The Hunt

Capping the bottle, I see the pile of clothes where Ashley June fel . She'd gambled, foolishly, coming out so early.



The protective gear was meant for late dusk, not now when the sun still had two hours of life in it. I remember what my escort had told me days ago, how the sight and smel s of hepers had driven some staffers to charge out at the Dome in the middle of the day. I'd found it hard to believe back then, but no more.



Strange, I think, looking at the pile of clothes. all I see on the ground is the SunCloak. No sign of her other clothes: shoes, socks, pants. Just the SunCloak. Maybe she was naked underneath the way Beefy was? I head over and kick at the cloak, expecting it to be sodden and sticky with yel ow fl uid and melted skin. But there's nothing at all . No sign of any yel ow fl uid. Then it hits me.



She's in the library. Somehow she was able to escape inside in time.



But when I spin around toward the library, I see something that— My mouth drops. My eyes widen.



The rays of the descending sun saturate the outside of the library— the wal s, the shutters, the brick pathway— in a sea of purple and orange. And standing in the midst of this color is Ashley June. Color radiates off her pale skin, mixing with the orange of her hair, the green of her eyes.



Her mouth is slightly parted, ful and whole. And she is not screaming, not disintegrating.



We stare at each other, speechless, my eyes helplessly agog.



She reaches into her mouth, tilts back her head, pul s something out.



A set of fake fangs.



She holds them out to me like a peace offering.



The fi rst thing she asks for when we walk in is water.



“Of course,” I tel her, remembering how parched I was a couple of days ago. “You've gone this whole time without water?”



She doesn't answer but downs a whole bottle of water.



That's answer enough.



“That's why I col apsed outside,” she says, eyeing my other bottle of water.



“You want more?”



“Yes, but not to drink.” She grabs the bottle. “In case you haven't noticed— the others certainly have— I'm beginning to smel .



really bad.”



“You should wash up inside. Sun'l give you a sunburn, your skin's so fair.”



She shoots me a look as if to say, Really? I haven't survived seventeen years by accident, buddy.



“In the back,” I say quickly. “There's a place with a drain in the fl oor.” She walks around the circulation desk and the fl oor.” She walks around the circulation desk and disappears. Leaving me with my tangled, bewildered, searching thoughts.



When she comes back ten minutes later, I haven't moved.



Her hair is slick wet and her face freshly scrubbed. She looks paler and drained, but her eyes are brighter. “I hope you don't mind,” she says timidly.



“What?”



“I said I hope you don't mind. I had to put on your clothes.



My own stuff is . . . there's too much of a smel in them.”



“No,” I say, eyes looking down, “it's okay. all that stuff they gave me are a few sizes too smal . I've never worn that outfi t before, it's yours now.”



We stand at a slant, looking at everything but each other.



“I'm sorry for using up two bottles of water.”



“It's okay. We still have a half bottle left.”



As soon as I say the word we, it's as though something breaks in her. Her head turns to mine; when I meet her eyes, they've wel ed up. She snaps her eyelids shut, and when she opens them again, her eyes have dried. She's good, she's practiced; just like me.



“Have you lived alone?” I ask her.



She pauses. “Yes,” she answers gently, sadly. “For almost as long as I can remember.”



Her story, told to me after we sit down, is not unlike mine.



She remembers a family: parents, an older brother.



Cheerful conversation at home, laughter, feelings of safety once the shutters came down at dawn and the world was locked outside, meals around a table, warm bodies asleep around her. Then she remembers the day.



She was bedridden with a fever and stayed home while her parents and brother hiked to get some fruit. They left ten minutes after dawn. She never saw them again.



One day in a family, the next day alone. Solitude and loneliness her constant companions, their presence so enervating and cold, like two damp socks worn on a winter day.



That was ten years ago. She was only seven. At fi rst it was incredibly hard. To live. Not an hour went by that she did not con-sider giving herself up at school. It would be so easy. To succumb.



Stand in the middle of the soccer fi eld during recess, prick her fi nger, let a droplet of blood seep. Watch them come fl ying at her. The end would be brutal but swift. Death would be an escape from this unbearable loneliness.



But her parents had taught her two things. Ingrained them in her.



The fi rst was survival: not just the basics, but the nuances, the minu-tiae, every conceivable situation she might fi nd herself in. The second was life, the importance of it, the preciousness of it, the duty to persevere and never let it end prematurely. She hated how clinical y they indoctrinated her: by the time they were gone, she had become a reluctant expert at survival.



Her beauty was a curse, especial y as she— and classmates around her— hit puberty. Attention, something she was repeatedly told by her parents to avoid, came her way with the force of a testosterone- fi l ed tidal wave. Boys would write letters to her, stare at her, converse with her awkwardly, throw spitbal s at her, join the same clubs she did. Girls, seeing the social advantages of befriend-ing her, fl ocked around her. Nothing she did to minimize her beauty helped. Clunky, self- cut hair; an abrasive, caustic personality; aloof-ness; feigning disinterest in boys; even outright stupidity. But none of these helped. The attention kept coming.



One day, she realized her approach was all wrong. Her defense was too . . . defensive. It didn't fi t her, and this kind of faux defensive life would eventual y be her undoing. She saw that. And she decided the best defense was offense.



Instead of tamping down her beauty, she played it up. She threw off the meek, stupid persona and instead exuded confi dence and poise. It was an easy act mostly because it didn't feel like one. More than anything, it gave her power.



She control ed the pieces, and instead of being pushed about by the horses and knights and queens 176 ANDREW FUKUDA about her, she turned them all into pawns. She grew her hair long and in a way that complimented her svelte fi gure.



She'd stare down the boys who gazed at her, grab the social knives meant to backstab her and use them to cut down her competition. She was ruthless until she was needed.



Eventual y, it became clear she had to get a boyfriend. As long as she was unattached, the boys would continue clamoring after her like magnet maggots. And too many questions about her would arise if she didn't.



So she plucked the varsity quarterback, an obnoxious and surprisingly insecure se nior who played it cool when with her in public but in private boiled like lava. Kil ing him turned out to be easier than she'd thought. For their one- month anniversary (teens can be so sappy), she suggested a picnic at a secluded spot a few hours away from the city limits. He was all over the idea. They brought wine and blankets. Once there, he drank too much— she kept pouring— until he passed out. She tied him to a tree that was, in the late autumn, stripped of leaves and would provide no shade once the sun rose. She left him passed out and walked home.



She never saw him again. When she went back to the tree the next day, there was only a pile of clothes hanging off limp lines of rope, slightly bleached by the toxicity of melted fl esh. She took the clothes and rope and burned them.



As with most “disappearances,” the subject was taboo and spoken of only in hushed whispers. A perfunctory search was conducted and then abandoned after only twelve hours; the matter was fi led away as a DBS (disappearance by sunlight). She pretended to be devastated by this tragedy, her heart cracked by the loss of her “soul mate.” At his funeral, she professed her undying devotion and love to him, promising that her soul was forever bonded with his.



It achieved everything she hoped it would. Boys largely left her alone; girls sympathized with her tragic loss, and her stock rose even higher. Nobody questioned her lack of a dating life even as the other girls in the Desirables necked, armpitted, and otherwise hooked up at parties. She was the tragic fi gure in need of time and space. Give her a few years, she'd eventual y come around, her friends thought.



She continued to build the deception. She joined the HiSS (Heper Search Society), a group that operated under the theory that hepers were still at large and had infi ltrated society. The members of the HiSS sought to fl ush out these heper infi ltrators.



“Why put yourself in the midst of the very people most keen to sniff you out?” I ask.



Because, she answers, the HiSS was the one place no one would ever suspect you. Membership in that club was the eye of the storm, where neither suspicion nor accusation would blow your way. And there was an added benefi t: She would be the fi rst to know about another suspected heper.



Her plan was simple: First confi rm that that person was a heper, then snuff out the suspicion as baseless.



“Then what?”



She turns to look at me, her mouth fashioning words and then stopping. “Establish contact,” she fi nal y says. She sits on one end of the sofa, a leg bent under her, half turned toward me.



“You were good,” I say. “I never suspected. Not for a second.”



“You weren't so good.”



“What?”



“You slipped a few times. I'd see emotions breaking out on your face. Or fal ing asleep in class. Granted, it was only for a split second— but the slight head nod of sleep was unmistakable.” Her eyes light up, remembering something.



“I saved your butt more than once. Like in trig class a few nights ago, when you couldn't read the board. Even last night, here in the library with the Director. Your hands started to tremble.”



“I remember that.” Then something occurs to me. “Why didn't you ever approach me? At school. And here. When you had me all fi gured out? Just tel me you knew what I was.”