Melissa winced, too, seeing the glances which Gretchen continually sent to Jeff, sitting at the other end of the table. The glances were demure, in a way. Which only made them all the more effective. Jeff was a well-bred country boy. A leering, garish, raucous street prostitute would have scared him off. A young woman in a robe, poised, self-confident-her breast exposed only to feed a child-guiding her family through a meal Sending glance after glance-soft, shining, promising-to a boy only two years younger than she in age, but eons in experience Melissa almost laughed. Leave aside that incredible figure!
The conclusion was foregone. Given. By now, Jeff would be nothing but a raging mass of hormones. Burning with desire. Would he take advantage of the offer? Ha!
Melissa had a sudden image of herself, standing on a beach, ankle-deep in seawater. Queen Melissa-imperious, righteous-ordering the tide to retreat.
Melissa was opposed to sexual harassment. She was opposed to men taking advantage of the weaker position of women in society to satisfy their lust. She was.
She still was. But Despair washed over her. The world she had been plunged into was so far removed from the one she had known that no answers seemed possible. How could she condemn? How could she could reprove? And, most important of all, how could she point a way forward?
The boy Gretchen had buffeted was no longer crying. To the contrary, he was smiling. Looking at Gretchen, eager to catch her eye. Utterly oblivious, now, to the bruise forming on his cheek. Melissa realized that his Gretchen-imposed time limit was over. Gretchen, as if guided by some internal clock, met his gaze, smiled gently, and nodded. The boy stuffed a handful of food in his mouth. Started to reach for another, paused, glanced warily at Gretchen. Sure enough, she was watching him. Frowning.
Angels never sleep. The boy sighed and put his hands back in his lap. The angel smiled. The eyes moved on to another child, another woman-weaker than she-to a crone, feebler than she-and then, to a large American boy at the other end of the table. The promise in those eyes was not angelic in the least.
The eyes moved on. Watching, watching. Sheltering, protecting. Steel eyes, forged in a furnace Melissa could hardly imagine. The eyes of the only kind of angel that could possibly exist in such a place.
Melissa was paralyzed. In the showers, she had been firmly determined to speak to Jeff. Warn him-in no uncertain terms!-that he was absolutely forbidden-
Forbidden? Why? On what grounds?
The answer was a serpent, a snake, a scorpion. A cure far worse than the disease. Good intentions be damned, reality would be something different. Forbid American boys to copulate with German girls-girls who would be throwing themselves at them in order to survive-and you take the first step on the road to a caste society. The copulation would happen anyway, in the dark. On back stairs, in closets. Between noble Americans, and German commoners. Whores again.
Everything Mike-and she-were determined to prevent.
So what to do? Is there any light in this darkness?
Abruptly, Melissa stopped eating. Thoughts of corporal punishment and sexual harassment were driven aside by a wave of nausea. She closed her eyes, trying to control her stomach.
The nausea was not caused by the food. It was simply high-school cafeteria food, the same food she had eaten times without number. Nutritious, bland.
The nausea was caused by sheer horror. The horror, by a memory.
She had been able to block it out, for a time. The difficulty of coaxing the women and their children through the sanitation process had kept her busy. The fretting worry over how to handle the situation developing between Gretchen and Jeff-them, today; all the other girls, she knew, within a week, with other American boys carrying the guns which could protect them-had kept her mind preoccupied. A schoolteacher's habit, forged over decades, of maintaining decorum and discipline had kept her tightly focused.
But enough time had elapsed, now. The memory could no longer be held at bay. The memory of three boys, none of them more than fourteen years old, squatting at her feet like animals, their eyes blank, their faces numb, while their mothers and sisters and aunts wailed and shrieked like banshees. All of them, except Gretchen, utterly certain Utterly certain!
- that Melissa Mailey had come to murder them.
She was going to vomit.
Not here! They'll think they've been poisoned.
Abruptly, she rose and strode away from the table. She waved away Jeff's look of concern. Just thought of something I need to do, that's all. Jeff, she knew, would reassure the others. He was a reliable boy. A good boy.
Once she was out of the cafeteria she turned left and pushed through the big doors leading to the outside. Melissa was almost running now. She couldn't hold it down much longer and she was determined to be completely out of sight of the refugees. Night had almost fallen, but there was still a bit of purple sky to illuminate the area.
She turned right, away from the cafeteria windows. Now, in the semidarkness, she began to run. Her bare feet slapped the walkway running alongside the school.
She couldn't make it to the bushes near the technical center. Not a chance.
This is far enough.
She stepped off the walkway and fell to her knees. Guiltless cafeteria food surged up, spewed, splattered innocent grass. Murder came out, rape came out, torture came out; cruelty beyond imagining covered the land. Horror spilled, anguish spread. The acrid smell of her own digestive juices was perfume, covering a stench so vile it could not be given a name.
By the time Melissa Mailey finished, her conversion was complete.
She leaned back and took a deep breath. Clean air filled her lungs. She probed her mind, pushing beneath the rage, searching for herself.
Still there, she realized, sighing with relief.
Barely. But still there.
Mike and Rebecca found her a few minutes later. They had arrived for the committee meeting early, as usual. What was not usual was that they were walking hand in hand. The sight of that affectionate handclasp helped to drive despair out of Melissa's mind.
Mike knelt by her side. "Are you all right?" He glanced at the vomit, glistening in the light of the rising moon.
Melissa nodded. "I'm fine." Then, realizing the absurdity of the statement, she chuckled harshly. "Physically, at least."
Her eyes welled with tears. "Oh God, Mike, they thought I was going to have them killed." A moment later, her head tucked into his sheltering arm, she began babbling the tale. As she spoke, Rebecca knelt alongside her also, listening closely.
When Melissa was done, she took another deep breath. "You know, I'm finding myself in a strange place. Mentally, I mean. Never thought I'd be here."
She tightened her jaws. The next sentence came between clenched teeth. "The way I feel right now, I'd have every single man in that army-both armies-lined up against a wall and shot. Tonight."
Mike smiled, and stroked her hair. "Take it easy, lady. You're the worst person in the world to have to make a decision like that."