Wild Like Us

by Krista Ritchie

  I end up staring at the sky.

  “She won’t,” Akara says strongly. “Winona will understand it was self-defense. If it were you or the cougar, she’d choose you.”

  I know that’s true, but there’s a part of me that also knows she’ll look at me differently once she finds out.

  Our dad never had to kill anything, but I took an animal’s life at twenty-one. I’m the one who went into the cougar’s home. The mountains—I don’t live in these mountains. I was just wandering by.

  And sure, maybe other families hunt wild game for sport and killing a cougar would be no big fucking deal, but all my life, I’ve been taught to preserve the wilderness and the creatures that inhabit it. My spirit has been tied to the outdoors for so long, and right now it feels as if I’m not worthy to belong here.

  “It’s not supposed to be easy,” Banks tells me. “What you’re feeling now. It’s normal, Sulli.”

  I meet his brown eyes that pull at me with compassion and understanding. He’s a Marine. I don’t know how much he’s seen or what he’s done, but in this moment, he’s holding me without wrapping his arms around me.

  I breathe.

  My limbs have stopped shaking, and Akara’s left hand is steady. The three of us are huddled together, and once we stand up, once we make our way back to camp, all of this will feel more real.

  We’re slow to our feet.

  “Can you walk?” Banks asks me.

  Taking a few steps forward, my legs ache but they support my body enough. “I’m good.” I glance to my left. “Akara?”

  “I’m good, too.” He’s already walking towards the cougars. No limp. No shuffling. All great signs. Maybe we will just come out of this bruised and scraped up.

  But the wounds are deeper than my fleeting optimism. I feel the harsh stinging across my body as Akara stops beside the cougar he stabbed. A haunted expression shifts over his face. “They’re going to rot here. Or be eaten by other prey.”

  “Not if we bury them,” Banks breathes.

  I nod. “We’ll come back here tonight, Kits. I have those shovels at camp.” Pooper scoopers, Winona calls them. I packed shovels to dig latrines.

  Now we’re going to be digging graves.

  “Okay,” Akara says and looks to Banks. “After yo—”

  “No way in hell,” Banks refutes. “You’re not following behind again. We walk side-by-side together this time so I can have your six.”

  Akara winces, more so at his wounds while he shifts. “I thought you hated making the calls, Banks.”

  “But this one is too easy.”

  “My vote is with Banks,” I tell Akara. “And I know I’m not a bodyguard and I probably don’t get a vote, but I’m creating one right now. So it’s two-to-one. You’re outvoted.”

  His smile looks like it aches to rise. “No I’m not. Because I’m voting with you.”

  And that’s how it goes. Step-by-step, we trek to our secluded camp. All the while, I never drop my gun. The closer we get, the tighter my grip becomes. Banks and Akara keep looking at me, at the weapon, and I feel their building concern.

  Shoes crunching leaves, our empty camp comes into view. Darkness has nearly set in, and I’m just on autopilot. Grabbing a couple battery-operated lanterns from our gear, I switch on the light.

  One tent.

  The emptiness of the tent doesn’t feel as safe as the spot between Akara and Banks. I venture back out to the fire pit. Where they both are popping lids to two First-Aid kits.

  Once more, Banks eyes my hand that clutches the gun. He says nothing to me and instead turns to Akara. “You’re going first. Don’t fight it, man.”

  “Hey, I’m supposed to order you around. Stop trying to take my job.” He sits down on a tree stump.

  I come up behind him. “How do you feel about going topless, Kits?” His shirt hangs by one inch of fabric at his shoulder.

  “Rip it,” he tells me.

  To do that, I’ll have to put the gun down. Instead, I decide to lean in and take the fabric in my teeth. I tear it off easily, and the bloodied shirt falls to the ground.

  Akara watches me for a long second, and when my eyes meet his, I’m throttled with his worry. “Sul, you’re going to have to set it down eventually.”

  “Not yet.” It scares me how much my voice shakes.

  “Okay.” There’s pain behind his eyes. A different kind of pain. He knows it’s not okay. I’m not okay.

  Banks comes over, his hand just covers mine for a second. Encased over my fingers and the hilt of the gun. He stays there.

  My pulse is in my throat. “I can’t…” I shake my head.

  “You can. It’s alright. I’m right here. Akara is here.”

  I choke out, “I need to protect myself.” Is that it? I think I’m more terrified of not being able to help them again. Of losing them, of being alone.

  The emptiness.

  The painful, guttural cavern they’d leave behind. How could that ever be filled again?

  Akara reaches out to me and places a hand on my back. “You don’t need the gun to do that, Sulli. You can let go.”

  Banks never forces the gun from my grip. He waits.

  His hand feels more like a comfort. So does Akara’s on my back.

  And slowly, I loosen my fingers and release my clutch.

  Banks checks the safety on my gun, then stores it safely in a backpack. None of us can hug, not when we need to clean up and deal with our wounds. So that’s what we do first.

  Quietly and methodically, we use the lanterns to help assess Akara’s wounds.

  The worst gashes are along his shoulder blade and a bite mark near his elbow. Akara washes off the blood with water. Antiseptic, gauze, and a tight bandage—that should hold up until we see Farrow.

  “If you feel dizzy at all, you better tell us,” I say to him.

  “I will,” Akara promises.

  Banks pulls off his shirt and lowers his shorts. Dried blood stains his skin. I shrug off my Camp Calloway tee and cargo shorts. Blood drips from my hair and down to my chest, soaking into my sports bra.

  There is no hesitation. I can’t keep it on. Gripping the bottom elastic band, I pull off the bra and let it fall to the ground.

  We’re all standing, and I stay between Akara and Banks. For some reason, this feels the safest. I stop shaking between their warmth and height. I pile my hair up into a high bun.

  “Where does it hurt?” Akara asks me.

  “My waist mostly,” I whisper. “Right here.” I reach down to the spot near my belly button. The blood is mine, not the cougars’.

  Carefully, Akara pours water over the claw mark. I bite down in a wince, and Banks uses a cloth to wipe the blood away. Revealing fresh scratches. We rip open more bandages. Add more antiseptic to each other. I can tell they’re trying hard not to cause me more pain.

  The fact that they’re so gentle with me just adds more emotion on top of the emotional cocktail I’ve been fucking drinking.

  I blow out a measured breath. Among everything, I’m just glad they’re here.

  23

  BANKS MORETTI

  With a hard thrust, I push the flimsy, collapsible shovel into the soft earth. Hours into grave digging, sweat builds on my temple despite the frigid air tonight. A lit cigarette hangs between my lips. Embers eat the paper, and I take a quick drag, blowing smoke off to the side before continuing.

  Across from me, Sulli digs the second grave, and near her, Akara rests on the ground. Forearms to his knees, he catches his breath from his shift digging. He’s on “break” since we’ve only got two shovels.

  Night air is thick with death. Among spruce trees, we found a grassy clearing for the graves, and two cougars lie lifeless, bleeding into the dirt and grass beside us. I’m more used to death than I’d like to admit.

  But it still knocks me back. Almost losing Akara, then Sulli, that sucker-punched me. Thinking about how close I was to the brutal loss now is like an invisible hand around my wind
pipe. Every so often I feel the ghost of a hand clench tighter.

  Christ, I’ll take a hundred more migraines. Just don’t take them.

  You hear me? I look up at the sky, then back at the dirt. Shoveling once more.

  Only thing that keeps my mind right and snapped to is feeling the smoke run down the back of my throat. Alive.

  Alive.

  Alive.

  Each word pumps into my head as I suck in the nicotine.

  “I thought you quit.” Sulli’s voice sounds loud in the night. Ever since we began digging hours ago, we’ve been quiet.

  “I did.” Plucking the cigarette from my lips, I keep it pinched between my fingers and skillfully dig the shovel into the dirt again.

  Akara and Sulli share some sort of look.

  I don’t stare too long to decode it.

  While Akara fits on a baseball cap backwards, he tells me, “I don’t even know why you brought cigarettes on this trip.”

  “For nights like this.” I heave the shovel back into the ground. Loose dirt comes up. “When bad shit goes down, the only thing that sounds like heaven-on-Earth is a good smoke.”

  “You passed that point like five cigarettes ago,” Akara says with the wave of his hand to me. “Now you’re just chain-smoking.”

  I flip him off, but I can’t really disagree. Once I start, it’s hard to find the will to stop. It’s buried too far beneath the dirt I shovel.

  “I’m digging a fuckin’ grave, Akara. Let me have my moment.”

  He makes a cross sound, verging on a laugh. “Sure. Tomorrow they’re going in the lake.”

  Sulli flings dirt to the side. “I’ll fucking help.”

  “Yeah, you would,” I say, wiping sweat off my brow. “Drawn to the water, aren’t you?”

  Her smile flickers in and out. Like she craves to feel weightless, but the situation is just heavy weight, dragging us all down. She stops digging suddenly.

  My jaw hardens in a deeper frown. “Sulli?”

  “What’s wrong?” Akara asks.

  “What if this whole trip was a bad idea,” she whispers, more to the empty hole at her feet than to us. “My dad might’ve been right. I’m named after his best friend who passed away at twenty-seven. He was your age, Akara—to think that this wouldn’t have been cursed from the start…”

  “This trip is not cursed, Sul,” Akara says. “You and I might be surrounded by death, but Banks isn’t. Hey, he’s like our very tall good luck charm.”

  Fuck.

  I must wear my devastation on my face because Akara immediately says, “Banks.” Like my name is made of glass and he’s cradling the damn thing in his hands.

  In the tense silence, I find the empty water bottle where I’ve been tossing cigarette butts. Careful not to start a forest fire while I’m at it. With their concerned eyes pressed on me, I take one more long drag and ditch the cigarette.

  Ghost hands wrap tight around my throat. Harder to breathe, harder to think.

  I’ve never had to tell this story out loud. It’d been a gift to go this long without unearthing that kind of pain. But it’s also agony keeping it buried in this moment.

  Either way, I’m going to hurt.

  “I had an older brother,” I mutter those words. I wonder if Thatcher explained this better to Jane. How perfectly did he unleash the past we share? I lift a shoulder. “He died when he was fifteen. Quarry accident. Drowned. I was twelve.”

  Sulli takes in a breath. “Banks, I’m so fucking sorry.”

  I shake my head. “It was a long time ago. I have mixed feelings about everything, so I like to leave it in the past.”

  “That’s why you didn’t tell me?” Akara asks, hurt cinching his face. “Thatcher never said anything either…”

  I bob my head. “We silently agreed to never speak about it.” I pause to meet his eyes. “I’m gonna be honest, Akara, I never planned on telling you or anyone, really.” I don’t add that I’d always hoped it’d come up between him and Thatcher, and I’d just let my twin brother explain it all.

  “Why?” Akara frowns.

  “Because that’s what we, Moretti boys, do.” I force the shovel back into the ground. “We bury the back-breaking, head-splitting shit and don’t ever speak about it.” I ache for another cigarette. “Maybe because we love each other so damn much that it’s hard enough feeling my pain—do I really want to feel Thatcher’s on top of it?”

  It’d cut me open tenfold.

  It already does.

  I add, “And then after a while, it takes too much energy to speak about the painful thing. So we don’t share with anyone until it’s more painful than the thing we buried.”

  Akara stands up. “Hey, you know I’m here, man? Whatever you want to share with me, I appreciate.” He steps closer. “And I can’t imagine keeping my dad’s death a secret from my friends. That couldn’t have been easy.”

  I let out a hoarse laugh. The ghost hand clenches tighter around my throat. “Easier than it probably should be.”

  “What was his name?” Sulli asks, then cringes. “You don’t have to answer that. Fuck, you said you wanted to keep it in the past. I’m bad with words—”

  “His name was Skylar,” I say quickly. “And I like your words.”

  She lets out a soft breath. “One day, if you want to talk about him, I’ll be here to listen.”

  “Me too,” Akara says.

  Pressure eases off my windpipe.

  I breathe in. “Thanks,” I say into a strong nod. One day, I hope I can tell them more. How my parents’ divorce is wrapped like a vice around Skylar’s death. How everything goes back to that one moment. How one night changed my whole world.

  Tonight could’ve done the same thing.

  Maybe it already has.

  Like the turn of a car, heading in a new, unexpected and unknown direction. One we didn’t plan or map out, but one that was meant for us.

  For whatever reason, we’re here together.

  I lean the shovel against a tree to pluck another cigarette from the pack. “So we’ve got Adam Sully…” I put the cigarette between my lips. “My older brother.” I light it with a Zippo and suck on the end. My eyes hit Akara and blow out smoke. “And your dad.” With the cigarette pinched between fingers, I motion between the three of us. “What does that make us? Some sort of Death Brigade.”

  “The Death Brigade,” Akara repeats with a short laugh and peeking smile.

  “We all just made it out alive,” Sulli tells us. “Maybe that actually makes us the Life Brigade.”

  “I guess we’ll see.” I grab my shovel and keep digging.

  Not even five minutes later, Sulli curses loudly, “Fuck.” The handle of her shovel just broke off. I’m more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.

  I look to Akara. “Too strong for her own good.”

  “A travesty,” Akara quips. “Do we need to bury her in a third hole?”

  “Fuck off,” she curses, frustrated, and she collapses on her ass.

  Akara and I stop joking around with Sulli, and we all take a break. Grouped together in the dark, we pass out the only snacks left in the hiking backpack.

  Teddy Grahams and applesauce.

  With sweaty, bloody clothes and dirtied hands, we eat together, and as I finish off a cup of applesauce, I look around at where we are, what we’re doing, and I start laughing.

  Sulli puts a hand to my head. “Are you concussed?”

  My chest rises in a bigger laugh. “I was just thinking about how we’re eating food that first belonged to a baby, digging graves with shovels meant for shitholes, and we’re in a meadow with a Meadows.”

  Akara and Sulli flash their headlamps around the grassy clearing we chose. Sure enough, they realize we’re in an actual meadow. And they both start laughing with me.

  “Shit,” Akara breathes into the light sound. “I needed that.” He touches the back of my head.

  “It’s what I’m here for.” I swig my water that I wish were beer. “Th
e Meadows-in-a-meadow jokes.”

  Sulli sways into me like she means to slug my arm, but instead, she just leans her weight against my side. I wrap an arm over her shoulder.

  Akara keeps a hand on her knee.

  Laughter has faded, but resting among each other carries a solace and comfort that I’d rather not leave behind.

  24

  AKARA KITSUWON

  After heaving the cougars in the graves, we shovel dirt on top. Covering their bodies, I crouch down while Banks hangs his head and Sulli presses her fingers to her lips.

  I touch the packed-in dirt.

  It was you or us.

  I’m sorry it had to be you.

  After a quiet moment, I rise. Banks makes a sign of the cross, and Sulli exhales a deeper breath.

  “Let’s go,” I tell them.

  They nod and follow. We make our way back to camp. It’s late. We’re all filthy and cut-up. Most of my pain centralizes on the bite mark around my elbow. Stinging escalates whenever I shift my arm, but I wash the ache down with some over-the-counter pain meds.

  Sulli is rigging a makeshift shower. A plastic sack, resembling an IV bag, is full of boiled water that’s been warming in the sun all day. She hooks the bag to a tree limb, but there’s only enough water for one warm shower.

  Before the cougar attack, we talked about just washing off in the river. Now that’s not happening. I don’t trust how well we’ve bandaged our wounds, and wading in a river with open cuts is parasite-central.

  So I grab a water bottle. “You take the shower, Sul.” Unscrewing the cap, I’m prepared to do a quick clean-off.

  “No way.” She steals the bottle, then blocks Banks from grabbing one out of his backpack, a hand to his chest. “The temperature outside has dropped too much—you’ll both have popsicle dicks if you try to bathe with bottled water.”

  My lips quirk into a smile.

  Banks makes a noise that sounds like a deep laugh.

  After this crazy night, I can’t believe we’re still able to find humor. I should probably go check my phone now that we’re back at camp with cell service. Running a security firm and a gym is a full-time gig, and the amount of missed calls, texts, and emails keep piling the longer I neglect them.