Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,28

plan. “I just didn’t want you to go all alone.” He paused, noticing her lip was quivering. “Are you mad?”

Wara burst into tears, and then tried to hide it by taking a deep breath. “But…your trip…”

“Who cares?” Noah shrugged. “Another time.” He got up and held out his hand for Wara to hand him her backpack. “C’mon, I think I saw the guys who hired this bus heading over there, so we’d better hurry up.”

Amazingly, Wara allowed herself to be led over to the bus, whose engine was now purring lustily, and they climbed up the steps into the darkened interior. Inside, the bus was only about a third full, most of the people sitting towards the back in a group, settling in for a nap on the way back to the capital. The men wore slick jackets with dress shirts, and most of the women seemed to be wearing pantsuits of some kind.

Probably the group who chartered the bus. Not very comfortable clothes for traveling.

Noah squinted at their tickets, and then found the seat numbers on the right side, pretty near the front. He put Wara’s purple backpack under the seat by the window, and then he waited, a little nervously, for Wara to get into her seat first.

She’s not talking to me. Is she mad?

Of course she’s mad---the stuff Lázaro said! That idiotic jerk. Why would he spout off like that about Wara?

Noah felt his face get hot again as he slid into his spot next to the aisle and he wondered how Wara could be so quiet.

“Why are you doing this?” He heard Wara’s broken voice echo in his brain, and he leaned back into his seat with a sigh.

Oh God, I really need some help right now, cause I’m really angry. Help me to love my enemy—that’s who our psychopathic tour guide has suddenly morphed into—and make this sudden turn of events work according to your plan.

Noah turned his eyes to Wara, and saw, with a twist of his heart, that she had leaned forward to rest her forehead against the velvet seat back in front of her, tears sliding silently down her cheeks and dripping onto the floor.

9

silver

NEVER BEFORE HAD WARA TRUELY understood the expression “I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.”

Noah sat next to her, and she wanted to die, just die. What was he even doing here? Nothing was ever going to be ok between them ever again.

She barely noticed as the last of the passengers filed onto the bus, sitting somewhere behind her and Noah. Good. Her eyes were so bloodshot and swollen from sobbing in the hotel room that she couldn’t even pretend to be civil to anyone in the mood to talk. Wara stared out the window, nervously winding her foot up in the strap of her backpack under the seat, again feeling her eyes sting.

“She’s a lot of fun for one night. Not the good little missionary girl you may imagine…enjoy!”

His voice ran through her head without her permission, and Wara blinked away the tears, truly wishing for that dark hole and covers to pull over her head and hide---forever.

With a soft hiss, the bus door closed and the vehicle rumbled to life. She sat in a daze as the bus began to crawl its way along the narrow, darkened streets, leaving Coroico behind. The hum of the highway enveloped them and Wara slumped forward against the seat back, miserable.

She knew he was there and was going to say something eventually, but she actually jumped when Noah’s voice broke the silence. “I can’t believe Lázaro would just make up all that stuff about you,” he spat. She glanced at him for a millisecond and saw that his jaw was squared, eyes stormy. “I mean, what is his problem? This is the second time we used his tour group to do stuff here in Coroico, and I thought the guy was cool. How in the world did he…”

The look on Wara’s face must have cut him off.

Noah thinks Lázaro made it all up.

Her heart broke then and she felt herself staring at him, pale in the moonlight streaming through the window.

“It wasn’t a lie.” She nearly gagged on the words. “I used to date him.”

“Huh?” Noah blinked. Wara felt her face crumple.

“Oh, Noah! Why did you come with me? You should have stayed…do you want to go back? We’re barely out of town.” Now she was blubbering, but the memory of everything was taking over: the things Lázaro