by Carrie Mac
I put the first square in my lap and stare at it. I’m not going to do anything. These squares don’t really matter. They don’t mean anything more than the prayers I tried when Pete was dying. I don’t believe in that kind of power, so this won’t do anything for me. It works for Preet because she believes in her god, and dharma.
I don’t believe in anything.
But yet I find myself putting the marker to the nylon and drawing the crystal I just found. I set it aside and pick up a square of his sleeping bag and draw a cube, for the pyrite. I draw the arrowhead on another, and for each talisman that I lost, I make a drawing on a square—the agate and the triangle of mica. They look like nothing at all, like some scribbles a toddler would make, but I know what they mean. I draw water, for the time we almost drowned. I draw the bridge we jumped off to get away from the man. The dam where they found my mom’s body. The bathtub where he found his mom. A dog, for all the ones we walked. A TV for Gigi. Earth for Everett, and a big flower for my dad. A dahlia, like a firework. I draw a star for Preet, a mountain for this place, flames for all the fire, and a heart for Otis, who is taking care of mine.
The last one I draw is a unicorn, jumping over the moon.
Of course.
* * *
—
The length of prayer flags is so long that I tie one end to a skinny pine tree at the edge of the burned forest, string it across the clearing where they found Pete, hook it on the little oak tree, and draw it all the way over to the big oak tree. I hand the end to Preet and catch a low branch and swing myself up. She passes up the ribbon, and I tie it above me with a double knot.
From up here, I can see across the creek and beyond the little grove on the other side. The view is what Pete called “suntacular.” The sun is starting to set, so the light is illuminating only one side of everything. There is a dark side, and there is a light side. There is a world without Pete, and there is a world with Pete, even now.
I hold the flags on this end tight in my fist. I might not believe enough to pray, but these are talismans, like the ones I lost. They’re all here somewhere, and now these flags will be too, until the elements decide it’s time to take them, like they took Pete. I rest my forehead against the tree trunk, my fist closed so tight around the cloth that my fingers feel numb.
Tears wet my cheeks, which are so dirty that when the tears fall and land on my other arm, they are little dark splotches. Otis puts his paws on the trunk below, whining. My heart guard can’t get up to me.
You left me, Pete.
That was never part of the deal.
I am so sorry that I couldn’t save you.
I take the marker from my pocket and turn over the flag with the unicorn on it.
I’m sorry, I write.
I write the same thing on the back of the rest of the flags in my hand.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
After we scatter the last of his ashes in the clearing, neither of us wants to sleep. I don’t want to sleep anywhere nearby even, so as it gets dark, we switch on our headlamps and I take Preet’s hand and we make our way into the forest, heading for the hot spring, with my GPS fully charged and topographical maps in my pack and on my phone, which I can always charge up with my new solar-powered power bank. Coyotes yip in the distance. Otis barks back, and they wisely fall silent.
“I’m really afraid,” Preet says. “But I trust you.”
This was my best hope for Pete, at the end.
That even though he was really afraid, he trusted me.
* * *
—
After the hike, when we finally get to where we left Preet’s car, I put my hand on the roof. Warm from days of sunshine, cute and compact. Like Preet.
“Barely two hours from civilization!” She dumps her pack into the trunk and stands by, waiting for me to put mine in too. Otis is normally the first one into any car, but he’s sticking by my side, obviously clued in to the fact that I have no intention of getting into the car. “Come on, let’s go. Ice cream sandwiches are in our very near future, my dear.”
“I’m not coming with you, Preet.” When she opens her mouth to protest, I hold up my hands. “Wait, wait. Just let me talk.”
But what can I say, really? And why didn’t I come up with something sooner? All this time, hiking and thinking, and not once did I try to sort out what this moment might look like. I want to say everything to her, but I can’t. I just can’t.
“Would you take me up to the PNT? I want to hike back to Shook’s.”
“Haven’t you had enough?”
“I never get tired of being out here, Preet.”
“Really?” She shakes her head and crosses her arms, which she does only when she’s preparing to win an argument, which she’ll probably still do in the courtroom in front of the jury when she becomes a lawyer. This is not Preet’s place. She doesn’t like any of this. The bugs, the dirt, the unpredictable weather, sleeping on a mat on the ground, eating reconstituted vegetarian lasagna with a spork out of a titanium pot. She can’t understand.
“You can’t tell me that you still want to be out here, after everything?”
“I do.” I pull her into a hug. “Unfold your arms and hug me back.”
“I worry about you,” she says.
“So do I.” I kiss her cheek, then the other.
“I don’t love you just because Pete loved you,” she says. “Although that is what it was in the beginning, when you hated me. And don’t insult my intelligence by claiming that you didn’t hate me. I know how it was for you.”
“Maybe there was a little bit of hate,” I say. “But you don’t know how it was for me. For me and Pete. Since we were little.”
“Well, I love you, Annie.”
I never thought about loving her. She belonged to Pete. She was the beautiful, wonderful thing that was taking him away from me. But I trusted him. So if he loved her…
I cannot believe that it took me this long to get to this moment.
So if he loved her, then it’s okay for me to love her too. Especially now. I sweep Preet into another hug, this one tight and messy as we both cry all over each other’s shoulders and Otis bumps his dirty head against our legs, worried for both of us.
“I love you too, Preet!” I pull away and hold her at arm’s length. “I absolutely love you! Now drive me up the road ten miles and drop me off at the PNT and go get yourself an ice cream sandwich!”
“You’re crazy, Annie,” Preet says as she gets into the car.
“I come by it naturally.”
“I didn’t mean your mom,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“It’s okay.” I hold up a hand. “Better the devil you know.”
“Honestly, though, you shouldn’t be out here alone. What is out there? This is ridiculous. Come home with me, please? What am I supposed to tell your dad?”
“Tell him that I’m not ready,” I say. “This forest? The wilderness? The mountains and the ocean and rivers and all the dense quiet in between? This is where I need to be right now.”
For a moment, Preet doesn’t say anything, and then her shoulders slump, and I know she isn’t going to argue anymore.
“Tell him I’ll send him letters. Folded into origami unicorns. Or my sad attempt at unicorns. Pete must’ve shown me a hundred times, but mine still look like pieces of paper folded into messy folded-up pieces of paper. When they come, just know that they’re unicorn heads.”
“You’ll send me some too?” Preet smiles.
“You too,” I say. “I already have the square paper, and I already have the envelopes, and I already have the stamps. I’m not going away, Preet. I promise. I’m just going.”
* * *
—
Preet dro
ps me off ten miles up the road at the trailhead to the Pacific Northwest Trail that Pete and I didn’t even get close to, and then she drives away slowly, keeping me in sight in the rearview mirror as long as she can, just in case I change my mind and decide to go with her. I have to wait until she crosses the first cattle guard and takes the corner, because I don’t want her to see that I’m not getting on the trail to go see Shook. I know I’ll see him again, but not just yet.
Instead, I stay on the road and carry on north, with Otis at my heels. When I hear a logging truck behind me, I stick out my thumb, and it stops so Otis and I can climb up into the cab. While Preet was asleep the night before, I scrolled up the topo maps until I found the nearest train tracks west to east. Otis and I are going to hop a train going east to I don’t know where.
Pete will be with us, even if he isn’t. Just like Gigi, and my mom too. It will be crowded with all of us, but not so crowded that I can’t run to catch a train, with my dog jumping up behind me. Not so crowded that we can’t all sit there and watch the mountains rush by, with wildfire smoke in the distance.
© BELINDA WHITE, APPLE STAR PHOTOGRAPHY
Carrie Mac is also the author of 10 Things I Can See from Here, which was an ALA Rainbow List Selection and a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. She lives in East Vancouver with her two children.
carriemac.com
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