It was on a Sunday morning when a solitary beam of light stabbed his eyelids open. He arose and his hand found his temple, which felt tender to the touch.
It throbbed the more to his slightest attempt at gathering his thoughts, so he just sagged on the wooden floor for a while.
Lukas scrutinized the unfamiliar shelter with a stony expression, which slowly designed itself to a scowl.
Then, a deafening bang - like gunfire - sent ice to his core and he jumped with a start, getting to his feet.
"You're up. That's nice." Duke said, slamming the door shut. He had a brown leather satchel strapped over his shoulder, which he dropped, causing it to land on the wooden floor with a thump. "You won't believe how you got here."
"Keep it to yourself."
Duke scrabbled about in his satchel and pulled out two green apples. He threw one to Lukas, who made no attempt to catch it.
"Eat up." Duke munched his own and eyed Lukas while chewing. Screwing his teeth shut to restrain his next words, Lukas took to surveying the shelter instead.
You could fit four classrooms in that place. The walls were set up with stones that bore ash scars, giving the room an impression of the inside of a charred loaf of bread. There was also an earthy scent of moist dirt and rotten leaves.
"You're wearing my jacket, by the way. And those are my pants too." Duke said.
Surely, when he looked downwards, Lukas grasped that he was no longer half naked. He wished he were, though. The pants exposed his pencil-thin legs and the jacket revealed his scrawny forearms.
"The least you can do is thank me. I even saved your ass from drowning."
It was becoming pointless to pretend as though Duke wasn't speaking, with the prospect of Lukas holding his tongue blurring. his silence, apparently, wasn't going to smoothen Duke's choice of words.
He withdrew from Duke's proximity and scoured the shelter for a different exit, but he stumbled on something, coming down head first onto the floor.
His head could've been a boiling kettle. He rose from the floor and hunted for something to hurl at Duke. The apple was many feet away.
"Now you got dirt all over my jacket. You know what, bring it back when you've washed it. And keep the pants, they look good on you."
Lukas cussed at top volume, ripped off the jacket, and flung it at Duke.
"Fine," Duke said, "I'll have the pants too, then."
Lukas spat in Duke's direction. Every ounce of his being was fighting hard not to fantasize about the countless different ways in which Duke can break both his legs.
They were both still taking part in a competition of determining whose frown was the nastiest when two more people entered the room.
Lukas recognized them at once. One of them was the dark-haired girl who'd sat a couple of seats away from him at the dining hall, engrossed in her book to the point of sleepiness.
She was accompanied by her twin. The girls scurried to the ancient pews without greeting and found their seats.
"Where's Gracie?" Duke said, interrupting the stare off to look at the twins.
"She's on her way." One of them said.
"Lukas, meet Jae and Ashleigh. Ladies, this is the guy I've been telling you about.
"Hi." Jae and Ashleigh said in unison, but Lukas - with ears roaring with vehement loathing for his present company - was already marching for the exit, shouldering Duke out of the way, then he halted.
The door had yawned its announcement of the next guest and Lukas's muscles stiffened as he watched Gracie stroll into the shelter.
She shut the door and went to sit with the twins. She maintained her determination not to make eye contact with Lukas the whole time she strolled to her seat.
"Glad you made it, Peanut. Now back to you. Explain yourself."
"The hell do you mean?" Lukas said.
Duke allowed himself a slow smile that built over the silence. "Take a guess."
Finding the opportunity to ask a question that bothered him since he realized he was wearing clothes, he said, "Who dressed me?"
The closest thing to a reply Lukas could get was a cough from one of the twins.
"What the hell's going on?"
"Peanut, he's all yours."
But Gracie just glared at her cellphone screen, which illuminated the lines of genuine bitterness on her face.
"It's Duke. He pulled you from the lake." Jae said, "It was really scary; we thought you were dead, then you started muttering her name -"
"Jae believes you're haunted, and you just confirmed that." Duke said.
