"I can't believe they did that to you! And it's all my fault!" We've moved out of the woods now and are back situated in our room, she on my bed and me pacing around the room.

"Alex, really, I'm fine. It wasn't that-"

"What? It wasn't that bad is what you were going to say? They hurt you because of something that had nothing to do with you! Nothing at all!" I angrily kick at the bed, but keep my voice at a low growl so as not to wake up everyone else. They're all asleep, considering that it's a little before midnight. They wouldn't appreciate being woken up by what they probably considered my whining. Justin's most likely told my parents what happened and I'm going to get it in the morning. Which is OK. I deserve it.

Mitchie gets up from the bed and stands in front of me, blocking my pacing. She looks like she's about to cry, although that might be from the cream I put on her back a little while ago to help the lashes. She won't get scars from this one beating, I think, which is good. She shouldn't have to endure anymore. "Don't worry about that. It doesn't hurt me anymore; I've been through worse. And you were just trying to help- that's enough for me."

I sigh. "It doesn't help me to know that you've been through worse."

She resorts to not speaking again, just reaching out to touch my arm, her hand warm and calming on my skin. "Alex... for tonight, can we just forget about all of this? I'm too tired. I... I'm just tired."

Judging by the look in her eyes, I know that all this talking is too much for her. I can't expect her to be a chatter-box after being totally silent for a year. "Sorry. I guess I didn't realize... yeah." I speak awkwardly, but those are the last words of the night. We slip into bed, under the covers and she cuddles as close to me as possible. I feel her body heat spread throughout me, her slow breathing calming my stressed panting.

I lay awake there in the bed, running my fingers through her hair and staring out at the sliver of moon visible between the slit in my window blinds. I can't go to sleep because of all the questions still buzzing around in my mind. There are so many left unanswered and so many more whose answers didn't really answer anything. I mean, she's all I have left- her and Max. That's more than I've ever had in the past and I don't want to lose either of them, so I'll have to stop over-thinking these things. I don't want to sound like an insensitive moron when it comes to her.

Struggling too much with sleep, I decided to very carefully roll out of bed and head down to the kitchen to find something to eat or drink or just to stop this random bout of insomnia. Mitchie shifts a little as I sit on the edge of the bed, putting on socks. Her hand grasps at my waist, catching the last bits of fabric. I stand up and she groans, but I quickly remedy this by wrapping the blanket more tightly around her. She snuggles into it, still a little upset from the cold, but it's better. I kiss her on the forehead. "I'll be back."

Down the hall, everything is dark. I mean pitch black. I can't even see my hand up against my face. The only door open is Max's, and the light from the moon doesn't reach through the trees surrounding his window. I hold onto the banister by the stairs to keep from falling over. As I descend, I notice that there's a light shining from the kitchen. I'm scared, fearing that it's my father or mother or worst of all, Justin. But in the end it turns out to Max, just sitting there by himself and eating one of Mom's homemade orange ice pops from the freezer. She lets us have those whenever and always has a constant supply, even as the summer fades away. Heck, right now we're in the middle of September and the fridge is still full of them.

"Hey, Max," I say as I grab one of the pops out of the freezer.

He nods in my general direction. "Can't sleep?"

I shrug and sit down, watching his monotonous licking of the freeze pop. "Lots on my mind."
"I heard about what happened- with the Enforcers," he whispers, getting down to business. "Justin told me just before you came home. He seemed pretty upset that you ruined his chance with Mitchie."

Without thinking, I blurt out, "He never had a chance."

"I know." Max smiles secretively at me like he's figured out something he should be too young to comprehend. Maybe he knows exactly how Mitchie and I feel about each other, maybe he just knows that we're so close that she would never give Justin a chance to do anything but grovel for forgiveness. I can't quite get a handle on how much he's gotten, even with my new abilities to be more sensitive to body language.

I think of a quick subject change to take it away from me and Mitchie. "So what about you? Found any good friends?"

He shakes his head and laughs quietly. Then the laughter goes away and he eyes his freeze pop with an intensity I've never before seen used on a fruit concoction. "There's no one here for me." His eyes have returned to mine, staring at me with the gaze of someone with many more than his thirteen years. "I mean, to have me and you and Mitchie, all in one compound, it would just be too much." Max looks so sullen, so sad, so... suicidal. Not quite, but almost. "The stars can only align in one pattern at a time. Sometimes you just have to wait for the pattern to shift in your favor."

"Wow, Max; where'd you get that?" I ask at his quote.

"I read it somewhere... I can't remember where, though," he replies.

I nod, taking this as a good response until- "Wait a minute. Where did you read it?"

"I told you I can't remember-"

"No, I mean where did you get the book from?" I say. We're not allowed to read any books outside of the schoolhouse or one of the chapels because they're all afraid we'll get the wrong idea from the book and rebel.

He leans in and whispers conspiratorially. "I'll show you." Quickly, he gets up and heads out of the door and into the night. Curious and cautious, I follow him around the back of the house, to the wall right below his window and right next to the trees. There's very little moonlight to see by, but he seems to know where he's going.

The two of us make our way to a little patch of grass. I can't really tell what's so special about it until Max picks up the shovel leaning against the wall and begins to dig. I can only assume he put it there when he discovered... whatever this is.

"Do you need any help?" I feel useless just standing around and watching him.

"Do you see two shovels?" Damn. He has me there. "It's not buried very deep at any, rate." Sure enough, his shovel runs into something hard and metal a couple of seconds after he says that. "I just put a layer or so of dirt on it, so people don't accidentally discover it."

I squint at the large metal plate in the ground, not really discerning anything from its appearance. Max grabs onto something I can't quite make out and yanks hard back on it. Clearly that something was a ring or similar object because he's actually thrown open the entrance to what looks like a cellar. "Max, where are we going?"

"In the early days, this place was a storage center for books. Some people wanted to burn them, some wanted them to be read freely, some wanted to use them to teach kids what not to do. At any rate, they all ended up here and no one could decide what to do with them. Eventually, they were forgotten about when they converted this into our house. Someone's journal is down here, too, which is how I know all this stuff. This is the only entrance to the cellar. And I just... found it one day. While digging." I raise my eyebrows at him as he lights a small lamp with a match. "Digging makes me stop being angry. And there's no electricity down here, so I have a lamp." I nod, but I'm not really paying attention. I'm thinking about his one sentence- "Digging makes me stop being angry." I never realized how much frustration Max has inside of him, and I guess it's true that boys typically react to that with fists instead of tears. But it has never occurred to me how bleak his life his: on one hand, perfect Justin with his perfect future with the Shepherds, and on the other, there's me- rebel, trouble-maker, and an all-around antagonistic force in this hellhole. And then there's Maxie, somewhere in the middle: not quite wild, not quite perfect. It would be weird to grow up in that type of environment, I think. I might be in the middle age-wise, but Max is in the middle mentally. That would throw off my feelings, too. Plus, it would be harder to make friends, I assume, with us being his siblings. Maybe that's why he's so quiet and so different.

We step down into the dampness. I find my breath almost caught in my throat at the sight of the books- there's not as many as I would picture to be in a library, but it's more than I've ever seen in my life. Filled with a sort of tingly anticipation, I snatch the lamp from Max and move closer to the books. I've never been much of a reader, but all I've ever had presented to me is the Bible and we're not even allowed to read that by ourselves. I haven't heard of any of these titles before, but I can't wait to read them.

Max is smiling beside me, looking prouder than I have ever seen in my life. "Do you like it?"

"I've never seen anything so fucking nice before," I reply. "You don't know how much I've wanted to see what it's like out there, somewhere where I wouldn't ostracized like hell, somewhere that I fit in-"

"I know," he says seriously. "Believe me, I know."

I put my arm around his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I've never really looked at things from your point of view, I guess."

"Most people don't. C'mon; there's one I want you to read first." He leads me over to the shelf farthest in the back and pulls out a tattered paperback from the bottom stack. "Here." I look at the cover: a man, burning in awkward flames. "Fahrenheit 451. It's about burning books. I think you'll like it." He doesn't say anymore as he takes the lamp from my hands and sets it on the floor next to a solid bit of wall.

I sit down, turn to the first page, and begin to read.

It was a pleasure to burn.

"Alex. Alex!" I wake up to my little brother's voice shaking me from sleep. He looks slightly anxious, but not overly worried. The book still lays atop my slowly breathing chest, and I remember where I am. "It's about three. You fell asleep, and I didn't want you to stay down here asleep. If you want to stay, you can, but I'm going to sleep." I notice he has a book tucked under his arm: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

"What's that one about?" I ask, nodding to the book.

He shrugs. "Something called the French Revolution- it's explained in one of the history textbooks over there. I like the characters, though. How did you like that one?"

Memories of what I've read come back to me, causing a smile to form on my face. "It's like here, where they live. I can relate to the society- I like it. It's nice to know that people care enough to fight like we have to, even if they are fictional."

"Are you coming back with me? Or do you want to read some more?" he asks again, though he's grinning now, which I assume means that he's happy with my reaction.

I take his hand and squeeze it, relieved and excited and joyful to have found my little brother again. "Yeah. Let's go." I drop the book back onto the shelves and we exit into the night.

Moments later I'm snuggled up in bed next to Mitchie and still nowhere near ready for sleeping. Luckily, it seems like she's awake as well. "What are you doing up so late?"

She blushes, afraid to say the real reason. "I woke up and you weren't here next to me, and it was weird. I got around to worrying about you, and I've just stayed up."

I'm grinning instead of blushing when she finishes. "That's awfully sweet of you. I think you deserve a kiss for it." I kiss her right on the lips, full of a certain form of passion that we have yet to experience. It's so much more intense and when I pull away for air, it's like I'm compelled to dive back in again. She is too, because we crash together; lips, hands, legs, bodies all moving and touching with some form need- like I wouldn't be able to go on if I didn't keep every part of myself in constant contact with every part of her. Things go on a little bit further as her hand gently slides up and down my back, my body shivering in time with the motion. I'm feeling adventurous, intense, and wild, so I slide my hand up from her waist and over her stomach. I hear her breath hitch, which sounds like a good noise from my point of view. Dangerously, I allow my hand to brush the side of her breast as I move upward.

Wrong move. She lets out a yell and jumps away from me, out of the bed, flattens herself against the wall. "Get away from me!" she screams, tears filling her eyes as she pants like she's just run up here from the woods.

I can do nothing but sit on the bed in total shock. What the hell is going on? I can't believe I hurt her again... she's so broken over there, on the brink of complete collapse, ready to let it all go. I know that I want to tear my eyes away but if I made her go through these tremors then the least I can do is try to suffer with her. There's nothing left for me to say to this wonderful girl who I've managed to destroy; there is nothing left to do until she is willing to accept whatever I can offer.

Soon enough, her world stops spinning and she slowly drags herself to the floor in a heap of tears. I cautiously make my way over to her, each step I take putting another crack in my already damaged heart. "Mitchie...?"

"It reminded me of him too much, Alex... I'm so sorry." She lets out a fresh bout of wails, and I know that it's OK for me now. Sitting down next to her, I wrap my arms around her and pull her tight and close until I can feel her heartbeat pounding, meshing, melding with my own. Our rhythms are slightly off, not matching up perfectly, portraying accurately the sense of confusion surrounding our relationship at this moment.

She lets me hold her, wipe away her tears for a moment, before she speaks again. "What he did to me, Alex..."

"Who, Mitchie, who? Just tell me; I'm there." I feel the anger returning to my veins, the protectiveness kicking in, my devil side bringing itself out all in the name of an angel.

"A man... from Cascadia. Name's not important. He... oh, God." Tears flow like water from a waterfall, like sand in an hourglass, like rocks down a mountain. She's hardly able to breathe between the amount of water gushing from her eyes and the number of giant, shaking sobs that wrack her fragile body and push it warm and sad against mine.

I take an enormous gulp of air, excited and scared to be on the verge of learning what happened to Mitchie. "What did the man do, Mitchie? How did he hurt you?" I run my fingers through her hair in a calming motion. Her breathing gets closer to normal and the sobbing slows down as I let my fingers wash through her hair and twist it and turn it in a peaceful motion.

She takes a deep breath, ready to tell. I can sense it; she's going to tell me, I can just feel it. "He... he... he raped me!"

Mitchie says the last part in a whisper, but it might as well have been a blood-curling scream.