Page 18 of Trade
The man frowns. “Stay here,” he growls, leaping to his feet. He quickly disappears into the woods.
I sniff and rub my eyes. Dad is gone. He’ll never know this happened.
He’ll never know I saw a real, live sycamore.
I hear its leaves flutter, each so delicate, like a webbed palm, its edges like the swoop between your index finger and thumb. When the wind gusts, they sway in unison, and it sounds like an exhalation, like it’s alive in a way that can’t be explained away by photosynthesis and the water cycle.
The man reemerges, carrying a ragged, oversized backpack. He drops it on the ground, kneels, and unclips a metal canteen from a strap. He drinks first, a few gulps, then holds it out to me.
All of a sudden, I’m parched. How long ago was breakfast? What time is it?
I take the canteen and drink. The water is cold, and it tastes strange. Metallic. Is that poison left over from the End? I shouldn’t chug it down, but I’m thirstier than I’ve ever been, and the other women must’ve drunk, too, at least some of them. They came back—most of them—and none of them got sick and died.
The man rummages in his pack and takes out a waxy cloth. He unwraps it and offers it to me. Jerky. I’ve only had it at Neil’s parties. I assumed the kitchen made it special for him. Did we trade for it?
It’s salty, and makes your jaw hurt to chew, but I’m suddenly hungry, too. It’s like my feelings are on delay.
I take a strip. He sits and helps himself to a piece. He’s not frowning anymore, and he’s back to staring at me. I self-consciously rip off a hunk of meat with my teeth and stare at him right back. See if he likes someone watching him eat.
He doesn’t seem to mind. When he chews, his jaw is even stronger. When he swallows, the cords in his neck flex.
Outsiders are supposed to be missing eyes and limbs. Their flesh should be peeling away, their bones poking through gaping sores. All the good artists in school used to doodle Outsiders in the margins of their textbooks, crammed between the doodles from when our parents and grandparents were kids.
Black holes where noses should be. Straggles of hair clinging to skulls. Fingers warped into claws.
“Does everyone Outside look like you?” The question kind of slips out between bites.
For a second, he doesn’t respond, but then he lifts a shoulder, almost imperceptibly. “I haven’t seen everyone.”
Is he being a smartass? He’s not smirking. He answered quietly. His voice is rusty.
I drop it. I was never obsessed with the Outside like some. I thought about trees and vegetation from the Before a lot, but I was never one to wonder about what was left.
We eat in silence. When I’m done, he offers me another piece. I shake my head.
To distract myself from what happens next, I scan the clearing, trying my best to commit what I see to memory. The sycamore. The red maple, white oak, and hickory, maybe shagbark, maybe bitternut. The dogwood. Ivy climbing a tulip tree, choking it out. Brambles and ferns, trillium and mayapple and wood sorrel sprawl and climb between the trunks.
I see at least a hundred shades of green and brown, and above it all, a cornflower blue so vivid and wide it makes me have to squint to look at it. And then—past the rocky edge of the clearing—the greens and browns go on and on. A river winds its way through a valley, disappearing into clusters of trees and then reappearing, narrowing until it vanishes in the tall grasses and then widening as it reaches something I first assume is the horizon, except the longer I stare, and the better my eyes focus, the more it seems to sparkle.
It's water, stretching across the entire plane of my vision. My heart rate quickens.
“Is that the ocean?” I ask, rising to my knees.
The man glances past me to see what I’m looking at. “It’s a lake.”
“A Great Lake?”
Again, he takes a beat to answer. “It’s fine.”
I snort—once—and then slam a hand over my mouth. It’s not funny. Nothing about this is funny. This man might be the same age as an intern, but that didn’t stop him from shoving his cock into me, and we’re alone out here.
Bennett pouts for hours if he feels mocked. He’d glower at me so that I know he’d like to do something—smack my face, maybe—and he’d do it, too, if he weren’t such a good person, above that kind of thing, and wasn’t I lucky that he’d never do something like that? And shouldn’t I be grateful?
Why did I never question the premise? Why did I co-sign it in my head? I believed I was home safe. I had a good husband who’d never hurt me. Even though he’d look at me like that. Even though I knew when I made a joke that cut a little too close or a remark flew thoughtlessly out of my mouth—he made sure I knew what I could have had coming if he wasn’t such a good man.
That crease appears between the man’s eyebrows again. “It’s got good fishing,” he says like he’s offering evidence in support of his thesis. Not like his ego’s been pricked.
My stomach muscles relax at the same time that my jaw drops. “Fish?” I’m instantly distracted from thoughts of Bennett. How is that possible? All aquatic life, except for maybe some of the hardier microorganisms, were all lost at the End, weren’t they?
