“So that’s what you meant when you said you were avoiding your feelings,” he says.
“Yeah, I guess,” I say.
Something touches my shoulder. His arm. It slips around me. I am not usually a hugger—I don’t like feeling constrained, pressed down. But this is different. It doesn’t feel like I’m trapped. It feels like ballast, like it’s keeping me here. Rooted.
The light finally leaves the sky. A few early stars poke through the dark in the windows. I don’t hear the bear any longer. I wonder if it’s bedded down somewhere out there. I wonder if the other creatures on the island are starting to poke tentative noses from their dens and nests. I lay my head against his shoulder.
“I’m glad we came, anyway. Even if Zahra isn’t here,” I whisper.
“Really? Even if we almost got mauled to death?”
“Yeah. I feel closer to her when I’m with you. Maybe that’s messed up. But I’m glad that, if nothing else, I’ve met you.”
“Me too,” he says.
We’re quiet I don’t know how long. At a certain point we both get up on the bed. It sags, and the mattress smells like mildew, but it’s more comfortable than the floor. Any other time it’d freak me out to be on a bed with a boy—it seems like a big deal. But that’s the thing about near-death experiences: they really leave you open to new things.
We don’t want to waste our cell phone batteries, so once it gets dark, it gets really, really dark. The stars are bright in the little windows. Outside the birdsong has quieted; now it’s just the waves and the wind, beating up against the little island.
I don’t know if it’s an accident or not. I move, or he moves, or the bed itself moves, the island, the earth moves, and our lips touch. My fingers brush his stomach, those hard ridges of muscle, the soft cotton of his shirt. There’s a tug at my hair. He has a handful of it, knotted around his fingers, and I don’t know if he’s trying to get free of it, caught in the long loose mass, or if he’s holding on for dear life. But then I am—holding on for dear life—and our lips play against each other, soft and then hard, hungry. And it’s strange, it’s so strange. I keep waiting to disappear down in my body the way I do, to become a giant mech suit with a tiny pilot inside, because this is new and it should be terrifying, it should send me hiding deep inside, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t. Every part of my flesh remains alive, aware, electric. Every inch of me trembles, waiting in breathless hope that its turn is next—toe, knee, shoulder, sacrum, all of it suddenly desperate to be touched.
And then maybe the earth shifts one more time, and we draw that much apart—enough to catch our breath, enough to think maybe we need to stop now before it goes any further. I push my face against his shirt. I listen to the quiet rhythm his heart beats out, and I feel his arms tuck around my waist, no longer groping and eager but strong. I hear him fall asleep first, his breath going soft. I lie there for a little while, dizzy with it all, almost drunk on it. My body feels impossibly awake to everything. But finally, I drift off, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I WAKE UP SHIVERING and ravenously hungry on the bare mattress, my body aching all over. It takes me a minute to put it all together, to believe that my memories are memories and not bad dreams: yes, there was a bear. Yes, it chased us.
Yes, we kissed.
We. That’s when I sit up sharply. Ben’s gone, and I’m alone in the cramped and musty cabin, wrapped up in a bundle of threadbare quilts. The sky outside is sallow with low, streaky clouds. I kick the covers off and half roll, half stumble off the bed.
According to my phone, it’s just after six a.m. Everything that felt warm and intimate the night before looks ugly in the naked dawn—the wooden walls raw and splintering, the cabin a dirty little box. I’m still wearing Ben’s jacket, and I hug it around my shoulders against the cold. Where is he? Did he leave me here? Am I going to have to figure out how to get out of here on my own, past that bear, across the lake?
I’m kneeling down next to my backpack, rummaging for an extra jacket, when the door opens softly behind me. Ben comes in, his hair wildly mussed, the legs of his jeans covered in dust. I jump to my feet.
“There you are,” I say.
He gives a crooked smile. “Sorry. I was trying to get back before you woke up.”
“What were you doing?” I ask.
“Looking around, trying to see if it’s going to be safe to get back to the boat today.” He chews on the corner of his thumbnail. “Bear’s gone. So’s the carcass. It looks like he dragged it toward the woods. So . . . it’s not what I’d call ‘safe’ out there, but I think we can make it down to the boat if we’re careful.”
I stare at him. “That’s a bad pep talk,” I say. “You’re bad at pep talks.”
“I’m a runner, not a cheerleader. Besides, the alternative is to stay here all day not knowing where it is or what it’s doing.” He gives a little shrug. “We’ll go slowly. There’s lots of shelter between here and there, so we’ll be able to get into the cabins or the classrooms if we hear it along the way.”
“As long as the doors aren’t locked,” I say. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “But I guess you’re right. We don’t have much choice.”
I catch my breath as he steps closer to me. My lips pulse with the memory of his. But he doesn’t look at me; he picks up one of the blankets and starts to fold it neatly. Blushing, I grab another. We pack them away in the bin under the bed.
“There,” he says. “Now the next people in here hiding will have clean, dry blankets to sleep under.”
The next people, I think, or him and Zahra, if they get back together. It’s coming to me, with the hard light of day, that this is the cabin where he usually comes with Zahra—that they’ve slept in the bed together, wrapped in these quilts. That they probably did more than sleep.
That I came out here to find her, but instead I made out with her ex in the same bed where they’ve probably done more than sleep.
No wonder he won’t look at me. We crossed a line.
The walk back down to the dock seems to take forever. We move slowly and deliberately and talk loudly as we go—but our conversation is all strained and superficial, made only for the sake of the bear. Everything easy and comfortable about being with him has disappeared in the last twelve hours.
“So do you think your dad’s going to be mad?” he asks.
“Definitely,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m probably grounded forever,” he says casually, looking around as we move past the dining hall. “Either that or Mom’s already rented out my room.”
“I’m probably going to be packed off to a reeducation class at Victory Evangelical,” I say. “With any luck they’ll realize I’m not good Handmaid material. Maybe they’ll let me empty the wastebaskets instead.”
We stop at the dock for a moment, turning our glances back up the hill, to the empty cabins and overgrown forest. We didn’t cover everything we could have—not by a long shot—but Ben seems certain she’s not here.
“We’re running out of places to look,” I say softly.
He doesn’t answer. Just hops down in the boat and starts readying the motor.
“Maybe it’s not that we don’t know her well enough to find her,” I say. “Maybe . . .”
I stop. I don’t want to say it out loud.
But it’s not like it’s a stretch to imagine a random stranger hurting her. It happens all the time—all over the place, but especially in Alaska, especially where there’s a lot of people on drugs, a lot of people who pass through town on their way to seasonal work. This place has been a hunting ground for evil men plenty of times before now.
Ben gets the motor started, and I jump down into the boat next to him. He doesn’t need me to tell him all this. He knows it. So I sit on one side of the boat, and he takes the rudder, and the island gets smaller and smaller behind us.
&nb
sp; The lodge isn’t open for breakfast yet. We get to my car and scrounge in the cooler for the rest of our snacks—granola bars and beef jerky, Cheez-Its and gummy bears. It’s the most satisfying meal I’ve ever had.
“Nothing like almost dying to put the savor in your processed food item,” Ben says, cramming a handful of crackers in his mouth.
My phone is out of battery, so we don’t listen to any music as we turn onto the road. But somewhere just beyond Long Lake, where Dall sheep dot the mountainside overhead like patches of snow, his hand finds mine. We don’t speak for the rest of the drive, but my fingers burn as if the contact has rubbed away the skin. As if touching him makes me raw.
* * *
—
IT’S LATE MORNING WHEN we get to my house. I expect everyone to be gone; it’s Wednesday, the middle of the school day. But when we get to my house, Dad’s truck and Brandy’s car are both in the driveway—and there’s a cop car parked on the street.
Ben and I look at each other. I realize abruptly that he’s let go of my hand.
I don’t have time to wonder why the cops are there, though. Because that’s when Tabitha pulls up behind us in her dented blue crossover. She gets out and leaves her door hanging ajar. I watch with surprise as Ingrid gets out of the passenger seat behind her.
Tabitha gets to us first. I’m in the middle of climbing out of my car, and my foot is tangled up behind me as she strides over to me. Her jaw juts aggressively. Her amber eyes flash.
“What are you guys . . .” I start to ask, but she talks right over me.
“Where the hell have you been?” she hisses.
I look at Ben, then back to her. “We went to Shosubenich Lake. To look for Zahra.”
She makes a sound in the back of her throat like she’s choking on something small and hard.
Ingrid’s caught up now. Her face looks unusually dour as she sizes me up. I wonder if she’s going to write me off the way she has Tabitha, just because I spent the night with a boy I barely know. But she just glances at the cop cars.
“Did you even stop to think how this would look?” she asks.
“God, Ingrid, I don’t care how it looks,” I say. “It was totally innocent, but even if it wasn’t, you can mind your own . . .”
“No, I don’t mean . . .” She stomps her foot like a child, looking impatient. “God, Ruthie, that’s what you think of me? I’m not talking about sex or whatever. I’m talking about the fact that you disappeared. At the same time as the guy who was there the night Zahra disappeared. People are freaking out.”
I look over at Ben. The blood has left his face. His mouth falls open. “You thought that I, what, snatched Ruthie?”
“I didn’t think that,” she says, though I’m not so sure I believe her. “But you guys were both missing, and no one was answering texts . . .”
“No service,” I say. “And then the phone died anyway.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why people usually tell their friends and family where they’re going,” Ingrid says, looking aggrieved. “Mom and Rick called the cops first thing this morning. Tabitha and I have been driving around looking for some sign of you.”
Tabitha’s just glowering, staring across the top of my car at Ben. I feel, like I often do, that she’s trying to tell him something. But he doesn’t even look at her. He’s looking at the house.
“I’d better go in and explain, then,” he says.
Surprisingly, all three of us jump to stop him at the same time.
“You’d better not,” Ingrid says. “Rick’s ready to have you arrested as it is. If he sees you . . .”
“You need to get home to your mom,” Tabitha puts in. “She’s left me about five hundred messages. Come on, I’ll drive you.”
He glances at me. I nod.
“I can handle my dad,” I say. “Your family’s probably really scared. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
For a moment he doesn’t say anything. Then he gives a short nod and picks up his backpack from the back seat.
Tabitha gives me another long, hard look before following him to her car.
I stand motionless as they drive away. A miasma of bug dope and sweat clings to me, and I can smell the sharp chemical tang of my own terror, the remnant of the adrenaline from last night. I realize suddenly that I’m still wearing Ben’s jacket.
“So, you and Tabitha went out looking for us, huh?” I say, tossing my car keys from one hand to the other. “That’s kind of the team-up of the century, huh?”
Her lips twist downward.
“I called her. I knew she’d want to find you, too. And I didn’t have a car to go looking for you.”
Right. “Ingrid, I’m so sorry I left you without a ride . . .”
She shakes her head. “I don’t care. It’s fine.”
“And thank you for looking for me,” I persist. “With Tabitha, of all people.”
“Ruth, it’s fine,” she says, more firmly this time. She turns to go into the house. “I just wish you’d realize that people actually care about you.”
I follow her to the house in silence.
Upstairs, Dad and Brandy are both at the kitchen table. Officer Sapolu is there. With him is a white woman in a neat black pantsuit, her thin blonde hair tied at the nape of her neck. She’s sipping from a steaming mug, her legs crossed in front of her.
When I come in, the reaction is immediate and overwhelming. Brandy’s the first one to me. She puts her arms around me and pulls me up against her so my face is in the crook of her neck. Her arms tremble around me. I don’t move away. I can sense already that she is my only protection in this room, without even looking at my dad.
“Where. In God’s name. Have you been?”
His voice is low and controlled. Beneath the careful enunciation, I can hear it—that deep, almost subaudible thrum of anger. That through-gritted-teeth snarl that always came before one of his rages, back in the old days. Usually it was my mother on the receiving end. Sometimes, though, I got it, too.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble against Brandy’s neck. I look up, turn to face the rest of the room. Dad’s risen to his feet, but he stays back, as if afraid of what he’ll do if he comes any closer. Officer Sapolu and the woman exchange glances. “You guys aren’t going to believe the night I had. We were looking for Zahra on this island, and there was a bear . . .”
“Island?” His voice goes up a few decibels. “What island? Where did you go? In what world did you think it would be okay to vanish like that?”
“Mr. Hayden,” says the woman. I turn to look at her face. It’s deeply lined, especially along the forehead. She’s older than I thought at first.
“I know how upset you must be,” she says gently. “And I don’t want to interfere in family affairs. But Officer Sapolu and I have a few questions for Ruthie. If we could take a moment, we’ll get out of your hair as soon as possible.”
Dad’s face is mottled and red, and looks for all the world like he’s been downing vodka since dawn. Something about it makes my spine snap straight. I feel my armor going up.
He gives a little nod. The woman smiles up at me.
“It sounds like you had quite a night,” she says. “We haven’t formally met. I’m Detective Lucy Teffeteller. I’m assisting with the search for Zahra Gaines.” She pauses. “You gave everyone a real scare.”
“I’m . . . sorry,” I say. “I didn’t really think.”
“Obviously,” snaps my dad. My gaze shoots up toward him, but before I can say anything, Detective Teffeteller is speaking again.
“So you’ve been spending time with Zahra’s friends?” she asks.
I give a little shrug. “They’re my friends, too.” I don’t know if that’s true anymore. Tabitha could be done with me now that she’s seen me with Ben. And Ben . . . I have no idea how Ben thinks of me.
“You were out of town with Ben Peavy. Her ex-boyfriend, right?” the detective says.
“Yes,” I say. “We went looking for her together. We planned to be back late last night, but there was a bear on the trail and we had to hide in one of the cabins.”
Dad gives a snort like he doesn’t believe me. I roll my eyes, but I don’t say anything.
Teffeteller’s eyes widen, but it comes off as performative, as if she’s humoring me.
“Can you tell me everything that happened?” she asks.
I don’t have a good reason not to. I sit down across from her and tell her everything that’s happened since we set out for the island. Dad makes little scoffing noises every so often, but I don’t respond to it.
While I’m talking, the detective watches me from pale blue eyes, rimmed with lashes so short and light you can barely see them. Officer Sapolu is making notes in a small book. When I’m done, Teffeteller leans forward, forearm on her knees.
“So you and Ben talk about Zahra quite a bit, then,” she says.
“Yeah, I mean . . . we’re both really worried,” I say.
“Has he told you much about the night of the party?” she asks. “Has he talked about the fight they had, or . . .”
“I don’t know anything he hasn’t told you,” I say. “He accused her of cheating. They broke up. He stormed off. He went caribou hunting after. When he came back she was missing.” I look around the table. “Look, Ben’s trying to find her as hard as anyone.”
The detective holds up her hands placatingly. “We all want to find Zahra, Ruth. And that’s why it’s so important for you to think about whether Ben said anything that struck you as odd. Did he describe the argument? Did he talk about his hunting trip at all?”
I Know You Remember Page 17