I returned home, more confused than when I had first left, and dropped my things in front of the house. My mind was racing, the lack of stimulation being the only thing that prevented me from going into sensory overload, and I paced back and forth frantically, holding my head in my hands: wanting to cry. It took me a moment to clear my mind enough to realise that I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd cried. Months? Years? It might have been either.
Did I even know how to cry?
I paced the length of the ground in front of the house a few more times before sitting down on the front stairs, my head crashing into my hands. I inhaled deeply, sucking oxygen into my lungs, and then exhaled and looked up again, calmed down. Scoutfield had been worried: I could tell. He'd been a jerk, but not to the extent he usually was. I finally picked up my crossbow again and traced the arch of the frame and the bowstring, taut between the two ends.
"Nova?"
I turned sharply at the sudden voice behind me. Calix stood in the doorway, his fists scrubbing his eyes as he leaned against the doorway. I held out my arms and he ran and climbed into them, leaning his head against my chest and thrusting his left thumb between his lips.
"Where's Mel?" he asked after a minute of silence. He lifted his head to look at me, his small right pointer finger reaching up to attentively trace my facial features. I sighed and ran a hand over his soft blond head.
"Mel got very sick, and she can't be here now..." and then to end on a higher note, because he was two, "but you'll see her again one day."
No time soon, I added to myself, I'll see to that.
Calix appeared to be content with this response. He hummed quietly in understanding before speaking.
"Oh. Okay."
He sighed heavily and leaned back into me as I gave him a kiss on his forehead. He finally drifted off to sleep to the sound of my heartbeat and I took him back inside to put him back in his bed.
I pulled down his sheets and blankets and laid him gently down, shifting his head onto the pillow. I pushed his hair off his forehead and then tucked the blankets up around his shoulders. As I turned to leave the room, my mother turned over in her bed and opened her eyes.
"Nova?" she asked confusedly. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Mother." I replied quietly, "Just putting Calix back to bed."
She didn't say anything more, turned over, and went back to sleep. I left the room silently and then sighed, leaning my head against the door. I felt drained, but not tired, by any means.
I put the crossbow away in the hall closet and closed the door gently before going back outside. I climbed my tree again, content to stay there for the rest of the night, and shifted to make myself more comfortable for sleep. It wasn't coming, though.
By the position of the moon in the sky, I guessed it was about a half hour to midnight. The dark didn't scare me, night had never scared me, but now it did. The viral killer that had taken my sister scared me. Senator Sly scared me. The possibilities of the next morning scared me.
My family and friends could die.
I could die.
With that happy though in mind, I shifted again and closed my eyes, hoping for some sleep... but it didn't come. Before I knew it, I was down on the ground pacing again.
I wasn't safe.
I wasn't tired.
I wasn't in control.
"Can't sleep?"
I started and looked toward the road to see a girl I knew from school coming towards me. Her name was Echo Larks, and we had been friendly at school. Not friends. School stopped when a child turned fourteen, and I had turned the snowfall before she did, so she still wasn't graduated, yet. Echo had no living siblings and no mother. She had only her father, who was often absent.
I vividly recalled her baby brother, who had outlived his mother by only three hours before passing in his sister's arms. She thought about him, sometimes. I always knew when she did.
"You clearly can't either," I noted, indirectly answering her question affirmatively. She nodded coyly and sat down on the front stairs where I joined her.
"I heard about..." she trailed off. I didn't reply.
I knew she was speaking of my sister, and I appreciated she had had the sense to stop speaking before the thought was out completely out of her mouth. She was silent again.
"How's your brother?" she asked next.
"Too young to understand…" I sighed. "And I'm happy about that fact. Maybe I can keep him carefree for a few more months."
Echo nodded absentmindedly and stared off into nowhere. I wasn't inclined to break the silence, so I pulled my knees to my chest and put my forehead down on them. We sat there quietly until the sun first started to rise over the hills and Echo stood to go.
"My daddy should be getting up soon. He doesn't know I left last night."
This was normal for Echo: the sneaking out at night. What wasn't normal was the expression she threw me: the one a poet might describe as guilty, the aficionado might describe as distressed, and I - a realist - described as unsettled.
I watched her disappear down the road... and then I was completely alone again, thinking. What did Sly know? What did Everett Scoutfield know? And now: what did Echo know?
I don't know. I don't know.
It seemed that was all I knew now: there was too much I didn't know.