Notes: Huge thanks to JuneBug672, KizziBee, DCPgrl, and WDfanatic for the reviews!
Also the flub with Chapter seven somehow being overwritten with chapter 7 from NV should be fixed again, no idea what went wrong there...wow. O_o
Chapter Ten
After diner Ethan and Bryn move to the barn. Ethan backing his truck to the wide-open doorway so they can load items for him to take with Libby to the sale the following day. Many of the items she'll take will be bartered off instead of sold for things they need from other local families.
Ethan explains to me as we walk that this way other families can get items they can't easily craft like tennis shoes, or couldn't afford with the high gov't taxes placed on them at the gov't sanctioned sales. And in return the boys were able to get their hands on even the most basic things like eggs, fresh cream, corn meal, flour, sugar and the coffee beans Bryn is addicted to without having to report what they purchased to the rationing boards at local gov't suppliers.
Most of the local farmers grow two sets of crops, Ethan says, those mandated and mostly confiscated per the product tax to be redistributed evenly among the different districts. Which he adds, is complete bullshit. The crops they grow in secret using seeds collected in the wild or skimmed from the top of the gov't handouts are grown in fields separate from the rest of their farmlands and closely guarded and tended to in secret. These secret crops are the ones that actually feed the majority of their families and give them the ability to barter for other items they can't get normally.
I nod listening to him talk. It's important for me to understand this complex world I now live in, there are so many rules and mandates to live by I wonder how they keep them all straight. When I ask Ethan says it helps that they live on the very edge of the Valley, so far outside the City back in the foothills between the mountains. Most officials and City sanctioned regulators don't bother to come out this far.
Closer to the City farmers who want to provide enough for their families are forced to tend to mountain plots hidden by tree cover up steep trails or sometimes ringing one crop inside another so when it looks like a farmer is growing corn inside the field he is actually farming tobacco or pot, both of which are highly sought after I'm told, and heavily taxed beyond the reach of all but the most prestigious City dwellers. A black market crop of either can feed a family sometimes for months. I wonder again, not for the first time, why Bryn and Ethan don't try growing some of these crops. Ethan laughs and winks telling me they try not to break that many rules at once. Bryn just shakes his head walking ahead of us to the barn and says nothing.
Libby has stayed inside to clean up after the meal but Bryn insists I help in the barn so I'll know what items need to go, and where they can be found in the long rows and huge stacks of crates, boxes and piles scattered in some elaborate organization scheme I do not yet understand. I am not entirely certain there is a system. I half wonder as I follow him after all the scowling he did at dinner if he wasn't just trying to separate me and Libby before she could teach me any new phrases. Pick-up lines for some reason make Bryn scowl a lot.
Bryn and Ethan begin loading large heavy items that require both of them to move. Lifting them with a lot of grunts and heavy breathing into the back of both trucks, both of them alternately pointing out small boxes or stacks of moderately heavy wooden crates packed with items ready to go. By the time Ethan's truck is half full my arms and elbows ache and my hands are shaking. I flex them in front of me staring at my red fingers and palms, I have never moved so many things on my own, I have never owned items that needed to be moved. As far as I could tell very little in section six was ever moved. Even my single chair and my bed had been bolted to the floor of my room each metal leg secured to the concrete floor by a flat rectangle of metal at the base of each leg, two bolts thick as my thumb driven right into the floor. It seemed over-kill when I wasn't strong enough to move them anyway. And really, where would they go?
"Hey Charlie," Ethan gathers my attention. "You alright?" I nod and he continues on without asking why I have stopped. Maybe his hands hurt too with all the heavy furniture and he already knows, he has done this before. Ethan tells me about a box he wants, down one of the other rows—they'll have room for it and he wants it to go. It has words written on the side in dark letters, stamped into the wood. I nod and move to look for it.
It's closer to the back of the barn, far from the doorway and the last of the low natural light of the setting sun. The air is still almost un-naturally hot even back here where the sun doesn't ever reach. The barn's rafters hold four overhead lights, but they're weak and resemble upside-down soup bowls with heavily tarnished rims. The one closest to my head near the right rear of the barn often flickers sporadically or goes dark plunging this entire section into a forest of long shadows and total darkness for indeterminate minutes or seconds at a time.
It's flickering now, buzzing like an angry insect on one of the house screens wondering why it cannot get in. It clicks and hums above my head and I resist the urge to stop and look at it, knowing if I do when I look away it's burning red imprint will make the darkness all the harder to see. I frown at the tall stacks, most of them reaching far over my head. I shuffle down the aisle scanning until I think I see it. And of course, it would be at the very top.
I will have to climb if I have any hope of reaching it. I place my hands on the table at the front pulling my legs up and climbing onto its top. From there I can make my way onto the nearby dresser with a big step—more a carefully calculated hop. I teeter there for a moment despite the wide top wondering if I might topple off, I am not standing that high really—scarcely level with my own head were I standing beside the dresser I'm now on top of, but somehow the view is mildly disturbing. I turn slowly hands clenched at my sides, firmly not looking down; well aware that I will instead have to go up.
The box itself is set against the back wall of the barn on a series of wooden planks built into shelves in the beams of the walls, and even those are somewhat stacked with items sometimes two and three deep.
If I were Ethan and Bryn I think I'd quit picking until I could get rid of everything. It's no wonder they can never find anything. I reach for the closest support—some kind of stack of boxes under a cloth, tarp…thing…I have no idea. It's coated with a heavy wash of barn dust, something hair-fine and tacky clinging to my fingers when I reach for a hand-hold to grasp seeking to pull myself up. I shake my fingers furiously making a face but it doesn't let go so I wipe my hand on my pant leg with a soft noise of disgust and then proceed to go up.
I test my grip on the wrinkle of heavy canvas material under my palm and it seems sturdy enough barely shifting when I pull. Unfortunately that swiftly changes the moment my knees are pulled up and I attempt to lift myself further up. There's a sound of a deep resonating rip, the material snags for a split second then jerks free and starts to slip towards me sending us both toward the ground. I put my foot down but the dresser is no longer there, somehow I've missed its edge when the cover slipped. I have a split second to think, crap. And then I'm falling.
I don't fall far, which is surprising considering where I started from. But I land hard, and not alone.
Hands grab my waist as we tumble backwards to a rather unforgiving ground. All the air leaving someone's lungs rushes past my hair even as we roll over twice to avoid the shower of upended boxes crashing to the floor. We roll to a stop ending up almost against the table legs on the other side of the aisle. There's a hard body pressed against my back, the iron grip of their arm just under my ribs keeping me pinned.
"Charlie!" Bryn barely manages. He gasps for air coughing while I stare at the rafters high over my head, the stupid flickering light certainly mocking me. I dazedly wonder how I didn't just break open my head on the lip of some blunt edge.
"Charlie! Are you hurt?" Bryn coughs again, voice thick though whether it's from the fall, or the resulting cloud of dirt we and the falling boxes have kicked up I can't be sure. His hand tightens on my upper arm when I don't speak yet again, his grip shifting on my waist, trying to turn me. I shift twisting to my side which results in me falling off of him onto the packed dirt floor. He grunts as I move, the sound strained before letting my arms go so I can twist some more enough that I can see his face, my fingers gripping the front of his sweat damp and now dust coated t-shirt of their own apparent free-will. I'm lying on my side now, still close enough to be touching him, breathing too fast and choking on the clouded air. I stare down at him equally coated in sweat and grime, he has yet to move from his spot on the floor. His eyes look a little wild.
He stares up at me appearing too winded for speech judging by his hitching breaths but he still manages a tight, "Charlie, say something or I'm going to think your dead."
I lift my fingers to the side of his face instead, maybe to brush away the dirt...even I'm not entirely sure. His eyes go a bit wider, then instantly darker, slipping half closed. His left arm rises in the span of my next heartbeat, fingers slip around the nap of my neck and suddenly he's yanking me down to meet dust coated lips and kissing me.
I gasp against his mouth, half startled, half thrilled while his grip tightens. A shiver of something liquid and electric slipping through my body with his other arm now wrapped around my lower back dragging me over him once more. Trembling washes of pleasure start under my skin, awakened with the touch of his lips moving just slightly scratchy and rough over mine. The sensations inching rapidly straight down my spine; they start to gather and spiral low in my belly in mere moments, catch my insides on fire. If I thought the sticky air pressed to our skin before was hot, it's quickly becoming second fiddle to the warmth trickling through my veins when Bryn shifts, lifting his shoulders, twisting and rolling so one leg is thrown over and between mine, his new position half pinning me in the dirt.
Not that I mind.
My hands are now fisted in the back of his shirt when I don't remember moving them, but instead of letting go I grip him tighter. He slides higher, leaning over me, shifting his weight against me and I feel his thumb press to my jaw, his fingers sliding over the sweat slicked skin of my neck raising a shudder that turns into a moan he answers with his own.
His thigh slides higher between mine, and I shift instinctively somehow beneath him, a tickle of something almost like fear slipping through me. It's not fear, even though it makes my heart race, and my breathing come in near panicked gasps in the short gaps between his lips rejoining mine. My tongue darts out to wet lips that taste like grit, my eyes pressed shut feeling the heat of his skin. I shift once more at the same time Bryn brings one hand down my side to grip my hip, his fingertips burning through my skin where my shirt has shifted up, the heat courses right through my middle spiraling out to curl my toes. I roll blindly towards him, something pressed between us hitting me just right to make both our bodies shudder my eyes pop open in surprise to find Bryn staring down at me only inches away. Those rich honey ocher eyes swirling with a mosaic of mesmerizing darker and lighter colors being so close.
"Hey Bryn, I thin—oh shit." Ethan quickly retreats the way he came without another word.
Bryn wrenches away from me, twisting and jerking to sit up forearms pressed to bent knees boots flat on the barn floor looking flushed, and breathing too hard. "Shit." He curses softly, dips his head, presses his forehead for a brief moment against his arms his expression hidden by his heavy fall of dark hair, even with his back half-turned to me still lying breathless and suddenly crushed against the dirt. "Fuck, Shit." He barely whispers them, hands tensing to tight fists. He draws in a shaky breath lifting his chin suddenly to stare blankly at the far side of the barn. "Are you okay?"
I nod, realize he can't see it, and lick my lips to croak, "Yeah, I'm alright." I'm not. I'm so confused by his behavior and mine my head feels a little dizzy, though maybe that's because I think in the last few minutes I forgot to breath as often as I should. I drag in a trembling breath and try to ignore the quiver in my belly and the heat flushing my cheeks. I didn't want him to stop, didn't want that feeling to end. But now it's gone once again, it feels like my insides are twisting tighter and tighter around a painful caustic rock he left in his withdrawal still sitting heavy in my gut.
"I came to tell you, Ethan was wrong. The box is actually over by the clothing." He adds quietly, which explains exactly nothing—except maybe why he was here to see me fall in the first place. I nod, not sure what else to do and then stand up.
I wonder for a half second if Bryn will carry me into the house like he did after the thunderstorm. But he doesn't move, doesn't even look. He tilts his head back down towards the floor clasping his hands together hard enough to bleach his knuckles white, his elbows resting on his knees and tells me miserably, "Go inside Charlie, get cleaned up."
I resist the urge to run past him, but only just. Ethan looks up from where he's shifting some of the boxes in the back of his truck when I walk up.
"Uh, sorry Charlie." He flushes scarlet eyes darting away.
Heat crawls up my neck and cheeks, even my ears feel hot. I open my mouth but no sound comes out so I simply nod wrap my arms around my waist which feels mildly comforting somehow and head straight towards the house.
This is twice Bryn's rejected me, and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. There is no one I can ask either without betraying my lie, the very one that keeps me safe here with them.
When Libby calls to me from the living room I dart past her not meeting her eyes a quick and false 'I'm tired' thrown over my shoulder as I flee up the stairs. She must not realize anything is wrong, or maybe she does because for once Libby doesn't follow me up the stairs and down the hall.
When Libby leaves with Ethan roughly an hour later I stay in my room, too ashamed to face any of them, and desperately wanting for the first time since I arrived to be alone.