Stung - By Bethany Wiggins Page 0,27
of ingrained into my head.”
“When did you learn to play classical guitar?”
He shrugs. “I taught myself after everything changed. My whole life I’d always been surrounded by music—by your music, you practiced so often. I guess I … missed it.”
A small smile flutters against my sore lips.
Bowen pulls a bundle from the bag and holds out a pair of faded jeans with ballpoint-pen ivy decorating the pockets. I look from the jeans to him. “They don’t stink, and I don’t think I can stand another minute in your presence unless you take off your pants,” he says, scrunching up his nose at my—Arrin’s—pants.
I take the jeans, press them to my nose, and inhale. They don’t stink at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. They smell like Bowen.
“So, hurry up and put them on,” he says, watching me. “I’m on pollen duty today.”
My heart starts to pound and my cheeks burn. Again. As if I’m thirteen. “Put them on right now? Aren’t you going to wait outside?”
“And leave you completely unrestrained and unobserved? Sorry, Fotard.” Mischief gleams in his eyes, and I have the feeling he’s trying hard not to smile.
I roll my eyes, and his mouth flickers into a quick smile. Electricity hums and my cuffs unmeld, freeing my arms.
I tug Arrin’s pants from my legs and, while Bowen stares, pull the jeans on over a pair of plain white granny underwear that goes up to my belly button. I don’t remember ever owning granny underwear. As my fingers loop the button through the buttonhole, Bowen hands me a brown leather belt. I take it and stare at it.
“You got a problem with the belt?” he asks.
“When I was in the tunnels, I asked Arrin for something to eat. She gave me a leather belt,” I say with a shudder.
“Fecs don’t have much food. Lots of them starve to death before they have a chance to turn.”
“Turn? Turn how?” I ask as I loop the belt through my new pants and cinch it into place. The moment it’s latched, electricity hums and my forearms meld back together.
“I’ll tell you while we pollinate,” he says. He slings one strap of the black backpack over his shoulder. Next, he gets a rifle and slings it over the other shoulder, making an X across his chest with the straps. He eases out of the tent, and I follow.
We walk past the camp—everyone stares at me—and then go to the base of the wall. And I see the first living plant I have seen since I saw Jacqui’s mom painting corn. Many plants, actually, in an assortment of mismatched pots—terracotta, plastic, clay, a few even grow in dirt piled in the interior of old car tires, or in paint cans.
I step up to a plant and trail my fingers over the pulpy green leaves. Tears sting my eyes and my throat constricts. “It’s beautiful,” I whisper. “What kind of plant is it?”
“A tomato,” Bowen says, looking at me like I’m nuts. “Are you crying?”
I sniffle and shrug. “It reminds me of … the world I used to know.” The world I belong to, where I am thirteen and Jonah is normal and plants grow. And I have never seen a pair of electromagnetic cuffs, not to mention been forced to wear them.
“Here.” Bowen holds out a fine-bristled paintbrush, and I take it. “We need to pollinate them or they won’t produce any fruit.”
Like Jacqui’s mom painting the corn.
“What you do is stick the paintbrush into the little yellow flowers, like this.” Instead of watching his little demonstration, I stare at his profile, wondering if he misses the old world as much as I do, wondering if he misses his family. “And then move to another flower. Until we’ve done it to all of the flowers. Got it?” He looks up and I nod.
I stick the fine bristles of my paintbrush into the flower. Tiny, pale grains of dust cling to it—pollen. I move to the next flower and do the same, brushing the dust from the first flower into the second, while taking dust from the second to place in the third.
“You asked me what it means to turn,” Bowen says, his voice warm and deep and grown-up. I pause and watch him move his paintbrush from flower to flower, his strong, callused hands gentle and precise. “Your tattoo. Do you remember getting it?”
I look at my hand and can remember the needle darting in and out of my skin faster than I could