by Roxie Noir
I set up my camera trap — it’s not really a trap, just a motion-activated video recording device — by around three, and start heading back. I’ve got plenty of sunlight left, but I’m hyper-conscious of not wanting to overdo it. I’m not so far from the research station itself that I’d die out here if I couldn’t walk, but I’d hate to inconvenience anyone else.
Besides, they’d be really, really annoyed.
I’m about halfway back to the station when I hear a noise that does not belong, a loud buzzing that has nothing to do with the wind whispering through the pine trees or the distant, constant drip of water seeping from earth’s every pore.
I glance behind me, make sure I’m not being attacked by a vicious male ox. Nothing. But the noise doesn’t stop, and I scan the horizon, my brain lazily flicking through the possibilities.
Bees? Birds? Motorboat?
Really far-away mining equipment, even though I thought we were on protected lands?
Finally, I look up, to the pure blue sky punctuated by puffs of white cloud, so big it feels like it could engulf me if I look too long.
There’s a plane. Heading in from the southwest and toward the research station. I think it’s either the same kind of plane that Wilder and I took—
Nope, I tell myself. Everything about that is officially off-limits right now. You visualized locking it into a bank vault, remember? So you can deal with it later but not right now?
Right. I’m not thinking about being cold for all that time, about being trapped, about Wilder fixing up my ankle or luring me down those rocks or across that landslide.
I’m not thinking about how he apologized, and I didn’t even ask him to. I’m not thinking about how that made me think that maybe he’d changed, about how maybe now the boy who’d been both the best and worst thing in my life at one point could finally just be good for me.
And I’m not thinking about the lake, the cabin, the terror of thinking that he might die, the relief when he didn’t. How I let my guard down then and now I regret it again.
Nope. Not thinking about that stuff.
Just heading back to the station, where I’ll help load in the supplies from the plane so the pilot can get on their way back to Inuvik and make it before nightfall.
Is it Friday? I think.
Don’t supply planes come on Fridays?
I shrug to myself, stab my walking stick into the ground, take yet another unsteady step.
“Must be Friday, then,” I say out loud to absolutely no one.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Wilder
My hands are still shaking as I cut off the tiny plane’s engine. My shirt’s soaked through with sweat, and I feel like I just got run over by a bulldozer after running two back-to-back marathons.
A small knot of people, all wearing hiking pants, sweaters, fleeces, and hats are collecting at the edge of the airstrip. They look somewhere between upset and confused, but I don’t even care right now. I don’t care about anything.
My nerves are fucking shot. I’m pretty sure that an enemy squadron could come screaming down out of the sky at me right now and I wouldn’t budge, because there’s nothing left in my mental reserve.
Getting on the plane to Edmonton was hell. Getting on the smaller plane to Yellowknife was a worse hell, and even though both times I was tempted to drink myself into oblivion before the flight, I knew I couldn’t.
Because come hell or high water, I was getting to Tekkeit Research Station. Even if I threw up twice before I got on this plane. Even if I couldn’t stop the camera in my brain from replaying the crash, over and over and over, even if every tiny bit of turbulence made me obsessively check my instruments again and again, certain that they were failing.
On the runway in Yellowknife, I almost bailed. There was a moment where I didn’t think I could take off and decided to just taxi around, figure out some other way to get here. A boat, on horseback, by Jeep, I didn’t care.
But then I thought of Imogen asleep next to me in that tiny bed in that ugly cabin, the wood stove fire nearly dead. I thought of the way she looked at me when I woke up after nearly freezing to death.
And I got that plane in the air. I nearly had a panic attack, but I did it, and now I’m here on the ground again, sweaty and shaking and in desperate need of collecting myself, but I’m here.
I just hope this is the right one, because Imogen’s not there. She’s not one of the people standing next to the air strip, looking faintly puzzled and faintly like they might start observing me through a microscope.
I take a deep breath. I open the door, I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants, I jump down and swing the door shut.
The gathered people just keep looking, obviously confused. That’s okay. I can only imagine that I’m confusing.
Finally, a woman steps forward. She’s slightly round, slightly short, and has gray hair and a gaze I’d describe as piercing.
“It’s not Friday and you’re not the usual delivery pilot,” she says.
“I’m not a delivery pilot at all,” I say. “I’m here for Imogen Gustavo.”
The others — two men, two women, all between twenty and sixty — move in. They remind me of a flock of birds, moving as one curious-but-shy knot.
“Here for?” she says, blinking.
I didn’t think this part through. In my imagination, as soon as I landed the plane she’d be there, standing at the end of the air strip, and she’d run — well, hobble — into my arms and I’d twirl her around and birds would sing and the sun would shine and all that shit.
“I need to talk to her,” I say, the only explanation I can really come up with.
“Imogen?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
The woman looks to her left and to her right, into the eyes of two other equally puzzled scientists. At least I assume they’re scientists. They’re sure not welcome ambassadors.
“Is that the girl who was in plane crash?” one of them asks.
“Yeah, musk oxen and busted ankle,” the other says.
“So I’m in the right place.”
The woman just snorts.
“No, you are not in the right place,” she says, adjusting her round glasses by the frames. “She’s in the right place. You are most certainly not supposed to be here. How did you even get here?”
I swallow, shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, and even though I’m still coming down from the most nerve-wracking hours of my life, I manage to smile at her.
After all, why be charming if you never use it?
“I flew,” I say.
One side of her mouth twitches, and one of the other scientists snort-laughs.
The short, round, gray-haired woman is Wanda, and she lectures me even as she leads me into the big, ugly, squat, semi-industrial building that houses Tekkeit Arctic Research Center.
“Should make you just leave back the way you came,” she says, turning her head so her voice drifts over her shoulder and to me. “Unauthorized visitors are completely unheard of, I don’t even know how you got through border security and all that, I hope you’ve got enough fuel to get you back somewhere because there’s none here, you know…”
I’m barely listening to her. She let me in and didn’t shoot me with a giant grizzly bear gun or something, and that’s all I really care about. The woman goes on and on about how I’m lucky they’ve got a bunk free, but food is rationed, so unless I’m going to be catching some fish and sharing it with the group, they haven’t got too much for me to eat.
My sweat-soaked shirt is cooled against my body, and I start to shiver a little. It’s cold up here, but given how close we are to the Arctic Circle, that’s not a huge surprise.
Wanda leads me into a room that’s got tables and chairs, a projector up front, and a couple of couches in the back. The entire research station is much nicer and less clinical than I thought it would be — from how Imogen described it, I thought it would be nothing but sterile white, microscopes everywhere, wi
th cold concrete-and-metal hallways.
But it’s kind of nice, though it has a very space-efficient, semi-Ikea vibe to it.
“Sit,” she says. “I guess I’ll go see if I can find Gustavo? It’s not like there’s a protocol for unannounced visitors, you know.”
I sit down, trying to behave myself. My shirt sticks to me. This seat has a lime green cushion with light wood all around it, and I lean back, stare at the empty projector.
I’ve changed, I think, still searching for what to tell her.
There has to be something, right?
There’s gotta be something I can do, something I can say, someone I can be that will make all the hurts and the scars and the betrayals fade.
I’d take it back, I think, desperation crawling its way into my heart. I’d take it all back if I could.
There are no windows in this room, no natural light, so I lean my head back against the back of the chair and close my eyes, miserably trying to figure out what to do.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Imogen
When I checked out of the hospital, I got a pretty long instructional lecture about how to care for my ankle. Things I should be doing including taking it easy, keeping my leg elevated when possible, taking it easy, drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of calcium, taking it easy, seriously, and make sure I’m gentle with the cast.
I’ve at least been getting lots of fluids and calcium. The other stuff is more… guidelines, right?
“They’ll really fuck up a watershed, you know,” Grace says, walking into the kitchenette.
I turn and look at her, blinking. She’s even more direct than most of the other scientists here — not a group known for tact, if I’m being honest — and I have absolutely no idea who’s been fucking up watersheds. I didn’t know anyone was fucking up watersheds.
“Pollutants?” I guess as the electric kettle clicks off.
Grace gives me a blank look, blinking once.
“Musk oxen,” she says, as if it were completely obvious what she was talking about. “That herd you’re chasing down really fucked up the stream I’m trying to study and now all my samples are filled with silt.”
She shakes her head like it’s my fault, her shiny black top knot bouncing slightly.
I’m at a loss for words. That’s not exactly unusual for me, but Grace is proving to be kind of a mystery, even for a fellow scientist. She’s got a weird habit of being unnecessarily accusatory.
Like right now. With the musk oxen.
“Walking through streams is what they do,” I point out, pouring hot water over my teabag. “They’re animals. They walk over stuff. It’s their thing.”
Go on, sound less professional, I tell myself.
Grace exhales loudly, pouring the last dregs of a mostly-empty mug into the sink.
“Well, their thing is fucking up my thing,” she says, even though she says it without malice or annoyance. It’s just a fact to her, I guess.
I say nothing. She says nothing. There’s a long, awkward silence in the kitchenette while I stare into my tea as it steeps, feeling baffled about human behavior.
Does she want me to do something about the oxen? Should I build a bridge over that stream? There are other streams.
“Can’t you use a different stream?” I finally ask.
She looks at me like I just farted.
“Of course not,” she says. “I’ve been measuring the phosphate levels in that one since last summer, and I need to know how the bacteria that naturally live at these climates are adversely affected by…”
The door to the kitchenette opens, and she trails off. We both watch as Wanda, the most senior person here and thus our de facto leader, pokes her head in and looks at us both for a long moment, blinking behind her round glasses.
“Imogen, there’s someone here to see you,” she says.
I’m stirring my tea, and I stop. I tilt my head in confusion, like I’m a baby bird.
“Someone here to see me?”
She just nods.
“Here.”
“Yes.”
“To see me?”
“Yes. He said he had to talk to you?”
I’m just dunking my teabag again and again, trying to wrap my brain around this even as my stomach tightens.
Suddenly I remember that plane a little while ago, as I was walking back to the station. I didn’t think it was Friday. Maybe I was right all along.
“You mean on the phone or something—”
“I mean here, Imogen, I didn’t misspeak.”
I toss the teabag into the trashcan, because at the moment my lungs feel a little like they’re being compacted, and I can’t breathe, because there’s exactly one person who has the means, ability, and reason to show up at my arctic research station.
And there’s only one who’d just show up without consulting anyone first, someone who thinks that he’s God’s own gift to the world. Someone who takes what he wants and doesn’t care if he has to lie about it as long as he’s happy, as long as he gets what he wants.
Flying in unannounced sure does look good, I’ll give him that. I’m sure the other scientists here are all very impressed, and I’m sure that was the entire point of his dumb, stupid, immature stunt—
“It’s too late in the day to send him back, so just come talk to him before everyone starts gossiping, will you?” Wanda says. “It’s bad enough that Jim and Tandy are practically doing elaborate mating dances at each other—”
“Jim and Tandy?” Grace asks. “They are?”
Wanda sighs.
“I’ll come talk to him,” I say, walking quickly for the door before we start speculating about which bird Jim and Tandy’s dance most closely resembles.
“In the lounge-slash-viewing room-slash-cafe,” she says, pointing. “And he’s not supposed to be here, you know!” she calls after me.
“I know,” I mutter to myself, my mug of tea still held in one hand, sloshing dangerously side to side as I limp quickly down the hallway.
He wasn’t supposed to come, I think, heart pounding. He did something stupid and showy, and now he’s here, and now all summer I’m going to be that girl who had some guy fly in just to beg her forgiveness, and they’re all going to wonder why and either I’ll have to explain it all or make up some lie...
It’s not a long hallway. I’m already there, standing outside the lounge/viewing room/cafe, staring at the metal doorknob, desperately wishing I didn’t have to go inside.
More than anything, I feel like an idiot. The first time I let Wilder chew me up and spit me out, I was in high school. I was seventeen. I’d never really had a boyfriend before, I’d never done more than kiss a guy.
I wanted it. He wanted it. None of the other stuff really mattered over the roar of our hormones, and look where that got me.
But now I’m older and I’m supposed to be wiser, but I fell for it again. He lied to me and I believed him only to realize that I shouldn’t, that I can’t, not if I don’t want the past to repeat itself.
I can’t do it again. I won’t. Wilder already tore my heart out and played baseball with it once, and that was more than enough.
I tighten my grip around my mug of tea. I grasp the metal doorknob in my other hand, firmly, square my shoulders, and open it.
Wilder looks up. He’s got the bomber jacket on again, leaning his elbows on his knees, his hair flopping in front of those jewel-tone eyes.
I almost close the door and run away, a wave of anxiety crashing over me the moment I see him. I didn’t come here after all that with a broken ankle because I want to confront my problems, I came here — to the Arctic, for crying out loud, it’s pretty far from everything — because I want to ignore my problems and spend my day researching oxen.
“Squeaks,” he says, and he smiles.
Over in the corner are two of my colleagues. They’re pretending to play chess but it’s incredibly obvious that now they’re just eavesdropping.
“Wilder,�
�� I say, and it comes out sounding stiff and formal. I glance at the chess players again, nerves crawling up my back because I do not need to be the butt of gossip here for the next two and a half months, I don’t want to look across the cafe area at someone and wonder if they’re talking about me and the guy who flew a plane in unannounced…
I jerk my head backward, telling him to come out into the hallway, and when he rises from the chair I realize that underneath his jacket, his shirt’s weirdly wet, sticking to his chest.
That must be cold, I think, but before he fixes it I can see his chest muscles flex and move as he walks. I realize I’m staring. I step into the hallway to make myself stop, but I do it a moment too soon, the door closing into Wilder who catches it gracefully with his shoulder.
Of course he does. I’d be on my ass if that happened to me, but of course not him.
We face each other, surrounded by concrete and drywall and bright lights.
“Why are you here?” I hiss. “You’re not—”
He leans in and kisses me.
I jump and step back, stumbling a little. The hot tea in my mug sloshes out, burns my hand, and without thinking I drop it with a yelp.
It shatters on the floor, splashing our feet and legs.
“What the fuck?” I hiss at Wilder, shaking my hand.
He’s holding his shirt away from himself, brushing liquid from his jacket sleeves.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine, but what the fuck, Wilder?” I say again. I’m trying to keep my voice down but it’s not really working, because I’ve pretty much just announced to the whole station that I’m having some sort of lovers’ spat out here and that is not what I need.
“I can’t let you go again,” he says.
Suddenly, the smirk is gone, the funny little smile, the God’s gift to the world swagger is gone and Wilder just stands there. Staring at me like he’s piercing my soul with those eyes, hands wet with now-cold tea, a brown spot on the front of his shirt.