Revelations by Carrie Lynn Barker

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret.”
    “Thanks again,” I told her. “Really.”
    “I know how dangerous it can be out there,” Alendra said. “We protect each other. And keeping what you can do a secret will protect us all.”
    “Got that right,” I muttered.
    Both Alendra and I looked to Jonas, who shivered horribly without his jacket. Alendra had an answer to the situation, saying, “You’re freezing your ass off, Jonas. Let’s go inside.”
    Jonas smiled at me then led the way back to the house. He and I waited alone in the kitchen while Alendra retrieved her clothes from where they had been left, out by the shed. She’d returned Jonas’s jacket and walked out mother naked into the night. She came back in time to find me putting Hermione’s tea kettle on the stove to heat up some water. I like tea, but I was up for some coffee, and I’m not one for using the coffee pot. Anyway, she sat across from me and Jonas, clasped her hands on the tabletop and angled her head.
    “So what does this all mean for us now?” she asked.
    “Guess this means we have to be friends,” I said.
    It was well known Alendra and I disliked each other. We avoided each other as best we could. In fact, we hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other each day I lived in the Commune. I’d never seen her change before. I really didn’t know anything about her except what Philip and Jonas told me. This new discovery changed everything.
    Alendra smiled at me.
    “What are you thinking?” I asked her.
    “I wish I could read your mind at all times, like you can mine.”
    I laughed quietly. “No, you probably don’t want to. It’s not pretty in my head.”
    She echoed my laughter then gave me a sly look. “I’m betting most of your thoughts are about Jonas.”
    Jonas lifted an eyebrow, or a brow ridge or whatever you want to call it since it really isn’t a brow of any kind.
    “She’s not lying, you know,” I said to him.
    If Jonas could blush, he would have just then. I got up to take the kettle off the stove and went about making myself a cup of coffee. This involved the use of fresh coffee grounds and a strainer. I made three cups and gave one to Jonas and the other to Alendra. I sat with the third cup and stared into its depths. What I was looking for, I could not say. So much happened in a twenty-four hour period. There was a lot on my mind.
    Alendra seemed to sense this, and she said, “Jonas, it’s good to have you still around. Hermione was mighty worried.”
    “She had every right to be worried,” I said. “He would have died.”
    Jonas looked at me.
    “What?” I said.
    “Seriously?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    I saw Jonas shudder then hide it by taking a drink from his cup of coffee. That was enough of a distraction for him to say, “This is great. Where’d you learn to make coffee like this?”
    I smiled. “On the street.”
    “The street?” Alendra said.
    “I wasn’t the most obedient kid,” I said. I left it at that. It wasn’t a story I really wanted to tell. Ever.
    She sensed this and stayed quiet.
    So it was the three of us stayed up until the sun rose. We talked about everything and nothing. We discussed the many aspects of our lives at the Commune. We laughed about something Pete said the night before. We talked about our favorite The X-Files episodes; mine being “Bad Blood,” the one about the vampires, and hers being the one with the ghost ship, where Mulder kissed Scully at the very end. When the sun rose, Alendra went to bed to get a few hours of sleep. Jonas and I went back out onto the porch and sat together in the swing.

Chapter Eighteen
    Starch was the first to find us, and he couldn’t think of much to say upon seeing Jonas as healthy as an ox. He’d gone out onto the porch only because he couldn’t stand being by himself in his room anymore. He waited patiently for news of Jonas’s death. I don’t have to say he was pleasantly surprised. “I thought you were a