that’s not even counting the bazillion burn scars you can’t see. Even my eyes are blue where yours are white, Derek, so don’t pretend that any part of how I look is normal.”
