Part 13 (2/2)
But when we got back on the street, we realized we had a bigger problem than clothing.
Back home in the DC suburbs there was so much ethnic diversity that you just took it for granted. Last year in English cla.s.s I'd had a Korean kid sitting to my right, a Somali kid to my left, and the cla.s.s as a whole could have hosted World Culture Day without needing to import anyone. After a while you just stopped noticing that kind of thing. Rita and Devon came from similar settings, and they didn't notice either.
But this place didn't have any Korean, Vietnamese, Pakistani, or African kids running around.
Special stress on the African.
No one in sight was black except for Devon. And he was pretty aggressively black, not some coffee-and-cream biracial who could pa.s.s for a suntanned white guy. Add to that the fact that he towered over most of the local kids, and it was d.a.m.ned hard not to notice him. Which meant that while we were with him, we were all d.a.m.ned hard to overlook.
None of us dared say anything about that. Such a conversation would have inevitably led to the question none of us wanted to ask out loud: What if the hominids are the only people here with dark skin? What if the locals are staring at Devon not just because he looks different, but because they think he's one of them? Instead we just hiked on in silence, our makes.h.i.+ft packs slung over our shoulders. You could feel Devon's anxiety radiating from his body like a heat wave, but we knew there was nothing we could do about that, so we didn't try. Sometimes silence is best.
Eventually the wretched slums gave way to the city proper, and we began to see more familiar features: gla.s.s storefronts, street vendors hawking their wares, even a few small parks tucked between tall brick houses. There were beggars all over the place, and most of them seemed to be children. Dirty, ragged children, all different ages, weaving in and out of the crowd in search of a brief sympathetic nod and a handout. Some looked injured, and they huddled against the brick walls of apartment buildings, tin cups in front of them, begging for charity with their eyes. I tried not to think about whether their injuries were real or feigned, or maybe imposed upon them by someone who would take a cut of their profits later that night. It wasn't the kind of thing that a Mana.s.sas teenager normally had to deal with, but I knew that it happened.
There were horses moving up and down the streets; apparently that was the favored means of transportation in this place. Most were hitched to some kind of wagon or carriage, and the resulting traffic was pretty chaotic; at times it was hard to cross the street without getting trampled. Evidently the locals were used to it, because we saw kids dash across the street without sparing a glance either way to see what was coming at them. I wondered how many of them got trampled each day.
Devon-font of trivia that he was-noted that there were no horse droppings in the streets. As he started to explain why that was significant, we spotted a small dark-skinned figure coming down the street toward us. One of the hominids. He was dressed more neatly than the ones we'd seen in the woods, but otherwise his appearance was much the same. He walked with his eyes cast downward, quickly scurrying out of the path of any larger person headed toward him. I could sense Devon stiffen by my side as he watched the ballet of submission, but he said nothing. Ultimately the hominid ducked into a butcher shop, and we lost sight of him.
There were fruit stands all around us and a sausage stand at the end of one block, so the air was filled with luscious and inviting smells. After a day of eating nothing but energy bars, it made my stomach growl. But with all the street urchins running around, the outdoor vendors were watching their wares like hawks, and I didn't see how we were going to manage to take anything. I started to go through a mental list of my supplies, wondering if I had anything I could barter for food, when Rita nudged me from behind. ”You two go over there,” she said, pointing to a cafe halfway down the block. ”Hand in hand. Then kiss.” She pushed us gently forward. ”Make it look good,” she urged.
I hesitated, then I thought, what the h.e.l.l, and I caught up Devon's hand, and we both started to walk to the spot she'd indicated. But when we reached the cafe I was suddenly so embarra.s.sed I couldn't look him in the eye. But he touched a finger softly under my chin and tipped my face up, until my eyes met his. Such gentle eyes! There was a touch of humor in them, like he knew just how awkward this moment was, and it was okay if we laughed about it together. There was also a touch of gravity in them as well, because we were lost in a strange world, and we were all more scared than we were going to admit. But that was okay, too, as long as we faced that fear together. So I closed my eyes, went up on tip-toe, and kissed him.
I hadn't kissed a lot of boys in my life. I certainly had never kissed anyone who made my heart speed up the way he did, or who made my legs tremble so much that I had to put a hand on his chest to steady myself. Maybe the kiss wasn't objectively that great, and it was just the power of that two-lost-souls-connecting moment . . . but for whatever reason, it shook me to the core of my soul.
You could feel that every eye in the place was on us-mostly because of Devon-but I didn't care. It no longer mattered who was standing around us, or what world we were on, or anything else. The really great kisses of the world are like that.
”Jeez, guys.” Rita's voice was pitched too low for anyone else to hear it. ”Get a room.”
Startled and embarra.s.sed, we quickly broke apart. She put a hand on each of our shoulders and pushed us gently forward. ”To the corner, then turn right.” She seemed to have some kind of plan in mind, and we didn't, so we obeyed. Then she had us go another short block and make another turn, and we had gone far enough from her, and we stopped.
We had reached a pretty quiet street, with a little park just ahead of us. She motioned for us to sit down on its low retaining wall, in the shadow of a large tree. Then she reached into her hobo bag and brought out three apples, one for each of us. And then warm pastry wraps with some kind of meat in them. And three twisted pieces of warm bread that looked vaguely like pretzels.
”You guys were good,” she appraised, as she started eating. ”I could have put that that whole d.a.m.ned fruit stand in my bag, and no one would have noticed.”
I was glad that Devon and Rita were focused on their food, so they wouldn't see me blus.h.i.+ng.
It was the first real food we'd had since leaving home, and it seemed pretty delicious, but after a diet of dry energy bars and distilled water, that wasn't a very high bar. For a few minutes we all concentrated on eating-which, in hindsight, was not our brightest move. As I wiped my greasy hands on my hobo bag, I realized that someone was watching us.
He was a thin boy, roughly our own age, and he was lounging against a storefront across the street. His pose was casual enough, but there was something about his expression that warned us not to take his relaxed posture at face value. And there was no missing the fact that we were the focus of his attention.
We tensed as he started to walk toward us; something about his stride suggested that he wasn't alone, but I didn't want to look away from him long enough to check for his allies. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rita's hand creep to where she had her kitchen knife hidden.
He came up to a spot about five feet from us and stopped. He looked us over, his gaze fixing finally on Devon. ”You Maasai?”
Devon blinked. I could tell he was having a hard time transitioning from no one here has ever seen a black person to this guy knows the name of an East African tribe. So he opted for just staring at him and saying nothing.
”I saw the Maasai amba.s.sador once,” the boy explained. ”You look like him.”
The Maasai amba.s.sador? Half the a.s.sumptions I'd made about the place of black people in this world suddenly went flying out the window, and I could see that Devon was equally startled. But he just nodded slowly, as if he knew exactly what was going on. I made a mental note never to play poker with him. ”Others have said that to me,” he offered warily.
The boy's eyes narrowed suspiciously. ”You Guild?”
”Do I look Guild?” Devon's voice had a disdainful edge that could be interpreted as either, ”Of course I'm Guild, why are you asking such me such a stupid question?” or ”Of course I'm not Guild, why are you insulting me with such a stupid question?” d.a.m.n, he was good!
”Are we on someone's turf?” Rita asked suddenly. Plainly, she'd gotten something out of this bizarre exchange that Devon and I had missed.
The boy's expression s.h.i.+fted slightly. It was a subtle change, and I sensed I was missing nine tenths of its meaning, but Rita looked as if she understood him perfectly.
”You were pretty good back there,” he told her. ”But taking so much at one time gets you noticed. Security will be tighter tomorrow. The locals won't be happy about that.”
She was about to respond when a dark shape suddenly pa.s.sed overhead. Muttering a curse under his breath, the boy moved quickly into the shade of our tree. The shadow of something with broad wings swept down the center of the street, heading east. He s.h.i.+elded his eyes with one hand as he gazed up into the sky.
”s.h.i.+t,” he muttered. ”s.h.i.+t. That's a Hunter, for sure.” He eyed us suspiciously. ”Is it one of you he's after?”
”How do you know it's a Hunter?” Devon asked.
He jerked a thumb toward the east. ”Those lazy Guild b.a.s.t.a.r.ds don't come into town to do their dirty work, they just grab a host from wherever they are and hitch a ride. Nine times out of ten if you see an animal that doesn't belong here, it's one of theirs.” He gestured toward the sky. ”That one was a mountain hawk, which means-”
His expression darkened suddenly. ”You didn't answer my question,” he challenged Devon.
”No,” Devon agreed calmly. ”I didn't.”
For a moment they just stared at each other, like two dogs trying to figure out if they needed to fight. I saw Rita's hand close around the grip of her knife, though I wasn't sure what she thought she'd do with it in the middle of a city street.
”s.h.i.+t,” the boy muttered. ”If the Hunters really are after you, then we should talk. But not here, with the whole world watching.”
Without another word he started to walk away from us. The three of us looked at each other in confusion, no one quite sure what to do. Then Rita nodded slightly, and since she seemed to understand the situation better than anyone else, that was good enough for Devon and me. We grabbed up the last of our food, threw our packs over our shoulders, and hurried off after the boy.
Somewhere in the distance a mountain hawk screeched.
17.
BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS.
VIRGINIA PRIME.
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