After a time Mandi’s hand touches my back. I cannot say anything. The deer is still moving, faster now, more sure of her footing, getting farther away. She is not permanently injured, no broken bones, just a dandy slam to her hindquarters. She is running it off. Finally, as her pain fades from my senses, I’m able to look up at Mandi. “You okay?” she says. I nod. She helps me to my feet. Like a couple of drunks we stagger out of the ditch and over to the car. I lean against the trunk. She steps away and turns to face me. “That was crazy, you know.”
“I told you I was weird.”
“Weird is one thing, but running to help an injured wild animal isn’t weird; it’s dangerous.”
My body starts shaking. When I finally bring it under control, I wipe my muddy hand on my jeans. “Will you drive?” Without waiting for a confirmation, I walk around and get into the passenger side. While she gets in and buckles up, adjusts the mirror, and the seat, and retrieves the GPS from under her feet, I buckle and turn the heat up to high. We’re still sitting crossways in the road. Not one vehicle came by during the ordeal. She puts the car in drive and pulls it around into our lane.
I analyze the cappuccinos, which made the wild ride just fine, switch the cups and then leave mine sitting. It is half full and still warm. I want the warmth but my stomach is hanging on the unsettled side. “You don’t understand what happened, do you?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I felt her pain.”
She pulls off the road and stops, carefully puts the car in park and turns toward me. “You what?”
“I felt her pain. Not like it happened to me, but like a weak copy.”
“A weak copy?”
“Yeah. When I hit her it was like someone punched me in the hip. I thought at first it was something flying around in the car. When she fell over the barbwire fence it was like someone was poking me with needles.” I pick up the cappuccino and take a sip. My body relaxes as the warm liquid slides down my throat. “As she ran she got stronger; my sense of her got weaker until it disappeared.”
“Do you feel any of the pain now?”
“No. I was unsettled for a bit but that’s clearing.”
“This is better than Dr. Dolittle.”
“This is weirder than Dr. Dolittle.”
“Dr. Dolittle isn’t real. This is. This is a whole lot better.”
“It’s weird.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s weird. But it’s still cool.”
“I don’t want to feel animals’ pain.”
She turns back into her seat. “No. I guess that wouldn’t be all that cool, would it?”
“Like, where does it end? Do I have to worry about stepping on a spider.”
Mandi looks at me; makes a face in the dark. “Or fish. Can you imagine trying to hook a fish. On a good day fishing your mouth would be in constant pain.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Sorry.”
I turn the heat down. “Let’s go.”
She pulls back onto the road. We both peer intently into the darkness at the far reaches of our headlights. We see no more deer the rest of the way to Kalispell.
We find a local map at an Exxon station and then pull into a twenty-four hour Perkins Family Restaurant. The place is almost deserted. I’m hungry, having given up my dinner along the side of the road. Mandi orders a coke. I stay with water. She opens the map while I look over the menu.
“It looks like Columbia Falls is about twelve miles,” she says. “If we’re not going to Matt’s, we need to sleep somewhere. Should we just do a motel or do you want to sleep in the car? It’s your money funding this adventure.”
I put the menu down, not able to decide what to order. “It’ll be too cold in the car. I guess we should do the motel.”
“It does sound warmer.”
I pick the menu back up and start looking at each individual choice. There are way too many of them.
“Reba! . . . Rebecca!”
I look over the top of the menu at Mandi, then up at the waitress who is back. She is staring at me. “Oh! I guess I’ll just have the small stack, and a couple of eggs.”
Carol, the waitress—her nametag gives her away—looks between me and Mandi. She doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t write anything down.
“I don’t care for anything,” Mandi says.
Carol looks at me again.
“A small stack and eggs,” I say again.
“Yeah. I got that,” Carol says. She doesn’t move. “You’re Reba, right?”
“Right.”
“From Texas, right?”
Getting weird. Mandi and I exchange glances. “Right.”
“Did your dad ever find you?”
Mandi and I now exchange open-mouth looks.
Carol sits down on the edge of the seat next to Mandi and gives me this sad, I’m so sorry look. She leans forward. “What did he do to you?”
“My dad? What do you mean what did he do to me?”
“You ran away, right?”
“No. I’m on college break. I haven’t even talked to my dad in a while.” A very long while, actually.
She sits up straight. “College?”
“Yeah. College. We’re at MSU. We came up here to visit a friend. What gives you the idea that my dad is looking for me? How do you even know my dad? You have to be thinking of someone else.”
“He showed me your picture, said you went by Reba, Rebecca, or Becky.”
“When?” This is really weird. Why would Dad be looking for me, and how would he even know to look in Kalispell, let alone this restaurant?
“Last Summer.”
I almost laugh. “Last Summer! That’s like a year ago. How could you possibly remember my face from a picture you saw back then? And what was my dad doing in here?”
“I lost my daughter after she ran away because I was stupid. I have since dedicated my life to helping runaways. I study faces, pictures, names. I memorize them. There are reasons why young girls run away. My daughter was being sexually abused by two men, one being her father. She died in Seattle two years after she took off, because I was blind to it. I’m not blind anymore. It’s too late for her, but it’s not too late for others. It’s not too late for you.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Your dad just happened to come in here for breakfast and for some reason thought this might be a place where you’d show up.”
“The last time I was in a Perkins was when I was twelve. Why would he think I’d be here? And for your information, my father has never abused me, sexually or in any other way. My father is a very wonderful man. My reason for taking off last summer had to do with issues that I personally had with myself and I felt I needed a vacation. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve so I went without telling them. I don’t need a lecture on the stupidity of it. I paid a price you don’t even want to hear about. My father did find me, apparently only a few hours after he was here. Everything that happened last summer is water under the bridge, as they say. You can erase my face, and my name from your memory, thank you.”
She turns her head toward Mandi; studying and memorizing her face, I’d be willing to bet. She looks back at me. “You sure?”
“Yes! I’m sure!” My impatience is beginning to show, and I’m tired.
She slips out of the booth. “Small stack and eggs.” She looks at Mandi again. “For you?”
“Still Nothing,” Mandi says and points her face back to the map.
Carol walks away.
Mandi and I look at each other. “Holy cow! Do you believe that?” I say.
Mandi starts to say something and then looks over my shoulder. I turn my head. Carol is back.
“You said you paid a price. Did he beat you?”
“No! He didn’t beat me. If you really want to know the price I paid for running away, I’ll tell you. Both of my parents came looking for me. There was an accident. My mother was killed. Okay?”
She looks at me until I think she
is going to cry.
“Water under the bridge,” I add. “Can’t get it back. Can’t go with it. Kind of like you and your daughter. We have to move on.”
She takes a step back. “How . . . I’m sorry.” She sniffs and clears her throat. “How do you want them?”
“Pardon me?”
“Your eggs.” She firms up her voice. “How do you want them?”
“Hard whites, runny yokes.”
She turns and almost runs away.
Chapter 11
May 3, 2009 – Sunday
My pancakes and eggs arrive in silence. My fork is dirty. I ask for a replacement. Carol goes away and comes back and goes away. I flood the pancakes with blueberry syrup and dig in.
“I guess I’m game if you’re sure,” Mandi says.
“I’m not sure, but I think the chances are good.”
Mandi peers at the map some more. My suggestion, while we were waiting for my meal, was that we could see if Sam’s place is still empty. It probably went into legal nowhere land while there was a search for her next of kin. I doubt she had a will, and I doubt there was a next of kin. On top of that she owned it under a false name.
“I’m willing to bet that the property is still bogged down in legal mire,” I say. “It probably still has furniture and stuff. Doubt there’s any electricity, but do we really care?”
“The nights are still pretty cold.”
I point my syrup covered fork at Mandi. “She had a fireplace, and a stack of chopped wood out back. We could drag a couple of mattresses down into the living room near the fireplace. We have sleeping bags if there are no sheets and blankets. The more I think about it, the more I realize it is perfect.”
She seems reluctant.
“What’s going to happen if we get caught? We get our butts chewed and we’re told to get out. Who’s going to catch us anyway, especially if we drive in now, in the middle of the night?”
“You sure you can find the way?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
My headlights seem to barely penetrate down the highway, and not at all to the sides. Now I’m not so sure. I’m driving again, cruising slowly up Highway 206, trying to find the landmark. It was a huge white house and red barn. There was a broken down tractor at the turn. The tractor could have been towed away, or the house could have been repainted, or we could have driven right by it in the dark. Every turn looks correct, but the house and barn aren’t there, at least not as I remember them. It didn’t seem like it was this far. I only drove in once, by myself, came out three days later—like a lifetime—by helicopter, my dad flying, my mom left behind buried in a mountain with Sam and Victor Vandermill. Two of those days we were being pursued through the mountains, hiding in caves, wading across creeks, facing down grizzly bears. Okay, one grizzly bear after I got separated from Mom, Dad, and Matt. I’d be long forgotten grizzly poop now if not for three sabre-toothed cats coming to my rescue and fighting him while I shook with fear behind a tree.
“What’s that?” Mandi points.
“That’s it!” I would have gone right on by, wrapped up in my thoughts. I brake hard, back up and then turn, the headlights washing across the broken down tractor, nearly invisible under a cloud-covered moon. I don’t know how Mandi spotted it.
I drive slow past the big, white house, then pick up my speed a little. Gravel turns to dirt, and then that turns to ruts. I slowly navigate the car around and through the ruts until things smooth out and we enter the forest, and really start climbing. A few minutes later we come to a gate. In the middle of it in small wrought iron script are the letters, SS, which I know stands for Samantha Sikorski. Above that is a sign that says, PRIVATE. Mandi gets out and opens it, waits, and then closes it after I drive through. We skirt a cliff and then climb up a hill, and over the top. As we start down the other side I brake the car to a stop.
“Is that Sam’s house?” Mandi asks.
“That’s it.” I stare at the house and yard in the headlights and sliver of moonlight that breaks through the clouds, and the garage beyond, hardly able to believe that we are actually here, where it all began. “This spot right here is where I parked my car before it started rolling down the hill and almost killed my mom. I saw her death coming and Dad and I saved her, which almost killed Matt and his dad. I’ve never thought of it before, but my mother died anyway. Like it was meant to be and all I did was postpone it.”
“You saved my life and I didn’t die later anyway.”
“Maybe you weren’t meant to die yet.”
“Maybe I’m meant to die here.”
I turn my head toward Mandi and glare at her, though I’m sure she can’t get a full appreciation of it in the dark. I put it in my voice. “Don’t even think such a thing. I didn’t come here to bury someone else; especially not my best friend.”
“Sorry. Just a weird thought.”
“My weirdness is catching.”
Other than my headlights, the yard is dark. The house is dark. The only car visible is mine, still sitting where it landed after rolling and then tumbling down the hill. This was still a crime scene when we boarded the plane back to Dallas, so it never got towed away. The bad guys’ truck is gone, though, as well as Dad’s and Mom’s rentals, and Matt’s Dad’s truck. I guess it all makes sense. I release the brake and we descend into the yard where it all began, two days before it all ended. There comes a rising burn of tears. I take a deep breath and push them away.
It is almost 4:00 in the morning by the time we jimmy a lock, haul our stuff into the house by flashlight, and get the fire going. Sam’s house is indeed empty, looks like it has been since those days in July. It is also very cold. We sit side-by-side on one of the mattresses and stare at the flames, blankets wrapped around us.
“We should make sure the fire is out by daylight so that there is no smoke from the chimney,” I suggest.
Mandi shakes her head. “The smoke is in the beginning. Once the fire is real hot the smoke ceases. Do you see any smoke now?”
“No.”
“If it goes out we can’t start it up again until dark.”
“It’ll go out after we go to sleep.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us is ready to sleep, though my head, my entire body, feels heavy with lack of it. “What do we do next, after we’ve slept?”
“This is your adventure, Reba. It’s your show. You tell me. I’m along for the excitement and to see what you’re going to do next.”
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath and lay my head on my knees. My adventure, all right. Seemed like the right thing to do yesterday. Now . . . I’m not so sure.
“Is that her?”
I force my eyes open. I’m still sitting with my head on my knees. I must have fallen asleep for a few minutes. I look up to where Mandi is shining her flashlight at the painting above the fireplace. It is a portrait of Sam with a young sabre-toothed cat.
“Yeah,” I say. “That was painted from a photograph that my dad took nine years ago. The cat is Tricia.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Who? Sam or Tricia.”
“Both.”
Mandi turns off her flashlight and then goes to her sleeping bag and slides in. I stare at the place where her flashlight lit the portrait, still able to see it, even in the dark. That’s really where it all began, nine years ago. Actually it was years before when they managed to successfully clone the first sabre-toothed cat from DNA extracted from a nearly perfectly preserved Smilodon specimen. Somehow, they managed to inject it into a Bengal tiger egg, and then inject that into a Bengal tiger to grow. The secret to the success, though, died with the scientist who figured it out. Doctor Jacob Zitnik. Tall and lanky, Dad called him. I can picture a long face and big hands, big feet. He used his secret not only on sabre-toothed cats, but also on humans. Sans Sanssabre created perfect babies-to-order using the best DNA from human specimens from around the world. The perfect German baby, or the perfect African baby, or the perfect French
baby. Whatever the parents wanted for their money, a great deal of money. Very rich parents.
I did the calculations once, based on what dad wrote in his journals, and came up with somewhere between 100 and 170 babies, now ranging between eight and fifteen years old; each one an exact clone of someone, somewhere in the world. I wonder what they are like? Are they in fact perfect?
I throw aside the blanket, place another log on the fire and then crawl into my sleeping bag.
Chapter 12
May 3, 2009 – Sunday
There is daylight coming from somewhere I don’t recognize. It takes me a few seconds to remember why I’m in my sleeping bag in front of a cold fireplace, and not in my dorm room. As it comes to me I realize we have moved into our apartment, but I have yet to sleep there. I haven’t even made my bed yet; the mattress still lies naked.
I peek out. Mandi’s sleeping bag is flat. On top of it sits her huge travel bag, open, clothes spilling out. I look around, see nothing, hear nothing. It’s 10:22 according to my watch. I reach and drag my bag closer, pull out a blue sweatshirt with a huge yellow Bobcat logo across the front—the MSU Mascot—and pull it on over the T-shirt I’m already wearing.
I smell food. In thirty seconds I’m into my sweatpants and heavy socks, and am heading up the stairs to the kitchen.
“Hey!” I say when I see Mandi. She is at the stove stirring something in a sauce pan. An empty can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup sits on the counter next to an unopened box of Ritz Crackers, and two bowls with spoons poking up. She looks up and gives me a big smile.
“Morning! No electricity, but we have propane cooking. Found plenty of canned food and still sealed boxes of crackers, rice, pasta, oatmeal, cereals; all kinds of stuff. Sam had herself stocked for the winter. Soup and Ritz Crackers for breakfast.”
“Smells delicious.”
“There’s also powdered milk, sugar, flour, Bisquick; you name it. If you don’t like my soup, go for something else.”
“Soup is great.” I spent one night here last summer, before all the fun began, so I already had a hunch there would be food, unless someone had hauled it all away. Sam certainly was stocked, both here and inside the mountain that now lay on top of her and Mom. I step into the pantry. There are cans of soup, beans, stew, chili, spaghetti, lasagna, and a ton of sugarless cereals. More soup in boxes, six cases of bottled water. It’s a huge pantry.
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