The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [86]
The principal turned, sat back down in his desk, and jotted down some note on a yellow legal pad. “You know what? I’m not going to argue with you, Sandra. I’ve tried to run this school with a team approach, and if a little bump in the road is going to be too much for you to deal with, then maybe it’s better if you’re not around while this bug runs its course.”
“Good!” Sandra said and stomped out the door.
“Was I wrong there?” he asked.
“If anything, you were too kind, sir.”
“Thanks, John,” Dave said. “Listen, I didn’t mean to scare any of you. I just wanted to pass on what was passed to me. If any of you think you need to join Sandra, go right ahead. Those news reports on KYUK have been enough for me to think about bailing, too. I’d hate to see my wife or daughter get that sick.”
“PLEASE,” THE GIRL whispered again. He tried not to look at her face, but when he did he saw that her white eyes couldn’t carry the emotion her voice held. Her eyes seemed to search for an answer, but her white irises stared right into him.
“Just for a little while,” she begged, setting her grass bundle aside. “I’m too cold. So cold. I don’t want to freeze to death.”
When he didn’t answer, she took the silence as acquiescence and moved toward him. She felt for his sleeping bag and pulled it down enough for her to slide her feet in. She was shivering, and breathing hard. So was he. He closed his mouth and held his breath. She lifted his arm and put it around her and poured herself into him, nuzzling her face into his neck.
She lifted her shirt just a few inches and pressed the warm flesh of her stomach and hips against his. She touched her lips to his ear and whispered again.
“I’m sorry. I’m so cold. Just hold me, please, John? Just this once,” she asked.
His mouth felt dry, his arms too weak to pull her in and just allow himself to return her embrace. The sleeping bag shrank and tightened to the point where he didn’t know if he would be able to take another breath.
Her warmth, her skin against his skin.
He tore out of the bag and stumbled away from their camp into the dark. He dropped to his knees and felt like he had to vomit. When nothing came he just knelt in the snow and then took two handfuls and buried his face in the icy powder.
After a while he got up and slowly made his way back to camp.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
The girl was back in her sleeping bag, shivering. Anna’s old sleeping bag. He looked at his own bag and his stomach turned again. At least they had been in his bag. He sat down on the tarp and closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind.
They had done nothing, just held each other for warmth, he told himself. But even that felt wrong.
31
Red opened the door just wide enough for John to slip through and then slammed it shut with a metallic clang. John leaned his head back against the door, closed his eyes, and tried to catch his breath. It felt as if the cold had frozen his rib cage tight so that his lungs could no longer expand.
“Should have put the kid out of his misery,” Red said.
John opened his eyes. The girl sat on the bed, her head in her hands. For a moment he was worried she thought he had left her, but then he noticed the old woman was gone.
“I tried to tell her to wait until you got back,” Red said. “Even showed you on the monitor.”
John looked down at the spot where the old woman’s makeshift sled had been.
“Why did she leave?” he asked.
Rayna raised her head. Her white eyes glared at the two of them. “She knew you were drinking. You were getting drunk, so she left.”
“Getting drunk?”
She stood up and walked to the table. She sniffed the air and picked up the glass that had held his gin.
“She smelled you guys. Said she wasn’t going to be around drunks with the hunter coming.”
“Did she say where she was going? Did you let her get her shotgun?”
Rayna shook her head. He looked at Red.
“You had the key to the cabinet outside. She wasn’t having nothing to do with me, anyways.