fixed on my back, his mouth hanging open.
“What?” I ask.
“What happened to your back?”
I crane my neck to peer over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
He crouches behind me and trails his warm fingers over my skin, from the base of the fabric wrapping my breasts to just above the waist of my jeans. I shiver as warmth floods my body. His fingers move to the skin between my shoulder blades, just above the bindings, and trail up to my neck, leaving goose bumps in their wake.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice unsteady.
“You don’t know?”
I shake my head.
“You have scars from here”—he touches my neck—“to here.” His finger trails over the binding and down to the top of my hip.
“Scars?”
“Yeah. They look like they’re from … fingernails.” He presses three fingertips to my midback and drags them downward. His eyes meet mine. “What happened to Jonah?” he asks, eyes guarded.
“He’s a beast,” I say. The words scratch my throat.
“That’s what I thought. He started the vaccine the same time you did, right?”
“Yes,” I answer without thinking, a fact I didn’t realize I knew until this very moment.
Bowen taps his chin with his finger and studies me. And then he’s standing, tugging his Sprite shirt over his head. My body temperature surges, searing my neck and cheeks. He doesn’t notice, is too intent on his chest. I follow his gaze.
His skin is suntanned and smooth over muscles earned by hard work. Right down the middle of his chest are five white lines, like five lightning bolts. I stand and get a better look. “Here, too.” He points to his shoulder. I take a step closer and study the white marks, tracing the jagged crescent with my finger.
“That looks like …”
“Teeth?”
I nod.
“A beast bit me. And the marks on my chest are from fingernails.” He pulls his shirt back on. “We need to go back downstairs. We’re sitting targets up here. Are you hungry?”
“What?” I’m still staring at his chest, imagining the five scar-streaks beneath his shirt.
“Hungry. Do you want something to eat?”
My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten in more than a day. He picks up my sopping shirt and hands it to me. I pull it on and follow him downstairs.
“When did you get those scars?” I ask.
“Three years ago. I was fourteen.” The main level of the factory is dark and muggy compared to the second level. I can hardly see his face. “They had just completed the second level of the wall and were admitting more people inside, offering protection. If.”
“If what?” I ask.
“If you qualified.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No, I did. But my mom? She didn’t qualify. They turned her away.”
An image wavers in my memory. A bathrobe and bunny slippers, and blood on snow.
Jonah and I were out front, taking turns pulling each other on a sled through the snow. It was my turn to be pulled, when a door slammed across the street.
She stood on the front porch, wearing a blue flannel robe. Twinkling Christmas lights clung to the roof of her house even though it was the end of February.
“Look, it’s the crazy lady,” Jonah whispered. “Dad says if you look at her wrong, she’ll kill herself.”
I tore my gaze from her and studied the purple plastic sled, wondering if Dreyden was embarrassed to have a mom like that—a mom who wore her bathrobe and slippers at four in the afternoon. A mom who left their Christmas lights on day and night.
The sound of Mrs. Bowen crunching through the snow of her unshoveled driveway echoed across the street to our house. A minute later a pair of pink bunny slippers matted with snowballs crunched into our yard and stopped beside the sled. Red dripped between those slippers, like the ticking of a clock … drip-drip-drip.
“I need help,” she said. “I’ve accidentally cut my wrist.” Drip-drip-drip.
I looked up, and Jonah rammed his boot into my thigh. “Don’t look at her!” he warned.
I stood from the sled and stared at the blood melting a red hole in the snow between her slippers.
“I’ll get Dad,” I whispered.
“Why didn’t your mom qualify?” I can still see the crimson snow when I look at him.
Bowen unzips his backpack and rummages around. “She didn’t pass their health requirements. And if you aren’t healthy, you aren’t worth protecting.” He takes out one of the meat-flavored disks, and my stomach rumbles. I don’t know how I hadn’t realized it before, but I’m ravenous. Eager, drooling, I hold my hand out for the disk,