Page 9 of Ablaze

I walk over to the end of the bar and stand in front of this stranger. He looks up from his drink, and his dark brown eyes look directly into mine. I feel like we are suspended in time. The way he looks at me is like he knows me, but this is impossible. We are complete strangers. I look at his features, and he is handsome. He’s not as old as I first assumed, younger, around my age. His dark hair falls onto his forehead, and he brushes it back with hand. I think he’s going to speak to me, but he just continues to hold my gaze.

I break the gaze between us and speak first. “George told me you thought we might be friends.”

“Ah, you’re the girl he told me about this morning,” he says. His voice is calm, but it’s all Dome accent. He sounds exactly like me, and he can’t hide that any better than I can. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about him bothers me. I find myself getting annoyed.

I give him a reply. “That would be me. Sorry to disappoint you that I didn’t turn out to be your friend.” I need to keep him talking to see if this was just a coincidence. I can’t take any chances with my safety.

“I’m not sorry at all. From what George told me, you seem like a nice girl. Besides, I haven’t seen that friend since before the disaster. So, what’s taking you to Antelope Island? I heard that’s where you were headed before you became ill. That’s where I’m headed too,” he says.

He dives right in with a question. Hmm… I don’t know what to make of him. I can’t tell him the truth and frankly, it’s none of his business. “I was heading there before George told me the news about it. Did he tell you? It’s closed off. Now I don’t know if I’ll go. I’d like to though, just to see it. That was my original reason for going anyway. I had heard how nice it was; or used to be that is.”

“Yes, me too. I had been travelling for a while to get out here. I came all the way from Indiana”

I decided to call his bluff. “Really? Your accent sounds like you’re from the Dome. The only other person I’ve met from the Dome since the disaster wasn’t very friendly toward me.”

He smirks at me and takes a drink of his water. He knows that I’m upset. He sits his glass down on the bar and stands up. He takes his large backpack off the floor and puts it on his back. He goes to leave but turns around and says to me, “I’m from there but from the sound of your accent, it sounds like you are too.” He walks out the door of the bar with me standing there looking at him like an idiot.

Jesse

Dammit! I’m so mad at myself. I’ve overplayed my hand. I wasn’t sure if George would tell her about our conversation, but he did. Now I’m walking out of the bar with my mystery girl behind me. I still don’t even know her name. What an idiot I am! I had the perfect opportunity to ask her and make conversation, and all I could do was sit there and gawk at her. She clearly has her guard up and doesn’t take kindly to people from the Dome.

I’ve got to figure out a way to go back in there and talk to her. I can’t scare her off, and the vibe she was giving me tells me she’s very scared and untrusting. I just don’t know what to say. Maybe I should apologize. I don’t even know what for. She was rude to me! You don’t call out a stranger on where they are from and definitely not when you’re from the Dome yourself. I keep walking while I think. I can’t go back in there until I know what to say.

I keep trying to focus on what she said to me, but all I can think about is her appearance. She’s far prettier than her photograph. Her lips were so plump, I had to resist the urge to reach out and touch them. She opened her mouth and that Dome accent rang out with its venom and slapped me back into reality. She’s young, but not as young as I thought. I’m guessing she’s 18 or 19 max. I need to relate to her. I need to figure out how to walk back into that bar.

I keep walking further away from the bar, my head filled with its own thoughts. When someone puts their hand on my shoulder, I’m startled and spin around to face them. I’m even more surprised that it’s her who’s startled me. She came outside and found me walking. The look on her face tells me that she’s embarrassed, either from startling me or from her attitude in the bar. I soften my approach with her.

“I’m sorry if I said something that upset you back there. It wasn’t my intention. I just thought we might have something in common with going to the island,” I try to explain to her.

She looks down at her feet and fidgets with both of her hands. She doesn’t look up at me as she responds, “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I was rude to you earlier.”

I wait a second to see if she’s going to look up from the ground and when she doesn’t, I let her know it’s okay. “Hey! How about we start over? I’m Jesse and, yes, I’m originally from the Dome, but I haven’t lived there since months before the disaster.” I stick my hand out to shake her hand.

She looks up from the ground and shakes my hand. “I’m Sadie.” She looks around us and waits till no one is within earshot before continuing. “I was living in San Francisco when the disaster happened, but I’m also from the Dome”

Finally, I know my mystery girl’s name… it’s Sadie. I smile back at her, and the innocent look on her face makes me want to tell her everything I know; It feels as if I have to internally hold the information in my body. I have to start slowly with her. She isn’t ready for my truth, but I do need to get close to her. I need to find out why she’s so valuable and that could cause my parents to place all their faith, and their only son, on the line. “So, Sadie, how long do you plan on staying in town for? I only plan on stopping through.”

I can’t just start asking her questions without giving her some information. I can’t keep her suspicious of me. If I tell her my plans, then maybe she’ll realize I’m not someone she needs to fear. I can see on her face that she seems less suspicious of my intentions now.

“Well… I was just passing through town when I originally got here. I was preparing to leave town, and the next day when I woke up after sunlight, I was sick as can be. I couldn’t even get out of bed. George, he came up and took one look at me and told me I had the flu. I was in bed every day for a week and tonight was the first night I felt almost back to normal,” she tells me.

Wow! It sounds like she’s lucky to make it through it. “Modern medicine isn’t readily available out here, so I’m glad you’re feeling better. You look good,” I say and realize that it came out wrong. Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes are cast on the ground again. I can feel my own cheeks heating up. I try to backtrack. “That didn’t come out right. I’m sorry! You don’t look nice. Shit! I mean you don’t look sick. You look healthy.”

Now the look on her face is hurt. I’m so confused. Maybe she wants me to think she looks good? I don’t know. I give up. The only woman I’ve ever really socialized with is my mother, and she’s nothing like Sadie, so I have no idea what to say to her. My parents should have given me lessons on this if they wanted me to get close to her. I give up and try to change the subject. “So, George seems like a decent guy.”

“Yes, he’s been very kind to me,” she gives a little laugh and raises her eyes to look at me.

“He told me about the island being closed off. I’m still going to go there and see it for myself. I plan on leaving after tomorrow’s daylight ends.” This catches her off guard.

“I hadn’t planned on leaving till the day after tomorrow. I told George that I would stay to help him out one more night. It’s the least I can do. He’d like me to stay longer,” she informs me.

I’m sure he would. I can see the way he looks at her. Something isn’t right. He seems overprotective, and not in a good way. I can’t tell her though because she clearly trusts and knows him better than I do. That would only push her further away from me. I’ve only got one more day to figure out how to keep us together. So far I’m not doing too well, but at least we’ve got a dialogue going between us now. We start to walk down the street together and before I realize it, we are in easy conversation. We haven’t talked about anything that would lead to me finding out why she’s so important, but it’s a start.

“We’re getting pretty far away from the bar. We should turn back before it starts getting daylight,” she says. I look up at the sky and realize it’s becoming lighter, so we turn around and start walking back. She’s opening up more and asking me personal questions . I slow our walking pace down to prolong our conversation. It’s her way of trying to figure out if I can be trusted. I can tell. I would do the exact same thing to her if she wasn’t already doing it to me.

“How old are you? You seem around my age,” she asks me.

“I’m twenty-one. How old are you?” I ask her in return.

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