My skin feels as if there’s an electric current running through it. Sam grins at me as if she knows things I don’t. Which is true.
Suddenly, I’m nervous. I’m worried about what I smell like or taste like or look like. When I produce the condom (stolen weeks ago from Judith’s drawer), the crinkling of the package seems amplified in the semi-dark. But then Sam’s kissing me again and I forget to worry. Her lips slide to my neck. I press hard against her. My breath seems loud in my ears and hers is just as loud against my skin.
The garage door is exponentially louder.
Sam swears as she rolls off me.
I’m frozen in the dark. My lungs refuse to operate.
“I think you might want your clothes,” Sam whispers. She sounds almost as if she’s laughing, but maybe my ears are frozen, too.
“Go,” she says.
I scramble for my pants. My belt is undone but I leave it that way. On the other side of the house, a door squeaks. I snatch my shirt from the entranceway, fling open the front door and dive outside. I practically hurl myself off the entrance stoop and into the shadow of the house.
My truck is here. Of course Corporal Ko has seen my truck.
But who cares? Because my shirt is on now, and thank God my keys are in the pocket of my jeans. I can turn the ignition and escape.
I’ve been driving for ten minutes before I realize I’m heading in exactly the wrong direction.
How do these things happen to me?
My face burns every time I replay my escape. I just want to get home.
I round the final curve, but as I’m about to pull off the highway, I spot a car in front of the logging-road gate.
Someone’s parked there.
I don’t stop to see whether it’s a broken-down car or a traveler taking a late-night nap. Instead I drive ahead, pull a U-turn and double back to the campground. I cut the engine and wrap myself in an old blanket from behind my seat.
I spend the night in a half-doze, not sure if I’m awake or dreaming. And when I finally pry my eyes open at dawn and take stock of my numb toes and frozen nose, I know one thing.
I don’t like running and hiding.
•
The strange car is gone by the time I drive back to our logging road, so I make it up the mountain for breakfast and a shower. But then I head back into town. Dad needs me to meet with a contact. Plus I made the mistake of mentioning that Judith looked tired, and now Mom wants to send her wild ginger. Enough to feed a small village for a year.
As I reach cell reception, my phone buzzes and buzzes with texts from Sam. But I don’t answer. I haven’t figured out whether I’m embarrassed or mad. Or if I’m overreacting and the entire situation should be funny. Maybe this is another version of the lipsticked locker?
But no, I think I’m angry. She said her dad was working night shift.
Every time I remember the sound of the garage door, my insides shrivel.
When the phone buzzes again, I turn it off and shove it into my pocket.
It’s early afternoon by the time I pull into the bar parking lot. I find Judith inside dusting window ledges, though the place seems to suit a thin layer of dust. The carpet is an orange and brown pattern, the tables are wood laminate, and the walls are hung with wagon wheels and beer signs. Even the few guys slouched at the tables look past-due.
My sister’s the only clean thing in this place.
“What are you doing here?” she says. “Other than breaking liquor laws and trying to get me fired?”
I drop the wild ginger on the counter. “Came to say hello. Make sure you’re okay.”
“Of course I’m okay,” she says.
She’s gone back to her dusting, so she says this to the window ledge more than to me.
“You didn’t look okay last week.”
Between Sam choosing canvases and my mini-meltdown, I never did find out what was bothering my sister.
“Did you and Garrett break up?” I ask, trying not to sound too hopeful.
“He wants me to move in with him,” she says.
I groan.
Judith narrows her eyes and turns away to shuttle a new pint to a guy in the corner.
I climb on a bar stool and wait, trying to rephrase my groan more diplomatically.
“You just got your own place,” I say when she gets back. “You can’t give that up already.”
“That bus is like an oven in this heat.”
I bite my tongue. Hard.
“He doesn’t want me working here anymore. Says there’s too many hands and too many eyes.”
“What do you think?”
She shrugs. “It’s not exactly five-star, is it?”
“You could get another job, easy. One of the restaurants, maybe.” Thus I prove it’s technically possible for me to be tactful.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to. Garrett has a nice place. Really nice.”
She’s going to stay in his house and do his laundry? Seriously?
“Garrett’s an ass.” Diplomacy over.
Judith folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t even know him.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Did you need something, or did you just come to irritate me?”
“You can’t move in with that guy. You may as well move back in with Walt. What the hell, Judith?”
She says nothing. Her jaw is clenched and she’s blinking fast. After a minute, she points toward the door.
I slide off the stool.
“I think you should be careful,” I say, turning to her one more time.
“Do you have any idea how hard this is? I’m all by myself here. And Garrett may have his faults, but he can be really sweet.”
“Yeah. Sweet like Big Bugger. Or Dusky.”
She shoves me the rest of the way out the door and slams it closed. For a few minutes I stand on the stoop and contemplate going back in. I come up with multiple ways to say “he’s an ass” using different words.
This is unlikely to help.
Eventually I stomp back to the truck and pull out of the parking lot, headed for the viewpoint where my meeting’s supposed to take place.
The whole way there, I stew. I don’t even know whether to blame Judith and her asshole boyfriend, or Dad and his bears for getting us into this situation. For driving Judith out.
I’m angry at Judith for not sticking up for herself and making her own choices…but who am I to be angry about something like that?
•
Two years ago, Judith was cleaning fish at the edge of the creek when one of the bears — an eccentric old guy named Dusky — decided the fish should be his. He swiped her long and deep across the back.
The image of Judith staggering into the cabin, shirt and skin in red ribbons, is burned into my eyelids. She wasn’t even crying. She was defiant, as if the thing she’d always expected had finally happened.
“What did you do?” That’s what Dad yelled.
I think he felt bad about it, after. He tiptoed around the house while Judith lay on her stomach, skin stitched together by Mom and slathered with salve. After a couple days, when she could get up again, Dad was the one who dragged the wicker chair inside and padded it with pillows.
I remember that. Him arranging the pillows. I’m not sure Judith does, though.
I also remember the sound of the shot when he killed the bear. And I remember the size of the hole we had to dig to fit that carcass. None of us could face the thought of eating the meat. Dad had known Dusky a long time.
•
I wheel into the viewpoint along the highway just west of town. Once I’ve scanned the place to make sure I’m the only one here, I cut the engine. I find a perch in the covered picnic area overlooking the patchwork of farm fields below. There’s an interpretive plaque here explaining
how the river was diked to allow this “fertile expanse of corn and canola.”
I hear the motorcycle long before I see it.
The plaque doesn’t say anything about illegal grows or motorcycle gangs.
When he pulls off his helmet, the guy reveals collar-length curly blond hair and cheeks pocked with acne. He’s younger than I expected. Younger and cockier.
“You the Mawson kid?” he asks.
I remind myself that we need this guy for the year’s profits.
“Isaac,” I say, reaching to shake his hand.
He has a firm grip at least. And he gets right to business.
“When will you be harvesting?”
“Early if the weather stays like this. Mid-August, maybe.”
“I’ll give you the number to call when you’re ready,” he says. I pass him my phone, and he punches in the number for his burner. He shoots me a few more questions about quantity and quality, which I answer automatically.
“What?” he asks then, eyebrows raised.
I realize I’m smirking at him.
I flush, but I tell him the truth. “Just thinking about what we’d be if we were born in a different place, that’s all. Maybe you’d be giving me stock tips.”
He cracks a smile for the first time. One of his teeth is half-black, rot growing from the root. “Not likely.”
He’s already climbing back on his bike. I hold up my phone. “I’ll call next month and check in.”
Our business meeting’s over. I wait awhile until the rumble of his Harley fades. Then I climb back into the truck and sit staring over the fields. I’m still thinking about what we’d all be if we were born somewhere different. Somewhere without bears and without weed.
•
When I finally answer one of Sam’s texts, she calls me from Burger Barn. She and Lucas are having dinner. So instead of talking about what happened, I slide in beside my girlfriend, who suddenly feels like a stranger, and I act as if everything’s perfect.
Sam seems to think that all is forgotten.
“Zac, are you ever going to ask me to grad?” she asks, poking the back of my hand with one of her Burger Barn fries. Across from me, Lucas chuckles.
I feel like a squirrel that’s wandered to the edge of our clearing and frozen, knowing it’s in dangerous territory.
“You get four tickets,” she says. “I could sit with your sister.”
“I’m not going,” I say.
“What?” She pulls herself upright so she can give me the full benefit of her appalled look.
“Way to crush the establishment, man,” Lucas says. He’s on his second milkshake. It’s quite possible he’s stoned again.
“You’re going, aren’t you?” Sam asks Lucas.
He nods. “The establishment loves me.”
“It’s a march around the gym in a robe,” I protest.
“It’s a celebration, Zac,” Sam says. “You watch the doors to the world getting thrown open and have a moment of joy.” This comes with expansive hand motions.
I move our shakes out of her reach. “I’ll have my own moment.”
“What about your parents?”
“They don’t like to come to town.”
“Not even for grad?”
I shrug. “I don’t think it’s occurred to them.”
“What about Judith?” Her questions come like bullets now.
“Judith doesn’t care.”
“What about the dance after?”
Maybe this is the real problem. “You want to go to the dance?”
“Only with a guy who cares enough to ask me.”
Lucas has stayed silent throughout this exchange. When I turn to him for help, he shrugs.
I want to make Sam happy, obviously. So if she wants to go to the dance, I’ll take her to the dance. “If you want to go, we’ll go.”
“I want you to want to go,” she says.
This entire conversation makes me want to poke my eye out with my milkshake straw, but I settle for squishing the innards from a French fry.
“I want to go, with you,” I say firmly.
Now that’s apparently not good enough.
“Do you even care about the future?” she asks. “I spend half my life dreaming about university and getting out of this place, and you didn’t even submit your portfolio on time. You’re not going to grad, you have no plans for next year…. It’s like you’re never going to leave this place. ”
I feel like that stupid squirrel after Big Bugger caught sight of it.
“My family still needs me around,” I say. “Walt’s sick. My dad’s got a lot of work. Mom can’t juggle everything on her own.”
Sam stares at me. “You’re not freaking Cinderella,” she says. “You know there’s home care, right? I bet the government even pays for some of it.”
“Your dad can hire someone to help out,” Lucas offers.
Wanted: employee to live in isolated forest region, guarding agricultural plot. Must be familiar with bears and helicopters. Experience with mental-health issues an asset. Must have flexible availability. Wages and benefits to be paid in illegal substances.
He should post that in the community newspaper.
Sam’s still staring at me. “So that’s it. You’ll spend forever in the woods.”
As if the idea doesn’t skewer me every time I think about it.
“Not forever. But I have things to take care of.”
She gives a frustrated huff — the type I hear from Hazel when I refuse to share my dinner.
“Excuse me,” she says. Then she slides out of the booth and stomps toward the door. She’s in combat boots today, which makes the stomping doubly effective.
“Sam!” I call. When she doesn’t stop, I run after her. “What am I supposed to do? Make up some plans that will satisfy you? I have issues at home. I’m working on them.”
“Sure,” she says, throwing her arms in the air, not looking at me.
“Don’t you think we have other things to talk about?” I fire back. “You have some issues at your house, too, as I remember.”
The glass Burger Barn door swings closed in my face.
“You two had sex, didn’t you?” Lucas says when I drop back into the booth.
“What?”
“The tension in here is a serious buzzkill. I guess it didn’t go well?”
My mouth opens and closes, but nothing comes out. For the moment, I’ve turned into Walt.
“We didn’t have sex!” It comes out much louder than it should, and several heads turn toward us. My insides twist tighter.
“We almost had sex,” I whisper.
“None of my business, man,” Lucas says. “I just worry you’re both going to get hurt. You two are kind of…different.”
Then he leaves, too. And I’m stuck in Burger Barn alone, with three half-finished milkshakes, thinking that there may be a few issues with my temporary emotional leave of absence this spring. Girlfriends and the idea of “temporary” aren’t as compatible as I once thought.
Did Lucas mean that Sam and I are two different types of people, or did he mean that we’re both weird, and we might be compatible because of it?
I finish all three milkshakes before I leave.
The idea of heading up the mountain forever, leaving Sam and Lucas and my rolled-up canvases behind…it doesn’t feel right anymore. But the idea of letting Dad harvest by himself and leaving Mom to deal with Walt’s moods while chopper blades thwack in the distance…that doesn’t seem possible, either.
Maybe I haven’t considered grad because grad means decision-making. Maybe Sam’s right, and I haven’t thought seriously enough about the future.
I remember my resolution of this morning when I woke up in the campground.
No more hiding.
/> 12
I write my math and English finals on Friday. On my way home, I pull into the campground and circle past an RV and a few kids with bikes until I reach the road near the treehouse.
Amir’s tarp is in the tree, but there’s still no sleeping bag dangling from the edge of the platform. His bucket’s gone.
I head for the campsite where Sam and Lucas and I sat with him, smoking up and discussing his place in the universe. When I spot the VW van parked in its same spot, I feel a strange sort of relief.
Maybe as long as Amir’s still around, I don’t hold the title for most confused.
Then a woman pops up from one of the lawn chairs. She’s a bit chubby with blonde hair back-combed above bright blue eyes.
“Sorry,” I stammer. I’ve walked right into her campsite. “I was looking for Amir.”
She turns toward the van. “Sweetcheeks? Someone here to see you.”
Sweetcheeks?
The side door of the van rolls open and Amir steps out. He wears a giant grin.
“Isaac! A pleasure. I see you’ve met the love of my life.” He stops to give the blonde a squeeze and a long, noisy kiss.
“Just came by to see how you were doing,” I say.
He strides over and claps both hands on my shoulders. For a moment I’m worried he’s going to hug me. But he simply stares at me, beaming.
“I am about to embark on the next stage of my journey, friend,” he says. “Destiny and I, we are going west. We are going to drive until we meet the ocean and we cannot drive any longer.”
“Big changes.” Could Destiny possibly be her real name?
“One cannot meet the universe in baby steps, friend.”
“I guess not.” I have to get out of here.
Destiny comes over and wraps her arm around Amir’s waist.
“You should tell him how we met, sweetcheeks,” she says. “In town that day? It was like fate. For sure.”
“Tea?” Amir offers. “Before we talk, yes?”
No. Because I have to go. I have to go before it fully sinks in that even the druid has plans. The druid’s getting out of here, on a date with Destiny.
“I just realized…I’m late.” Late for my date with the void.
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