Excerpt: Camp Town

Sela’s home was even more raggedy than she. Gray and sagging, like the rest of the little shacks full of scurrying brown people, covered in a layer of dust that Jonah could see, but not feel. The inside was precisely as light, and dark, as the outside, in spite of two small, lead-glass windows. A lumpy mattress lay in one corner under the first window, and an ancient kitchen setup stood under another, both in obvious disuse. A silver knife glinted from the kitchen counter. A victrola gathered cobwebs in the far corner, attended by a wooden chair with no back.

Jonah glanced around the sparse, small room. Looked upward at bent roof-timbers. Goosebumps congregated all over him, but he couldn’t think of how to make them stop.

“I can’t wait,” Sela said. She pulled him into the center of the room and threw her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him fast and hard, smiling in the most disconcerting way.

She was hard—flat-chested and thin. He thought that was wrong, somehow; thought that a girl was meant to feel softer, sweeter. Thought that they weren’t supposed to look at you like that until you knew them a little better, and when they did, it was supposed to make you feel something. He stood with his arms plastered to his sides, trying not to shiver at the feeling of her cold seeping through his t-shirt, into his chest.

Up on her toes now, her eyes almost even with his. She leaned forward, put her lips against his.

He closed his eyes, because that was how it was done. Her lips were softer than the rest of her, but still too hard. Still freezing against him. The feeling flooded his own lips, then his cheeks, his tongue, the rest of his mouth. Almost-numb, like winter frost creeping over the ground.

Next, they were supposed to open their mouths. Turn their heads sideways, try to get closer. Jonah remembered Elena, and the way her lips always tasted like cherry lip balm and those cinnamon candies. And the one before her—what was her name? He’d loved her, he was sure, but now all he could remember was the taste of her spit and how warm she’d been, how much she’d liked to go out dancing and put her arms around his neck like this.

Sela opened her mouth, but then she held still. Too still.

She tasted like…

Dirt.

Not just dirt, but underground. Cold, dark places where skittering things lived.
So still. Her chest didn’t rise and fall against his. Her lips never moved, her tongue didn’t search for his.

A sudden sense of indignation swelled inside him. Who was she, and why was she doing this, and where had she brought him? This wasn’t supposed to happen, and it was all wrong—

But the cold stole down into Jonah’s throat and up into his nose, and he forgot to be angry. His chest grew tighter, then colder. He started to feel dizzy; black spots clouded his vision before he realized he had stopped breathing and had to make himself start again.

His lungs felt numb. He hardly ever noticed those particular organs, except when they burned on that final push to the wall or just after a flip turn. And even then, they’d never just… stopped.

Sela pulled her lips off his, and Jonah didn’t know how long they’d been kissing.

Except that they hadn’t been kissing at all. That had been…

Awful.

But she smiled, and this time it looked truly happy. Her cheeks were even a little bit pink under the brown and black smudges. Her eyes were less black—they made her look more real. The hand that slipped into his wasn’t warm. But it wasn’t cold either.

She pulled him to the mattress. “Lay down. You gotta be tired.”

He felt tired. He felt cold and miserable, like he’d been out in the rain for days. He wanted nothing more than to sleep for a very long time.

That, and a blanket. But he didn’t see any around.

The mattress sent up a cloud of seemingly animate dust when he sat, but he barely had time to cough before she joined him—tackled him, and flattened him there. She curled up beside him, pulled him close, arranged his arms around her and her front against his.

A far away something in his stomach screamed, told him everything was wrong. Told him to get up and run.

But he didn’t know where he’d run to, anymore.

Her hand slipped under his shirt, surprising against his skin. She purred, tried to pull him closer.

He closed his eyes, frozen inside, feeling like he knew what should come next, but dreading it—even the thought of it.

She kissed him again—if it was supposed to be a kiss at all.

When he was too cold to think anymore, and she was blood-warm against him, her face in his neck, he finally fell asleep.