Some Kind of Animal

by Maria Romasco-Moore

  Lee drags him backward, lays him down, stretched out on the ground. Surprisingly gentle. She kneels and presses her ear against his chest. Her eyes closed, she rests there for a long time, listening.

  My sister the wild one. The witch. She’s going to save him, I think.

  I watch, afraid to speak, hardly daring to breathe,

  She is still, so still, listening.

  Suddenly she sits up, scrabbles at the ground beside her, gathering a big handful of dirt and dead leaves. She holds her hands straight out in front of her and drops the leaves on Brandon’s chest. She stands up.

  I stare at him. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Right? He has to be.

  Lee is behind me now, hands under my armpits, pulling me to my feet. I won’t take my eyes off Brandon. Any moment now, he’ll move. He’ll wiggle his fingers, clasp and unclasp his rough hands. He’ll open his eyes. He has to.

  He was just here. Just moments ago. He was breathing. It can’t happen that quickly.

  I’m shivering, though it hasn’t gotten any colder.

  Lee’s taken off her puffy jacket. She’s tugging my right arm into the sleeve. When she grabs my left wrist it hardly even hurts anymore. She gets the jacket on, though I give her no help. My body feels distant, numb. I don’t want to go. Don’t want to leave him here alone.

  She has to pull me away. Has to drag me, my heels scratching long, thin scars in the dirt.

  * * *

  —

  I move like I’m in a dream. My limbs not quite attached. They are somewhere far from me, working on their own.

  I can’t stop. He didn’t want them to find me, didn’t want them to catch me, to keep me.

  It’s my fault. My fault that he ran when I told him to. My fault he was in the truck. My fault that he had to leave his camper in the first place.

  It can’t be for nothing.

  He wanted to fix the mistake he made all those years ago, taking me into town. He would want me to keep going. Would want me to run and never look back. I tell myself this, over and over. It’s the only way to keep moving.

  Maybe if we’d let ourselves be caught, they could have saved him. Maybe if I’d realized sooner, I could have called 911. Could have gotten an ambulance.

  But he didn’t want that. I’ve got to keep going.

  When we reach the edge of the cemetery, Lee tries to head toward our meeting tree, but I hold her back, pull her wordlessly up the hill toward Myron’s house. I’ve shown her the house before, though I could never convince her to go inside. We circle around, still shielded by the forest. My heart pounds with how close we must be to people. What if they’re scouring Queen of Heaven? What if they’re waiting for us at Myron’s? Savannah could have told them. Betrayed me again.

  The house, from what I can see through the trees, looks how it always looks. Dark. Empty.

  “Wait here,” I tell my sister.

  I search her eyes, her posture. She looks calmer than she should, when I feel like I might shatter at any moment. I haven’t forgotten what I thought back at the camper. That she was a stranger. That I don’t know her at all, not really.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “Savannah’s here.” I hope to God that’s true. My sister stiffens. “I asked her to come,” I say. “She’s on our side, okay? And you can’t hurt her.”

  Lee’s shoulders are hunching, she is closing herself up.

  “We’re running away,” I say, trying to sound hard and sure. There is no room for argument now. “Like you wanted. She’s going to help.”

  Lee seems about to protest when we both hear voices, shouts. I whip around, peer through the trees toward Myron’s house. I don’t see anything. The shouting comes again. It is distant, difficult to make out words, but it could have been Jolene, could have been my name.

  “Stay here,” I whisper. “Don’t move. I’ll whistle if it’s safe for you to come out.”

  I don’t give her time to object. There is no time. I sprint out of the trees to the side of the house and move carefully along it, crouching low.

  I peer around the edge of the porch, expecting nothing. Or maybe Margaret. Maybe Aggie. Maybe the pastor. Maybe an angry mob.

  There’s a car in the driveway.

  I squint at it. The moon is brighter here, pouring down unobstructed into the clearing, and I realize I know this car: a low-slung little sedan, nothing special, scratched gray paint, dent in the hood.

  This car belongs to Jack.

  No. He can’t be here. Did Savannah send him? Did he follow her somehow?

  I back up around the house, heart hammering, reaching for the phone in my pocket, when a voice, small, scared, says, “Jo?”

  I whip my head around, unsure at first what direction the voice came from, and then I see Savannah, poking her head out the kitchen window, cigarette in hand, tiny cherry flare in the darkness.

  “Savannah,” I say, almost too happy to speak. I run to the window.

  Savannah is wearing her plaid jacket with the fake-fur-lined hood, zipped only halfway, so the top of her tank still shows and, bent over as she is now, the top of her breasts too.

  “Is he here?” I whisper.

  “Who. Jack? No.”

  I sag against the side of the house, relieved. Savannah swings her legs over the sill, jumps down. She’s got her Tupperware of cigarettes from the Naked Lady Room tucked under one arm.

  “How’d you get his car?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “It makes him go to sleep.”

  “What does?”

  “You know.”

  It takes me a second to understand, then it hits me. It shouldn’t matter. Not now, after everything. But I still feel a sick lurch in my stomach and my face must betray my disgust, because Savannah frowns at me.

  “You did it again?” I ask

  I told myself I wouldn’t judge her. That I would be better than that. But it’s hard, when he’s the worst possible person. How could she let him touch her like that? He’s gross and she’s perfect. He shouldn’t even be allowed to look at her.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette on the side of the house. “I didn’t really mean to, the first time. It just kind of happened.”

  Which makes no sense. How can that just happen? It’s not like you just trip or something and then suddenly you’re doing the one thing that pretty much everyone your whole life has told you not to do. That everyone in your whole life will judge you for.

  I know everyone judged Mama. They judged her right out of town. Judged her to death.

  I won’t be like them.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter,” I say, and it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. Nothing matters. Brandon is back there in the forest. He looks like he’s only sleeping, but he won’t ever wake up. I know that, but I can’t think about it. I don’t have time to think about anything. They are looking for us. Hunting us. It can’t have been for nothing.

  “You brought me a car,” I say. “You’re amazing,”

  Savannah smiles at me and I’m hit with this rush of feeling. The end to a longing I didn’t even realize the strength of until this moment. Savannah is back. She’s on my side. Her eyeliner’s smudged a little, and I love that. I missed that. It’s only been what, two days since I saw her? And yet I missed her. I didn’t even realize exactly how much. I can’t help it; I throw my arms out and hug her tight. She hugs me back.

  I could cry. I could kiss her.

  When we finally let go, I turn back toward the trees. My sister’s out of sight. I whistle, whistle again.

  Nothing happens.

  “What are you doing?” asks Savannah.

  “Goddammit, Lee,” I say under my breath, ignoring her. “Come on.”

  I can still remember what it felt like,
all those nights when I’d make Savannah wait with me in Grandma Margaret’s backyard. That desperation, that yearning. The woods like a magic eye picture—if I only stared long enough maybe the picture would change, reveal the figure of a thin girl in a too-small dress. But it never did.

  The next night, when I was alone again, she’d show up and I’d demand to know why she didn’t appear. You know why, she’d say, or she’d just scowl at me and ignore the question. Please, I’d beg her. Savannah is really cool. You’d like her. It made no difference.

  But everything is different now. She attacked Henry. She broke my window. She fought the pastor. And I know that she was never as reclusive as I had always believed.

  “Lee!” I shout, risking it.

  “Who is—” Savannah starts, but then something shifts in the distance and suddenly there’s a girl standing by the tree, slight as a moth. Savannah sucks in her breath sharply.

  “No fucking way,” she whispers.

  “I told you.”

  I gesture for Lee to come toward us, but she doesn’t move.

  “Maybe you should leave,” I whisper to Savannah. She doesn’t answer and when I glance over at her, she’s staring, eyes wide, at the tree line, at my sister.

  She lifts a hand, waves.

  My sister takes a step forward, out of the trees, and then another, and then she’s running, closing the short distance between us.

  I shift sideways, blocking Savannah, thinking of the bridge. Henry. Lee stops abruptly a few feet away, whole body tense as a guitar string.

  I turn back to Savannah. She looks terrified.

  “Savannah,” I say, “this is my sister, Lee. Lee, this is Savannah.”

  It’s so strange. This is exactly what I always wanted, all those years ago. It hardly seems real now. It’s the sun shining at midnight, all the stars coming out at noon.

  “It’s okay,” I say, to them both. “She won’t hurt you.”

  Lee shuffles closer and grabs my arm with both hands, gripping it tight. She peers over my shoulder at Savannah.

  “I can’t believe it,” whispers Savannah. “She looks like you.” She reaches a hand toward my sister, as if she needs to touch her, to prove she’s no ghost. Lee hisses in a breath between her teeth, digs her nails into my arm.

  I grab Savannah’s hand quickly to stop her. Her short nails are painted. The glittery polish sparks in the moonlight.

  “Thank you,” I say to Savannah. “So much. I owe you forever.”

  My sister is making a rumbling noise in her throat, nearly a growl. She’s holding her muscles so tight they are shaking.

  “We’ve got to go now,” I say.

  Savannah tears her gaze from my sister, finally. Smiles at me. “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “You can’t come with us,” I say.

  “No.” She yanks her hand out of my grasp, face falling. “No, fuck you.”

  Lee tightens her grip on my arm. I think I hear the shouts again, far away.

  “We’re leaving,” I say. “We’re not coming back. We’re going on the run.” Going dark.

  “So?” she says, defiant. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You don’t want to come with us,” I say. I’m sorry to leave Savannah, but she has no reason to run. They aren’t chasing her. And she always fit in better than me, anyway. She belongs in the real world.

  “Yes I do,” she says.

  I shake my head. She must think this is a game. An adventure. “It’s not—”

  Savannah cuts me off. “No,” she says. “Listen. I stole a goddamn car for you, okay? I can’t stay here. Even if I don’t get arrested somehow, Jack will tell everyone what happened. He’ll be mad and he’ll tell everyone and they’ll all know. They’ll know what I did.”

  She isn’t talking about the car anymore, I know. She’s talking about the other thing. The thing that even her best friend in the whole world wanted to condemn her for. I know how the girls at our school talk, how everyone in the whole town talks. How they talked about Mama.

  “But your family,” I say. “Your mom.”

  “Whatever. You know her. She’ll probably be over the moon that there’s one less mouth to feed.”

  I shake my head again.

  “You need me,” Savannah says. “You don’t even know how to drive.”

  Which is true. I guess I’d assumed that Brandon would—

  But he can’t.

  Savannah pulls something out of her coat pocket, shakes it at me. The keys. She marches over to Jack’s car. I twist to look at Lee, who is staring after her.

  “You can’t hurt her,” I whisper. My sister meets my eyes.

  She isn’t a stranger. Liar or not, I know her. I’m a liar, too. And I can see she’s as desperate and scared as I am.

  I’m all she has.

  Savannah isn’t entirely a stranger, either. My sister has been hearing about her for years. She’s seen her, too. Only from a distance, of course. From the dark cover of the forest. The other little girl standing next to me in Margaret’s backyard. The one she used to be scared of. Too scared to get close.

  But she’s older now, braver. We all are.

  “Okay,” I say. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  Savannah clutches the steering wheel so hard her knuckles go white. Her shoulders are hunched forward, rigid. In the backseat, I squeeze my sister’s hand.

  We reverse out of the driveway, fast, gravel crunching under the tires. Out the back window I can see the lights of the processing plant down the hill. I made Savannah turn the headlights off before we started.

  Savannah turns sharply, heads up the narrow ridge road into the forest. Behind and below us, I can see the lights of cars moving on the busier roads through town. I can see all of Lester. So small. And then it’s gone, swallowed by the trees.

  “Go faster,” I say.

  “I can’t even see the road,” Savannah says. Lee is bent over beside me, kneeling on the seat, head pressed into my shoulder, breathing heavily. She smells like forest floor, like wet leaves and spicy bark and like death, like something rotting. That’s probably her breath. I’m pretty sure my sister has never brushed her teeth in all her life. She chews on bones, instead. Gnaws them to get at the marrow.

  As far as I know, she’s never ridden in a car before, either.

  It was a struggle getting her inside. I had to tell her that people were going to catch us for sure if she didn’t get in. Had to tell her I was sure they were close. Nearly upon us. That wasn’t a lie, really. We’d both heard the shouts. When she still resisted, I had to whisper in her ear, Mama would have wanted you to. Had to practically shove her in anyway, even after all that.

  My stomach jumps as we crest a hill going too fast. My sister gasps. There are headlights coming toward us suddenly, flashing along the trees that line the road.

  “Don’t stop!” I shout to Savannah in the front seat. “No matter what. Go around if you have to.”

  The other car lays on the horn. Savannah swerves. The other car swerves. My sister howls and topples off the seat. I hadn’t even tried to make her put on a seat belt. The two vehicles zoom past each other so close that our whole car shakes.

  I whip around to look out the back window. Before the other car disappears over the crest of the hill I glimpse a hand, sticking out the driver’s-side window, giving us the middle finger.

  “Shit,” says Savannah in a shaky voice.

  I drag my sister back onto the seat. She hunches down, arms clamped over her head. She’s breathing fast and loud, like she’s running or drowning.

  “Is she okay?” asks Savannah.

  “Yes,” I say. No. But there’s nothing to do about it.

  We come down the other side of the hill, go up another one, down, and then we
’re out of the trees and into the open and Savannah’s merging onto the state highway, turning the headlights back on. I haven’t heard sirens yet, haven’t seen any cars I recognize following us, but I can’t stop looking out the back window.

  We are well beyond Lester, beyond Needle, rushing through the tiny towns scattered along the highway.

  They whip past us, these little towns, many of them small as Lester. Towns I’ve never heard of, never thought of. Are they all the same? Full of the same kinds of people? Full of girls like us, straining at the thin bars of their cages, eyeing the plywood walls with hearts full of sky.

  “Where to now?” asks Savannah, her tone a forced casual.

  I have no idea. I have no plan at all. But I can’t tell her that.

  “West Virginia,” I say. When we left Myron’s, Savannah just turned away from Lester and drove. I said we needed to get away fast. But we’re headed south, so if we keep going, West Virginia is the first state we’ll hit. From what I hear it’s mostly mountains, Appalachian foothills covered in trees. Seems as good a place as any to hide.

  Savannah snorts. “Lester wasn’t hick enough for you? We should go to New York City.”

  “What the hell would we do in New York City?” I say. I can’t see Savannah’s expression from the backseat. Is she kidding? Probably not, it’s Savannah after all.

  “Or at least Cincinnati or something. We can go to my cousin’s.” She twists around in the seat for a moment. Frowns at my sister.

  “Watch the road,” I say. “We can’t go to a city. We’ve got to hide.”

  “So? Can’t we hide in a city?”

  I try to imagine the three of us descending on some poor unsuspecting city cousin, crowding into her tiny city apartment. My sister can’t even handle a town. How in the world would she survive a city? So many people, so many lights. Savannah doesn’t understand.

  “No,” I say firmly, “we’re going to hide in the woods,”

  “The woods?” asks Savannah.

  A semitruck barrels past us with a roar. My sister lifts her head to look and then scrambles into the far corner of the backseat, pressing herself as flat as she can against the door, eyes wide.