by A. E. Rought
Sudden pain flares across the top of the arch of my foot, driven there by Bree stomping it hard enough to make me wince. Passing Jason’s soda back, I whip a glare at her. Drama Queen Bree pretends innocence, but gives me a cheeky wink. She inclines her head in the direction of the In Crowd tables, where Alex follows Ally to a pair of empty seats. He sinks with his hood pointed at me until a football player draws his attention.
“That girl’s had your puppy out of the window twice now.”
“Ally can kiss my butt.” And like he heard me four rows of tables away, Alex looks at me. “He can, too. I’m tired of them both.”
“What! You’re joking, right?” Bree’s eyes widen to near saucer size. Even Jason lets out a surprised little snort.
Yeah. I don’t believe I said it, either.
Feedback chews through the intercom speaker before lunch is over. Heads pop up and turn toward the speaker. The announcement chime rings through the large room. Then the main receptionist’s voice comes through, “Attention, please. This is a reminder that Mr. LaRue’s fifth hour Dune Ecology is to meet in the student parking lot immediately after lunch.”
“Field trip!” Josh Mason whoops from the Sports Crowd tables.
“Neanderthal,” Jason groans and rolls his eyes.
The bottom drops out of my gut, and I’m suddenly sorry I ate the mac-n-cheese. Field trip, an entire afternoon spent one-on-one alone, crawling over the dunes with Alex Franks as my partner. If I’m lucky, or unlucky, Josh Mason might follow us, making more of his nasty comments. My mind sticks on time alone with Alex. What will I say, how will he act?
“What?” asks Bree. “Why are you so pale?”
“Well, looks like I’ll be stuck with Alex Franks for the next few hours.”
“Oo.” Jason’s eyes widen. “I’ll pray for you. Y’know I heard he had to leave his fancy prep school due to violence.”
“Nuh-uh,” argues dark-haired, dark-eyed Chelsea Reamer. “I heard it was because he spent a year in juvie for accidental manslaughter.”
They seem to know the rumors. Do they know he has mismatched hazel eyes, and scars on his wrist? Or that he opens my locker just like Daniel? Do they know I can’t stop thinking about him even when I want to?
#
A group stands huddled outside the school building, in the parking lot reserved for students. Growing winds push and pull at hair and jackets. And true to the weight of storms I’ve felt all day, gray, brooding clouds linger in a bank in the sky, dark as a threat.
Alex remains outside the group, not ignored, but more by choice it seems. Josh Mason’s directly across from him, leaning on the hood of his Z-28 and giving him stink eye. I weave between people until I’m close to Mr. LaRue, who’s counting heads. He drops a quick gaze to my immobilizer and arches an eyebrow. I lift a shoulder in a weak shrug, and he responds with a shake of his head. I love silent conversations.
“I’ll be taking one mini van,” he announces. “Mr. Baker will take the other. You can ride with us, or ride separate. Don’t get any wise ideas. I will be taking head count at Meinert Park, too.”
Josh runs a hand through his carrot curls, then whistles through his teeth and calls, “Yo, Emma!”
I bristle. A disgusted noise issues from the tall hooded guy a couple of feet to my left. I clench my jaw, biting down swear words. Josh looks at me, expectant, patting his hood and coaxing me like I’m some dumb freshman begging for scraps of attention. Wind whips my hair in my face when I shake my head, then give Josh the middle finger.
“You wish,” he mouths.
If my right hand wasn’t in a cast, I’d give him another.
Spinning, I march stubbornly to the school’s minivan, half-filled with Dune Eco students and drop into the seat behind the driver’s. Josh climbs into his Camaro, slams the door and guns the engine. A few giggly titters rise from the girls. The guys ignore him, like I’m doing. His project partner Shane Lowenstein, however, climbs in and sits behind me muttering, “I hate that guy.”
Me, too. I slouch in my seat, rest my head against the window and try to doze while Mr. LaRue drives the seven miles of farmland to the lakeshore. The reek of cow crap filters into the van’s air systems. I bury my nose in my elbow, and close my eyes. Trees litter the dark side of the dunes, scaling up and away from the kidney shaped parking lot and chipped white bath house. A wooden boardwalk clings to the side of the dune, an exposed spine riding over dark flesh, meant to preserve the fragile ground.
The park is a quiet retreat, one Daniel and I often watched the sunsets from.
My heart twinges in my chest after I climb from the van. One smell of the fresh lake water laden air brings memories crawling from the dark where I’d shoved them. The rest of the class climbs from the vans, and from a few student cars, including one black shiny hybrid, and one rusty Z-28. Trees and dunes tower over our heads, the kind of ageless beauty that makes me feel small and alive at the same time. With memories of Daniel plaguing me, I need that life, and lean against the white vehicle, tip my head back, close my eyes and just breathe.
A cool shadow cuts into the edge of my consciousness, familiar and strange all at once. Heaving a sigh, I open my eyes and focus on my lab partner standing a couple feet from me. A white notebook and pencil fill one of Alex’s hands. With the sun at his back, I can only make out the lines of his face, the glint of his eyes in the darkness cast by his hood.
“Ready, partner?” He smooth tenor voice a perfect accompaniment to the breeze whispering in the trees. “I figured I’d bring the supplies, seeing as you’re…well, y’know…”
“Handicapped?”
A smile beams from the shadows cloaking his face. “They call it handy-capable, too. We just need to figure out what you’re good at.”
“What?” I ask, pushing off from the van. “Flipping Josh Mason off isn’t a skill?
His laugh is rich and sudden. “I think you’re making that an art form.”
We fall into step behind the stragglers of Mr. LaRue’s alphabetically partnered teams. Beneath our feet two black rubber tracks gouge the asphalt. Teams break off to do their separate projects as the sun and shadows lurch across the pavement, shoved around by the stiff breeze coming off Lake Michigan. I sink deeper into my hoodie, and duck my head. I’m grateful when Alex zips his jacket and shifts to block the wind from hitting me. When I turn of my head, nearly everyone has disappeared on the separate trails. Our path is clear in front of us, and so is a disturbance in the leaf litter to the far side of the parking lot.
Unconsciously, I reach out and tug on Alex’s sleeve. A hint of a tingle races through my fingertips when he stops and my hand bumps his elbow. I point to the torn dirt near the culvert.
“What do you think that is?”
“No idea.”
By the new angle of his steps, we’re going to find out.
He treads over sun speckles to the deeper gloom thrown by an overhang of trees whose tangled roots have broken through the pavement’s edge. Water gushes from the entrance of the park, through the gully we walk toward, and then on to the lake. The little ditch’s edge is ripped raw, and appears to be bleeding. Red splats of mud cover the mound, and trickle down either edge.
Alex suddenly drops the notebook and pencil and scrambles over the edge.
“Oh, my God!” His voice scales to tones of panic. Wet splashes sound over the muddy rise. “Emma, get help! Get Mr. LaRue.”
His alarm cuts at my heart, draws me like a magnet. Instead of running or shouting for help, I trace Alex’s steps. The smell of iron hangs heavy in the air over the red mud. It sticks to my hands and my clothes as I scramble to the lip of the little creek.
A young white tail deer lies half in, half out of the shallow creek, rear on the dry dirt, upper half in the inches of water. The whites of her eyes show as they wheel in their sockets. Her ribs and side are a torn, bloody mess. White bone protrudes past the skin of her twisted puzzle of a front leg. Only a vehicle could do that kind of damage.
Alex kneels in the muck near the doe’s head, his hands crimson and shiny with her blood.
“Get help!” He begs. “Please!”
I’ve lived in Michigan all my life. I know the mortality rate of a deer after a collision with a car. Alex should, too. The deer needs to be put out of its misery.
“Sorry, Alex. I don’t think anyone has a gun.”
“A gun?” His eyes are nearly as wide as the doe’s. “We can’t shoot her. She can’t die!”
She’s going to. Her eyes, her staggered breaths, everything says her end is coming. If anything, it makes Alex more agitated. He strokes her neck, looks at me with his eyes wide and beseeching.
Why is he so panicky? His emotions are reaching in, rattling my calm and infecting my nerves with a ghost of his distress.
“I could call the DNR to come get her,” I suggest. It’s the only logical choice, despite his mad need to save what’s already lost. Logic isn’t working with Alex’s stress screaming in my head. I should get our teacher, but I can’t walk away when Alex is so distraught. “The DNR’ll take care of her.”
“They’ll KILL her!”
It’s his raw ache, the way he stands in the filth as torn by his emotions as the deer by the car that topples my ability to maintain any distance. With a few steps, I’m in the muddy water, reaching toward Alex. A tear rises in his eye. The hazel is amazingly vibrant. His voice is naked, exposing a wound in him when he begs, “Emma, please. I can’t let her die!”
“Okay, Alex.” Plese let him be okay, I pray silently, because I feel as crazy as he sounds.
I scale the muddy rise, and shout for help. The dune swallows my voice. My second shout reaches farther. Shane Lowenstein’s head appears around the corner of the board walk.
“Get Mr. LaRue!” I shout.
Shane’s face is a mask of questions but he nods, and disappears toward the glimmer of lake water.
Alex’s arms are under her body, the deer’s legs lashing weakly, churning the water to burgundy mud when I turn back to the scene of the dying doe. Horrid bleats rip from her throat, and tighten mine. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m in the water, inches from her mangled leg and the bubbles in the bloody ruin of her chest. At this angle, a notch in her ear is very visible.
Spots of feverish red stain Alex’s cheeks. Foamy deer blood speckles his face. His lips are pursed as he tries to shush and calm the deer.
“What can I do?”
“Get her front.” He slides along her spine, easing his arms under her hip. “I’ll get her back end.”
Heedless to the danger of a wounded animal, I follow Alex’s directions. Cooing to the deer, I ease my arms down past the raw meat and exposed bone of her chest and under to the other side. She’s a fighter, struggling even now with her life running crimson and wet over Alex and me.
Blood, thick and lukewarm, strains through my hoodie and t-shirt. My stomach rolls violently at the smell, and I clamp my jaws on my gag reflex.
Between the two of us we hoist the young deer, her struggles weakening as we carry her out of the creek that could’ve been her death bed. People stand in gossiping clumps, Josh Mason is shaking his head, one girl’s crying and none of it rises above the buzz of backround noise in my head. Alex, the deer, and her death are crystal cut, High Definition. They are real, and ripping my heart to pieces.
Mr. LaRue stands a few feet from the tire tracks burned into the pavement. He doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t reprimand. “You have the rest of the day,” he says. “Do what you can. Just…write me a report about it.”
We manage to get the animal to Alex’s car. There, feet away from Alex’s trunk, the deer stops fighting. Her chest struggles to rise, air gushing in tattered flash between her ribs. Then, she turns one beautiful brown eye on me, and releases her last breath. The tension leaves her body and the light leaves her eye.
“No!” Alex shakes his head. “No. Not after all this. She can’t die.”
I hang my head, close my eyes and hold her tighter, despite the wetness running down my skin. “She’s gone, Alex.”
A strangled sob breaks from him. He’s shaking, I can feel it even through the deer’s still body.
“We need to bring the body to the DNR.”
He’s quiet, too quiet, face a frozen mask. Then he nods. “Okay,” he mutters, shoves a bloody hand into his pocket for his keys, then pops the trunk. “You’re right.”
Finally he’s acting more normal, not crazed. It’s hard to reconcile the panicked guy in the filthy culvert with the mysterious guy back at school. I want to rewind the afternoon, or maybe push my hair from my face, or clean the blood from his, anything to wipe away the muck and emotion of the past few minutes.
After we jockey the doe’s corpse into his pristine trunk, I look at Alex. His face is drained of color and expression. He stares at me, blood smeared across the front of his zipped-up leather jacket.
“You’re soaked,” he says, as if he only now really realized I was in the filth with him.
I just nod, relieved to have the calm, thoughtful Alex back. “Got any towels in your car? I don’t want to ruin your upholstery.”
“I don’t care about my car,” his voice is flat, nearly as dead as the deer in his trunk.
The rip of his jacket zipper is unnaturally loud in the quiet after the doe’s death. I watch in a numb state of shock as Alex whips off his jacket, then pulls off his hoodie. Beneath the shirt he’s bare. Thin scars run the lengths of his arms, down his chest and the cleft between his stomach muscles. When he offers the dry shirt to me, he exposes lines of white on his neck.
My God. What happened to him? Where did all of those scars come from?
“Put this on.”
I can only stare at his marred perfection.
“Emma. Come on. Take the shirt.” Shocked, I function on autopilot. My right hand lifts and his gaze goes to my filthy immobilizer. “Crap! Your brace is ruined. Hold still.”
My brain is locked on his scars. My senses reel, and I think vaguely I might puke or pass out, then focus on Alex as he unzips my hoodie for me and pulls it gently off. He uses the hood to wipe as much blood from my immobilizer as he can and undoes the Velcro closures. His eyes lock on mine and he whispers, “This might hurt,” then removes my brace.
Pain shoots across the back of my hand. I bite my lip while he balls up my sweatshirt and brace then turns away. Self-preservation, or maybe modesty, regain awareness in my stunned mind and I duck behind the car, closer to the trees to pull off my t-shirt and sopping bra. I use the back of the shirt, the only dry part, to clean up as much as I can. Alex’s shirt slides over me with a whisper of cotton, the smell of leather and death.
His car door is open, and he’s covering his scars and skin with another long sleeved t-shirt. “I’ll take you to the clinic so you can get another brace, then I’ll take care of the deer,” he says.
“Okay,” sounds limp in light of what’s happened but it’s all I can force out.
His seats are covered with sheepskin seat covers. I hesitate a moment, clutching my right hand to my chest.
“Don’t worry,” Alex promises. “They’re washable.”
Mute, I slip into the seat, not at all surprised when he reaches across me and does my seat belt for me. Daniel would’ve done the same. I scan the inside of his car, and see two black trash bags sitting in the footwells behind the seats.
“What’s in those?”
“Our bloody clothes.”
“You travel around with lawn and garden bags in your car?”
“Better safe than sorry,” he says, then starts the engine.
I close my eyes and wish I could wash the stink of blood from me. What happened today won’t wash away as easily as the seat covers, but I wish it would. I have enough emotional wounds to carry without adding an animal’s death and the conundrum of Alex’s internal and external scars to them.
Chapter Nine
Death lingers in the dirt and blood
clinging to me. Every breath pulls in more of it, coating my throat and turning my stomach. My eyes close and the doe’s face stains my inner vision, pain and life fading from her eye in a repeating loop. Bile rises and I swallow it back. The window rolls down before I push the button as though Alex knows I’m going to barf.
I inhale huge greedy gulps of fresh air, begging the oxygen to clear my head. I’m not sure anything will wipe that image from my mind—the deer dying, or Alex’s reaction to it.
A sick fear digs through me, growing thorns and coiling around my gut.
What if he’s like his dad? I’d just let Daniel go, the last thing I want is more drama. An unstable lab partner might as well be filed under the drama heading in the dictionary, especially when his dad is a psycho. It’s a double whammy.
“Um, Alex?”
Silence, a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and a perfect view of his clean hood pulled up to hide the scars. Otherwise, the only thing he offers is a jerk of his head.
“Alex?” I shift in my seat, facing him as the autumn fields roll past.
He flicks me a pained look at the stop sign at the top of the hill. His eyes are knapped hazel stone and the thin pressed line of his lips screams, “Leave me alone.”
I can’t. Not after the meltdown I saw back in the ditch.
“What was that back there?”
A short snort escapes him. His knuckles clench so tight on the steering wheel they crack. Preservation instincts tell me to shut up. Common sense says to leave it alone. Listening was never a strong point of mine. I repeat his name, a lower tone, more insistent. Then, Alex does the last thing I expect. Instead of drive like he’s running away from something, he damn near stands on the brakes, steering the shuddering car off the road next to a field of drooping feed corn.
“You wanna know what happened back there?” His voice cracks into my shocked silence.