10
They said no more on the way back than they had on the way there. They rode to the housing units, put the dragons to bed – first Carmine, then Vulture – and then, without discussing it, Asta followed Nat to her quarters.
Asta didn’t know why she was there except that what she had just seen had scared her, and she needed to talk about it.
‘You reek,’ Asta said, once they were inside, the door closed behind them. She was trying for a lighthearted tone.
‘You like it.’ Nat’s voice sounded so small that it broke Asta’s heart.
Asta cocked her head, forcing a smile. ‘Like it? You smell like a dead frog.’
Nat raised her eyes to Asta’s. ‘Maybe you should put me in the shower and clean me up.’
She didn’t mean it, Asta told herself. She was reeling, just like Asta was.
This is what Nat did. She deflected. The flirting wasn’t personal.
It was just a coping mechanism, even though acting on it would ruin their friendship.
But then, maybe that was the point. Maybe, after what Asta had just seen, Natalia was looking for a reason to drive her away.
‘Come on,’ Nat said, her tone wheedling. ‘You’re no summer peach yourself. You can get clean with me. Or dirty. Whatever.’
‘Nat—’ Asta shook her head.
‘What?’ Nat snapped.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
Nat’s eyes flared with anger. ‘I’m fine, Asta.’
‘Hey. Don’t bullshit me,’ Asta shot back, her own anger rising. ‘You haven’t said two words since the river. We need to talk about it. Getting naked right now isn’t going to make whatever the hell happened tonight better.’
Nat pouted. ‘It couldn’t hurt.’
Asta set her jaw.
‘I’m just saying,’ Nat protested.
‘You’re not saying anything. That’s the problem.
You make jokes. You flirt. You trash-talk, but you don’t say anything.
Can we please just talk about tonight? What was that?
It was so messed up.’ Asta shuddered at the memory of Hummer with the branch, pushing Nat under the water over and over.
‘I mean, Hummer’s always been a shithead, but that was something new. ’
‘New to you,’ Nat muttered.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Asta was appalled. ‘I seriously thought he was going to drown you.’
‘Me, too.’ Nat had the look of a pine grown into a cliffside, its roots wedged into a crevice in the sheer rock and barely hanging on.
‘This is what I’m saying! You don’t have to be okay after that, Nat!’ Asta fought back the sob rising from her chest.
Nat’s face took on a steely look. ‘He wasn’t actually going to hurt me. You only made it worse.’
Asta stared at Nat in horror, but Nat wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘What if it had been me out there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If he had done that to me, would you have tried to stop him?’
Nat moved stiffly to one of the leather chairs by the door. Her jumpsuit was foul with algae, but she sat anyway. Asta watched her, unsure of what to do. Nat had completely checked out of the conversation.
‘Please, Nat,’ Asta said. ‘This isn’t fine. You’re not fine.’
Even with its soft nightlights, the room felt darker than any of the shadows they had crawled through tonight. Asta wished that Carmine was there so that he could blaze some light into the place, burn some truth into it.
‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Asta said, giving up.
‘He wouldn’t have,’ Nat said.
‘What?’ Asta asked. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘If it had been you, he wouldn’t have done it.’ Nat put her head in her hands. ‘Maybe the river, but not the stick. That was special for me.’
Asta’s throat tightened. ‘How do you know that? That he wouldn’t have done it to me?’
Nat talked to the carpet between her feet. ‘Because you’re not one of us. You’re just there to—’ But she didn’t finish whatever she was going to say.
Asta could fill in the rest. To push Natalia. To be a stick to flog her with, drown her with, until she was so afraid of losing that she would do anything to avoid it.
Asta looked at Nat, hunched over in the chair, hair clumped and dirty, tangled in her fingers. She went to her and sat on the carpet in front of the chair, placing her hand gently on Nat’s knee. ‘I’m so sorry, Nat.’
Nat didn’t say anything, but she reached out and stroked Asta’s hand, tracing her knuckles and fingernails one by one.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Asta asked after a minute had passed.
‘Sure.’
‘Why did you ask Felix to come with us tonight?’
Nat snorted. ‘I forgot I did that. Could you imagine?’
‘Did you want him to see it? Did you want him to stop it?’
‘God, no. I don’t want him up in my business. I just thought it would annoy you to have him there. I didn’t know it was going to be . . . whatever that was,’ Nat answered. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling. ‘I just wanted to blow off some steam.’
Asta rested her chin on Nat’s knee and looked up at her, waiting for her to say more.
What if Felix had come with them? She tried to imagine how things might have gone differently.
But it was too strange a thought to entertain.
Even the idea of Nat and Felix having a civilized conversation felt far-fetched at this point.
They were like oil and water in her mind.
They pulled on different sides of Asta, brought different things out in her.
Nat sat forward and took hold of the zipper at Asta’s throat, catching Asta by surprise. ‘You know,’ she said, sliding the zipper pull down, one slow inch at a time, ‘I can think of other ways to blow off steam.’
‘Nat, come on.’ Asta knew what a bad idea this was, but there was a part of her that wanted to give in, to see what lay beneath Nat’s surface. There was more to Nat than just the bad girl and the show-off. Asta had glimpsed something there, and she wanted to know what it was.
Nat’s eyes followed the zipper as it opened. Asta’s thin white undershirt was exposed down to her ribs, her waist. She slipped her hand inside Asta’s jumpsuit and pulled at her undershirt until she reached bare skin.
‘I wonder if Golden Boy’s up. He could come out and play with us after all.’
Why did she keep talking about Felix? Asta didn’t want to think about him right now. If Nat knew what was good for her, she would just shut up.
Asta forced herself to take a long, even breath. ‘I thought you wanted to crush him into a powder and scatter him.’
‘There’s more than one way to crush a man.’ Nat’s voice was low and dreamy.
‘Should I ask if he’ – Asta faltered a little as Nat kissed behind her ear – ‘if he likes girls who smell like river-ass?’
Nat gasped, smiling. ‘Oh, Ek. You are in so much trouble.’
Asta shrieked as Nat dove for her. She fled across the room, laughing.