by Roxie Noir
“How’s everyone liking their Night! To! Remember?” he booms.
That’s our prom theme. Apparently proms have themes. Everyone cheers again. Even Art claps.
“Well, now I’m pleased and honored to announce that it! Is! Time! To crown the Solaris High School Prom King and Queeeeeeeen!”
Jesus, you’re not announcing an NBA game, I think. It’s just a dumb high school prom.
“Could all the nominated couples please come to the stage?” the DJ asks.
My eyes land on Wilder and Melissa, holding hands. She’s flushed with excitement, and somehow her hair still looks great. Her makeup hasn’t melted, not even a little, and I think about how deeply unfair the world is.
“I shouldn’t have come,” I mutter to Art.
“No shit,” he mutters back.
They all get arranged on the stage. Five spotlights, five couples, but everyone knows who the winners are. It’s a popularity contest, nothing more.
“If I could have a drumroll please,” the DJ announces.
He plays himself a canned drumroll. God, I hate it here.
“Solaris High School’s Prom Prince and Princess are… Justin Brennon and Lila O’Connor!”
Cheers. Applause. A tightening, sick feeling settles into in my chest as some girl who I’m pretty sure is in my gym class drapes them both in sashes, then gives Lila an ugly tiara.
For at least the thousandth time, I wish I hadn’t come. I don’t know what I was thinking.
“And now!” says the DJ. “For Tonight’s! Solaris High School! Prom King! And! Queen!”
Lights flash over the crowd, strobing and blinking, washing a few hundred high school students in a sea of color. I back further against the door, suddenly afraid I might either puke or cry because I hate seeing him with her.
Even if she never did anything wrong. Even if that burden’s entirely on my shoulders and even in the blackest depths of my heartbreak I know it. I just hate that he picked Melissa, the empty-headed popular girl, over me.
I’m interesting, dammit.
“With a full fifty-four percent of the vote, coming in first place…”
I look up at the stage, my heart so far in my throat I think I might choke on it.
Wilder’s standing there, wearing a tuxedo that he actually looks good in, unlike all the other high school boys around me. He’s got Melissa’s hand on his arm, her dress a sparkling green cascade, just a hint of freckled cleavage visible.
He’s so fucking sure he won. I can read it in his face, in the way that he’s holding himself. In the slight cock of his hips.
I’ll never know why she didn’t dump him. She knows he cheated on her. She knows that he wasn’t saving himself the way she was, and she’s still up there, looking at Wilder like he’s the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae.
“May I present Prom King Wilder Flint and Prom Queen Melissa Hedder!”
More lights. I shade my eyes, turning away, but from the corner I can still see the girl put a sash on Wilder and a crown on Melissa as the crowd of other teenagers goes completely wild.
I’m fighting tears. Art gives me a weird look, because he has no idea why. I just shrug at him.
“I’m really sensitive to strong light,” I say, praying that my voice doesn’t sound as miserable as I feel right now.
He shrugs, leans over to me.
“Wilder sure does clean up nice,” he says.
“Yeah,” I agree, my tone as flat and neutral as I can make it.
“Think he might be… curious?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow.
My fists are clenched so hard that I think my fingernails are cutting into my palms.
“I wouldn’t know,” I say.
“Now I’d like to take it down a notch,” the DJ cuts in. “And congratulate Wilder and Melissa on being Prom King and Queen! You’re all invited to join them as they dance to their song, Hey There Delilah!”
Wilder doesn’t even like that band. He told me once that he just doesn’t get the hype, that that song is terrible and stupid.
She puts her arms around his neck. He puts his hands on her waist, cranes his neck down.
I look away just as he’s about to kiss her and wish for the thousandth and first time that I hadn’t come tonight.
“I mean, I don’t think he’s even that into her,” Art opines. “Look at how he kinda scrunched his face up when he went in, like he doesn’t even want—”
“He’s not interested in you, either,” I tell Art.
The opening chords of this song I hate are playing, some stupid acoustic guitar part that’s all fluff and sweetness and did I mention that I hate this song?
“You don’t know that,” Art says. “Maybe he just needs—”
Just after the lyrics start, the sound cuts out. A murmur passes through the crowd, and Melissa looks over her shoulder at the DJ, her pretty face frowning slightly as she and Wilder keep swaying.
Art sighs and rolls his eyes, but I’m secretly glad because watching them dance to their song was a form of torture I’d just as soon not subject myself to.
Until a loud moan echoes through the room. A moan that goes up at the end, finishes in a high-pitched squeak, the obvious moan of a woman having a really good time.
The crowd murmurs, giggles.
I can feel the blood drain from my face. My vision goes gray at the edges, my fingers and toes starting to prickle.
My mind is filled with pure white blank panic as I moan again through the speakers, gasping, squeaking as Wilder eats me out and I try desperately not to scream.
“Imogen,” Art frowns. “Is that…”
People are turning toward me, whispering to each other. I lurch for the doors, one hand over my mouth.
“Don’t stop,” my recorded voices whimpers, begging Wilder for more.
I shove through the doors, stumbling, nearly blind with panic. There are two teachers out here in the lobby, talking to each other, but I barely see them.
Right in the middle of the fancy carpet, I puke. I think I puke up everything I’ve eaten in the past week, I puke so hard, until I’m crying and dry-heaving, the bottom of my skirt splashed with my own vomit.
“Are you okay?” someone asks. “Did you drink—”
I can hear another, louder moan from the other side of the doors and I take off again, my stride building to a run when I get outside.
People are shouting after me. I don’t stop. I don’t think I can stop, my legs just go and go, beyond my control. I run through the parking lot of the resort where we’re having prom, through the street, into the woods beyond.
I stumble. I trip. I fall. I keep going, blind and deaf to everything, face slashed by branches and knees scraped from falling.
All I can see is Wilder’s face. The way he looked at me when the music cut off, that ugly, cruel smirk he had on his face.
He did this. I know he did this. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t really matter.
They find me an hour later, balled up against the roots of a tree, crying my eyes out.
I never step foot in Solaris High School again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Wilder
Present Day
At ten-thirty, Imogen’s door is still closed. It’s the third time this morning I’ve checked to see if she’s awake yet, and that’s after checking twice last night.
I should have just chased her when she left. I should have made her believe me, shouldn’t have let her go thinking that maybe she wanted some time alone…
I don’t know. I don’t think that would have worked, I think we’d have had a shouting match in the hospital corridor and that would never have fixed anything.
But now she’s still asleep. It’s been eleven hours, which I guess isn’t all that much if you’re trying to heal a fractured ankle and you’ve been walking through the cold for days, but I’m kind of worried that something happened.
Could a blood clot or something…?
Did she fall…?
I turn around, head to the nurses’ station again, and there’s finally someone there who barely looks up at me as she types something into the computer.
“Yes?” she asks, still not looking at me.
I put on my most charming smile.
“Sorry to bother you, but do you know if Imogen in room two fourteen is still asleep?”
“The girl who was in the plane crash and walked forty miles?”
“Right.”
“She checked out first thing this morning,” the nurse says, tapping on a keyboard. “We wanted to keep her for another night, but she—”
“She’s gone?”
I feel like a trap door opened underneath me, and I put my hands palm-down on the counter in front of the nurses’ station.
The nurse just nods, and I’m suddenly unmoored, unanchored.
You lost your chance, I think. You fucked up and now your chance is gone, you idiot.
“Did she say where?” I ask, swallowing hard.
“Most people go home when they leave a hospital,” the nurse deadpans.
My jaw tightens for just a second, and I have to fight the urge to grab her, shake her, demand to know where Imogen went.
But instead I walk away. The nurse doesn’t know, either. When I get back to my room my mom is there, unpacking bagels from a brown bag and placing them on the tray that swings over my hospital bed along with little plastic tubs of cream cheese.
“Not that Solaris is exactly New York City, but at least they have all right bagels,” she murmurs to me. “I’m afraid that up here they’ve confused them with donuts or something. Look at this.”
She pokes one, her finger leaving a deep impression.
Imogen’s gone.
Most people go home when they leave the hospital.
Imogen lives in Seattle now, but did she go there? Or did she go home to Solaris, with her parents, maybe to recuperate for a bit before going back to her research job?
“Wilder,” my mom says.
“Sorry.”
“Do you want the everything bagel or the sesame one? If you can even call these bagels.”
I swallow, my mouth dry, my mind still completely elsewhere.
“Sesame,” I say.
“What’s wrong?”
I sit in the vinyl-covered armchair next to the bed, lace my fingers together. I feel more at loose ends than I can remember ever feeling before, more like something important has slipped through my fingers.
She left. Without saying goodbye, and the knowledge is like a rock in my gut. The last time I saw her before this was ten years ago, and she was running away from me then.
She’s running away from me now.
I clear my throat. My mom arches one eyebrow, still waiting for an answer.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “Imogen already checked out and… I’ve still got something of hers.”
“That’s the second girl from yesterday?”
“Yeah. The girl I was stranded with.”
My mom spreads cream cheese on her subpar bagel, radiating disapproval, because as much as I don’t involve my parents in my sex life, they’re not blind, deaf, or stupid. They know that I’ve got a habit of going through women and never bringing one home.
Hence my mom’s collection comment yesterday. Even if she’s never said anything, it’s not a secret that she thinks it’s more than time for me to, if not exactly settle down, at least date someone.
“And you’re so upset that she’s already out of your hair?”
I pause, a bagel halfway to my mouth. I close my mouth. I put it down.
She might not take you back, I think. Maybe you shouldn’t tell your mom about this, because what if she doesn’t and it gets around Solaris that the dork from high school turned you down?
“Wilder?”
Don’t be fucking stupid.
“Imogen and I went to high school together,” I say slowly, looking at the bagel and not my mom. “And I fucked up pretty bad then.”
“I don’t remember her,” my mom says.
“You wouldn’t,” I say.
And then, before I can stop myself, I tell my mom everything.
She’s the first person I’ve ever told, the whole story spilling out of me in fits and starts, from studying for biology to getting rescued on the side of the road to being afraid that the love of my life slipped through my fingers twice.
It feels good to get it off my chest.
When I finish, she wipes her fingers neatly with a napkin, poised and ready.
“All right, let’s get to work,” she says.
I clear my throat, not really sure what she means.
“There’s only so many places she can be,” my mom says, perfectly reasonable. “Let’s find her so you can grovel and finally have a girlfriend you’ll let us meet.”
First thing the next morning I’m sweating, shaking, my heart rate skyrocketing. I haven’t been able to eat for ten hours because the only thought I’ve had this entire time has been a loop on continuous replay: dropping out of the clouds, instruments going haywire. The mountain, up close, rushing in.
It plays again. And again.
“Thank you for flying CanadaAir to Edmonton!” says a perky female voice over the loudspeaker. “Please be aware that since the first half of this route is pretty bumpy over the mountains, we’ll be delaying beverage service…”
I turn my head to look out the porthole, but my mom’s closed it. There are only two seats on this side of the aisle and one on the other, so the outdoors is never far away enough.
“I wish you’d take some Xanax,” my mom says, her voice worried.
I just shake my head, sweat rolling beneath my collar.
“My head’s gotta be clear so I can fly,” I say.
She looks away, because as gung-ho as she was about Imogen at first, she hates my plan.
“At least spend the night in Edmonton,” she says.
I don’t answer her, just tilt my head back against the seat rest and close my eyes. If I spend the night somewhere I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve and wind up back in Solaris, no closer to Imogen than before.
And I can’t do that. I have to get to her, even if I have to spend hours and hours sweating and shaking in tiny planes, even if the mere thought of flying makes me vomit up everything I’ve eaten for the past day.
I wish I could take the Xanax, or get drunk, or do anything to make me forget where I am and what I’m doing, but I can’t. Not if this is going to work.
And I want it to work more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Imogen
When I finally make it to Tekkeit, I sleep for seventeen hours straight and only wake up to go to the bathroom a couple of times. Other people come in and out of the tiny bunk room, which has four beds in two sets of bunks, but I barely notice them.
It’s the Xanax. Generalized Anxiety Disorder aside, I rarely take the stuff, because I mostly don’t like the way it just… flattens everything out. It’s harder to feel anxious or nervous or insecure, sure, but it’s harder to feel anything.
Plus, it knocks me out cold for seventeen hours. Anything with that kind of power kind of freaks me out.
But I needed to get here. The Foundation was willing to extend my grant, in light of circumstances, and let me do this next summer, but I couldn’t handle the thought of going back to Seattle and having to see lots of people, deal with other academics, explain what happened and how I got my ankle broken again and again.
Easier to be here, with a few other scientists who’d rather talk about bacteria than relationships, and who think that hey, Imogen, I saw rutting marks on some trees yesterday, so I think the bulls are getting pretty frisky is a perfectly good conversation starter.
That’s why I took the Xanax and then slept, because getting here, to Frisky Musk Oxen Paradise, necessitated several flights and the exact same kind of tiny plane that someone crashed less than two weeks ago. They weren’
t thrilled when I showed up in a walking cast, but they didn’t send me back, either.
The first morning I’m awake, after the pro tip about the rutting marks on trees, I pack my bag for the day, grab a walking stick, and head in the direction of the horny oxen.
It’s beautiful up here. It’s chilly, unsurprisingly, but as I walk very slowly toward where my colleague marked the trees on the map, I unzip my outer parka and then also my inner fleece, warming up.
Late May here is the beginning of spring, so there’s bright green new grass poking through the marshy soil, spotted with gray rocks. Water is everywhere, with much of the snow and ice melting after the winter, revealing the tundra underneath.
A little further away are the pine forests, less dense than the ones further south, the trees smaller, stunted. The sky above is the perfect, clear blue that you only see in commercials for antidepressants or somewhere hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest city.
I find the rutting trees without much of a problem. I spend my day recording everything I find there: the marks, the poop, the tracks. I follow them for a bit, watching for evidence of changed behavior, and though I don’t find the oxen before I need to leave, it’s a nearly-perfect day.
I don’t see anyone else. I don’t talk to anyone else while I’m out there, and no one talks to me. I could be stark naked or wearing a glittery evening gown and no one would care, because I’m all alone.
It’s great. It’s the best.
And I can’t wait for a whole summer just like it.
The next day is promising again. I find a clear watering spot for the oxen, not to mention plenty of fresh dung. I take samples of it along with the fresh, new grasses that look like they’ve recently been feasted on.
A few plants around have strands of their long, shaggy fur stuck to them, so I collect those too. Global warming means that, among other things, the northern skin mite has been making inroads with the oxen population, and no one is quite sure what that means for the animals themselves.