Volumes of the Vemreaux Complete Collection: A Dystopian Adventure Trilogy, page 37
“I don’t remember,” he admitted, scratching his head as he processed. “Really?”
“Why is that so strange?”
“I…usually I…” Sam looked up at Blue in confusion, the angel of deliverance he expected to scare off by morning. “That’s…unexpected. Didn’t I say not to let me fall asleep?” he asked both of them rudely. Then he stood without further explanation and went into the bathroom while Blue put her shoes on in shame. Even when he came back out, he did not speak, but remained deep in thought. It wasn’t until he had his jacket, wallet, keys and some of his bearings that he opened his mouth at all. “You ready to go home yet?” His tone was clipped, all traces of levity gone.
Blue nodded.
“You can talk, you know,” he snapped maliciously. His tone slashed at the glow she’d acquired from lying in his arms. His mood shifted for a reason she could not pinpoint, but she’d been around Baird enough to know that the problem was usually her, and that she should quietly wait out the storm before standing up in the middle of it. She took her penance with grace, and tilted her chin to the floor in an effort to be invisible. She followed behind him out the door, glancing up only enough to see his shoes to know where she should go.
This irritated Sam. “You don’t have to walk behind me, you know. It’s creeping me out that I can’t even hear you walking. Here.” He slowed down so that he was next to her. “Just be next to me. Make me feel like a beautiful woman like yourself would want to walk down a hall with me.” He tried to regroup with humor, but waking up with a woman in his bed was a new experience. Not having had a night terror was downright unsettling.
When her pace began to fall even slower, he sighed in irritation. “It makes me nervous to have anyone, except maybe Alec, behind me. He actually makes a little noise, so I don’t feel like I’m being stalked.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked disgusted with herself, the splendor of their intimate evening shattering around her. She felt like a fool. “I…you’re m-mad at me.”
Sam internally berated his temper and sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not mad. I’m just not…I’m not mad.”
As they strolled together down the hallway, Blue began to drift behind him once more. Sam told himself that he simply had to link his fingers through hers, so that she’d keep pace with him. He ignored the silent cheers inside when his lonely hand got its wish. The brightness was short-lived, however, when he realized she would not look up at him anymore.
35
Different Worlds
“Yeah, yeah. I’m smoking,” Sam grumbled obstinately as he pulled out a cigarette. “I smoke in the morning and pretty much all day long, and I’m fine with it.”
Blue had not said a word, but crawled further and further into her shell as he lashed out.
“My clothes smell like smoke, too, apparently, and I bloody love it.”
The plastic bag had been stowed under the front passenger’s seat for safe keeping, but Blue still checked that it was there when she ghosted past the door that Sam opened for her. She kept her face from him and tried as hard as she could not to anger him further.
“Why don’t you ever look at people?” His tone had too much edge to it. Sam stood, leaning on the open passenger’s side door.
Blue did not answer, nor did she move to show him her face. She shrunk down into her seat, head bowed and shoulders hunched to ward off his aggression. Her voice was so small; he had to close his mouth to hear it. “I’m sorry.”
Sam paused, and then shook his head as his hands cast out in frustration. “Why are you apologizing?”
“Because you gave me a direct order, and I disobeyed. You told me not to let you fall asleep, and I did it anyway. I got confused. The Vemreaux Supervisors never put us in charge of that kind of thing back in The Way. Forgot that you’re Vemreaux, and you never disobey a Vemreaux Supervisor. So, I’m sorry.”
Sam paled. Once words finally came to him, his tone was gentler. “Blue, I’m not your supervisor. You don’t have to obey me.”
“Yes, I do. You’re throwing a fit right now because I didn’t.”
“Throwing a fit, eh? Well, I guess that’s true. But you don’t have to obey me. We’re equals, here. I was just being a jerk for no good reason. You should cuss me out, and then call me a dick for being mean to you.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? We’re back to that? That’s all you have to say? Why don’t you ever fight back? Where’s the girl what threw me against the wall a couple days ago?”
She shrugged. “Fine. You’re a dick, then.”
“Good. Now tell me you think smoking is bad, and I should stop.”
“But I don’t know anything about smoking. Never saw it until I got out of The Way.”
“Well, it’s a bad habit, and you should throw a fit about it.”
“I’m not going to throw a fit.” Blue sighed. “You losing your temper’s just hurtful and petty. When I lose mine, it’s dangerous. When you hurt people, they just want to die. When I do it, they could actually die.” She shook her head, still not looking anywhere near him. “If you don’t want to smoke, then don’t. I’m not here to boss you around or make you mad at me. I’m not your supervisor. I’m just trying to get home, which I already told you, I don’t need you for.”
The morning air worked its magic of finally smacking sense into him. He closed his eyes. “Ah, Blue. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
He cringed, but fought to control his temper. “I am. It’s not you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Okay.”
Seeing her hide herself from him and knowing that this time, he deserved it brought about the rare emotion of humility in him. Instead of shutting her door, he knelt down on the pavement and placed his hand on hers. “Blue, I’m sorry. I’m a jerk, and I’m sorry. I’m not a morning person, and well, I don’t usually let girls stay the night in my bed. Kinda threw me.”
She held her face far from him to keep her hurt feelings private. “I didn’t ask to stay the night, Sam. I told you I could run home. If you didn’t want me to be there, you should’ve let me go. I don’t understand your Vemreaux politics, so you shouldn’t mess with my head like that. Just say what you mean. I didn’t…I didn’t ask you for anything.”
“I know that. I’m not upset that you stayed. I’m really glad you did. I…” He ran his hands through his dark chocolate-colored hair in frustration and humiliation. “And now I’ve been a jerk to you, so I have to tell you why.” He made a frustrated noise, and then exhaled, steadying himself. “You said I slept peacefully. I don’t do that. I have night terrors and I wake the guys up screaming every night. That’s why I get my own room. Peaceful sleep? I can’t remember the last time that happened.”
“I don’t know what night terrors are, Sam. I don’t know why smoking’s bad. I don’t understand elevators, and until last night, I never laid down in a bed with a guy. Never. So stop being mean to me. This is new to me, too.”
“Blue, I’m so sorry. Please look at me.”
“No. Not until you’re worth looking at.”
“Ouch. I deserved that.”
“More than that. You’re just lucky I have more control than you do.”
“I guess you’re right.” Sam shook his head, unsure how to clean up the mess he made. “Have you ever had a nightmare?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember. Haven’t slept since I was a kid.”
“Well, mine are like bad dreams that you can’t get out of. Like, I can feel everything happening to me in mine. I can taste it. Smell it. Like when you first bathe in the Fountain of Youth and everything’s heightened, or like you’re on acid.” He shook his head. “I’m not explaining this very well.”
Blue moved her head to look down at her lap instead of far away from him. “So you have bad dreams usually? And you scream, so you don’t let people see you sleep. Is that it?”
“Yeah. Kinda embarrassing.”
“Why is that embarrassing?”
“Do you want people to watch you cry for help or suffer through things that… Would you want anyone to see you like that?”
“I guess not. But why are you upset now? You didn’t do any of that last night. I was there the whole time.”
“That’s just it. I scared off the only girl I let sleep next to me a couple years ago. She did it once, then never again. I was expecting you to be gone, too. I was not expecting to sleep like a normal person and wake up still holding you.”
“Did you want me to be gone?”
“No. But if you were going to leave, I’d rather you do it now rather than later, when I get even more attached. Give you a really good reason, like me being partially insane when I’m passed out.”
“Is that supposed to be rational? Because I don’t get it.”
“Do you get that I’m sorry, and I acted like an idiot?”
“The idiot part, sure.” Blue sighed at the complications in their non-relationship. She was beginning to understand why Baird avoided being in one. “Look, if you want to smoke, do it. If you don’t, then stop. If you don’t want me to be next to you, then just say so. I was so…so happy last night, even after everything I did. Then you just took it away because…what? Because nothing bad happened? I don’t understand Vemreaux.”
Sam cocked his head to the side and sized her up. “I guess we’re pretty different.”
Blue hissed humorlessly. “You have no idea.”
He looked her over, then stood, shutting her door and moving around to the driver’s side. He sat down next to her, started the car, and reached for her hand. He took her flinch in stride, knowing he deserved it. He placed her hand on the gear shift and spoke to her with determination to make things right. “Okay. What’s it like in The Way?” When she looked up at him and quirked her eyebrow, Sam relaxed a little and offered a small smile. “What? I don’t know any more about Waywards than you do about Vemreaux. I’m not allowed to try to figure you out? You do it to me all the time.”
“I do not understand you,” she admitted.
“That’s my whole point,” he agreed, his accent thickening. “If this is going to work, we should probably try to understand a little more about each other, yeah?”
“Um, okay.”
“First gear,” he instructed, and she obeyed. She did it so fluidly now that it was almost like he was doing it himself. There was no jarring or trying to fiddle with the proper gear to get it where it should be. She was a quick learner. Still, he deemed it necessary that his hand should rest on hers. “Second. Now tell me all about The Way.”
“Um, well, it’s a lot of the same. We all wear the same clothes, do the same rotation of chores for the most part. We each had a cot on bunks for sleeping. I belonged to The Way West, which mostly did paper pressing, fertilizer, housing bricks, and of course, S-bricks. Baird let me be out in the yard and do fertilizer for a couple years, did a little time in housing bricks, but then he had me go to the Paper Unit with the rest of the girls.”
Sam was beginning to despise the sound of the older brother’s name. “Which one did you like best?”
“Oh, fertilizer. No contest,” she admitted. It felt strange to be asked her opinion, but as soon as he did, she found she had one that no one knew about. “Paper’s pretty boring.” She lowered her voice, even though no one was in danger of eavesdropping. “Have to pretend to not be able to lift really light weights all morning long. Not so fun. With fertilizer, you at least get to shovel the scratch and use the fun tools. It’s a good workout if no one’s watching.”
“Sounds like you had to hide yourself a lot there.” He cleared his throat. “Third.”
“I have to do that everywhere.” Blue shrugged. “Imagine being Grettel who can barely lift one of the weights. Baird was right to put me on paper. Grettel woulda had to eat a lot of scratch if I wasn’t her partner.”
“Eat scratch?” Sam wrinkled his nose. “Is that Wayward slang for something?”
“No. If we drop the weights and they break, we have to clean them up. If there’s any shards left, we have to eat them. The weights are made out of the parts of scratch that are leftover after making the S-bricks. Like how the housing bricks are made. Same thing, different shape is all.”
Sam turned his head so that she would not see him gagging. “I knew you worked in manure, but I thought The Way was mostly a school.”
“What’s manure?”
“Fourth gear. Manure’s another word for scratch, Blue. It isn’t used all that often anymore, though. Doesn’t have the same ring as ‘made from scratch’.”
“Oh, well there’s some school that’s required, but after that’s finished, you could sign up for more classes or you could learn a trade. But scratch duties always come first.”
“What kind of trade do the Waywards aspire to?” Sam made every effort to be conversational, though he could not stop his stomach from lurching as he pictured the girl with cow pies smeared on her lovely face. Cow pie burger. Cow pie…pie? He shuddered.
“You know, normal stuff. We sewed clothes, assembled furniture, made socks and soaps and stuff like that. We cleaned a lot. You have to. With that much scratch around, you can’t allow even a little dirt. Flies flock to any trace of it. I took all the school they offered for my age group, even though Baird said it was probably a waste of time.”
Sam hissed. “So you don’t always do everything your brother says?”
Suddenly her hand felt wrong under his, so she removed it, sliding it out from under him so that his rested on the shifter all by its lonesome. “No, I don’t. But I do what he says when he’s right. I may not always want to hear the truth, but he tells it to me. He’s got a good view of the big picture, and I sometimes don’t.” She fiddled with the seatbelt across her chest, but then remembered that she was making her nervousness obvious, so she folded her fingers in her lap instead. “It’s good that he’s the way he is. If he wasn’t, then I wouldn’t be going to the island, and all those Vemreaux would keep disappearing. I’d be selfish and do what I wanted instead, which wouldn’t be right.” She sighed. “Baird’s not the easiest to get along with, but he does what needs to be done, even when it’s hard.”
Sam had to go against everything in his nature to speak softly and hold his tongue from spouting off the first sarcastic retort that popped into his brain. “What do you want?”
Her response was quick, robotic and rehearsed. “I want to end the tyranny.”
Sam’s frustration was harder to harness than he would have thought. He blamed it on the early hour and loss of contact. “That’s rubbish, and you know it. If you weren’t the Light, what would you want?”
Blue blinked, showing him that the question made no sense to her. She mulled it over in her head as if for the first time, kicking around different possibilities that all seemed as unlikely as the next. “I want to be here,” she finally replied just when he thought she wasn’t going to answer him.
“Here in the Americas or here in the car?” he asked with too much hope.
“Both.” Her thumbs twiddled in her lap as she spoke nervously.
“It’s a good car,” he commented, evading the almost compliment he’d tricked her into giving him. “What else do you want?”
“I want my brother to be happy. Every now and then I see him smile, and it’s nice. I make him so miserable.” She shook her head at her shortcomings. “I wish he could be happy when I’m around instead of always worrying that I won’t be ready when it’s time for me to go.” She looked forlornly out the window at the trees rushing by. “He used to joke around with our little brother, Griffin, and it always made me a little jealous. I mean, I can be fun, too, if he’d let me. We’ll have, like, a minute of fun, and then he’ll come down hard. He’s like you. Being too nice makes him mean. Thinks I won’t be able to leave him, but I will. I want him to enjoy himself someday. He can’t do that with me in his life.”
“I am nothing like Baird. And I told you, I just got thrown for a minute this morning, is all. I’m back, though. For better or worse.” He sighed. “You were talking about Baird.”
“Elle makes him happy when they’re not fighting. Well, sort of happy. Whatever Baird’s version of that is, I guess. I want him to be nicer around her. She deserves at least that. He’s the only thing she wants, other than to keep us all safe.”
Blue thought further when Sam made no attempt to interject. “I want Grettel to stop being so afraid of everyone. I want her to be able to look a Vemreaux in the face and smile like Elle can. She’s seen me black out a few times in The Way, and it scared her. She denies it, but sometimes I can tell that I still scare her.” She stopped speaking then, for the next words that wanted to come out of her carried a hitch in her voice with them, which she would not tolerate.
“Blue, what do you want for you? Not your friends or your brother. For you,” Sam clarified.
“All the rest of that is what I want for me, Sam. If they’re happy, I’m happy. When I leave, they can all try to have a normal life without worrying about me being found out. Elle won’t have to put up the show so no one notices me. Grettel won’t have to be so afraid that she’ll slip up and say something about me to the wrong person.” She concentrated on her short fingernails as she veered closer to honesty than she usually cared to venture. “Baird’ll be relieved when I’m gone.” Though she’d thought the words before, saying them out loud in the privacy of the car was a declaration she had been trying hard to deny the truth of. Immediately she was engulfed by sadness that punched her in the gut and pushed her spirit down past the floor with the passing of the words through her lips. “Do you think we could talk about something else? If this is what it feels like to talk about myself, I don’t like it.”
Sam mulled over her words, though she still had not answered the question to his liking. “Baird mentioned earlier that you hadn’t had a boyfriend in The Way. Is that true?”
An unexpected short laugh lightened her demeanor. “Yeah, that’s true. I doubt anyone even knew I was there half the time. Most of my life’s been spent trying to be invisible, not that anyone would’ve looked anyway. I had one guy friend who was only around because he was Griffin’s best friend, and you know, had to be around me. Marxus, too, I guess. But he only checked in on me occasionally because Baird asked him to after he got bought. The only other man I really talked to was one of the professors who was nice to everyone. Liam’s Uncle Jack. Baird made sure that I hid my face as much as I could because of my eyes.”
