Some Kind of Animal

by Maria Romasco-Moore

  “Yes,” I say to Savannah. I try to tug my sister back to the middle. She’s breathing fast again.

  “You were just in the woods,” says Savannah.

  “Look,” I snap, “I told you not to come.” I don’t even have a plan. They’ll catch us. And now we’ll all go to jail for being in a stolen car. Maybe we should have stayed in the national forest. Found the most remote cave. Hunkered down. Dug deeper into the earth.

  “No,” Savannah says. “That’s fine. The woods. Sure. Whatever. West Virginia.”

  “Just keep going south,” I say again, rubbing my eyes. I’m so tired.

  My sister knocks her head against the car window.

  “Be careful,” I say, pulling on the sleeve of her dress.

  But she does it again. Her skull makes a hollow thwack as she headbutts the glass. I pull harder on her sleeve. She bangs her fist against the window.

  I undo my seat belt with one hand, the other still holding on to my sister’s sleeve. She bangs her fist against the window again, scratches at the glass.

  “What’s she doing?” asks Savannah. I meet her frightened eyes in the rearview mirror for a moment, but then my sister gets ahold of the door handle, and she yanks it down and pushes the door open a crack. The wind rushes in, the roar of the tires on the asphalt.

  “Shit.” I lunge sideways, grab Lee by the shoulders, hold her down. “We need to stop.”

  “Do I just pull over?” Savannah’s voice is panicked, rising in pitch. The car door bounces open and shut.

  “I don’t know.” I’ve got Lee pinned under me, one arm hooked around her chest. With the other arm I grope forward, trying to catch the door handle.

  The car swerves suddenly. The door bangs open. I can see the road rushing past beneath us like an angry river.

  The car swerves the other way. The door bangs shut. We jerk to a stop and I tumble off the seat. My sister is up and out the door before I can unwedge myself.

  “Shit,” I say. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Savannah appears at the door a moment later and reaches in to help me up.

  “Where did she go?” I ask as I stumble out of the car. We’re stopped in the parking lot of a bank. It’s closed, dark and empty, though there’s a glowing row of ATMs holding vigil outside. Savannah gestures vaguely to the far end of the parking lot, to the line of trees.

  It’s no forest. Just an unshaved strip of wilderness no one cared about enough to remove. I can see through the trees to another parking lot beyond. I run over, shout my sister’s name.

  “There she is,” says Savannah from behind me. I turn and follow the line of her pointing finger.

  My sister’s already halfway up a tall pine, arms and legs wrapped around the trunk. She’s mostly obscured by the needles, but her pale skin gives her away.

  “Lee!” I shout. “Come down!”

  She shimmies up a few more feet, the branches shaking wildly as she pushes against them.

  “What the hell is she doing?” asks Savannah.

  “Climbing,” I say, though I know that’s not what she’s really asking.

  It’s so strange being around Savannah and my sister at the same time. I’m not sure which version of myself to be. The nighttime or the daytime. I feel like I’ve had to smash together two halves that don’t fit, that don’t quite add up to a whole.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Savannah asks as we hurry over to the trees.

  “She’s not used to cars.”

  “Is she like mentally challenged or something?”

  “No. Jesus.” I turn on Savannah, clenching my hands into fists. She doesn’t know my sister. Two days ago she didn’t even believe in her.

  “Sorry.” Savannah shrugs. “I mean, she’s not normal.”

  “She’s fine,” I say, as much to myself as to her. “She just got scared.”

  It’s stupid, because Lee is acting foolish, putting us all at risk, but I feel defensive about her with Savanah. It’s like the pastor saying she was too skinny, saying she couldn’t survive all alone. He and Savannah don’t know her. They have no right to judge her.

  I don’t like being forced to see Lee through their eyes. I take it for granted sometimes, how wild she is. When it’s just me and her alone I get a little wild, too. Piss in the dirt and howl, narrow the gap between us. Maybe I’ve never eaten an animal raw, but I’ve touched their dead bodies after my sister kills them. I’ve touched their still-warm hearts. Used the blood, once or twice when we were children, for finger paintings on the sides of trees.

  Savannah and I both crane our necks up at the pine. Lee is so high up I can hardly even see her anymore. The tree sways in the wind. I look back toward the road. Cars zip past in the dark, headlights flashing through the trees. We’re in shadow here, but the stolen car parked in the middle of an empty lot is not exactly subtle. We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t get caught now. We just can’t.

  “Can she talk?” asks Savannah.

  “Of course she can talk.” I hadn’t really noticed until this moment, but it’s true Lee hasn’t said a word in front of Savannah yet. It’s like when she first met me, all those years ago.

  “I don’t understand,” says Savannah. “Where did she come from?”

  “The forest.” I circle the pine tree, searching for a good foothold. I don’t want to explain this all to Savannah right now. I don’t think she’d understand.

  It could be worse. Henry called me weird, so God only knows what he made of Lee. What would Maisie say? Or Nicole? Or Lisa? They’d understand even less. Probably wouldn’t even give her a chance.

  “So she just lived out there?” Savannah asks.

  “Yes.”

  “All alone?”

  I don’t want to talk about Mama or Brandon. Not now, not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t even know where I’d start. “Mostly,” I say.

  “How did she survive?”

  “She’s smart.” Which isn’t strictly true, I guess. My sister has a very narrow field of knowledge. “Here,” I say, “help me up.”

  Savannah pushes on my butt as I reach for the lowest branches of the pine tree. She’s not very helpful, but I manage to pull myself up anyway. The branches aren’t thick enough to hold my weight, so I have to climb the trunk, gripping it with my legs and hauling myself up bit by bit, pushing off the flimsy pine boughs, twisting my shoulders up through them like a maze.

  “What should I do?” shouts Savannah.

  “Just wait,” I call down.

  Lee has shimmied even higher up, so high the whole pine sways with her weight. By the time I reach her, my hands are gummy with sap and my thighs burn. I stretch one arm up and grab her ankle, give it a little tug.

  “Lee,” I say. “Get down. You can’t stay here.”

  “No.” Her voice sounds small, far away.

  “We’re going to a new forest, okay? A better forest. You just need to stick it out a tiny bit longer. Just a little more time in the car and then you can climb all the trees you want. Come down.”

  She peers down at me.

  “We’ll have the forest to ourselves,” I tell her. I pull on her ankle, harder. I wonder if I could pull hard enough to knock her right out of the tree. She’d probably just take me down with her. “And I’ll be there with you all the time. Not just at night. I promise, okay?”

  “You and me?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Just you and me.”

  Her gaze shifts beyond me, to the ground.

  “And her,” she says.

  I twist around. Though the needles I can just make out the small figure of Savannah, pacing back and forth at the bottom of the pine.

  “Well, yes,” I admit, “and her. But she’s helping us.”

  Lee makes a low noise of discontent.

  “For fuck’s sa
ke,” I say. “You can trust her.”

  The tree sways. I feel queasy. I see Savannah pacing and pacing. So what if she had sex with Jack? People act like that one little thing changes you forever, ruins you, but it’s nothing, it’s stupid. Savannah stole a whole car for me. That’s something.

  It’s me and her. Like old times. Me and her against everyone.

  “She’s just like Mama,” I say to Lee, and pull on her ankle so hard that she slips and tumbles down far enough to kick me sharply in the side, before she gets her footing again….

  When we finally make it down, Savannah is waiting for us, looking absolutely miserable. She’s got her arms tucked in tight against her body, and her shoulders are hunched.

  I slide to the ground. Lee leaps past me, landing in a crouch. Savannah jumps back, still terrified. My sister stares. She’s studying her, I think, this strange monster, with her eyeliner and her push-up bra peeking out under her tank top. I always thought that in the pictures I’d seen Mama looked like a cross between me and Savannah. Maybe even more like Savannah than me. Mama wore makeup. Mama was beautiful.

  Did she still wear blue eye shadow when she lived in the woods? I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Lee, later.

  “We better go,” Savannah says, backing away.

  “Start the car,” I say. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  I yank on the lowest branch of the pine tree, brace myself with one foot against the trunk, jerk the branch back and forth. Finally it cracks and tears free in ragged splinters like a broken bone. I carry it back to the car.

  “It’s a portable forest,” I tell my sister, who has trailed along behind me. “Just for you.”

  Savannah laughs. A nervous laugh, which skitters away into the dark.

  I shove Lee and the branch into the backseat and climb in after. I attempt to buckle her seat belt, but after she slaps my hands away enough times I give up. She holds on to the pine branch, rubbing her fingers against the bark, occasionally whacking me in the face with it. By accident, I think. Pine needles shake loose and fall onto the floor of the car, steady as rain.

  My sister is silent, but Savannah can’t stop talking.

  As she pulls out of the parking lot and back onto the highway, she rattles off the plot of every television show or movie she’s ever seen that features people on the run. She says maybe we should all three of us dye our hair. Or at least cut it. Or maybe we could all shave our heads and dress in men’s clothing. You could probably get away with that, Jo, she says, since you’re so tall and flat-chested. Heck, you even have a boy’s name. I guess nobody would believe that I was a boy. Not with these puppies. Anyway, we should get fake IDs. We should fake our own deaths. We should jump a train, ride it to the end of the line.

  * * *

  —

  “We need gas,” Savannah says. She’s lit a cigarette, is smoking it fast, ravenous, tapping the ash into the cupholder. My sister’s humming to herself, head bent down to her chest, eyes closed.

  “We can’t stop,” I say.

  “The little needle says it’s low.”

  “I don’t have any money,” I say, realizing it for the first time as I say it. I think, with regret, of the fifty dollars socked away beneath my mattress. My sad little life’s savings.

  This whole thing is impossible. Where are we going to go? What are we going to do? I didn’t think this through. I didn’t think.

  “I do,” says Savannah. “I have money.”

  “You?” I’ve never known her to save a penny. Every cent she gets she spends on makeup or cigarettes. Something pretty or something deadly.

  “I don’t think he was actually in love with me,” she says. She catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “I mean, he said he was, but then, afterward, I don’t know. He acted different.”

  “You took his money?”

  She laughs and I recognize that laugh. That note of hysterical underneath it, that note of terrified. We are totally off script now. No idea what we’re supposed to do. Nobody writing this story but us.

  “The garage pays him cash under the table,” she says. “So he had a lot.”

  “Well, goddamn,” I say. “You’re my hero.”

  If I could, I would throw my arms around her again. I would kiss her for real. I’m so shocked, so delighted. This is the Savannah I used to know. The wild one, who didn’t need anybody, who never did what she was told. I am so happy to have her back.

  “I really think we’re going to run out,” Savannah says.

  “Okay,” I tell her, “we can stop.”

  I’ve got to pee, anyway. Should have done it back in the woods. Wasn’t thinking.

  Savannah jerks us into the turn lane too quickly. Somebody honks. My sister snaps her eyes open, clutches at my sleeve. We swing into the parking lot of a Sunoco.

  Light spills into the car. Savannah pulls in behind a pickup truck. It doesn’t even look like Grandma Margaret’s truck—wrong color, wrong size—but my heart seizes up for a second anyway.

  My sister presses her head against my shoulder. She’s scared. Her whole body practically quivers with it. It makes me want to forgive her for everything. I can’t stay mad at her when she’s like this. I want to protect her, instead. She seems so helpless, so harmless, a frightened baby animal. I don’t think this is what she wanted, after all. Not exactly.

  “Come on,” I say. “Just hold on to my hand.”

  I’ve followed her through the forest so many times. But now we’re in my world. Now she’s got to follow me. I coax her out of the car while Savannah pumps the gas. I wouldn’t even have known what kind to use.

  Lee flares her nostrils at the scent of the gasoline, flinches every time a car whips past on the road behind us. I start to take off the puffy gray coat she gave me, thinking I’ll make her put it back on, less for the cold than to cover up the scratches on her arms. But there’s blood on my shirt underneath. Dried brown now, the color of earth. I zip the coat back up quick.

  I wrap my arms around my sister and hold her while she shivers, trying not to think. Trying not to remember holding Brandon. Trying not to remember whose blood is on my shirt.

  When Savannah’s done, we head into the store. Lee has a death grip on my hand. I feel sure that when she finally lets go there’ll be an imprint of her hand on mine, bruised purple, indelible. She’s been in town before, between the houses, been in Brandon’s camper as a kid, I guess. But it must have been years since she’s walked inside a building. She tries to pull me away several times before we get to the door, but I pull her back, trudge forward.

  Coming out of the darkness into the store is like an explosion. My sister’s eyes are huge in the bright lights, pupils tiny pinpricks. A bell chimes. The colors shout at us.

  Lee freezes as the door swings shut behind us. She is perfectly still except for her eyes, which dart wildly this way and that.

  “Come on,” I say, trying to pull her toward the bathroom, which Savannah has already disappeared into, but I might as well not be there. She’s looking at everything except me.

  She reaches out to the nearest shelf, runs a hand across a bag of chips, spicy barbecue, the shiny foil crackling like dead leaves.

  Whatever spell she was under breaks, and suddenly she’s touching everything. She’s picking up a can of Pringles, shaking it, prying off the lid. When I grab the can from her, she just picks up another one.

  I have to drag her by the wrist to the bathroom. She’s still trying to reach for the refrigerator case—all those rainbow bottles sealed behind glass—as the bathroom door bangs shut.

  I go to the handicap stall, drag her in with me.

  “You’re going to get us caught,” I say. She blinks rapidly, eyes still wide.

  She watches me as I pee. She had better manners back in the woods, when we’d piss on trees. She’s seen toilets be
fore, at the junkyard and at the camper, I guess, but I don’t know that she’s ever used one. I ask her if she has to go, feeling like someone’s mom, but she just stares. I shrug and go to wash my hands.

  Savannah is standing by the sinks, twisting a paper towel. She side-eyes my sister, who has discovered the automatic dryer.

  “What if the cashier is calling the police right now?” Savannah asks.

  “They won’t have heard about us this far out.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I say it like I’m sure of it. Some small part of me has been listening for sirens this whole time.

  Lee crouches down and sticks her face under the dryer, lets the hot air blow back the few loose tendrils of dirty hair around her forehead. When the dryer shut offs, she blinks up at it, disappointed.

  “What if there’s like an ABP or something?” asks Savannah.

  “ABP?”

  “Or whatever it’s called.”

  “Just act normal,” I tell her. I comb my hair out a little with my fingers. My sister goes over to the sink, starts playing with the motion sensor, darting her hands in and out of the water. Savannah edges away nervously. She’s still thinking about Henry, I bet, that night on the bridge. Remembering what this weird dirty girl is capable of.

  There’s not much I can do about Lee’s hair without a pair of scissors. She’s got on the brown knit cap, but that doesn’t hide much.

  I wet the edge of a paper towel and try to scrub some of the dirt off her face. She yelps, flails her arms, manages to whack me in the face twice before I give up. She looks a little better, I guess. It’s a relief at least that she’s wearing the leaf-print dress instead of her old blue one. With her torn tights and hair that devolves essentially into one giant dreadlock, she could pass, I hope, for some kind of punk rocker. I pick a small leaf from where it’s caught behind her ear.

  “This is so crazy,” whispers Savannah.

  My sister looks up, takes a step toward her. Savannah shrinks back against the paper towel dispenser.

  “Lee,” I say, “what are you doing?”