You Won't Believe Me by Cyn Balog

Author:Cyn Balog
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

TWENTY-FOUR

We don’t talk about the airplane. Not for days.

It’s weird, but the days melt together, and we rarely talk to begin with. We communicate with gestures and looks. So the plane never comes up.

But I think about it. Do I ever.

I wonder who was in the plane. If they escaped someplace terrible. If they were going someplace better. Someplace with other people. Someplace where the world goes on and civilization is beginning anew.

Without us.

E, however, doesn’t seem to care. It seems the airplane flew out of our line of vision and flew out of his mind too. Which is strange, considering. We’re out here, in the middle of nowhere. I doubt we’d see a plane even if the world hadn’t gone to pot. But when he saw one…nothing. No emotion whatsoever.

I should be happy. I’m alive, and things are good. E seems happy too. Well, happier than he was at least. I was only with him a few weeks when that sliver of smile appeared. I’d like to think that was my doing. I’d slipped in mud while tromping through the marsh, trying to catch a frog, thinking we could eat it, since I once heard it tastes like chicken, and damn do I miss chicken. I got covered in thick black marsh mud from head to toe. He actually laughed when he saw me, a sound that I still think of every time our situation starts to feel hopeless. His laugh was deep and nice, and I felt it low in my belly as much as in my ears. He called me a marsh puppy.

I love his laugh. I love a lot of things about him. I both love and hate how shy he is. He has never been with another girl. I know that for sure. I don’t think he talked to any girls besides Suzy before me.

He put up a flowered bedsheet near the side of the house, by the barrel, so I’d have privacy to wash up. He pretends he’s not watching me, but I know he is, or at least the outline of my body as the sun plays against the fabric. Every time I come out, skin scrubbed and clean, his cheeks are a few shades redder.

I know his parents were very strict. He obeyed them to the letter. His father was disconnected from society and kept them that way too. A fortress against the world.

It’s a world he didn’t want me in at first. But gradually, he opened up to me. He let me in. And now I am as much his family as they were.

Except he knows what he lost, so I think he treasures me even more.

I guess I treasure him too. I’ve lost a lot myself, though I don’t like to think about that.

There is so much about him—about all this—to like.

I may not be religious, but I have a confession to make.

I have been thinking about the world outside.

I don’t think he has.

Not at all.

Of course not. He has never been a part of it.

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