Animals We Are

by Valerie Brandy

  Maybe he’s hiding something. Maybe he hasn’t told me the whole truth about Cassandra. Maybe I’m just imagining red flags that aren’t even there. But whatever the explanation is— whether Mike is good, bad, or a little bit of both— he’s still mine. He’s a member of my pack, and I won’t stop until I find him.

  A rustling sound echoes from the trees behind me. My fists fly to my face as I look over my shoulder, ready to fight. A woman steps forward, and I’m sure it’s Cassandra. She’s happy that her plan worked— she’s found me, alone— and she’s going to accomplish what she came here for.

  But then the moonlight falls on her face, revealing that she’s not Cassandra at all.

  “Sue,” I drop my arms.

  “I didn’t want you to think—” Sue pauses, trying to find the right words. “I didn’t want you think no one cared.”

  We stand across from each other, two women suddenly connected by the very thing that divides us. A long chasm stretches between us, as wide as it is deep. We build a bridge.

  Sue crosses it, handing me something. I hold it up to the moonlight. It’s a Ziploc bag, filled with five packages of powdered eggs, and a fire starter.

  “I can’t take these,” I start to say, but Sue doesn’t let me refuse.

  “Take them.”

  “You guys might need them…”

  “We’ll manage,” Sue says. Then, she holds out a hand, and I take it in mine. We shake on it.

  What “it” is I can’t exactly verbalize, except that it’s a silent agreement as old as humanity itself. It’s the one that led to cities, and to storytelling, and to families, and to me, and to you. It’s a contract woven into our DNA. We break it as often as we abide by it, but it’s never rendered invalid. It never expires.

  It’s tempting to talk about it out loud— to address the magic of it— but Sue’s eyes connect with mine, and I think better of it. Being party to an unspoken agreement is like making a wish on your birthday; if you talk about it, it might not come true. Instead, I settle for something simple.

  “Thank you,” I say, and Sue nods, because she knows what I mean.

  “When we get to the resort, we’ll radio help to Taft Point, right away,” she promises.

  My lips feign a smile. I’m trying to be encouraging, even though I know help won’t find me. By the time Sue reaches the resort, I’ll already have left Taft Point. If Cassandra’s letter is to be believed, I’ll find another clue on the mountain, which will lead to another clue in a different location, and another, and another, until so much time passes that Mike and I belong to the forest, just like Brock.

  Sue releases my hand and I turn to leave, but a loud noise stops me. It’s a scream— a man’s scream— and it’s coming from the direction of our camp. It’s such a primal sound that it’s felt more than heard. The entire forest sits up and pays attention. Sue’s face floods with fear.

  I start to run back toward camp, but Sue grips my arm.

  “Go! You’ve waited long enough,” she says, nodding toward the direction I was heading.

  “What if it’s her?! You guys might need—”

  Sue cuts me off. “We don’t need anything,” she says, and the words sting a little, even though she’s saying it for all the right reasons.

  “But—”

  Sue shakes her head. “You get yours, I’ll get mine. Now, go!”

  She pulls me into her arms and hugs me tight, and the embrace is so quick I barely have time to capture the memory. Then, Sue’s running back toward camp, shouting over her shoulder, “Go, Zoe! Run!”

  There’s no time to think about it. My legs take over, and before I know it I’m speeding away from the camp, from the lake, and from my friends, the Hardingers. Branches hit my face and my feet ache in my boots, yet I push onward, driven by the primal desire to put as much space as possible between myself and Cassandra.

  I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing. But I keep running anyway, my breath catching in my throat, eyes watering as I think about Sue’s promises to Ken, and Mike’s promises to me, and what we all owe each other.

  12

  Tuesday

  I stay close to the edge of the lake for as long as possible, but eventually I’m forced to break off and wade deeper into the forest. Tenaya Lake disappears from view, growing smaller with each glance over my shoulder.

  The Lake served as an easy indicator of location. Now, as I push deeper into the trees, I’ll have to stop more often to track my direction. A compass is not a GPS, and if I get off course, I won’t be able to call on a satellite for help with pinpointing my exact coordinates. I’m like an ancient maritime sailor, using the stars and a sextant to locate my position in a vast, empty ocean. The sun won’t rise for hours, and the forest knows it; the wild is so quiet and devoid of human life that it might as well be the Atlantic.

  My flashlight doesn’t offer much illumination, its rays weaving through the trees, struggling to make the world clear again without the benefit of moonlight bouncing off the lake. The forest is dense here, and the pine trees grow so close together that their needles crisscross over each other like stitches. My progress slows as my feet stumble over pinecones and fallen logs. The trail is gone.

  Anyone else would stop and make camp until daylight, but I’m afraid to lose my head-start. If the scream Sue and I heard means that Cassandra found our camp, then she’s behind me, not ahead of me. Mike is safe— most likely restrained and incapacitated— but safe, for now. She can’t kill him if she’s not near him. Maybe I can beat her to the end destination, wherever that is.

  The forest leans over me, blanketing me in shadow as I try not to think about what might have happened to Sue, and Ken, and Logan. Images flood the night: their bodies laid side-by-side, just like Brock’s, their jaws shattered, eyes wide open. Instead of looking at them, I distract myself by counting steps, or how many times an owl hoots. Better to focus on the mundane. Dwelling on worst-case scenarios might make me curl up in a ball and never get up again.

  My feet tangle up in some brush. A branch scratches into my arm, leaving a thick, searing line. I try not to look at it, pressing deeper into the emptiness, feeling more alone with every step. Minutes pass by, turning into hours, my heart speeding up with every step, because it knows that I’m approaching something awful.

  I saw it on the map when I first developed a strategy to reach Taft Point, and immediately felt my stomach turn over. Avoiding it with another route would have taken days. And Mike might not have days.

  Moonlight shines through branches and the trees scatter, fading into a less dense arrangement— a sign that I’m close. My pace slows. If I approach too fast, I might make a fatal misstep. My flashlight turns in my hand as I clutch it closer, waiting for the world to open up.

  It does, and my relief at heading in the right direction is tainted by bone-chilling dread of what comes next.

  My feet are at the edge of a tall ravine, a deep valley carved between two mountains. I’m positioned on the shorter side, and while it’s not a completely vertical drop, the incline is extreme enough that scaling it qualifies as rock climbing more than hiking. My mouth goes dry and my fists clench. Vertigo makes the world spin.

  It’s difficult to estimate the slope of the ravine without teetering over the edge. My hands wrap around the straps of my backpack to keep it from slipping off as I bend over. Rocks scatter, free-falling in mid-air, taking eons to hit the bottom. This side of the mountain isn’t a perfect right angle, but it’s pretty close— maybe a ninety-five degree spread. Just short of a vertical cliff face. Walking down is not an option. I’ll have to descend with my back to the ravine in order to find footholds in the mountain.

  My flashlight tosses light at the side of the ravine, but it can’t illuminate the bottom because the distance is too far. Tree roots stick out of the soil, and layered geology has created uneven patches of metamorphic rock. There’s plenty of places to hold onto, and if I’m smart, I’ll probably make it down alive.


  At first glance, the bottom of the ravine is just a gulley of rocks hidden in shadow, their outlines difficult to make out through the darkness— harmless, until I think about where they came from, and the possibility of rock slides.

  You don’t know for sure that they came from the mountains. Maybe they were already there, I lie to myself.

  It’s too late to find another route. I’m committed to this.

  I hang my flashlight around my neck, letting it dangle freely as I get on my hands and knees and back myself toward the edge of the mountain, grasping onto a tree root in order to ease myself over the side.

  This is the hardest part. Beginning is always the hardest part.

  My feet flail against the soil for a moment, but then they find traction, slowly, carefully guiding me over the edge of the mountain.

  One hand at a time.

  Anything is possible if you break the process down into tiny, manageable pieces. The thought makes me stop to take in the width of the ravine, and suddenly I’m thinking of Mike, and the day that I met him, and the feeling that there’s always been a distance between us that I can’t seem to close.

  My climb becomes a pattern, which I rinse and repeat. First, my right hand— the dominant one— grabs the flashlight from around my neck and searches for a new hold. Once my right hand is safely gripping a tree branch, or clutching around a rock, I work on the left. When both hands have found safety, it’s time for the feet. Sometimes I’m lucky and my boots are able to rest on a protrusion. Other times, they’re flat against the mountain, creating an almost unbearable tension in my biceps. I’m nearly blind in the dark, relying on pale moonlight for most steps in my pattern.

  Relying on patterns— on the things that I know, the things I can trust— is the key to my survival. This is something Mike’s never understood.

  My hand closes on a round rock, and for a second its smooth exterior becomes the handle to the front door of my last apartment, the one I lived in before Mike and I moved in together. The building was a historical landmark, a fancy label that only served as an excuse for the land-lord to avoid renovations. Hallways lined with paisley carpets, rife with the wet, clinging scent of mold. Lead paint peeling from the lobby walls. Gold mailboxes with curling leaf accents and keys bent from too many years of use. The building needed work, but for every hazardous piece of it, there was also something beautiful, something rare. Stained glass windows on the entire first floor. Original mahogany molding on edges of doorways. French doors, fire places, and built-in cabinets in the luckiest of apartments, including mine. Sure, it was falling apart, but it was my falling apart.

  The first time I brought Mike over to my apartment, the round, dated door-knob on the front entrance to my unit came right off in my hand.

  “Does that happen a lot?” he asked, staring at the gold orb cradled in my palm.

  “Depends on how you define a lot,” I answered, popping it back into place with the motion of a practiced expert.

  Mike offered to fix it for me, right up until the day we moved in together.

  “It’s not safe,” he would argue. “Anyone could waltz right in!”

  “But ‘anyone’ doesn’t know about the doorknob, so who cares? If someone wants to break into my place, let them try. I’ve been wanting an excuse to buy a new TV.”

  For once, Mike didn’t laugh.

  Logically, Mike was right. I needed a new doorknob.

  But I loved the way my apartment was just a little broken, and the fact that I knew how to fix it. I loved peering into the inner workings of the door, glimpsing exposed bolts and metal, a clock-work mystery revealing itself to me.

  There was no way to explain to Mike— without hurting his feelings— that letting him help me felt like a greater threat than hypothetical robbers. If we didn’t work out, every time I came home— every time the door knob didn’t pop out in my hand but rested quietly in place— it would be a reminder of something lost.

  My patterns weren’t perfect, but they were mine, and they kept me from getting hurt. It was an impossible thing to convey to him, and the fact that he couldn’t understand it made me feel far away from him, like we were standing on opposite sides of a ravine as wide as this one.

  My arm trembles in place, and my right hand misses the branch it was grabbing by a fraction of an inch. The misstep takes me by surprise, jogging me back into the present moment, but not quickly enough. My left hand relaxes, and for a second my body churns with the sensation of falling, certain that I’m tumbling down the ravine, heading for the jagged rocks at the bottom that lie in wait. My left hand manages to find another hold, and I’m back in position, shaken, but spared from death.

  My stomach settles. I’ve learned my lesson. Focus.

  I’m not sure how long it takes me to finish the descent, but the journey feels infinite. At some point I decide it’s never going to end, and resign myself to a future like Sisyphus, rolling a stone up a hill for all of eternity. Hand over hand, foot by foot, I rinse and repeat.

  This is my punishment for being closed-hearted, for not letting Mike fix my front door. An eternity climbing down a mountain with no end.

  My butt hits the bottom of the ravine before my feet. I’m not expecting it, and in response, my hands release their vice-like grips. Suddenly I’m lying on my back over a pile of rocks, staring up at star-speckled night sky, laughing like a drunk hyena.

  I’ve never felt so alive. If I did this, I can do anything.

  Watch out, Cassandra. I’m coming for you.

  ***

  The bottom of the ravine is a world all its own. The air sits heavy on my shoulders, like I’ve reached the deepest piece of a dark ocean crevice. It’s silent, here, with no sign of animal or plant life— just a rocky, desert trail that cuts through the forest, a thread that weaves back in on itself with no beginning or end.

  The muscles in my arms are useless, exhausted from the descent. Climbing the other half will be harder, and if I can sleep in this endless, desert wasteland, I should try.

  Rocks scatter as I kick them away, clearing a flat space on the dirt using just my feet in an attempt to let my arms recover.

  I unzip my sleeping bag, trying to calculate how much sleep I’ve had in the past two days. A couple hours on the boulder by Tenaya Lake. Restless fevers the night before. An exact amount can’t be calculated, but whatever it is, it’s not enough. They sky is lighter than it was when I started my descent, but maybe I can doze off before the sun rises and trick my body into sleeping longer.

  The sleeping bag wraps me in soft, gentle fabric, but my body won’t relax. It’s on high alert, waiting for some predator to find me. Every breeze that streaks through the ravine is Cassandra. Every twig that snaps is a warning.

  For some reason, I feel the need to light a fire, as if the flames will keep my enemy at bay. I reach for the fire starter and collect some brittle, dry branches from the bottom of the ravine, pieces that fell from the trees up above. They snap as I arrange them in a small pyre. It’s cold, but the air isn’t too moist— perfect conditions. Metal strikes metal, and a spark jumps onto the sticks, creating a blaze. I’ve done it on my first try.

  Flames warm my knees— my legs are curled up at the edge of the pyre, my sleeping bag repurposed as a pillow.

  My eyes are closed, but dreams won’t come. I’m coated in awareness of being on my own, and it’s a feeling that’s too big for me. I want to shrug it off like a dress I bought at Goodwill and later came to regret. The adrenaline rush I experienced earlier evaporates, and I’m left clutching some endorphins who hang around like the last guests at a party, wondering why everyone else went home so early.

  Mike would understand. It’s true, he couldn’t grasp my need to leave a broken doorknob as it was, but the ravine between us isn’t as wide as I sometimes imagine it is. Mike is an expert at understanding strange feelings, even the most insignificant ones. Sometimes he even comes up with words to describe them.

  On one dreary Saturd
ay in Silverlake, when the sky was dark and clouds hung heavy over the hilly streets beside our house, Mike and I decided to break up the day with comfort from our favorite deli. It’s an unimpressive place. Laminate countertops and a white tile floor. A glass display case with pastries inside that always look the same. But for some reason, being there makes us feel like we’re a part of something. Maybe it’s the fact that the menu labels the place as a “local establishment,” or just that the cashier remembers our names and agrees that the coffee is no good.

  On this particular day, I stepped outside my comfort zone and ordered something different than my usual, specifically requesting extra pickles and no dressing. The second the sandwich slid over the counter I regretted my decision— the bread was too oaty, the pickles too salty, the cheese too mild. It was waste of a sandwich, but I couldn’t morally justify getting a new one, because this one was exactly what I ordered

  “What do you call this feeling?” I asked Mike.

  He thought about it, chewing on his perfectly-made turkey-cheddar combo.

  “Breadshamefraude,” he said. “From the Latin root for ‘Shame,’ meaning ‘to cover,’ the German ‘freude’ meaning ‘joy,’ and the English ‘bread’ meaning— bread.”

  “Joy?” I said, picking at the crust of my terrible sandwich. “Why joy?”

  He grabbed a plastic knife and cut his sandwich in half, passing it to me across the table.

  “Joy at having a boyfriend who’s willing to share.”

  It wasn’t just that Mike shared, but that he didn’t belittle a ridiculous feeling. He named it for me. He’s always naming things for me. It’s a small characteristic in a person, but it’s the kind that grows on you over time. It’s the kind that makes you forgive him after a fight, the sort of thing that keeps you coming back to a person again and again, always wanting more, even when the road is rough.

  Ken was wrong. He has to be wrong.