Wildefire

by Karsten Knight

  “Fruit of the Loom!” the kid shouted back, and pumped his fist triumphantly into the air.

  Raja shook her head and pulled at her jumpsuit as if it were made of dog shit. “I’d almost rather wear a scarlet letter than this.”

  Rolfe elbowed her playfully in the ribs and winked.

  “There’s a second time for everything, I guess.”

  She shoved him away, but Ashline noticed the smile Raja failed to hide as it slithered across her lips. Well, that’s new, Ashline thought. Perhaps there was some sugar buried beneath her outer coating of Tabasco.

  Any further comments from the passing students were ever so gratefully preempted by the arrival of the park ranger. The truck, a big green monstrosity with a fat, round hood, looked like it had rolled right out of the fifties. It moved unhurriedly up the access road.

  And leaning out the truck window wearing a brown collared shirt, a pair of shades, and a Cheshire smile was Colt Halliday. “You Girl Scouts ready for some hiking?”

  He lowered his shades and winked.

  Raja whistled. “Thank God it’s you and not some mountain man.” She darted forward with a big grin and pecked Colt on the cheek. Ashline watched as Rolfe’s 188

  perpetually chipper expression liquefied right off his face and splattered to the ground, along with the memory of the moment he’d shared with her earlier.

  Ash realized she had unconsciously drawn her own arms snug across her chest. Relax, she told herself. Just a boy.

  “Shotgun!” Raja’s voice rang out from the other side of the car, at which point Ash finally noticed the accommodations for the rest of them—the truck bed in back.

  “Sweet,” Ash said, and glowered at Colt, who was still leaning out the window and watching her curiously even as Raja climbed into the passenger seat. Ash nodded to the truck bed. “We’ll just hang out back here in the chicken coop and wait for it to start pouring.”

  Colt shrugged. “Weather station says there’s only an eighty percent chance of rain.”

  Ash tugged on her jumpsuit. “If I find out that these chain gang jumpers were your idea, there’s a one hundred percent chance I’m going to kick your ass.”

  “Good thing I like it rough,” he replied, and withdrew back into the cab. Music exploded out of the radio, drowning out Ashline’s groan of disgust.

  The remaining four of them vaulted up and over the side of the truck into the bed, with Ashline leaping in last. The bed had a faint odor of decay, and the rubber lining was coated with traces of sawdust.

  Lily rapped on the back window. The panel slid open, and the sounds of classic rock piping out of the truck’s 189

  old speakers washed over them. Lily held up some of the sawdust for him and let it sprinkle to the ground. “Would it have been too much to ask you to sweep back here?”

  Colt grimaced. “Ooh, sorry. Had to pick up a dead deer off the road last week. The sawdust was to help soak up the blood.”

  Ash, who had been trying to pluck the sawdust off the bottom of her shoe, gagged and dropped her foot.

  “There are sandwiches in the picnic basket back there if you get hungry,” Colt said, and snapped the window panel shut again.

  Rolfe opened the picnic basket and began to rifle through the contents inside. The plastic sandwich wrap crinkled under his fingers.

  “You seriously can eat with that smell?” Ade asked him.

  He pulled out a sandwich and held it up, trying to figure out what meat was inside. “As long as it’s not venison.”

  The truck rocketed forward.

  The weather graciously remained rain-free on their trip up the 101 and then down the long stretch of Davison Road. Despite the fact that she was wearing what looked like a bright orange garbage bag and they were spending what was supposed to be a day of rest picking up litter, Ash began to appreciate the wind ruffling her hair as the truck rattled along the path. Strange how their punishment for breaking curfew was another trip off campus.

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  Still, Ash couldn’t help but try to listen in on the muffled dialogue going on within the cab, which was impossible to hear over the rumble of the old truck engine and the tinny clamor of classic rock. From the sound of it, though, Raja was doing most of the talking. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

  Rolfe, too, was quieter than usual, and after the first ten minutes or so of glancing up at the window, he turned his pensive attention out to the forest.

  Fern Canyon was absolutely one of the most beautiful things Ashline had ever seen.

  Growing up in Westchester County, she’d been to her share of arboretums, and there had even been one disastrous weekend way back in third grade when her father had decided that they should be a family that camps, and he took them up to the Catskills. Forty-eight hours and many, many bug bites later they checked into a hotel.

  Ash had fancied herself more of a city gal ever since.

  But this . . .

  As they walked along the mile-long path, Ash felt like she’d tripped over a log and stumbled into some prehis-toric era. Bushy ferns covered the rocks from the riverbed all the way up to the forest floor high above. It was impossible to believe that the far-from-mighty stream that trickled beside them on the canyon floor had somehow, over the millennia, carved such a magnificent wound into the earth.

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  Ashline knelt and dipped her hand into the water.

  Her fingers raked the pebbles of the streambed.

  Colt came up next to her and placed a palm on her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  She stared at his hand. Colt instantly retracted it and winced; maybe he’s mistaken the look she’d given him for unreadiness on her part to indulge in that sort of body-to-body contact.

  Just the opposite, fool, Ash wanted to tell him. To feel the warmth of his hand through the jumpsuit, and to wonder what it would be like if that hand just . . .

  “I just wanted to feel what it was like to have time run through my fingers,” she said at last, hoping it was a solid enough cover, but her hot, rose-tinged ears betrayed her.

  Out of all her transparent moods, embarrassment always shone out like a spotlight in a dark theater.

  Colt nodded knowingly. “I come here whenever I get the chance. When I’m here, it’s like for one hour I can forget about college, and computers, and MP3 players, and keg parties, and traffic. And I can just breathe.”

  A hundred feet ahead, Rolfe had mounted a toppled log. “Welcome,” his voice boomed to Lily, Ade, and Raja, who stood below him. He threw his arms out in a grand flourish. “Welcome to Jurassic Park!”

  “The surfer is funny,” Colt said.

  Ashline wiped her wet fingers against her orange jumper. “He might seem like just a ‘bro’ at first, but I think Rolfe has more complexity going for him than 192

  choosing which wax to rub on his long-board.” The image surfaced of him as a boy holding the bully by the neck.

  Quick, Ashline, change of subject, before your goddamn face gives it all away. “I take it your from SoCal too, then? Given the perfect tan you’ve got going for you.” She declined the sudden impulse to reach out and touch his face.

  For some reason Colt laughed. “I’m from Arizona, and it’s not really a tan. . . . I’m part Hopi.” Ash must have looked totally baffled, because he added, “That’s Native American.”

  Ash tried to suppress her I-feel-like-an-idiot face, and covered with another question. “So you grew up on a reservation?” The idea of it sounded romantic.

  “Downtown Phoenix, actually.”

  Ash shook her head. “I’m two for two on playing the ignorance card today.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sure you’ve collected a few of those cards yourself during your life,” he said.

  As they caught up with the other four, Ashline said,

  “This place is definitely beautiful, but something’s been nagging me, and I just realized what it is.”

  “Oh?” Colt raised his eyebrows.

  “Y
eah.” She pointed to the ground. “It’s immaculate.

  I haven’t seen a single piece of litter on the ground. The film crew must have come back and cleaned up after . . .”

  She trailed off, because Colt was very clearly fighting to suppress a smile. “There was never a film crew shooting a movie here, was there?”

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  “Sure there was.” He scratched the back of his head and squinted thoughtfully. “I think it was about fifteen years ago that they came through. I would have been three.”

  She stopped walking. “You bullshitted the headmistress?”

  “Since I make very compelling arguments, and authority figures for whatever reason”—he snickered—“love me, I figured you five would appreciate a nature hike over whatever vile punishment the headmistress was concoct-ing for you. Would you rather be scrubbing the cafeteria floor with a toothbrush and your own spit right now?

  Because I can give the headmistress a call if you want.”

  He rummaged through his pockets for his cell phone. “I have her on speed dial.”

  Ash shoved him into the stream. “No one’s complain-ing, asshole. My saliva thanks you. I guess I’m just suspicious as to why you went to all this trouble for five high school troublemakers like us. Seems to me that a state college boy like yourself should be disgusted by the thought of even fraternizing with a group of hyper, naïve—albeit extremely good-looking—minors. It’s almost one p.m.—aren’t you late for a keg stand?”

  “This may be impossible for you to believe,” Colt said in a hushed voice, “but as recently as last year, I was a hyper, naïve—albeit extremely good-looking—minor myself.”

  “And now you’re a persistent, outdoorsy, unshaven man-boy who cavorts with clones of your former self?”

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  Colt plucked a round stone out of the water. “I prefer boy-man, but the rest of the sentence sounded fairly accurate.” With a flick of the wrist he let loose the stone, which decided that instead of skipping downstream, it would sink upon contact.

  “Okay, first of all, you need to choose a flatter stone.

  And second . . .” She placed a hand on his elbow. “You need to not throw like a total wuss.”

  He turned on her fast, his eyes gleaming like the edge of a sword. “And you need to stop second-guessing my interest in you.”

  Neither the trickle of the stream nor Ade’s booming laughter ahead could fill the silence that followed. The tops of the canyon seemed to extend toward the sky, and for the first time in six months, Ashline felt the upper hand slipping away from her, and fast. “Can you blame me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said matter-of-factly, and crossed his arms.

  “I can.”

  Damn. He was sexy even when he was being stub-born. “Call it . . . a defense mechanism. You ever see one of those National Geographic shows with the antelopes on the savanna and the lions waiting in the bushes? Ever wonder how the antelopes just know to run like hell is on their hooves when they see the lion coming out of the grass?”

  “Am I the lion or the antelope in this situation?

  Because I’d like to think I’m more of a cheetah than—”

  She cupped her hand over his mouth to silence him.

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  “Girls have the same instincts. They know that when a good-looking older guy—who goes to State and is probably knee-deep in college freshman, sophomores, and sev-enth-year seniors waiting to feel him up in the shadows of some off campus party—acts like he’s smitten with a crass, overly sarcastic high school sophomore, something is amiss.”

  Colt leaned forward. “Wood nymphs.”

  What the hell? “Did you just say . . . ,” she started, but then she realized that, yes, she had in fact heard him correctly. “You ate some of the sandwiches from the back of the truck, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head, and the corners of his lips curled up mischievously. “I’m knee-deep in college girls when I’m at school, and beautiful half-naked wood nymphs when I’m out here.”

  Ash held up a finger. “This is the part where you make a case for why your being interested in me makes you sane.”

  “I like you because of the crazy glimmer in your eye when you hit a tennis ball, and because you look damn good in an orange jumpsuit?”

  “Try harder,” Ash said. “And this time maybe don’t say it in the form of a question.”

  He stepped forward, and his hand slipped into hers as if it had been there the whole time. “Ash, this is the truth as I know it,” he said seriously. “A boy grows up restless in a home too small to contain him. So he runs away and 196

  spends his youth traveling everywhere that a passport and a backpack will allow, until the dirt from the four corners of the world is caked beneath his fingernails. Until he forgets what home smells like. Until he’s seen so much of this world that he takes a job as far away from it as he can. Somehow, one night, at a bar filled with retirees and old fisherman, in a town that might as well be off the map, he sees a girl sitting at the bar. Even though she’s only twisting idly in her bar stool ordering a drink, that’s all it takes for him to recognize that she might be the fire he’s been looking for. In that moment he realizes that he could spend the rest of his life doing all the things he ever wanted to do in all the places he ever wanted to see, but if he doesn’t ask her for her name, this is the moment that, forty years from now, he’ll still remember as the moment when he blew it.”

  Ash realized she’d been holding her breath the entire time he’d been talking, and let it out slowly. “I’m . . .

  going to assume the boy in the story was you?”

  Colt smiled. “So now that you’ve listened to my long-winded, dramatic, probably creepy but completely sincere speech . . .” He paused, then enunciated his next words deliberately: “Will you, Ashline Wilde, let me take you on a date, a real one that doesn’t involve orange jumpers and isn’t a detention sentence?”

  Ash was suddenly aware of how clammy her hand was in his, and had to actively stop herself from staring at his lips. It was time to concede defeat. “Tuesday night. But,”

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  she added before he could get too excited, “your date better be as well-planned as your speech was convincing, or I’m afraid it will be back to slumming it with the wood nymphs for you.”

  “You put a lot of pressure on a man,” he said, and leaned forward. Despite all of his suavity, his tongue still unconsciously wetted his lips, which parted with anticipation.

  Ash leaned forward . . . and slugged him playfully on the shoulder. “I’ve got faith that you’ll step up to the plate. Welcome to the major leagues, big boy.” And then she turned and walked away toward her four comrades, before she couldn’t stop herself from pouncing on him and pinning him to the riverbank.

  She was the lioness now.

  Lily came up with the brilliant idea for chicken fights, because, she argued, when else were they ever going to have the opportunity to do chicken-fighting in a fern canyon? So Ashline obligingly climbed onto Ade’s shoulders, and Lily saddled up on Rolfe. While they jousted, Raja comically tried to convince Colt that she had more than enough muscle in her legs to support his frame. Colt wouldn’t cave.

  Finally Ade, who was panting heavily and whose voice sounded mighty strained, invited Colt to a log race, which Ashline took to mean that her weight was beginning to crush down on him.

  The canyon was a graveyard for fallen redwoods.

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  Some of the old logs, casualties of erosion and time, leaned up against the fern-covered walls, while others rested on the canyon floor. The boys and Lily organized a relay race along the logs. Raja and Ashline lingered back and watched; it wasn’t unlike observing toddlers interacting in a sandbox and wondering what crazy scenarios they were envisioning as they played.

  “You know he’s completely taken with you, don’t you,” Raja said—not a question. “Ever since the bar, he’s tried to find subtle ways to ask Ashline-related questi
ons.

  Colt has the subtlety of a car alarm.”

  Ash snickered. “He’s blunt, all right. You’re sure . . .

  that’s okay with you?”

  “What—me and Colt?” Raja giggled. “You know how I met him? I was doing a practice ten-k run through the woods, and I lost my trail. Ended up stopping dead in the middle of a clearing. Suddenly I hear some guy behind me say, ‘Need a compass?’ And there Colt is, leaning up against a tree. Don’t get me wrong—he’s hot as hell, and in another life I would have liked to wear him like a mink coat. But when your first thought about someone is wondering whether they’re some sort of handsome woodland serial killer, it’s hard to build an attraction.”

  Ashline smiled and looked up at Colt. He had hopped from one log to another and was balancing precariously.

  “He does have a habit of sneaking up behind people.”

  “Didn’t stop me from wanting to go praying mantis on you when, after just five minutes at the bar, he was all 199

  over you like the soccer team on freshman orientation.

  But I’m over it. Besides,” Raja added, “I’m finding that my interest is gravitating elsewhere.” Her eyes blatantly tracked up to Rolfe, who had broken off a branch from the fallen log and challenged Ade to a fencing match.

  So Rolfe really had slithered under a chink in her armor.

  “Be careful,” Ash warned her. “You don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.”

  Sure enough, Lily was watching the two boys fight with the sort of glowing, unreserved interest that could only be expected from someone who didn’t know she was being observed.

  “Who, Flower Power?” Raja asked. “She may have staked first claim, but she needs to shit or get off the pot.

  If she thinks the whole passive watch-and-wait thing is going to hook a man, then she should quit love now and stick with botany.”

  Lily chose that moment to look over at the two other girls. Ash hoped for her sake that her abilities didn’t include superhuman hearing, or Raja’s biting tirade was going to leave a slap mark. “You know,” Ash said, “seventy-two hours ago, you wouldn’t have given Rolfe the time of day.”