The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

the journey home.”
    My fingers curled into a fist, begging me to punch something.
    “Can you do me a favor?” I asked in a tight voice, my lips barely moving as I spoke.
    “What? You’re not going to ask me if I’m worried about this ‘friendship’ you have?” he said with mock hurt.
    I ignored him. He knew. He knew how I felt, what I was capable of. The idea that there was something going on between Rash and me, other than friendship, was ridiculous and didn’t deserve any attention.
    “Just do this favor for me. You warn Pelo that if he doesn’t stay out of my business, he’s going to be sorry.”
    Joseph face settled into seriousness. “You know, you really should give him a chance.”
    I crossed my arms angrily. “He had his chance. He threw it away.” I could feel unwanted tears brimming and teasing my eyelashes. “Just tell him, ok?”
    Joseph grabbed at me with both hands and swept me into an awkward embrace, my back pressed into the armrest. “Ok.”
     

     
    We had to leave , all three thousand of us, minus those lying in the crater. But now I didn’t want to. My body was reluctant, juiceless. I’d been squeezed too hard, and I wasn’t sure what was left. Joseph dragged me along. I walked, carrying Orry, next to Pelo, trying to see what my father was, and what was underneath all the energy and scatty movements, but I came up with very little. I thought about to giving him a chance as Joseph had asked, but I didn’t know how.
    I trailed my hand along the filthy, graffiti-covered wall. The black loops and straight brush strokes were hypnotic and a good distraction from the anticipation of sliding on my belly along the collapsing concrete incline.
    We stopped when we hit a wall of people in front, and someone at the front cried out. “Babies!”
    People muttered , “Babies, babies,” and someone reached for Orry.
    I snatched him to my chest and looked to Joseph. He smiled down at me kindly and nodded . “It’s all right, this is how they did it when we arrived.”
    I let hands pull me to the front of the line. Hessa was being passed up into the concrete pipe, another person’s arms stretched out ready to receive him, and then he disappeared into darkness. He was quiet but for a little squeak. It sounded as if he had lost his voice.
    A woman with kind eyes and thick tendrils of red-brown hair fixed into long, looping plaits smiled at me. “You go up, dear, and we will pass Orry to you.”
    I felt small and warm, cradled by these people ’s compassion, but still scared to let Orry go.
    The woman beckoned with her fingers and tugged at Orry’s hand-knitted cardigan. “Go,” she said, gently but urgently.
    I placed Orry gingerly in her arms and hoisted myself into the pipe.
     
    *****
     
    Inside was a network of interlacing torchlight, all held between grimacing mouths as people lay on the concrete slab with their feet atop of each other’s shoulders.
    I followed their light, wiggling up, getting a shove or a hand pulling me up as I went. If this were the Woodlands, people would just go. There was no thought, no conceiving of others’ needs. But here they were, forming a human ladder to help me up, to help Orry.
    When I reached the top, I turned around and waited, arms stretched into the darkness, my fingers longing for the weight of my baby. I watched as Orry was carried with so much care, like he was as delicate and breakable as a thin, shelled, sugar egg. They talked to him as they passed him, muttering unintelligible words of comfort, until he was safe in my arms. With Orry in my arms, I looked down, feeling like I might cry. The ladder was laden with more helpers, waiting to bring him safely to the ground, to join Hessa in the alley.
    Sometimes I worried that bringing Orry into their world was a mistake, that the pain and violence he has had to witness would damage him in some way. But when I saw these people, the way they treated him as precious, the kindness and strength they