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

to his lips, kisses them both, one after the other.  Then he starts to let go.  But I won’t let go of him.  I squeeze his hands, and push them down to his sides, then behind his back.  I kiss his lips, more slowly, more gently than I’ve ever kissed anyone’s.  Then I kiss him a little harder and press my breasts against his chest, tilting him back just a bit.  He gasps, and I kiss him again, even harder, holding his hands tight behind him.  I nuzzle his ear, and then I lick it.

“Thomas,” I say.  “Lie back.”

Chapter Twenty Six

I lay in my bed, letting the sun wake me slowly.  I stretch, and turn toward Jobee’s crib.  He’s awake too; I can see his hands waving above his head.  When I came back to my room last night he was still sleeping peacefully.  I kissed his forehead softly and covered him back up with the blanket he always shrugs off.  Then I slipped into my own blankets.

Thomas was sleeping when I left him—fitfully—but sleeping.  I hope he still is, right now.  He needs some respite.

When Thomas went to the facility where his mother put Greg, he found a locked room where his brother had been staying.  When he found the Director of the place, he was told there had been an accident and that his brother was in the medical unit.  On the way there, they passed his brother’s old room again, but this time the door was open.  There was a person inside, an old woman in a Helper uniform, cleaning blood off of the walls.  The Director tried to stop Thomas from going in, but Thomas went crazy, grabbing him by the neck, threatening his life if he didn’t tell what had happened.

That’s when he told Thomas that Gregory was dead.  He said the other person in the room—a man who was admitted just that day—had turned out to be completely unstable.  He said the man attacked Gregory and before anyone was aware of what had happened, he’d cut Gregory’s throat with a knife.  They didn’t know where the knife came from, or what set the man off.  They only knew that Gregory was dead.  He’d bled to death on the floor of the room before they could even try to get him to the medical unit.

Thomas insisted on seeing Gregory’s body, where they had him covered up in the medical unit.  He said there was nothing left of his throat, that he had been nearly decapitated.  He couldn’t say anymore about it.

I shudder remembering; and make myself think of other things.  Like Thomas’s gentle, knowing fingers, and his body next to mine.  I shake my head, still in wonderment at how it was.  It was like nothing I’ve ever done—no grabbed touch from a complex boy even approached it.  It wasn’t just the pleasure of it, it was something else—some connection I felt to Thomas.  I feel it still, though we’re not together in the physical sense.  I think he felt it too.  No, I know he felt it.

But his parents arrive back today.  He’ll be sent to a new school, and I’ll be here.  I don’t blame Thomas, but I know how things have to be from now on.  I just hope he does.  Last night he kept saying we can’t do this Benna, we can’t.  But I don’t think he meant what I mean.   I think he wants to try to be together somehow.  He still thinks there is some way.  But he’s wrong.  Motie knew that.  I know that, too.  I’m a Helper.  He’s a Society member. Any mistakes that were made have already been corrected.  We can’t be together.

I wrote him a letter last night, when I got back here.  I told him how it is, how it has to be for us.  I took the drawing I made of him during our day in the country and I slipped it and the letter under his door.  Then I came back here and slept.

I don’t see Thomas until right before the Sloanes arrive.  I’ve kept Jobee upstairs most of the morning, but he wants the courtyard—he reaches for the window and cries when he wants out.  So I relented, and took him down into the afternoon sun.

In just a few minutes, Thomas comes out to the courtyard.  He walks over and sits in the chair next to me.  He doesn’t look at me; instead he watches Jobee.

“I got your letter,” he says, quietly.

I nod, but say nothing.  I look over at him.  He is gaunt today, shadows under his eyes, grief in them.  Nothing will bring Gregory back.

“I know you think we have to be apart.”

“I don’t think it.”  I look away from him.  This is so hard.  “I know it.”

“You’re wrong, Benna.”

“I’m Helper12, remember?”  I stare at him until he looks at me.  “I’m a Helper, nothing more.”

“Do you know why you’re a Helper, Benna?  Do you?”

“I tested and tracked as a Helper.  I have the correct aptitude to—”

“Why did they mark you with a B first, Benna?”

“There was a mistake.”  I recite it from memory. “Initial tests indicated that I could be tracked for Breeding, but then they must have found . . . something wrong with me.  So they corrected the mistake, and made me a Helper.”

Thomas looks at me with such sadness.  He inhales, a deep breath, and exhales it.  Then he speaks.

“Do you know what my father does for a living, Benna?”

If he wasn’t speaking so quietly I would get up and leave, just to stop him from saying my name.  If Helper heard, we’d both be in trouble.

“Do you?”  He waits.

“He’s in some sort of business, I imagine.”

“Yes, he is,” says Thomas.  “He’s a consultant, actually, for the government.  He reviews statistics, makes predictions about future requirements for maintaining the infrastructure, that sort of thing.”  He leans toward me.  “The government pays him to let them know what they’ll need in the future,