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  “Please just go.”

  “All right.”

  After a last long look at me, he moved across the living room to the front door but then paused, as if he had one last thing to say. Though if he did, before he could say it, I suddenly stood, realizing I had one last thing to say as well.

  “You acting like you’re interested in me on a romantic level, have you been doing that to try to convince me to train and fight? Has it all just been a manipulation?”

  Jim’s snort and his expression of genuine disbelief that I’d even asked what I had answered my questions even before he spoke. “I’m romantically interested in you, Avery, because I think you’re strong, and a fighter, and I think you have an incredibly kind heart. Those are all qualities I’ve been looking for in a woman, but have never found in quite the right combination. I’m also intensely physically attracted to you, which has only further increased my romantic interest. In fact, I can barely even look at you without wanting to take you in my arms and kiss you. It’s starting to seem like all this doesn’t matter, though. I can’t see us ever having any kind of a relationship if you keep pushing me away.”

  With that, he left the cabin and shut the door, leaving me by myself. The tears that had been prickling my eyelids finally overflowed, and I swatted them away, in disbelief that I was crying over a man I’d never even kissed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I spent the rest of the morning setting up a little art studio space in one corner of my living room. Then, I spent several hours doing sketches and beginning on an oil painting, just trying to take my mind off Jim. I wasn’t very successful. Particularly since he and I were the subject of my painting. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d felt compelled to paint the scene of when we’d approached the bar the night before. I’d made a start on it anyway, painting some of the towering trees around it and the dark spaces between them, and part of the moonlit path leading up to the wide, party-goer-filled porch. I’d paint the two small figures approaching the porch, holding hands, last.

  Around three in the afternoon, Jen came through one of my kitchen windows, announcing that the “snack patrol” had arrived. “I was gonna make it the lunch patrol, but Marbles and I have been out in the forest all day, and we just didn’t get back in time.”

  We sat at the kitchen table to eat our snacks, which consisted of fruit, string cheese, and candy, and I asked Jen what she and Marbles did on their frequent trips into the woods alone.

  After tossing a grape into the air to catch it in her mouth, but missing, making the grape bounce off her face onto the table, she shrugged. “I don’t know. We mostly go into all the thick forestland to the west of town, because nobody else likes to go there. Sometimes patrol shifters come by, but not very often, since the northern guards are always holding a line to hold the Angels back.”

  “But what do you and Marbles do in the woods, though?” I was really curious. “Do you just hike?”

  Again, Jen just shrugged. “Mostly we play games. We just like to be away from people sometimes. I think Annie likes us to be away sometimes, too. And going into the woods is one thing she always lets me do without ever saying anything about it, because she knows there’s no one I’ll be bugging in there, and she also knows I’ll never get lost. See, I may not be very great at reading, but I have an awesome sense of direction. Even Annie admits that. I can be spun around a million times and still know my north, south, east, and west, which is way better than Annie herself can do. She actually sucks at directions. Marbles doesn’t, though. He’s actually good like me. He even wanders into the forestlands all around here, all by himself, all the time. He just likes to be alone by himself sometimes, even without me. He always comes right back home after a couple of hours, though.”

  I still didn’t feel like I quite understood exactly what Jen and Marbles did on their daily trips into the woods alone, because I couldn’t imagine that a girl and a dog could just “play games” for whole hours at a time every day. But then again, I reasoned, I could certainly be happy painting for several hours a day, because that was my passion, so maybe Jen was happy playing games for hours every day because that was her passion. At any rate, I didn’t press her for further explanation because I figured that whatever she did during her time alone in the forest everyday was her business. I was, however, beginning to get the feeling that there was more to her than many people thought, or maybe more than even I had initially thought. I definitely still thought Jen was an interesting person, with her bubbly, wacky personality, yet with a need to spend hours alone everyday with just her dog.

  After our snacks, we spent about an hour working on Jen’s reading skills at the table, and even an hour was kind of a struggle, as her attention span for literacy-related exercises really tended to wander. Despite that, though, and despite the fact that I’d been educated as an art teacher, and not a literacy specialist, we made some good progress. I discovered that Jen could at least write the whole alphabet and knew the sound that each letter made; it was just sounding out whole words that she really struggled with.

  Once we’d agreed to finish our reading session for the day, Jen wandered out to the living room and began examining my newly-begun painting, saying that it was really good. “And I should know, because I’m kind of an artist, too.”

  I had to admit I was a little surprised, though I didn’t really know why I should have been; I supposed because Jen was very childlike in so many ways, though I knew childlike qualities didn’t automatically preclude someone being artistically inclined and talented.

  Having a seat on the couch, I asked her what kind of art she liked to do, and she shrugged.

  “Well, I work in all sorts of different mediums.”

  Impressed by her use of the art-world term mediums, I asked her what kind, and she shrugged again.

  “Jim says I work mostly in the medium of colored wax. He’s even the first one who ever told me I’m very artistic. See, it’s all part of my job as secretary of the council meetings. Part of how I take the notes and record the minutes is by using different chalks, and pencils, and my colored wax sticks, and I’m making art at the same time. If sometime you ever go to a council meeting, you’ll see what I mean.”

  I wondered if by “colored wax sticks” Jen possibly meant crayons, but it seemed rude to ask, so I didn’t. I just told her that it sounded like she was very helpful at the meetings, and it did, even though I was a little unclear exactly how.

  That evening, along with Annie, we worked in the bar, with Jen filling the food orders, and Annie teaching me how to run the cash register and make a few special drinks.

  “Most of the time, though, what you’ll be serving is beer and whiskey. Shifter men tend not to order very fancy drinks.”

  She was right. Over the course of three hours, I served three whiskeys, maybe a dozen beers, and a few mixed drinks to two young women who spent an hour or so talking at a small table in one of the dimly-lit corners of the bar. Jen served several bowls of soup from a crock pot, and she made a few sandwiches, and she refilled the little bowls of pretzels and peanuts that sat atop the bar. She also delivered hamburgers and fries to the two young women in the corner, but Annie and I were the ones who made the hamburgers and fries. Jen had a way of kind of twirling around the kitchen area while she worked, doing energetic little dances every so often, and once, flipping a bowl of soup when she suddenly burst into song, spreading her arms, and I agreed with Annie that maybe it was best that she not operate a fryer full of hot oil, or be near a hot grill without supervision.

  When the three of us left the bar around ten, which was when the “late shift” staff of one arrived, Annie told me that how it had been all evening was pretty much as busy as the bar ever got on a weekday. “It’s not that overwhelming of a job to work a couple days a month. In fact, it’s typically so dull that we usually have a hard time getting all the shifts filled every month. Everyone wants a bar and restaurant place to hang out, and everyone benefits from the profits, which
go into funds for big community Christmas and New Year’s parties, but no one is ever very excited to work. Well, besides Jen.”

  It was crossing my mind that maybe I could use this to my advantage. Maybe I could convince Jim to let me work at the bar full-time, and serve the community that way, rather than participating in training.

  When I arrived back home at my cabin, I saw that Jim’s cabin, just two away from my own, was completely dark. Annie had said that he and several other shifters, including her boyfriend Aaron, would probably be out late on patrol in the north. For some reason, this disappointed me, though I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t want to see Jim and argue with him anymore. But at the same time, I did want to see him, despite the fact that so far, each of our meetings had made me feel further conflicted about what in the heck it was that I wanted in general when it came to him.

  The next day, around ten in the morning, I received a puzzling text from Jen. It contained no words, just three picture symbols. The first was a bear, the second a male police officer, and the third an old-fashioned rotary telephone. I studied the symbols, just trying to figure out what they could possibly mean, but when I wasn’t able to come up with even a guess after a minute or so, I decided to just call Jen and ask her. However, before I could even complete the call, I received another text, this one from a number I didn’t recognize. Hi Avery. Jen gave me your number. Hope that’s okay. Just wanted to let you know I’ll stop by to pick you up for training in a half-hour. Jim

  Now Jen’s text made a little more sense. I was pretty sure that she’d been trying to tell me that she’d given Jim my number.

  When Jim knocked on my door, I was all set and ready to go, dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, and with my long hair in a ponytail, but I wasn’t all set and ready for training. I was ready to work.

  After closing my cabin door and joining Jim out on the porch, I looked at him and spoke, just as casual as could be. “So, I decided that I’m just going to work at the bar full-time, instead of—”

  “Nope. You’re coming to training.”

  I had to work hard to resist a childlike impulse to stomp my foot. “So, you don’t even care that I’m willing to do a job that nobody else wants to do, and that I’d be contributing to the community that way, which—”

  “Whether you come willingly, or whether I have to handcuff you and throw you over my shoulder—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re coming to training.”

  “So, you claim to be a man who won’t ‘drag me off by the hair,’ and yet you will handcuff me and throw me over your shoulder?”

  I had no idea why the idea of that borderline enraged me, even though at the same time, it strangely excited me.

  With his expression one of complete seriousness, Jim shifted his weight from one foot to the other, a movement that briefly drew my gaze to the long, hard length of his body. “Look, Miss Clark. Say one more word—just one more—and the cuffs are going on.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  With my jaw dropping, I just stared at Jim for a long moment, horribly confused as to whether I wanted to say one more word or not. On one hand, his threat of putting me in handcuffs had made me bizarrely but pleasantly breathless, and I wondered if he might take me back inside my cabin to put the cuffs on me. Then I wondered if he might try to kiss me before hauling me off to practice, Then I wondered if that might even lead to a further delay in us getting to practice, a delay that I had a feeling might be exquisitely enjoyable. But on the other hand, Jim’s threat had angered me to the point that my fists had balled, seemingly of their own accord.

  However, before I could make a decision to say another word, or not, Jim’s serious expression changed into one a little softer, and his dark green eyes developed a little twinkle.

  “I’m kidding. Obviously. I’m not going to put you in cuffs and throw you over my shoulder. I just wanted to lighten the mood a bit. I also wanted to see if you still have that little fighting spark I’ve seen in you a few times, and yes... yes, you do.”

  For some reason, I felt profoundly disappointed.

  “I’m not going to put you in cuffs, Avery.”

  I didn’t say anything. And maybe Jim could see some hint of disappointment in my eyes, because suddenly, his expression changed to one a bit more serious again.

  “Unless sometime you might want me to put you in cuffs. For whatever reason.”

  A dull, gnawing ache somewhere low in my stomach told me that maybe I did have a reason to want him to put me in cuffs sometime. But while I struggled with deciding whether or not I wanted to tell him this, Jen came literally skipping down the lane with Annie and Aaron, waving at Jim and me.

  “Come on, guys! Last one to training is an ugly, wrinkled bear claw!”

  Sufficiently jarred out of my reverie about handcuffs, and Jim, and me, I turned from Jim and began heading down the porch steps. “I’ll go to training. But if you dare try to take my hand on the way, I’ll levitate you into the treetops so fast you won’t even have time to shift.”

  “Oh, so you are ready to practice your power.”

  He’d already cleared the steps and had caught up to me, and I glanced over at him.

  “Please kindly go to hell. I’ve had it with you and all your... all your teasing.”

  Especially his teasing to put me in handcuffs when he had no real intention of doing so.

  Jim and I walked up the dirt lane between the cabins in silence, some distance behind Annie, Aaron, and Jen, who was now being given a piggyback ride by Aaron. Jim didn’t try to take my hand. It would have been pretty impossible anyway, because I had my arms folded tightly across my chest.

  Annie had told me that there were two large clearings to the north of the cabins. The first was the smaller of the two, and was just commonly called the training field. The one further north was a massive clearing, maybe the size of two football fields, as Annie had said, and it was that clearing where the shifters who guarded the land to the east and west drove the Angels so that all the Timberliners could fight them in one spot. I intended to never set foot in this particular clearing.

  Once we’d passed all the cabins, the dirt lane became a little narrower and continued on directly north, now through densely-forested woodland, and Jim and I remained walking along silently. Soon, sounds of conversation from somewhere fairly far behind us told me that we had at least a few people following us, maybe even looking at us and wondering why we weren’t holding hands like we’d been the night of the party at the bar. I didn’t care. If anyone directly asked me why we weren’t holding hands, I was just going to tell them the truth, which was that I was upset with Jim because he obviously had some sort of round-the-clock sheriff complex that made him think he could force people to do things, like attend training, which, apparently he could, I realized, since I was now walking up the trail to do just that. However, I told myself, I’d been the one who’d ultimately made the choice for myself. Jim may have been adept at using strong-arm tactics, but I was still determined to make my own decisions and control my own life.

  After we’d walked a short distance, I spoke to him, but while continuing to keep my gaze on the path ahead. “I’m attending training, just because I didn’t want to have to explain to Jen my reasons for not wanting to attend, but let me make clear that I’m not practicing my levitation power.”

  Jim hesitated a moment before responding. “That’s fine for your first practice, anyway. Right now, I just want you to continue to get woven into the fabric of the community here. I think that the more you do, the more you’ll feel inclined to practice your power, and some day, when you’re fully woven into the fabric of your new community, and have maybe even grown to love it, that might make you feel inclined to fight.”

  “Nope.”

  “Because, see, Avery that’s why people here fight. It’s not because we all think we’re the bravest and the strongest people that ever lived; we fight because we love. We love our community, a
nd our state, and our country, and each other, and we want everyone to be safe from the Angels.”

  “Well, that’s nice, but there’s no reason that could ever get me to fight. Not love, and not anything. I’ll express my love for my country and the community by staying out of everyone’s way so that no one ever gets hurt because of me, and so that no one is ever looking to me for help, but I can’t give it, and so then something really bad happens to them.”

  “Boy, you’ve really convinced yourself that that’s what would happen, haven’t you?”

  “That is what would happen, Jim. I had an experience very early in my life that taught me just exactly how much of strength and bravery I’m capable of, or, more precisely, how much strength and bravery I’m not capable of.”

  “And I wish to God you’d just talk about that experience sometime. I wish you’d talk to me about it. Or if not me, I wish you’d talk with Annie or Jen. Just someone. Because I think you need to talk about—”

  “Well, I’m not going to. I hardly even like to think about it, and for many years, I more or less haven’t. I’ve been able to just put it away in some corner of my mind, and that’s where I always intended to keep it, until this whole Gifted thing made other people, like you and the government agents, bring it up.”

  Jim gently took my arm, trying to slow me down, because I’d startled walking at a pretty brisk pace. “Avery, please just stop for a second.”

  Wrenching my arm from his grasp, I found I couldn’t even look at him. “Let’s just get to the field. I’ve already said more than I wanted to this morning, and I’m done talking right now.”

  I really was.

  To my surprise, Jim didn’t say anything else, just walked along with me silently for maybe a quarter-mile, until we reached the clearing.

  When we arrived, it looked like most Timberliners were already there. Spread out on the field, most shifters were already in shifted form, and most Gifteds were already “warming up” their gifts, levitating one another into the air, or shooting beams of light from their palms to trees surrounding the clearing. The day was already fairly warm, for the first day of April, anyway, and bright sunshine shone down on the whole scene.