Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

“I call dibs on the wool one,” Sharlotte said. “Try on the down coat.”

I hated pink, but I put it on. The left cuff had melted, and my wrist would likely get chilly. Still, it didn’t leave my middle freezing like the Regio coat did, and it would certainly keep me warmer than the wool blanket I’d had to suffer through.

I found pants and jeans, but the girl had been slender, so neither I nor Sharlotte would be able to squeeze into them. Dang, seemed like no one in the Juniper had hips except for me and Sharlotte.

In what had been the closet was another pile of clothes, mostly burned up, but I did find a black wool sweater, a matching black skirt, and a thick but tattered New Morality dress, hand-sewn. Sharlotte held up several pairs of black leggings, while Wren found gloves, hats, scarves, and even a pair of hiking boots.

Like the jeans, the hiking boots didn’t fit me nor Sharlotte. We put them in a pile. Sharlotte got the New Morality dress, and I got the skirt and wool sweater. The leggings were made of a material that was stretchy enough we could pull it up over our thighs; it made things about a million times warmer. I was actually kind of warm in the leggings, skirt, and sweater. It wasn’t comfortable, though. Too itchy.

I found the .45 caliber bullet I’d tucked into the seam of my silky dress. Wren had thrown that fateful bullet at Micaiah the night I’d first stood up to her. I kept it as a grisly souvenir of our adventures, but a part of me also knew having an extra bullet around was a good idea. Like the placard Mama had hung on the wall of our home, Waste Not, Want Not.

In the New Morality dress, Sharlotte looked like she’d just come out of her bedroom.

Wren held up a pink diary with a lock and handed it to me. On the front was a name, Eryn Lopez. “We should read it,” Wren said. “Might be something on who attacked the condo. Or maybe information on Aspen.”

I held the diary, felt the weight of Eryn Lopez’s most secret thoughts. I put it on the desk. I couldn’t go through it like I’d gone through her clothes.

“I can’t,” I said. “Poor girl has passed on, and I won’t disrespect her like that. We know enough. Marisol’s family and friends were all killed by raiders, and she wasn’t here, so she lived. The end.”

Wren picked it up. “Sorry, Cavvy, but if she’s gone, she won’t mind. I’ll do it. Don’t you fight me on this. Not right now.”

I let her have the diary but still felt bad.

Sharlotte cleared her throat. “We don’t have time to bury those bodies, but we should say some words, Cavvy. You want to?”

I glanced around the ruined room and kept coming back to the James-Young Gang poster. Decades old, the ink had grown faded, but the boys were cute. Eryn had been in love with boys who were middle-aged men now. Even her love life was salvage. I knew that feeling. Other than my time in Cleveland, all my life, I’d been living off the leftovers of a better age. My very life now depended on her things, more salvaged clothes on my back, smelling like smoke. Dead people’s clothes. I’d grown up wearing dead people’s clothes. I felt the tears hit my eyes, for me, for Eryn, for Juniper girls livin’ hard from New Mexico to Montana. Even Wind River girls.

“I can’t, Shar,” I muttered.

Sharlotte nodded. “Well, me and the Lord have been fightin’, so He may not listen, but I’ll try. Come on.”

With our bundle of salvage, we left Eryn Lopez’s room and returned to the yard where Dutch still held Marisol.

“Shar is going to say some words,” I said. “Like a funeral, for Marisol’s people.”

Dutch didn’t stay a word. He just helped Marisol stand, while Wren came over and held his hand.

Sharlotte stood before the bodies for a minute, cleared her throat, then spoke in a prayer. “God, lots of people died here. And this girl, Eryn Lopez, she died, too, but we thank you for sparing Marisol. She’s helped us over and over, and we’re doing some desperate things ’cause we’re chasing after some bad people who took our boys. And as you know, we’re on a quest. A quest ... I guess that’s the right word, though it sounds a little too fancy for the likes of us. Anyway, you said be fruitful and multiply, but the whole human race is having trouble doing that. So, we’re going to deliver the cure and do your will. Yet we are but cottonwood fluff traveling on a troublesome river of woe.”

She paused.

Leave it to Sharlotte, our cowgirl poet, to come up with such words.

Then she continued. “But that’s for us, the living. As for the dead, Lord Jesus, take their souls into your arms and hold them, hold them like Eryn’s mother held her, like Marisol’s mama did too, when both were born and the wind blew. Bless them and bless us, soften Marisol’s pain, and watch over Micaiah and Pilate, until we can be reunited once more. We ask this in your name, Lord Jesus, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

We then said the Our Father. Dutch said it, and I knew he meant it. Had I been wrong about him? It seemed so.

“That was nice, Shar,” I said, having to wipe my eyes on the right sleeve of my new smoke-damaged coat. It was like wearing a campfire around, it smelled so strong.

Wren nodded. “It was beautiful, Sharlotte. ‘We are but cottonwood fluff traveling on a troublesome river of woe.’ Never knew you had such pretty words in you.”

Marisol suddenly threw herself into Sharlotte’s arms.

We all were quiet. Snow fell in soft plinks on our clothes. A winter bird flitted