“What happened to the moths?”
“I dunno,” Pie says. Then she tips her head up and grins at the change in her power. “I don’t know, but I like the fireflies better.”
She lies back, fitting into the crook of my arm like we were meant to be this way.
We watch the flickering glow as the swarm of lights disperses into the tops of the giant trees, then finally merges with the sky, becoming pinprick stars in the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – TOMAS
The feed store is closed when I get into town, but there is a note on the door so I get out of the truck and walk up to it.
Tomas—I’m running an errand for my uncle. I’ll meet you at Big Jim’s at seven.
She signs her name Madeline with a heart over the ‘i.’ I stare at the note. Enjoy the way my name looks in her loopy cursive handwriting. Then I fold it up, tuck it into the front pocket of my flannel shirt, and get back in the truck so I can drive down to Big Jim’s.
When I walk inside, he’s at the counter, messing with something. The bell jingles over the door and he looks up. “Yep,” he says. “Madeline said you’d be by. How are the generators working?”
I walk up to the counter and casually lean against it, taking a moment to realize where I am and what I’m doing. And how, one year ago, I would’ve never guessed that this would be my new life. Wouldn’t even have dared to dream it.
“Hello?”
“Sorry. I was lost in thought.”
“Yeah. I gathered that about you.”
“Gathered what?” I ask, my face scrunching up in confusion.
“You’re one of those thinkers. A deep thoughts kind of man.”
“Hmm.” I consider this, not sure if he’s right. Pell would definitely not agree. But then again, Pell doesn’t know me very well, does he? He thinks he does, but… he’s wrong. “Maybe I am,” I finally decide.
“Yeah,” Big Jim agrees. “But that’s the problem.”
“Problem? What problem?”
“With you and Madeline?”
“What are you going on about?”
“She’s not your type, Tomas. Can’t you see it?”
“Not my type? I’m not sure I have a type.” In fact, I’m positive I don’t. Because I’ve been in the company of exactly two women in my entire existence. But I don’t tell him this. Maybe I’m not an expert in this new, modern world but I know a man who appears to be my age—which Pie says is somewhere around twenty-eight—and with my physique and handsome good looks would’ve been with dozens of women by now.
I try to picture that, what it would feel like to have had dozens of women in my bed, but find that I can’t.
Madeline is the girl in my fantasy bed.
The only one I need.
“She’s… different,” Big Jim says.
“Different how?”
“You know. Off.”
Off. I say that word in my head, trying to understand what he means.
“She’s… weird, Tomas. You can do better than her.”