Page 67 of Chaos
“Hmm. We’ll turn the lighters in. Least most of ’em. They don’t need to know about those bottles, though.”
He’s the kind of guy who was probably good looking in high school. I bet he had an easy time getting girls when he was younger—but he’s past his peak. He just doesn’t know it. But if he’s willing to help me get Ben out, I’m willing to try to play nice.
“Do we, Ephie girl?”
I swallow the impulse to tell him to go to hell. “What about the soldier watching us?”
“Don’t have to report everything we find.”
“We can’t get them into Thornewood, can we?”
He splays his hands wide. “The wall isn’t finished yet. I know where the cameras and motion sensors are.”
We slide the bottles to the back of the closet, deep in the shadows, leave a handful of lighters with them, close the door, take the crate of lighters with us down the stairs and into the trucks. When we drive to the gate, they pat us down, they search the car, and they find nothing. They don’t check my boots, where the lighter is scrunched under my toes.
That night at dinner, Duane stops beside a disgusting looking vat of grits covered in salsa, broccoli, and what I swear is acorn squash. He slips a hand over my hip, down toward the pockets of my jeans, to a place I don’t want him touching.
“Package imported.” He leans down close to me. “Thornewood won’t always be so pretty.”
I have to keep my face from reacting. The food’s trash, and I don’t really like the people, but this room is like standing inside a beam of warm, golden sunshine.
How much damage can nine bottles of lighter fluid do?
Duane moves on, leaving me alone to fill my plate with shaking hands.
I don’t see Shane anywhere.
But I keep on looking, and wondering what I’ll say to him when I do.
Maybe no one’s ever told him he looks like Cyrus, the guy Monroe loved with everything she had. Or maybe they have. Maybe he’s even seen that show, and he looks at me and my hair, the purple fading away, and it reminds him of Monroe’s cloud of purple hair.
I could ask him. I could say I’m sorry. I could tell him Duane has nine bottles of lighter fluid, and I snuck a lighter into Thornewood in my shoe, and now it’s in my closet.
But I don’t.
And when I leave, he’ll hate me forever.
15 |Cavemen in a fancy resort
FRANKIE
SHASTA’S SITTINGin a side chair in the tea house turned greenhouse. She left her room, which feels like a major win. She’s even learned how to do her lipstick on her own, as long as I check it for her. And she has an ever-growing collection of sunglasses.
She’s wearing a set of antique headphones, the kind with fluffy gray foam balls that cover her ears. Cain is moving trays of recently propagated tomato seeds to a shelf closer to the window, and I’m shoving boxes of ant poison to the back of our pesticide shelf when Mitsy walks in.
She takes one look at me, and then one look at Cain and says, “She’s back then?”
“Uhh.” Cain scratches the back of his head. “Yeah.”
Colleen assigned him to help me manage planting schedules nearly a year ago, and we’ve gotten along well since. He’s a nice guy. Really nice. Way too nice for Mitsy. So I really hope I’m misunderstanding what’s going on between them.
“So you just … don’t need me any more?” she asks, squeezing the strap of her purse and blinking around, and for once I almost feel bad for her. At least until I remember how Yorke said she tried to get him to go back to her room when he was shot. Everytime I think of that, my skin crawls.
It didn’t occur to me to ask who watered my plants while I was gone. I just assumed it was Cain. A queasy feeling runs through me as I look around at the fluffy tops of my avocados, the cluster of lemon and lime trees, the orchids I’ve nursed back to health, and my lone pineapple, all sitting against the wall closest to the building where it’s warmest, beside the cage of pigeons someone, probably Colleen, decided to stash here.
The plants suddenly feel like traitors, having let her touch them.
“Thanks for your help,” Cain says, awkwardly setting down a tray. “I really couldn’t have gotten through this last month without you.”