Free The Sun Dwellers by David Estes

in the presidential courtyards.
    Pain is nothing . Words my father once spoke to me just after whipping a backhand across my cheek. It was the first time he ever hit me. I was only eight, but remember it as vividly as if it was yesterday. The sting of the blow brought tears to my eyes.
    Pain is nothing, he repeated. Tears are weakness.
    I blinked away the tears that day and rose to my feet, hatred for my father in my eyes. When my mother asked me how my mentor session was with my father, I wanted to tell her, wanted to ask her why my father would hit me, but instead I answered only Good.
    He hit me eight other times in my life, each harder than the last. Until I turned fifteen, I didn’t know that he hit my mother, too, either because I didn’t want to know, or because I was too dumb or naïve to consider the dark truth.
    Pain is nothing.
    For me, his words are true, and soon the burning in my calves and thighs is nothing more than background noise against the slap of our shoes on the tunnel floor.
    Trevor leads, and thirty minutes later he slows to a walk, running his hand along the high wall. “We’re close,” he murmurs. “Yes, here it is.”
    To his credit, he was right about the alcove. It is well hidden, just a thin crack in the impenetrable stone tube, barely wide enough for us to squeeze through sideways.
    I let the others push through first, Trevor, then Roc, then Tawni, and finally Adele, who reaches out and grabs my hand for just a moment before releasing it. I’m so used to the crackle of electricity that her touch—or even her presence—normally releases down my spine, that I almost don’t notice a few different feelings that arise. Warmth, like the heat from the artificial sun, spreads up my arm and into the rest of my body; flittering excitement bounces around my stomach and in my chest; there’s a numbness in my toes, almost as if I’m floating, or like my feet have disappeared. It’s as though when our connection or magnetism or whatever it was that we had before was severed, it opened my body up to a whole rash of new and wonderful feelings, ones that perhaps were previously overwhelmed by the tingling in my scalp and spine.
    Just before Adele slides into the crevice, she smiles back at me, as if she knows what I’m feeling. Grinning, I follow after her, barely noticing the scrape of the textured rock walls on my skin.
    The alcove is much larger than I expected, long and rectangular, its ceiling double my height. An old unused fire pit sits ringed by small, white stones and solid stone benches. Above the pit is an opening in the roof, a conduit for the smoke to escape to some unpopulated cavern.
    “A shipping rest stop,” Roc says.
    “Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s here,” Trevor says. “I’m about to be dead to the world for a long time. Wake me up when something exciting happens.”
    We unpack our bedrolls and lay them in a circle around the barren fire pit. Roc, always a gentleman, settles in close to Tawni, but not too close. Trevor collapses a bit further away, his breaths deepening almost immediately. I place my bedding a respectful distance from where Adele is standing, holding her own pack. To my surprise, however, she drops her pad in a heap next to mine, lowering to her knees to smooth it out, avoiding my gaze.
    As I lie down facing away from her, she nestles in close to me, tracing my legs with her own. The gentle beat of her heart taps lightly against my back, sending slight vibrations along my skin. The feelings from before reappear: warmth, flittering excitement, floating.
    My strength sapped, I close my eyes and feel wakefulness start to slip away.
    “My mom said it’s no accident that we met,” Adele whispers in my ear.
    “Mmm,” I murmur, unsure of whether I’m awake or in a dream.

Chapter Seven
    Adele
     
    D espite the warmth in my heart and body as I lie next to Tristan, sleep doesn’t come easy. For a while I can’t turn off my brain, as I think about the