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Saliva pooled in my mouth instantly. I realized I hadn’t had anything to drink either, not since … before.
“I’m gonna sit you up, okay? You need water.” As I rose up onto my knees, the man’s upper body lifted along with me, his head rolling to one side.
“Hey.” I reached down and wrapped my left hand under his chin to turn his head, and the scrape of his stubble against my palm brought tears to my eyes. It felt exactly the way I’d imagined.
I pushed my classmates’ jeers of, “Crazy Clover,” to the back of my mind as I brought the bottle to his parted lips. I didn’t know what to expect as I began to pour. I was afraid I might drown him, but the moment that cool water hit his tongue, the man began to swallow, and he didn’t stop. I sighed as his throat bobbed against my splayed fingers, and when he lifted his hand to the bottle and wrapped it around mine, a bolt of tingles shot up my arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake.
I watched him drink through a wall of grateful tears. His black eyelashes, his bloody knuckles—every detail became blurry and distorted. Every detail except for the red, blue, and white flag emblazoned across the swell of his bicep. That I could see clear as day. It was like a tear in the fabric of my fever dream. A slash of reality reminding me that this man was not who I so desperately wanted him to be. Not even close.
He was the enemy.
He’d destroyed my town.
He’d killed my family.
And I was officially out of my goddamn mind.
Shoving away from him, I grabbed my things and ran back to my side of the inlet, yelping in pain as I stepped down on a particularly sharp pebble before careening into the cave wall behind the boulders. Curling into a ball where he couldn’t see me, I pulled my knees up to my chest like a shield.
“Stay away!” I screamed over the deafening roar of the storm outside. “Don’t come any closer! I have yer gun!” My voice broke on that lie as I realized how vulnerable I truly was. How deluded. How weak. “I’ll kill you,” I tried to yell, but the words came out no louder than a strained whisper, hoarse and heard by no one but me. I repeated them over and over again as I rocked in my corner, tears streaming down my already-wet face.
I didn’t know what I was more upset about losing. My mind …
Or him.
CHAPTER 11
CLOVER
That night felt like it would never end.
I’d been in survival mode ever since the moment the first bomb had dropped, but with a granola bar in my belly, a collection of rainwater on the roof, shelter over my head, and an enemy who was too injured and unconscious to hurt me, the only basic needs I had left to focus on were the ones I couldn’t meet.
Warmth.
And love.
I was used to living without the latter. I’d learned that I didn’t actually need love to survive. But what I did need, what I’d really lost in the explosion, was the hope of love. That was what had kept me going day after day. The hope that if I was good enough, quiet enough, hardworking enough, forgiving enough, Da would stop hating me. The hope that Odie would grow up to become my best friend—my only friend. The hope that, if I did what I was told and smiled through my tears and inconvenienced no one, I could convince my family to love me. Eventually. I just had to do better. Be better.
Now, that possibility was gone.
I tucked my knees inside my jumper in an attempt to stay warm, but the knitted material was so burned and torn that it did little to stop my shivering.
But honestly, I didn’t want it to stop.
The discomfort of being cold, the aches and pains of lying curled up on a rock, the gnawing in my nearly empty belly—those were the only distractions I had from the absolute agony of realizing that the family I’d lost … wouldn’t have cared if they’d lost me.
And the worst part was that there was nothing I could do to let that feeling out.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to wail. I wanted to hit and kick and break things until I expelled the poison boiling over inside of me. But making that kind of noise in this new world was a death sentence, so I had to just lie there and let the pain consume me, fill me up until it leaked out through my tear ducts and between my gritted teeth like the high-pitched whistle of a teakettle.
It was excruciating, and the longer I lay there, the louder and more uncontrollable my crying and shivering became. I covered my mouth with my hands to try to muffle it, clenched my jaw shut, curled in on myself tighter, but fighting it was exhausting, and I was already so, so tired.
Fear gripped the back of my neck, turning my shivers into full-body tremors when I realized that I couldn’t stop my sobbing. It felt like vomiting. My body was expelling the pain whether I liked it or not, and it was not a quiet process. Burying my face in my elbow, I rolled onto my knees to muffle the sound, but it wasn’t enough.
I began shushing myself between every desperate, wailing gasp of air, but my attempt to self-soothe only made me cry harder.
Because it made me realize how completely and utterly alone I was.
