Boondocks

Chapter 37: Girl

FERN

Tex was playful as we butchered the meat. Flirtatious as we chose which cuts would accompany us to the kitchen onboard the ship. Efficient as he built the smoker that would work to preserve the rest. Then tender as he told me he'd have the men take care of the cooking, and that I should get cleaned up. We were having a party.

A party. I couldn't wrap my head around what we could possibly have to celebrate. Perhaps just the fact that we weren't dead yet. It rubbed me in all the wrong ways, and without Tex's infectious good humor, my mood darkened. It was bon voyage. A goodbye to everyone set to go on this suicidal mission.

There was something about a happy Tex that twisted my heart into knots. I wanted to forget all about Savannah and war and bask in him. Enjoy him. He smiled wider, laughed freely, and in a perfect world, this would be him. I knew it in my bones. If things were different, he'd be like this all the time, and I'd move heaven and earth just to stand close to him.

I lingered over the stockpile of clothes, chewing my lip as I sifted through the women's selection. If this really was our goodbye, I wanted to look like a girl. One last time. It was easy to forget I was one when I'd spent so many years buried in layers. Male or female didn't make much difference alone, in the woods, fighting to survive. But the night of my first kiss, I'd been a girl. I'd been the Fern from before, dug up from her grave of long johns and coats. If I could be anyone my last night on Earth, it would be her. Happy. Alive. Blissfully unaware that memories grew thorns when the people who helped make them disappeared.

"Hot date?" Willow asked.

I jolted, then grimaced. "I was just..." Who was I kidding? It was too cold for one of the few dresses, and most of the rest looked out of date and overused.

She stepped around and slipped a finger through a torn wool sweater. "I see your problem." She dropped it. "C'mon, then."

She was walking away before I could process what she'd said, and I had to hurry to catch up. Willow led me above deck, then to the cabin she shared with Croc, Eve, and Eric.

Croc looked up when the door opened. He was sitting on the bed, a kid on either side of him, reading from a wide book with a cartoon hippo on the cover. He kept going without looking at the page, as if he'd read it so many times, he'd memorized the story.

Willow waved him off and whispered, "I'll be back. Just grabbing something." She pulled a duffel from beneath the bed, hoisted the strap over her shoulder, then motioned me back out the door with her chin.

I eyed her profile as she headed toward my room. "You don't have to—"

"I never have to do anything. It's a rule." She reached my door and pushed it open, then stepped inside and dropped the duffel onto the bed. "I guess pirates just didn't like windows, huh?" She lit the lantern and adjusted the wick until the flame reached its maximum. "It gets so dark in ours, even Croc can't see where he's going. He hates it. He stubbed his toe on the wardrobe the other night, and it took all powers of distraction to keep him from throwing it overboard." The whole time she spoke, she unpacked the bag, and everything was bright, vibrant, lacy. Feminine spilled across my bed. She turned, her expression shuttered. "These were Julia's."

I shook my head. "You don't have to—"

"We already established that I don't have to do anything." She lifted the empty duffel and deposited it on the pillow, allowing me a clear view of the bounty. "This bag has been giving me shit for weeks. It's like she's still here." Her voice lowered, roughened. "Bitching me out for hoarding perfectly good clothes when the majority of that pile downstairs is hideous." She shook her head. "It feels like this is what she would do, so that's what I'm going to do. It isn't all neon or animal print. There's a lot of leather, too. And some spandex she called her business clothes." Her nose wrinkled. "I'd stay away from those."