Running Water

“Guessing it doesn’t bother you, being filthy all the time.”

“Fuck off.” I flex my fingers and roll them against my palm, trying to get rid of the sticky steering-wheel feeling and contemplating the merits of punching Peter in the face. Caleb’s just standing around looking indifferent, which is somehow even more irritating; telling Peter to fuck off is as reflexive as swatting at a fly.

Tris’ voice is steely. “You two, go that way. Don’t come back for half an hour.”

He knows better than to argue. “Fine.” Peter tramps off without any particular effort toward stealth, dragging Caleb by the arm; the two of them head in the direction the stream’s flowing toward, downhill maybe, down among the trees. Tris steadies herself against me to pull off her socks.

The eerie stillness can’t mean anything good, but it means we don’t have company, for now. The other two members of our party can be heard growing increasingly distant – Caleb’s heavy imprecise footsteps, Peter’s sharp cold voice sounding out and diminishing. If that voice gets any nearer to us, I’ll have to be ready; Tris’ uneasiness is palpable, but it’s pushing and pulling against her equally powerful desire to just be clean again.

If any uninvited guests make an appearance – I pluck up a stone from the riverbed and weigh it in my hand to gauge its mass and its balance before letting it drop. It’s no throwing knife, but I’m confident I could blacken an eye with something like that, and worse.

We walk along there for a while, Tris cautiously barefoot, just listening – for other human voices, for wildlife sounds, or gunshots, or the rumble of a car engine coming down the dusty road. Our truck was parked uphill in the shade, so the solar panels could cool down, but we weren’t exactly hidden from view. Not from anyone who knew how to look. Eyes open, ears open.

Up a little further, where the creek runs into a sort of basin, there’s a milky white tarp tethered between two trees – filmier than the one we’ve got, filthy and scarred by the elements. It’s in poor enough shape that I can mentally categorize it as discarded and not a sign of recent occupation. Tris pauses behind it to undress, tossing her clothes over one by one for me to catch – coat, knit undershirt, belt, jeans. All this stuff put together wouldn’t get you 10 points from the Dauntless commissary – it’s utilitarian, mismatched, no cut-outs or deliberate tears. But on Tris it just looks better – just looks cooler, according to the small part of me that’s still dazzled by the freedom of dress our old faction afforded. Back there anyone can probably wear anything now, with the faction system come apart at the seams.

I’m getting sentimental about my girlfriend’s clothes. I half-expect her bra to come twanging out last of all, but that she keeps – it could probably stand to be washed by the water anyway with the rest of her. I kick off my boots and lay down my coat on the rocks, setting Tris’ clothes aside there and then my own. I don’t especially care about modesty out here, so that’s over and done with soon enough.

By the time I’m done and turn around, Tris is rubbing her arms briskly, standing in the shade. She might be blushing, or just sunburned from the drive. The welt on her upper arm is fading; I can see it through her fingers, and when she catches me noticing she startles a little.

“So how do you want to do this, then? This might be our last chance for a while.”

I bend down by the edge – the bank, I guess – and catch up a handful of river water in my cupped hands. It’s cold enough that my skin smarts, though that might just be the sensation of five hundred miles’ worth of road dust and nerves washing away.

“God, it’s cold. We’d better get this done fast.”

“How do we know it’s not dirty?” Her tone brings to mind visions of poisons and parasites. But it’s one thing to be circumspect about water for drinking and cooking; more than that seems unfeasible.

“Just don’t put it in your mouth.”

Be vigilant. Be calm. The sun cutting through the trees is blinding – the kind of unnatural glare you get from a reflection off glass, almost painfully bright. Tris wades ahead of me in her gray bra and black briefs, upstream where a low ledge produces a weak sort of waterfall – a tangle of tree roots jut out exposed. Clusters of scarlet flowers grow by the waterside, humming with bees, but that and the dim chatter of running water and splashing steps are the only real sounds.

The leaves overhead are eerily still, and their shadows cut a pattern across the riverbed. The muscles of Tris’ pale back are crisscrossed with shadow like new tattoos.

Her blond head shines in the light like gold, upright and steady on her slim neck, not bowed. With her hair cropped so close, she looks almost boyish from behind. If Tris had been a boy, I don’t know if we’d ever have known each other – we’d have met, but it’s difficult to imagine an equally small, shy boy putting himself on the line the way she had for Al. Smaller boys in Dauntless either kept to themselves, getting wiry and hard-hearted, or they crashed out, hard. It was her selflessness that put her in that place, with her back to the target facing down the knives – and Abnegation selflessness meant something very different for women and men. For men it meant some kind of respectable austerity, being serious and unfeeling. For women like Tris and my mother – something else. Intense, indomitable.

The little hollow at the back of her neck – I’ve touched that hollow place before through the falling tangles of her hair, learning to find it with my fingertips the same way I learned the rest of her body. Now I know it by sight.

“Aren’t you coming too?”

“Feet first.” You can’t go anywhere on fucked-up feet, one of the most banal of all Dauntless precepts. Some military holdover from before the faction system. I flex my toes in the calf-deep water, feeling the powdery dirt shift beneath me under the water. It’s gray like ash. The backs of my heels are scabbed from my boots and I try to rub out a little of the grime; it’s not as bad as our short stay in Amity, where everything ended up covered in a fine layer of crumbly dirt within minutes of arrival, but I’d give anything to feel just a sliver more humane and not like some mesmerized animal staring down the broken asphalt road.

I hear a splash coming from the deeper water, and Tris cries out – not a playful scream but an actual scream. Not loud. Stifled.

“What is it?”

Tris is shuddering, rigid in the muddy water. Her hand is pressed over her mouth.

“Something touched me–”

Something’s in the water. You can’t really hurry through knee-deep water, but I sweep over quickly, bracing to tell her to jump out of there – dim memories of things living in water that I’d seen in photographs, things like snakes, things with too many teeth. There’s something silvery and mobile coursing past us, glinting under the surface. Something – some things, plural, miniscule things with scales and fins and stupid expressions. They dart past us, and they’re gone.

“It’s just fish, Tris. They live out here after all.” I put my arm around her, feeling her shuddering go still after the embarrassing surprise wears off. She’s cold to the touch, despite the warmth of the day, and visibly feeling the chill of exposure to fresh freezing air after so long in an overheated vehicle.

The water runs past us, around our ankles and on and down. The novelty of natural water sources must be a relic from back before the city opened up – they were the kind of thing you learned about, not the kind of thing you interacted with on a regular basis, and there was nothing more clear and free-flowing than the massive swamps. Those must have featured in the worst nightmares of every other kid to grow up there – they were harmless, and only the real hardliners thought they were poisonous or anything, but they weren’t exactly inviting. Nothing seemed to grow out there, while here everything’s growing. Even when you don’t want it to be.

“Come on, then,” Tris says, mildly embarrassed. “Sorry, I’m just – remembering.”

Remembering the river we’d crossed, and the swollen human body buffeted against the rocks on the shore. Or remembering something else.

“Want to go deeper?”

Tris grabs my hand to steady herself, padding gingerly along the rocks at the river’s edge. The water deepens the closer we get to the low ledge, and the sharp stones and broken wood from downstream give way to broader polished rocks – slipperier, but less murderous on the feet.

I can’t shake the memory of when we’d last bathed together, not a messy clean-up with boiled water but an actual bath with water from the tap. I thought we’d never have that again. I know I shouldn’t miss the amenities I’d gotten used to in the city – what they were like in Dauntless. Things you can’t live without make you soft.

I don’t know what shape the city will be in when we get back, knowing whatever we know by then. I don’t know who’ll be sleeping in my apartment, or washing off blood in the bathroom of my father’s house. But when I think of going back, I think of those places. Places where I’d felt strong, places where I’d been sure of myself.

It’s difficult to imagine feeling strong out here. More like inconspicuous, and very small. I lift Tris down into the water, and go to wash my hands under the falling water – it’s not that different from the kind of quick wash you can pull off with a couple inches of water and a basin, brushing water over my arms and shoulders without any soap and hoping to remove the worst of the grime. The coolness is gratifying – though I can only really wet my hair, Tris only has to spoon a palmful of water over her cropped head to achieve some rudimentary effect of cleanness. Her shoulders shine with damp rivulets, slipping past the mesh back of her bra. I can see her going through the motions of a quick wash – underarms, neck, behind the ears. That much is so universal they must teach it in some lesson during Dauntless initiation – or maybe it’s an Abnegation thing we both learned, minimizing waste. I don’t know. It’s not like there’s any shortage of water out here.

“Here. I’ll help.”

I kneel in the water, feeling the tug of the current, and start washing her calves and knees. The water level sloshes a little, and it’s not any less freezing cold against my defenseless back than on my legs, which have had time to adjust – but Tris’ legs are damp and shiny and blindingly pale. The road dust hasn’t touched her here.

Her hand slips around to my back, cupping over the Dauntless symbol like you’d conceal a small object from a child. She’s quiet, and still. I wonder what she’s thinking about.

I plant a kiss on the side of Tris’ leg, and she laughs, knee jostling me in the chin. “Cut it out, I’m still filthy.”

“Don’t worry about it. Your knees have dimples.”

“Do they?”

Her fingers card through my wet hair, brushing it off my forehead. To think it’s gotten long enough not to stay put – we’ve really gone far from how we used to be. Only the fear of losing balance entirely and toppling keeps our hands off one another at this point.

“You’ve got a leaf stuck to you. A big one.”

I go to peel it off the back of her thigh, but she catches my hand, holding it against her leg. Tris sinks down into the water with a splash, kneeling among the shifting stones. Startled, I shift back onto my heels a little.

“Tris–”

“I’ve got another pair in my bag. I planned ahead, you know.” Tris’ arms find my waist under the water, and she pulls me in close. She smells like river water now, instead of dust and sweat. At least it’s natural – a sharp green smell that’s practically a taste, as I cover her mouth with mine, feel the brush of beads of water trickling down her cheeks.

We could wash away entirely. It would be like we were never here. The hunger for her never lessens, not with exhaustion and not with pain – I’d be starving like this forever, shivering flesh against flesh, linked close and dying to be closer. To memorize every pore and freckle, the crease in the middle of her bottom lip, each eyelash – to drink her in and be gone.

“You’ll be all right.” Speaking against skin – my thumb rests in the soft indentation between her bottom lip and jaw. She lifts her chin, and brings her mouth to mine again.

*

We end up sitting on the bank to dry, or at least I do after Tris gets tired of sitting around in soaking wet underwear and steps off to change. I hear her call my name from behind that ludicrous makeshift curtain –

“Four? How were we planning to dry off, again?”

I toss her my balled-up shirt, and resign myself to air-drying for now. There’s so much sun out here – it’s hard to resist the low basal urge to soak it in, despite the warmth of the day. If the whole world was like this – sunny, maybe, empty – maybe everybody would have something to look forward to when they got out. It can’t all be like this; it can’t all be empty perfect summer days.

Tris reemerges again, fully dressed, and surrenders my damp shirt; she breaks the stem of one of the red clustering flowers and tucks it behind her ear. She doesn’t say anything, and I don’t say anything, and when we reconvene with the rest of our party (Peter and Caleb looking considerably soggier than we do, and very sheepish) they don’t say anything either. Not even Peter, who’s never known an opportunity to say something vicious he didn’t take. He and Caleb are walking awfully close together, and Caleb has the book of blank paper he carries tucked under his arm, bristling with the stems of leaves.

When we get where we’re headed, to the next safe place, I can’t imagine they’re going to be interested in a handful of pressed leaves. But it’s harmless, compared to the other stuff Caleb’s done to occupy his brain – harmless as Tris and her flower, bright as a burst of fresh blood at her temple. The red is all I can see out of the corner of my eye, vivid against her yellow hair.