Will didn’t seem to care, and when Emma roped him next, probably with the intent of asking him if he liked her back, he formed invisible scissors with his fingers and cut the lasso in two. “It’s a stupid game,” he said cruelly, hurting Emma’s feelings.
Although Heath felt badly for Emma, he was relieved Will had refused to play. He was worried Will might rope him next and make him reveal to the group that he was sick. The pain was back, getting worse by the second. He might have to come clean eventually, but he didn’t want to be forced to do it now.
“Congratulations, Will,” Emma sulked. “You win the prize for the shortest crush I’ve ever had.”
“Whatever.” Will swatted a horsefly off his chest. “I’d never date a twin.”
“That’s stupid,” said Dunbar. “Who doesn’t want to date a twin? It’s like having a spare tire in case one blows out on the road.”
“NO, IT IS NOT!” Emily screeched. “You’re as big an idiot as he is!”
Emma went after Will. “What’s so horrible about dating a twin, huh? Are you so used to being a loner that you can’t stand to be around more than one person at a time? I bet you’re just jealous. You see the great relationship that Em and I have and you—”
“I would never date a twin,” Will repeated, his jaw muscles twitching, “because I have a twin. My sister, Wren.”
“No way!” Miles laughed. “You mean there’s a Xerox of you somewhere, running around with girl parts? That’s hilarious!”
“You do not have a twin!” Emma accused.
“I do, too.”
“Where is she?” Emily asked. “How come she didn’t come with you to camp?”
Will shrugged. “Last I heard she was living in Seattle with our aunt.”
“Last you heard?” Heath was confused. “You don’t know?”
Will’s eyes narrowed and his gaze drifted down the river as he spoke. “No. We haven’t talked in two years. And I don’t ask about her.”
“Why not?” Emily asked. “I couldn’t imagine not talking to Emma for more than a day, and even that’s difficult to do. Don’t you feel a natural bond to your twin?”
“‘Natural bond’?” he scoffed. “I can’t stand her.”
“What’s wrong with you, Will?” Emma demanded.
Heath suspected there was no honey in that particular bees’ nest, and they were best off not shaking it.
“What’s so special about being a twin?” Will asked. “In your case it’s just one zygote splitting off to form two people. Big deal.”
“What’s a…zygote?” Miles looked confused. “Is that like…some kind of farm animal?”
“If anything,” Will continued, “I’d say twins are even less special than normal people because right from the beginning they have to share everything, even their mother’s womb. And I can’t stand how some twins even dress alike.”
“These are equestrian outfits!” Emma argued. “They all look like this!”
“Look,” Heath started, always the peacemaker. “Let’s just agree that everyone’s born unique and leave it at that.” His line of thinking pleased no one.
“Twins are special,” Emma insisted, poking Will in the chest. “But to be honest, I’m not surprised that you can’t get along with yours. Nobody likes you, Will Stringer, and you know why?”
“Tell me.” He chuckled. “This should be good.”
She pressed her finger into his sternum hard and screwed it there. “Because everything that comes out of your mouth is as germy and nasty as those squirrels we left back in the channel. Your brain is just as diseased as they were, but at least they have an excuse. What’s yours? Huh?” When she received no reply she demanded, “Answer me!”
Will glared down at Emma’s finger, then up into her watering eyes. Then back down at her finger again. “Do you see a lasso around me?”
“Em…” Emily said softly. “Who cares what he thinks? He’s an idiot. Just let it go.”
“She’s right. You’re not even worth it…jerk.” Emma gave Will a flimsy shove, then trudged quickly through the river, returning to Emily’s side.
“Oookay, that was fun,” Dunbar said. “Whose turn is it next? Or is it still Emma’s?”
“I think it’s probably Heath’s,” Cricket said. “Unless Emma wants—”
“Have any of you ever heard of the Greek goddess Lyssa?” Will asked his perplexing question in a voice so cold it was creepy.
“What are you talking about now?” Emma dried her eyes with her palms.
“The goddess Lyssa,” Will repeated. “When my grandfather’s dog got rabies I wanted to understand the disease. Learn everything I could about it. So I searched the Internet for days. Found tons of info. It’s how I knew the Flash was airborne just by watching the squirrels. And how I predicted we’d probably have to deal with bats, the biggest carriers of rabies.”
“Know your enemy,” Heath said, quoting Will’s earlier sentiment.
“That’s right,” Will nodded. “Anyways, that’s when I found out about Lyssa. She was the daughter of Gaia, the Earth goddess, and Aether, the god of the—”
“Yawn,” said Miles. “We don’t need a history lesson. Get to the point.”
“Fine. Lyssa was known as the goddess of mad rage and frenzy…and rabies. She wasn’t a lot of fun to be around.”
“So she was kinda like Emma,” Dunbar muttered under his breath.
“Shut it!” Emma ordered, flicking water off her fingertips into Dunbar’s face.
Will ignored them. “There was a hunter named Actaeon who traveled with a pack of hunting dogs. One day he saw the goddess Artemis naked and to punish him for not looking away, Lyssa gave the pack rabies and they tore their master to bits.”
The group quieted. Heath felt uneasy. This wasn’t the kind of story they needed to hear in their current situation, but he was curious to see where Will was going with it.
“Lyssa is also mentioned in the story of Hercules,” Will said. “Her mother, Gaia, had a grudge against Hercules. Hated his guts. So she ordered Lyssa to punish him. See, even though Lyssa was the personification of mad rage, she was actually one of the more levelheaded gods. She tried to talk Gaia out of it, but Gaia wouldn’t listen, and since she outranked her daughter, Lyssa had to do as Gaia commanded. But Hercules was Lyssa’s stepbrother, and she didn’t want to kill him. So rather than siccing rabid animals on him like she did to Actaeon, she gave Hercules rabies instead. She drove him mad. I guess she figured if anyone could beat the virus, Hercules could. And he did. But before he cleared it out of his system, he murdered his wife and kids. Tore them limb from limb. Ripped them apart with his—”
“Stop it!” Emily cried out. “Can’t you see you’re making Molly miserable?”
Molly was hiding her face in her hands. Her body was shaking in little jumps.
“You’re such a loser, Will,” Miles said, wrapping an arm around Molly’s shoulder to comfort her. “If it was a different day, I’d knock your teeth out.”
“What’s the point of your story?” Heath was ready to pound Will, too. “There was a point to it besides making Molly cry, right?”
“Of course there’s a moral to the story,” Will said. “Think about it.”
Before Heath could reply, Cricket started swishing ahead through the water excitedly. Pointing downriver, he hollered, “Look! Over there! Isn’t that—?”
Heath saw it, too. Bright yellow and a sight for sore eyes, like a taxi waiting to take them home after their long, grueling day.
It was the dead man’s kayak.
There’s something wrong with me, I’m not doing well.
A busted, rusted truck is hardly worth the sell.
But it’s not how long I lasted, or the miles that I went.
It’s the beauty in my rearview mirror that makes my life well s
pent.
THE KAYAK WAS collared between two small boulders, bobbing slightly in the crack. It was a two-man boat with two cockpits. Both were empty.
“Do you think he was alone?” Cricket asked as Miles and Heath clambered up on top of the boulders and shifted the kayak free.
Heath looked down into the rear seat hole and saw a pink sandal with a plastic daisy on the thong sloshing around in a broth of red water. “I don’t think so.”
It felt like Christmas when they found the paddle bobbing close by, not trying to escape at all.
Heath told Molly not to look while they prepared the kayak. After the blood was poured out and the boat was set and balanced in the river, the group helped Theo and Molly inside. The choice of passengers went undisputed. Theo knew how to kayak and for some unspoken reason it just seemed right that Molly should go with him—nautical etiquette maybe: women and children first, and she was the youngest girl in the group.
“Forty to fifty minutes,” Theo guessed. “We’ll be in Granite Falls in less than an hour.”
“Don’t forget about us,” Dunbar said, only half joking.
“You’ll be all right now.” Heath patted Molly’s arm. He was relieved because he believed his own words. “You know what you look like, Molly, all snug in that seat?”
With her chin tucked to her chest, she shook her head.
“You look like a perfectly good egg, safely back inside its carton.”
She lifted her eyes to his, reached out from her seat, and pulled Heath in for a hug. He hugged her tight.
“We’ll send help back right away,” Theo assured them.
“I know you will,” Heath said.
Will gave them last-minute advice. “Keep your ears open. If you hear bats, flip the kayak and wait under it until they’re gone. There’ll be plenty of air in the seat holes. And don’t get out of the boat when you reach Granite Falls. Hyde Street runs parallel to the river. If people are alive in town, you’ll see them. But don’t get out of the boat until you know for sure how things are there.”
“Listen for bats and don’t get out of the boat,” Molly parroted absently while picking at coils of shredded fiberglass where something big made claw marks on the side of the kayak.
“See you soon, Moll.” Miles wrapped her in a careful hug, then swished away from the group, sniffling.
“Good luck,” Will said, then he, Dunbar, and Heath launched the kayak off down the river. The remainders followed them, wading in the boat’s gentle wake. Theo stabbed the water with his paddle and they quickly pulled away.
The Dray’s course ran straight for quite a ways, so the group was able to track the kayak for several minutes until it was no more than a tiny fleck of yellow. Then it rounded a dash of land and was gone.
Unexpected sadness gripped Heath tightly. He felt so friable, as if a gentle breeze could crumble him into dust. Tears spilled from his eyes, skated down his cheeks, and slipped between his trembling lips. He washed the evidence away with a splash of river to the face.
“That Theo kid doesn’t like me very much, does he?” Miles said, still staring off at the spot the kayak had vanished, his eyes veiny and pink.
“You made him your runner last year.” Heath spoke softly because he knew his words were hard. “You weren’t very nice to him.”
Miles was taken aback by this. “I did? Oh. I guess that explains it.”
“He’s mad that you don’t remember. Can’t really blame him.”
“Me neither.” Miles gave a heaving sigh. “I suck.”
Heath thought back to his first encounter with Miles earlier in the day. And then again later in the forest, before the porcupine charged. Mere hours ago, the kid had seemed so dangerous. Shivering in the water, shoulders sagging, full of self-loathing, Miles was the most pitiful creature Heath had ever seen.
Heath put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll see him again.”
“Hope so,” said Miles. “I’ll do better.”
“I believe you. Talk to Theo at Granite Falls.”
Dunbar caught the tail end of this exchange and repeated his earlier prognosis. “Granite Falls is fine. The virus couldn’t have made it that far. It’s not even windy today.”
Heath’s reply, if he’d felt like stealing Dunbar’s brightness, which he didn’t, would have been, Bats don’t need wind to get to Granite Falls.
It was sometime around seven o’clock when Heath felt the first pangs of hunger. He’d forgotten all about the chicken salad sandwich he’d tucked into his pocket, had even napped with it, and now that he’d remembered, it was mushy and inedible like his mother’s meat loaf. He dropped it into the water and watched little fish weave in and out of the pieces, nibbling the soggy chicken. Birds are supposed to eat fish, he thought irritably. Nobody minds the food chain anymore. He was tired. So tired, in fact, that when Dunbar nudged him he nearly fell over.
“You should talk to her,” Dunbar said with a wink.
“Who?”
“Emily. I think she likes you. Lucky jerk.”
Heath squinched his face and considered this. “She does not. Besides, that’d be weird, don’t you think? Under the circumstances?”
“It’s kinda weird that you seem to be talking to everyone but her.”
Heath glanced over at Emily. She smiled at him, and he felt his ears warm and prickle.
“It’s stupid,” Heath hissed. “If she likes me, it’s only because we’re in this mess and she’s not thinking right—”
“I agree,” Dunbar sniffed.
“Stressful situations mess with peoples’ emotions. Besides, Camp Harmony is done. It’s not like we’ll have a chance to spend time together, assuming we survive. She lives all the way in Portland.”
Dunbar put it another way. “So what if we don’t survive? Shouldn’t you try to get to know her a little bit? For that reason alone? Emma’s fighting with Will again. Now’s your chance.”
“Okay,” Heath surrendered. “But not this second. It’ll look like you put me up to it.”
He shooed Dunbar away, waited thirty Mississippis, then waded sideways, gradually, until he was beside her. At that point he realized he didn’t have a clue as to what to say. For a few uncomfortable seconds they walked side by side silently like two horses pulling a wagon.
“I like your shoes,” Emily said finally.
“Thanks,” he replied, and they watched his fascinating feet for quite awhile until more words came to him. “Are your boots comfortable?”
He could feel Dunbar rolling his eyes behind him.
“Not really. They’re leather so they’re getting tighter in the water. If the rubber grip soles didn’t make it easier to walk on the rocks, I’d probably ditch them and go barefoot.”
“Mine have rubber soles, too.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah.”
More painful silence.
“Oh, I know what I wanted to ask,” Heath blurted, excited to have a topic. “It’s about what happened back in the livery. When you and Emma went off to decide whether to stay or head to the river.”
“What about it?”
“I didn’t think you’d win that one. Your sister seemed to have made up her mind. What did you say to her?”
“Not much,” Emily said. “Just three words.”
“That’s it? Really?”
She smiled. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
Heath laughed. “It all came down to—”
“Paper. Paper smothers rock.”
“Sweet.”
“Being twins isn’t as fun as people might think. I mean, we’re not as bad as Will and his sister. I love Em a lot, but we argue too much. It’s gotten better though. When we were little we used to get into horrible fights. Bloody noses, scratching, hair pulling…over the littlest thing
. Our mom got sick of having to be our referee so she taught us rock, paper, scissors. She said we had to use it to decide all of our arguments. It worked pretty well. Even now, we use it on a daily basis. But…if I’d lost in the livery…if I’d picked scissors…I would have asked for best-two-out-of-three. And if I’d lost that, I’d have argued the point with her some more. Anyway, I got lucky, and that saved a lot of time and hard feelings between Em and me. I knew that going to the river was the right choice. And I still think that. It’s not anyone’s fault that some of us didn’t make it.” Heath knew that what she meant was it wasn’t his fault. Was he that transparent, that she could read his mind and sense his guilt over the deaths of the ones who died on the run to the river? After all, he’d helped talk them into leaving the livery. “You know that, right, Heath?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, nodding. He glanced down at his feet again, but this time he noticed a snail had hitched a ride on his shoe. He lifted his foot and plucked it loose.
“Looks like you found a friend,” Emily said.
“I guess he’s a good judge of character.” Heath chuckled. He’d heard somewhere that girls liked confident guys. It seemed to work.
“Oh, is that so?” she said and touched his arm in a flirty gesture.
Heath ran his finger along the spiral pattern on the snail’s grainy shell. “Or maybe he just had to get somewhere quicker than one foot per minute. That’s how fast they go on land, anyway.”
“You know a lot about nature and stuff,” Emily said. “I think it’s cool that you’re so smart. I’m jealous. Sometimes I wish I’d spent more time hitting the books growing up and less time mucking horse stalls.”
“But you love horses,” Heath reminded her. “You and Emma are amazing riders. Everyone knows that. I saw it while I was watching you at the arena. The way you and Sweet Pea seemed to understand each other…it was impressive. I may know a lot about animals, but that’s just from watching TV and reading books. The bond you have with Sweet Pea is something most people never experience with an animal. I’m jealous of you.”
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