Then the Lab itself did something to solidify the relationship among the three of them. They were chosen, along with several others, to participate in storytelling sessions. Every few days, they would be taken out of class and placed in a room in the Big House itself. They lay down on cots and a nurse gave them injections from a big needle, which hurt. But then they got to stay there and listen to stories played on a tape. They hated the injections, but it was fun to lie around while others were studying. And they felt pride in being special, in being "an experiment within an experiment," as Baptiste had put it.
In retrospect, those were the halcyon days, the carefree years when the three of them were together, before all the questions and doubts. And then Raisin had died.
Julia had been just as profoundly affected by the death as he'd been, and so they felt a need to comfort each other. It was natural for them to seek each other out and to begin meeting secretly, going to great lengths to plan ways to be alone together even when it became clear that doing so was against the rules.
"How can this be wrong?" Julia asked one time, as they strolled through a meadow near the hidden pasture. "It doesn't feel wrong. It's the rules that have changed, not us. We're not doing anything different."
But, of course, they were. They had begun touching and holding hands. And one morning when Skyler was lying on his back, she asked him why he'd come to visit her in the sick bay that time, and as he tried to explain, searching for the words, she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. He was shocked and scared and thrilled all at once. And he wanted more.
They began meeting regularly. Her job gave her some leeway two days a week — when she delivered mail to the small airstrip on the island's eastern bulge — and Skyler met her nearby. They began touching and kissing as soon as they were in the woods. The Lab said sex was wrong, but Kuta preached a different doctrine, and what he said seemed to make sense. Skyler followed Raisin's example: he didn't take the little pill that was proffered every evening, and Julia stopped, too. Soon their bodies felt different, more sensitive, alive and subject to sudden exciting urges.
One hot, silent afternoon, they explored the southern end of the island, where they had never been. They followed the remnants of an old road scarred with ruts from wagon wheels. It skirted a line of scrub brush and loblolly pine and led them to a sand dune. They walked around it and saw an astonishing sight — a forty-foot tower rising up from a rocky peninsula. It was made of brick. Painted bands of red and white ran up the side, now faded to pastel hues, and on top was a round glass cabin encircled by a walkway and topped by a round metal roof. It was an abandoned lighthouse.
They ran to it. Skyler pushed the wooden door, which gave way with a bang, and they stepped inside. Suddenly, the air was alive with the beating of wings — scores of birds flapping and circling and rising to disappear out open windows. It was gloomy and there was an acrid smell from bird droppings that coated everything. A spiral staircase clung to the sides and mounted toward a shaft of light above. They went up it, and halfway to the top, there was a two-foot wide breach. They crossed it, clinging to iron rivets in the brick wall, Skyler first and then Julia. They continued up and finally reached a circular glass room flooded by light. In the center was a huge lantern with a four-sided lens set upon a rusted rotating track. They stepped outside onto the round balcony. A strong wind blew against their clothes. They could see for miles over the green-gold marshes and curving brown creeks and distant mudflats — all the way to the mainland.
They stepped back inside the glass room. They hugged and lay down on the warm concrete floor. As the birds resumed their roosting on the metal railing outside, they kissed. Then slowly, trembling, they removed each other's clothes and came together naked. Skyler caressed her body and she caressed his. They knew instinctively how to touch each other and where. Skyler felt Julia's breath hot in his ear, and he clenched her tightly and told her he loved her. She squeezed him back, so hard that at first he thought he was hurting her, and she told him that she loved him, too — more than anything in the world, more than life.
They made love. Afterward, they examined one another's body thoroughly, taking it all in, all the turns and curves, including the blue marks on the thighs. Then lying in each other's arms, listening to the sound of the birds outside, and in the distance the waves slapping upon the shore, they said again that they loved and would always love each other. Skyler was amazed that he felt no regret, no feeling that he had done anything wrong. On the contrary, he knew he had done something right. And he also knew deep inside that now there was no turning back.
The lighthouse became their refuge and escape. They came whenever they could get away, and after making love they would sit in the glass room at the top, holding onto each other and looking over to the mainland like two castaways in a crow's nest.
On Campus, they studiously ignored each other, which made their trysts in the lighthouse all the more passionate. To arrange them, they evolved a code using a smooth gray rock the size of a fist at the base of an old oak tree; if either of them moved it from the right side of the trunk to the left, that was a signal to meet in the lighthouse that afternoon. How Skyler's heart would soar when he saw the rock had been moved!
It was not long before the meetings turned subversive. After making love, they would talk about everything, sharing their doubts and fears. In addition to lovers, they became confederates.
Once she startled him when she looked out at the distant banks and said: "You know, I've been thinking more and more lately that we should go to the other side."
Since Patrick's death, Julia had been on a campaign to get to the truth. She had stepped up her spying in the Records Room. She had stolen a glimpse at two folders in the filing cabinet, which looked like the results of their physical examinations, she said. And by close observation, she had learned some computer commands. Twice, when left alone, she had used them and even gotten the computer to respond. But she needed to find the right passwords, she said — two of them. Without those two words, she would get nowhere.
The danger she was running made Skyler wild with fear. He tried to drive home the risks of discovery: she could be caught at the computer at any moment; for all they knew, it made a record of its use. But she would have none of it. She was so caught up in the chase that she was throwing caution overboard. She insisted he was letting his imagination get the best of him.
But as he tossed around in bed, he thought again about Patrick's body laid out in the morgue and recoiled at the image. That was not imaginary.
Skyler rose and pulled on his jeans as the morning light began to stream in through the windows. The other Jimminies were beginning to stir in their beds, shifting around, clearing their throats and making other waking noises. Benny, a small boy who had slept above Skyler for as long as he could remember, let one arm dangle over the side rail of the upper bunk, as he did most mornings. Skyler looked at it; the meat of flesh on his underarm was filthy. He was often in trouble for lack of cleanliness.
From outside came the clanging of the ranch bell, the signal to get started, which roused more movement in the bunks. They had heard it so many mornings now, it was almost subliminal.
Skyler combed his hair in the mirror. He looked at his face looking back at him — his dark eyes and thick dark hair and broad forehead. He had never thought one way or the other about his looks, until Julia, but he did now. He liked it, lying in her arms when she told him how handsome he was, but he was not sure he believed her.