Water Rites Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jeremy made a frog appear on Ezra’s head.
    Dan never asked outright, but he talked as if Jeremy was going to come with him when he left. To the cities. And the sea.
    “Where did you come from?” Jeremy asked on Saturday, just a week after Dan had arrived. They were eating lunch under the same overhang where they’d stopped the first day out.
    “The Corps’ regional office in Bonneville.”
    “No, I don’t mean that.” Jeremy swallowed cold beans. “I mean before that. Before the surveying. Where were you born?”
    “South.” Dan looked out toward the dead river. His gray eyes looked vague, like he was looking past something far away or deep inside his head. “We came up from LA, running from the water wars and the gangs.” His eyelids flickered. “I was pretty little. But the people in the valleys weren’t sharing their water, so we moved on. You leave everything behind you when you’re dying of thirst, one piece at a time. Everything.”
    He was silent for a moment. The wind blew grit across the rocks with a soft hiss and Jeremy didn’t make a sound.
    “I ended up with the Corps,” Dan said abruptly.
    The transition from we to I cut off Jeremy’s questions like a knife. He watched Dan toss a pebble down the slope. It bounced off an old cow skull half-buried in drifted dust.
    “I won’t kid you about things.” Dan tossed another pebble at the bleached skull. “I’m leaving soon . . . maybe tomorrow. And if you come with me, you’re going to find out that things aren’t always what they should be. When you’re on the road, you don’t have any options. You do what it takes to stay alive. Sometimes you don’t like it much, but you do it.”
    The hard thread of bitterness in Dan’s voice scared Jeremy a little, but it didn’t matter. If you come with me . . .
    “Can you make a face?” Dan asked suddenly.
    “I don’t know.” Jeremy looked into Dan’s bleak, hungry eyes, stifling a pang of fear. He wanted to say no. Get up and go back to surveying. “I . . . can try.” Dan’s eyes pulled the words out of him.
    “She was about sixteen, with brown eyes and black hair. It was straight, like rain falling.” His eyes focused on that invisible something again. “She looked a little like me, but prettier,” he said. “Her nose was thin — I used to kid her about it — an she smiled a lot.”
    He could feel it, almost. Dan’s memory. Scared, now, Jeremy shaped a face in his mind, watched it take shape in the air. Dan shook his head.
    “Stupid of me to play that kind of game.” Dan laid his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Thanks for trying.”
    And just that quickly, he felt the awful shiver that seemed to run through his flesh and the air and the dusty ground.
    She smiled, her face brining with warmth and sadness, standing there, looking down at them. Jeremy stared at her, sweat stinging his eyes. She was right — the way the land had been right that day he had looked at it and it had turned green and lush and he had seen water running through the creekbed at the far edge of the field.
    “Amy.” Dan’s voice broke.
    The sound of Dan’s voice pierced him. The making shivered, dissolved, and vanished. “I’m sorry,” Jeremy whispered, his skin tight with fear. “Dan, I’m sorry.
    Dan buried his face in his hands. Hesitantly, Jeremy reached out and touched him.
    “It’s all right.” Dan raised his head, drew in a long breath. “You did what I asked.” He shook his head slowly, his face full of wonder. “That was her . Not some image. It was like you called her back for a second. I . . . thought for a minute she was going to say something to me. She was so real .”
    Like the green fields full of alfalfa. Jeremy looked away because he could see fear in Dan’s face, too. Not just wonder.
    That was why his dad hated them . . . the makings. Because of the green fields.
    And hated him.
    “Let’s get back.” Dan stood up, looking down the dead valley. “I’m through