Vicious Memories

Chapter 37 - Alice

I hated my monthly examinations with Bev.

It was uncomfortable to have my body poked and prodded, to be asked intimate questions about my physical and mental health. It was akin to being laid bare, to having my outer layer of defenses peeled back.

But it was also nice to have a close interaction with another person. It was nice to feel taken care of, to almost feel loved.

"Looking great, as always," Bev said, rinsing her hands in a nearby bucket of water. She waved them around to shake off most of the water, finished drying them on the hem of her shirt. It was endearingly careless.

I nodded and stood up from the plastic chair.

It was already mid-morning. Shortly after dawn clouds had rolled over the sun and hung there with tenacity, muting the golden rays to a level of dullness that seemed to make the world move in slow-motion. Bev watched while I stretched stiff muscles, her blue eyes thoughtful. The corners of her lips quirked up just the tiniest bit.

To me Bev had always been one of the most interesting people in the village. She carried a sense of confusion with her everywhere she went - it was part of the aura she exuded that I wasn't sure anyone else noticed. Her face often warred with itself, contradictions plain - caring but withdrawn, beautiful yet boyishly careless, unencumbered but disquietingly thoughtful. Something about her filled me with a sense of sisterhood. Something about her also made me think she saw and understood more than anyone else.

I liked her.

Ever since Ollie had washed up on our beach it seemed that I was making internal declarations like that a lot more often. I'd spent more time interacting with people in the past week than I had in the past year. Whether that was in some indirect way because of him, or because of our current situation, I didn't know.

Bev's eyes flickered and for a moment it felt as if she'd been reading my thoughts.

"You're different lately," she said. It wasn't posed as a question.

"Yes."

She smiled brilliantly. "I'm glad you've noticed that about yourself."

"I think that I am, too."

"What do you think brought it on?"

"I'm not sure," I said. I gave a half-hearted shrug.

Bev gestured toward the doorway and began walking with me. "It wouldn't have anything to do with the new person in our village, would it?"

"I couldn't say for sure one way or the other."

"Well." She paused for a breath. "One thing we can say for sure is that he's certainly an interesting one."

"I suppose he is."

"It's hard not to like him, the way he picked up our cause and started championing it."

As I looked down the few inches of height that separated us, I saw in Bev what most of the men in the village must see. A beautiful blonde, smart and unflinching in the face of injury or conflict, a nurse who had healed our wounds a hundred times over. And on top of all that, an unmistakably attractive personality.

A woman who was not like me.

It made me feel something that I didn't recognize at first. A dragon reared up in my chest and roared at the thought of another person wanting the same thing that I did. It was an emotion I felt ashamed of because I found it difficult to hold any ill-will toward Bev, but it was also an emotion I knew I wouldn't be able to control, because her words had finally woken me up.

I nodded in agreement. "It is."

"Well," she said, tilting her head to one side, "if anything good has come out of this past week, it would have to be considered a silver lining. I'm glad to see that you're becoming more comfortable with yourself."

She turned and walked back through the doorway, smiling over her shoulder once she'd reached the deeper shade, the third such expression she'd favored me with in the past two minutes.

"My door is always open, Alice."