The Host(92)

I looked at Jeb mournfully, and he was smiling in my direction. There was a smugness to his grin that made me believe he knew what I was thinking—not only did he guess my discomfort, but he was enjoying it.

He winked at me, my crazy friend. I realized again that this was the best to be expected from human friendship.

“See you tomorrow, Wanda,” Ian called from across the room, and laughed to himself.

Everyone stared.





CHAPTER 24

Tolerated

It was true that I did not smell good.

I’d lost count of how many days I’d spent here—was it more than a week now? more than two?—and all of them sweating into the same clothes I’d worn on my disastrous desert trek. So much salt had dried into my cotton shirt that it was creased into rigid accordion wrinkles. It used to be pale yellow; now it was a splotchy, diseased-looking print in the same dark purple color as the cave floor. My short hair was crunchy and gritty; I could feel it standing out in wild tangles around my head, with a stiff crest on top, like a cockatoo’s. I hadn’t seen my face recently, but I imagined it in two shades of purple: cave-dirt purple and healing-bruise purple.

So I could understand Jeb’s point—yes, I needed a bath. And a change of clothes as well, to make the bath worth the effort. Jeb offered me some of Jamie’s clothes to wear while mine dried, but I didn’t want to ruin Jamie’s few things by stretching them. Thankfully, he didn’t try to offer me anything of Jared’s. I ended up with an old but clean flannel shirt of Jeb’s that had the sleeves ripped off, and a pair of faded, holey cutoff sweatpants that had gone unclaimed for months. These were draped over my arm—and a bumpy mound of vile-smelling, loosely molded chunks that Jeb claimed was homemade cactus soap was in my hand—as I followed Jeb to the room with the two rivers.

Again we were not alone, and again I was miserably disappointed that this was the case. Three men and one woman—the salt-and-pepper braid—were filling buckets with water from the smaller stream. A loud splashing and laughing echoed from the bathing room.

“We’ll just wait our turn,” Jeb told me.

He leaned against the wall. I stood stiffly beside him, uncomfortably conscious of the four pairs of eyes on me, though I kept my own on the dark hot spring rushing by underneath the porous floor.

After a short wait, three women exited the bathing room, their wet hair dripping down the backs of their shirts—the athletic caramel-skinned woman, a young blonde I didn’t remember seeing before, and Melanie’s cousin Sharon. Their laughter stopped abruptly as soon as they caught sight of us.

“Afternoon, ladies,” Jeb said, touching his forehead as if it were the brim of a hat.

“Jeb,” the caramel woman acknowledged dryly.

Sharon and the other girl ignored us.

“Okay, Wanda,” he said when they’d passed. “It’s all yours.”

I gave him a glum look, then made my way carefully into the black room.

I tried to remember how the floor went—I was sure I had a few feet before the edge of the water. I took off my shoes first, so that I could feel for the water with my toes.

It was just so dark. I remembered the inky appearance of the pool—ripe with suggestions of what might lurk beneath its opaque surface—and shuddered. But the longer I waited, the longer I would have to be here, so I put the clean clothes next to my shoes, kept the smelly soap, and shuffled forward carefully until I found the lip of the pool.

The water was cool compared to the steamy air of the outer cavern. It felt nice. That didn’t keep me from being terrified, but I could still appreciate the sensation. It had been a long time since anything had been cool. Still fully dressed in my dirty clothes, I waded in waist deep. I could feel the stream’s current swirl around my ankles, hugging the rock. I was glad the water was not stagnant—it would be upsetting to sully it, filthy as I was, if that were the case.

I crouched down into the ink until I was immersed to my shoulders. I ran the coarse soap over my clothes, thinking this would be the easiest way to make sure they were clean. Where the soap touched my skin, it burned mildly.

I took off the soapy clothes and scrubbed them under the water. Then I rinsed them again and again until there was no way any of my sweat or tears could have survived, wrung them out, and laid them on the floor beside where I thought my shoes were.

The soap burned more strongly against my bare skin, but the sting was bearable because it meant I could be clean again. When I was done lathering, my skin prickled everywhere and my scalp felt scalded. It seemed as if the places where the bruises had formed were more sensitive than the rest of me—they must still have been there. I was happy to put the acidic soap on the rock floor and rinse my body again and again, the way I had my clothes.