HELPER12, Jack Blaine [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

hold it without getting soot everywhere.  I open the tablet to the first, pristine page.

“What will you draw?”  Thomas looks around us.  “That tree there?  I know!  What about Jobee?”

“Jobee won’t hold still long enough for me to draw him.”  I know what I want to draw.  “But you will, won’t you?”

“Me?”  Thomas looks skeptical.  “Surely there are better things to draw than—”

“Turn just a touch, toward the lake.”  I’m already picturing how I’ll capture his eyes.  “Now, relax, you look stiff.  Let your shoulders fall.  There, that’s perfect.  Comfortable?”

Thomas nods, and we fall silent.  The only sounds are the distant voices we can hear coming from the other side of the lake, and my charcoal, whispering across the paper.

It’s dark when we get home.  Jobee is sleeping soundly, thoroughly worn out from the fresh air and the new sighs and sounds.  I feel almost as tired as he is, for many of the same reasons.  I’ve seen so much today, done so much I’ve never done, felt so much I’ve never felt.  I am ready to fall where I stand.

Thomas seems to know this.  He helps me out of the car and after he dismisses the Driver he hurries to help me get Jobee upstairs.  Once he’s settled in his crib, Thomas leaves me for the night, with only a chaste kiss on the forehead.  I cling to him, laughing, but he just smiles.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Benna.”

I change out of my clothes into a sleeping tunic.  Though I’m exhausted, I feel wound up, unable to close my eyes.  I retrieve the drawing tablet from where I’ve hidden it under the changing table pad, and sit on the bed.  I open it to Thomas’s portrait.

There he is, just like he was sitting across from me today at the lake.  He’s so achingly beautiful to me.

I’ve managed to capture his eyes quite well, I think.  The slight tilt of them in his face, the way they sparkle.  And his nose is perfect.  But I couldn’t get his lips quite right—I’ve smudged the charcoal out and redrawn them so many times I doubt I can get a clean line there again.

He wouldn’t let me have him.  I wanted to, wanted to have sex with him right there on the lakeside.  But he shook his head, and told me we should wait.

“I want you, too, Benna.  But I don’t want you in a hurry.  And I want to know we’re both . . .”  He stopped.

“Both what?”

He looked uncertain for a moment.  “In love, as silly as that may sound to you.”  He watched me.  “I want to know we’re both in love.”

“Why do you think that might sound silly to me?”

“Well, most people don’t even believe in it.”  He touched my hand.  “Do you?”

I thought about that, and what my answer would have been even two weeks before.  I thought about how often I had wished for something, some thing that I couldn’t name, and couldn’t see and couldn’t touch.  I looked at Thomas.

“I do now.”

Chapter Twenty Four

In the morning, Thomas comes to the courtyard where Jobee and I are sitting, enjoying the early morning sun.  He stands in the doorway watching Jobee play with a leaf.

“I’m going to go see Greg today.  And I have to do a couple of other things, too, so I may be late.”

“You don’t have to report to me, you know.”  I smile up at him.

He smiles back.  “I know.  I just want to, Benna.”

My expression must telegraph the alarm I feel inside.  Thomas looks behind him to make sure Helper isn’t lurking and then he crosses to me.  He kneels down and plays with Jobee, but his whispered words are for me.

“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t thinking.  I hate this.”  He keeps a smile on his face, in case Helper is watching from some unknown vantage point.  “I should be able to call you by your real name, shouldn’t I?”

“Whether you should be able to or not, you can’t,” I say, my own false smile plastered on my face.  Things don’t seem so simple today as they did yesterday on the shore of the lake.  If Helper heard Thomas using my name that way, she’d report it.  Not to his parents; to the police.  There are rules in place to keep things like this—like us—from happening.  My hands are shaking, just thinking about it.

Thomas shakes his head, his face a happy mask.

“We can’t do this, can we?”

I say nothing.  I can’t look at him anymore, so I turn toward the door, and there stands Helper.  She doesn’t say anything.

“Hello, Helper.”  I try hard to keep my voice steady, my tone casual.  Thomas stands up.

“What do you need, Helper?” He sounds less friendly than I did.

“Nothing sir.  I just wondered if you’d be home tonight for dinner.”

Thomas turns to me.  When I meet his eyes, it’s with a blank stare.  I watch as he searches my face, and absorbs what is there.  I watch as his eyes go cold.

“I won’t be home, Helper.”  He walks away without another glance at Jobee or me.  “I’ll be eating with friends tonight.”

And then he’s gone.

I stay in the courtyard until mid-morning.  Jobee has a bottle, and I’ve lost my appetite, so missing breakfast doesn’t matter.  I don’t let myself think about anything but Jobee until he falls asleep.  Once he’s snuffling softly, I try to relax in the lounge chair.  It would be nice if I could drift off, but I can’t.  I keep seeing Thomas’s face, his expression going from hurt to numb, his eyes turning frosty, right before they turned away from me forever.

I don’t know what else I could have done.  Never in my life have I thought that I would find myself in this sort of situation, but I have heard of them.  There was a girl in our Helper Training, tracked for Baby Helper just like me and Kris.  She was a beautiful girl, not like me.