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

(i)

“WHERE’S MICAIAH?” I asked as Pilate showed me my own private room at the top of the Chhaang House.

Pilate shushed me. “You’ll see tomorrow. But first, I have more birthday presents for you. Quite a few.”

He showed me them all and then left me alone to enjoy them.

One was a shower, hot water pumped from tanks above into a shower room. It was for the barracks of women, but I could use it by myself. Even had shampoos and conditioners from the World: Paul Mitchell and Herbal Essences and Givenchy body soap.

I stood under the shower and felt heaven kiss me. It was a long time before I got to the washing part. But then I soaped up my shrunken body and hard muscles and bruises and cuts and scrapes. I looked for a long time at my hand, where I’d cut myself on Edith the Razorback’s spikes. It hadn’t healed. But with food, with soap and water, with rest, I knew it would. So would my blistered feet. So would my heart, talking to Pilate.

After toweling off, I found pajamas made of a soft fleece—not a nightgown, but jammies, like I was five years old again, at home. Except Mama wasn’t going to show up to kiss me goodnight. And home was gone—my blue room with lacy curtains had been destroyed along with my ribbons I’d won from the county fair for having the best science experiment.

I wanted to cry again, but I was too tired.

Then I found the soft bed, and sleeping was like falling away into a soft oblivion. I spent a dreamless night, resting under blankets, on a mattress—on a real mattress—and a pillow, all smelling clean from Kansas laundry soap and Colorado sunshine and wind.

Then I was awake, looking up at the cracks in the ceiling when I heard a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said.

The door opened. Micaiah stood there, silhouetted from the light in the hallway, so I couldn’t see his expressionless face. I knew, if he wanted, he could pretend to be human, come up to me and fake emotions and make me fall in love with him again. He was a master manipulator, but I also knew he couldn’t pretend to be human with me ’cause I knew the truth about him.

Since his face was hidden, I could imagine he had tears in his eyes, ’cause the Micaiah I fell in love with cried easily and without shame. Not this Micaiah who wasn’t Micaiah at all. I was looking at Micah Hoyt, a genetic clone of Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt, a man who made June Mai Angel look like the patron saint of puppies.

“Hello, Cavatica,” Micaiah said from the doorway.

I left the bed to see how much of Jesus I had left in my heart.

Turns out, I had more than I thought.

(ii)

As I moved up to Micaiah, the light from the daylight in the hallway lit up his face, and like I thought, he looked at me with clear eyes in a full face, healthy, plump even, not like me and Pilate, sucked to our bones from our hellish pilgrimage, sacredly suffering as we did our duty to a higher cause.

No, Micaiah looked like he’d just got back from a holiday on a cruise ship, like the ones Becca Olson used to go on, back at my academy. Rich priss. She couldn’t make fun of my weight now, but the irony was, I’d gotten too thin. Welcome to being a girl ... either too fat or too thin and never perfect. None of it mattered now that the boy I loved was incapable of loving me back. Such is the foolishness of vanity.

Micaiah and I stared at each other.

Then he asked about the only thing that we had in common: “Do you have the chalkdrive?”

“No,” I said. Then had to change what I said; I could feel it on my chest. “Yeah, I guess I do. Pilate must’ve hung it around my neck while I was sleeping. Not sure why.”

Neither one of us spoke for a long time. He didn’t know what to say ’cause after confirming I still had the chalkdrive, there was no other business between us.

I could see him struggling, and you know what made it worse on him? The fact I knew the truth about him. I knew what he was, how slippery and soulless he could be.

He stood there, conflicted. He couldn’t just leave the room, but he couldn’t stay there with me. And then, I found the last bit of mercy I had in my heart, the only bit that hadn’t been froze, burned, starved, or thirsted out of me.

I went up to him, slowly, and took my hand in his, and entwined our fingers. I whispered, “I know how it feels to be like you. I’ve been numb like you are now, and it’s horrible. It’s like not having any money and going into a store. There’s all these wonderful things around you to buy, but you can’t afford a single one.”

He nodded. If he’d had emotions, he’d have been crying; he wanted to feel but couldn’t. It tortured him.

I pulled him to the bed and sat him down. Then I went and opened the shades and let the sun splash inside, bright, Colorado sunshine. Even in November we had sunny days ’cause the Juniper was a place of light, no matter what dark things people did there.

Sitting on the bed next to him, I again took his hand in mine. I wasn’t going to kiss the thing he’d become, but I could hold his hand, touch his arm, and listen as he told me the story of how he and Pilate had escaped Glenwood Springs.

(iii)

The plan had been for all of us—Dutch, Micaiah, Sharlotte, me—to get into the Marilyn Monroe. Together, we’d all meet up with Rachel, Nikola Nichols, and Marisol in the Audrey Hepburn at the eastern wall of Glenwood Springs. We’d all escape together to rendezvous with Pilate on I-70.

But