Chapter 13
Jesse
Dammit! I’m so mad at myself. I’ve overplayed my hand.
I wasn’t sure if George would tell her about our conversation, but he did.
Now I’m walking out of the bar with my mystery girl behind me.
I still don’t even know her name. What an idiot I am!
I had the perfect opportunity to ask her and make conversation, and all I could do was sit there and gawk at her.
She clearly has her guard up and doesn’t take kindly to people from the Dome.
I’ve got to figure out a way to go back in there and talk to her.
I can’t scare her off, and the vibe she was giving me tells me she’s very scared and untrusting.
I just don’t know what to say. Maybe I should apologize.
I don’t even know what for. She was rude to me!
You don’t call out a stranger on where they are from and definitely not when you’re from the Dome yourself.
I keep walking while I think. I can’t go back in there until I know what to say.
I keep walking further away from the bar, my head filled with its own thoughts.
When someone puts their hand on my shoulder, I’m startled and spin around to face them.
I’m even more surprised that it’s her who’s startled me.
She came outside and found me walking. The look on her face tells me that she’s embarrassed, either from startling me or from her attitude in the bar. I soften my approach with her.
“I’m sorry if I said something that upset you back there. It wasn’t my intention. I just thought we might have something in common with going to the island,” I try to explain to her.
She looks down at her feet and fidgets with both of her hands. She doesn’t look up at me as she responds, “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I was rude to you earlier.”
I wait a second to see if she’s going to look up from the ground and when she doesn’t, I let her know it's okay. “Hey! How about we start over? I’m Jesse and, yes, I’m originally from the Dome, but I haven’t lived there since months before the disaster.” I stick my hand out to shake her hand.
She looks up from the ground and shakes my hand. “I’m Asmita.” She looks around us and waits till no one is within earshot before continuing. “I was living in San Francisco when the disaster happened, but I’m also from the Dome”
Finally, I know my mystery girl’s name… it’s Asmita.
I smile back at her, and the innocent look on her face makes me want to tell her everything I know; It feels as if I have to internally hold the information in my body.
I have to start slowly with her. She isn’t ready for my truth, but I do need to get close to her.
I need to find out why she’s so valuable and that could cause my parents to place all their faith, and their only son, on the line.
“So, Asmita, how long do you plan on staying in town for? I only plan on stopping through.”
I can’t just start asking her questions without giving her some information. I can’t keep her suspicious of me. If I tell her my plans, then maybe she’ll realize I’m not someone she needs to fear. I can see on her face that she seems less suspicious of my intentions now.
“Well… I was just passing through town when I originally got here. I was preparing to leave town, and the next day when I woke up after sunlight, I was sick as can be. I couldn’t even get out of bed.
George, he came up and took one look at me and told me I had the flu.
I was in bed every day for a week and tonight was the first night I felt almost back to normal,” she tells me.
Wow! It sounds like she’s lucky to make it through it.
“Modern medicine isn’t readily available out here, so I’m glad you’re feeling better.
You look good,” I say and realize that it came out wrong.
Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes are cast on the ground again.
I can feel my own cheeks heating up. I try to backtrack.
“That didn’t come out right. I’m sorry! You don’t look nice.
Shit! I mean you don’t look sick. You look healthy. ”
Now the look on her face is hurt. I’m so confused.
Maybe she wants me to think she looks good?
I don’t know. I give up. The only woman I’ve ever really socialized with is my mother, and she’s nothing like Asmita, so I have no idea what to say to her.
My parents should have given me lessons on this if they wanted me to get close to her.
I give up and try to change the subject. “So, George seems like a decent guy.”
“Yes, he’s been very kind to me,” she gives a little laugh and raises her eyes to look at me.
“He told me about the island being closed off. I’m still going to go there and see it for myself. I plan on leaving after tomorrow’s daylight ends.” This catches her off guard.
“I hadn’t planned on leaving till the day after tomorrow. I told George that I would stay to help him out one more night. It’s the least I can do. He’d like me to stay longer,” she informs me.
I’m sure he would. I can see the way he looks at her.
Something isn’t right. He seems overprotective, and not in a good way.
I can’t tell her though because she clearly trusts and knows him better than I do.
That would only push her further away from me.
I’ve only got one more day to figure out how to keep us together.
So far I’m not doing too well, but at least we’ve got a dialogue going between us now.
We start to walk down the street together and before I realize it, we are in easy conversation.
We haven’t talked about anything that would lead to me finding out why she’s so important, but it’s a start.
“We’re getting pretty far away from the bar.
We should turn back before it starts getting daylight,” she says.
I look up at the sky and realize it’s becoming lighter, so we turn around and start walking back.
She’s opening up more and asking me personal questions .
I slow our walking pace down to prolong our conversation.
It’s her way of trying to figure out if I can be trusted.
I can tell. I would do the exact same thing to her if she wasn’t already doing it to me.
“How old are you? You seem around my age,” she asks me.
“I’m twenty-one. How old are you?” I ask her in return.
“I just turned nineteen. I was halfway through my year of self-reflection when the disaster happened. Were you away at school when it happened?”
“No.” My answer comes out harder than I mean it to.
“I chose work. I didn’t continue into school after my year was over.
” I can see the information sinking in. I try to gauge her reaction to this, and I instantly feel like she thinks less of me now.
My anger gets the best of me. “Typical Dome brat!” I mumble the words before I even think about it.
She hears me and gives me a sharp look. She folds her arms and continues to walk forward in silence.
We continue to walk in silence, once again getting closer to the bar.
The bar is in sight when she finally speaks up. “You know, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing the work program. That just wasn’t going to be an option for me. I commend you for the choice, but now it’s a moot point, right?”
In spite of myself I laugh, because she’s right.
The disaster changed everything, and it doesn’t matter what we did before.
Now it only matters what we do from here on out.
I smile at her, and she knows that I’m not mad.
We are within a block of the bar when I notice a group of men going into George’s bar.
We stop in our tracks and hide behind the end of a building on the end of the block.
We peek around the edge to see them. The men are wearing all black, holding large guns, and they have more muscles than they know what to do with.
A flash of an orange emblem on their sleeve catches my eye.
These aren’t your typical day guards. These guys are from the Dome.
I look to Asmita, and she’s seen the same thing.
“Have you ever seen them before?”
“No, never, not while I’ve been here. George doesn’t have any guards of his own. The guy across the street keeps an eye on the place in the day, but he’s not George’s man.”
I don’t like the look of this, and I have a bad feeling about going back into the bar. I’ve got my bag on my back and can cut all ties with this place, but Asmita is another story. If she’s like me then her entire life is in her backpack. I don’t know where it’s at, but it’s not on her back.
“Where’s your bag?” I quickly asked her.
“It’s inside, up in my room. Why?” She gives me a quizzical look.
“You can’t go back inside the bar,” I tell her.
This is alarming. These men aren’t here by accident.
I haven’t seen a Dome guard since leaving there.
If they’re out here, it’s for one reason and one reason alone…
Asmita. My parents told me she was important, and they warned me not to take her to the Dome.
“I have to go back in there. I have to get my bag!” she screams at me.
“You don’t get it do you? Those men are from the Dome.
They aren’t here to just say hi and chat about your day.
They want something, and they’re looking for it in that bar.
Have you forgotten what the Dome is like?
Whatever it is they want, they won’t stop until they get it.
” I have to stop and take a deep breath before I can continue.
“You do not cross these people!” I stress the words to her.
We stand there in silence, watching the front of the bar together.
I take my eyes off the bar and look at her face.
She has tears in her eyes, but she’s fighting to hold them in.
The tears start to fall, and she tells me about a man who had chased her.
At first, I think the man was probably out to rob her, but when she tells me that he was holding a photo of her, I feel chills spread across my body.
I ask her to describe the photo that she found on the man, and it matches the one I carry.
It doesn’t make sense that he was trying to harm her when I was given the same one to protect her. Then it hits me. Could it be George?