“Nothing,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest, looking away.“Sorry.Just forget it.”
I close my eyes and breathe deep.
It’s not about you,I remind myself.Almost nothing is about you, really, so chill the fuck out.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though the words come out stiffly.“You’re leaving and I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.”
“I know,” he says.“That was an asshole thing to say, I’m sorry.”
We stand there, awkwardly, on the sidewalk for another moment.
“I’ll see you in a couple weeks, okay?”he says.
I just nod.
We kiss, but it’s not quite right, too stiff and strange and mechanical.It’s almost worse than if we hadn’t had a goodbye kiss at all.
“Stay safe,” I say, and climb the steps to my porch.
“See you soon,” he says, and I go inside my house.
Then I close the door, put my forehead against the wall, and think:fuck.Fuck.FUCK.
ChapterTwenty-Four
Hunter
I can’t fucking believeI said the thing about desert crust.Now I’m not gonna see Clementine for weeks, and the last conversation we had was an almost-argument because I’m goddamnjealous.
This is familiar, too, in the worst kind of way, because I feel like I can’t give her what she needs.She goes to conferences about bacteria and I dig holes in dirt for a living, and sometimes, it feels like there’s no way she won’t get bored with me sooner or later.
And I fuckingknowpicking fights with her won’t help.Especially not now, but then I went and almost did it anyway, out of some terrible self-sabotaging instinct.
I head back inside, into the kitchen, where Porter’s got everyone assembled, two guys holding up the laminated map like a makeshift bulletin board.On it, the towns of Eaglevale and Coldwater are big black squares, and Porter points at them.
“These fire breaks are gonna be our first priority,” he says.“Emergency personnel have already started evacuations, but we need to save as many homes as we can...”
It feelslike it takes me hours to finally fall asleep.I’m thinking about the time that I hiked into the Spires, and how hard it was even without equipment.I’m thinking about building fire breaks on rocky, steep terrain like that.
I’m thinking that maybe I should go to Clementine’s house before we leave, even though it’ll be 5:15 in the morning, and apologize, because I hate the thought of saying goodbye likethis, the weight of things unsaid hanging in the air like an axe over my head.
By 4:45 a.m., nearly everyone is awake and out of bed.I’m not the only one who could barely sleep, and even though we all get dressed and prep our equipment without talking too much, the air feels charged, electric, like a spark could make everything explode.
I haul stuff outside to where the trucks are waiting.We load them, as quietly as we can, so we don’t wake anyone up.I keep looking at the house next door where Clementine lives, hoping to see a lighted window that I can take as a sign.
Her house stays dark.I load more stuff, then start checking that it’s all secured, that we’ve got everything.Everyone mills around a little.None of us are very good atwaiting, and once everything is loaded and checked and triple-checked, we stand around, kicking the sidewalk, hands in our pockets.
I look at her windows again and again.I think that maybe I should let sleeping dogs lie, and when I get back it’ll be better.We’ll talk it over then, like adults.
But then I remember our uncomfortable, stiff kiss.The way she couldn’t look at me, the way I lashed out at her for no reason, and IknowI can’t say goodbye to her like that.
I turn to Silas, who’s standing next to me, lost in his own thoughts.
“I’ll be back in five minutes,” I say.
He just nods tensely.It’s hard to beaboutto head into a fire zone.Almost easier to just be there.
I mount Clementine’s porch steps as my phone dials her number, because I don’t want to wake her roommates if I don’t have to.The call takes a few moments to go through, and as it starts ringing, I stand on her porch, my stomach in knots, hoping she answers.
