Red Hood

by Elana K. Arnold

  The first place you search is in the table next to the bed. Nothing looks amiss—but then you realize that the envelope of cash is gone. Maybe she’s put that money in the tin for your groceries, but you’ll bet she didn’t leave it all. If she doesn’t want a record of where she was going, Mémé wouldn’t want to use her credit card.

  You take apart each drawer, you search through the closet, you put your hand in every pocket.

  Nothing.

  In Mémé’s office, Keisha is going through the filing cabinet, setting aside each folder as she finishes it. “Your grandmother is an incredibly organized woman.” Her voice is both grim and full of admiration. “Not much of a paper trail here.”

  Maggie crashes into the room. “I found her phone,” she says, triumphant. “It was in this old breadmaking machine, tucked way in the back of a cabinet.”

  You’d given Mémé the machine a few years ago for Christmas, thinking it would make her baking easier, but she’d never used it. You’d assumed she’d returned it.

  Maggie hands you the phone. You power it on. It asks for a pass code.

  “Any ideas?” Keisha asks.

  You shake your head. But then you type 020181.

  The phone opens.

  “My mother’s birthday,” you say.

  Keisha takes the phone, clicks on every icon—messages, mail, notes. Nothing unusual. The most recent texts are all from Maggie. “Sometimes I send her funny videos,” Maggie says.

  It’s a dead end.

  “That’s it, then.” Your knees feel like rubber, and you slide down to the floor.

  “I have one more idea,” Keisha says, “but we’ll have to wipe her phone and restore it. Bisou, does your grandmother back up her phone?”

  “She doesn’t know how to do anything with that thing,” you say. “But if they helped her set up a backup when she bought it, there’s no way she would have switched the settings.”

  “Okay,” says Keisha, thumbing through Mémé’s settings and tapping on Erase All Content and Settings. “Fingers crossed.”

  The screen goes blank. She powers the phone back on and begins the setup process. She lets out a held breath when she sees the Restore from Backup option. “It was last backed up this morning.” She looks up, smiles. “Maybe we’ll find something.”

  You wait together as the phone restores. When it’s finished, Keisha clicks on the message icon; this time, there’s a conversation above the one from Maggie, from a number you don’t recognize. The bottom message, in a blue text bubble, was sent by Mémé at 5:02 a.m.—By the light of the moon, it reads.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Keisha says, and you are so grateful for her steady voice, her organized way of thinking. You’re grateful, too, for Maggie’s arm, which she has wrapped around your waist, the way she’s pulled you close.

  Keisha scrolls to the beginning of the conversation.

  It’s an old photo. It is you, a small child clutching a blanket; you are on the lap of a young woman whose nose has not yet been broken. Only one person could have sent this picture.

  Your father.

  “Mama,” you say, a word you haven’t uttered in many years.

  The next message is a response from Mémé: Who is this?

  The answer: You know who I am.

  All of these messages have been sent between the hours of three and five a.m. this morning.

  “How could he have gotten her number?” you wonder.

  “If someone has money, nothing is private anymore,” Keisha says. She scrolls to the next message.

  What do you want? Mémé has replied.

  You.

  “It’s not your fault, Bisou.” Keisha looks up at you, and her expression—is it pity? “You didn’t know.”

  “What’s not my fault? I didn’t do anything!” But then you realize that yes, you did. You left two naked, dead boys in the woods. Two wolves. “No,” you whisper, but the word is useless against the truth.

  Your father, the one wolf that Mémé has fought but hasn’t killed, has seen the reports of the bodies. He has put it together, that those naked corpses mean a hunter is nearby. And now he’s found her.

  “He thinks Mémé is still the hunter.”

  Keisha nods. “She fought him all those years ago. She scarred his face. And he’s angry.”

  Mémé’s next message reads, Where last we met, I will find you again.

  Then the final message, read this morning at 5:02 a.m. You were asleep in James’s arms.

  By the light of the moon.

  The moon will be full on Monday night. You have sixty hours.

  A wave of calm washes over you. It’s clear, suddenly, what you need to do. This is better, knowing. And acting on that knowledge. “Keisha,” you say, “I need to borrow your car.”

  She’s reading through the messages again. Without looking away from the phone, she says, “You can’t do it alone. I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m coming, too,” says Maggie.

  Part of you wants to refuse them, but Keisha is right; it’s too far for one person to drive alone, without taking breaks for sleep, and only two nights separate you from the next full moon. You need them.

  Keisha says, “Together, we’re better than apart. Sybil said so, remember? We need to go together.” She powers down the phone.

  “She said it,” you say. “But she didn’t mean it. Not for herself, anyway.”

  “She meant it,” Maggie says. “Just, not more than she means to protect you, no matter what.” Then she turns to Keisha and says, “Keisha, will your car even make it that far? I mean, it’s kind of a piece of shit.”

  In the kitchen, the leaven rests quietly. You carry it to the trash, where you turn the bowl upside down, shake it firmly, and watch as the leaven, which will never become bread, slips from the bowl and lands with a plop in the bin.

  Maggie has no money, but in addition to the crystal and the stone, she’s brought snacks—pistachios and almonds, some cookies, apples and grapes. To her basket, she adds bottles of water and more fruit from the fridge, then drapes the basket with Mémé’s blue checked cloth. You take the grocery money from the tin where Mémé has left it, and you put it and all your saved cash into your wallet. You’ll follow Mémé’s lead and not use your debit card on the road. Keisha has sixty bucks, not a lot, but together, you have enough to pay for gas.

  Keisha goes outside to check her car’s fluids, adding half a pint of oil from the garage, and takes a quick trip for gas and also to fill the air in her spare tire.

  You are itchy and nervous to get going. Every minute that passes closes the distance between Mémé and the full moon. While Maggie packs the basket and Keisha preps the car, you go to your room to gather your warmest layers, for you and for your friends. As you head back out, you see the stack of your mother’s poems where you’ve left them on your nightstand. There’s only one left unanswered, the shortest, the final poem. You read it:

  v

  who’s afraid of the big bad wolf

  i am afraid

  of everything

  Pressing your pen into the paper so firmly that it nearly tears, you answer, speaking the words as you scrawl.

  V

  Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

  Not me.

  Fuck the wolf.

  By the time the car is loaded and ready, Maggie folding into the back seat with the basket of snacks, the clouds have thickened to obscure the sun and the growl of the thunder seems a threatening omen.

  It is dark, the sky, dark enough even at midday that Keisha pulls on the headlights. They are waiting for you in the car, Maggie and Keisha, and you take out your keys to lock the front door, standing for a moment on the porch of the home that has sheltered you for the past dozen years, the home and hearth where you have lived with your grandmother, warm and dry and safe from wolves and from memory.

  As you stand on the porch, the clouds can hold the rain no longer and it pours down, and you remember, suddenly
, the first time you stood in this spot. You were small. Were you frozen? You felt frozen. You could not feel your face, or your hands, or your feet. But that was all right, that was better, because you also could not feel your fear anymore.

  It was raining that day—heavy, loud sheets of rain, and Mémé had bundled you in her arms as she ran with you from the taxi to the porch. Then she had set you down as she found her keys, and you watched her pull them from her bag and fit one into the door.

  She pushed open the door and turned to you. “It’s all right,” she had said. “We’re home. You are safe here, and you will always be safe. Come inside.”

  You remember looking through the pushed-open door into the front hallway—the bench with shoes tucked beneath; the long floral rug, extended like a tongue down the shining wood floor; the light up above. Everything clean, everything neat.

  You had turned to look back at the street, sleek with rain. The taxi had gone away, and the road was empty. You squinted your eyes and scanned the rain, looking for your mother, who you knew was not there. You tried to remember her face, but you remembered instead her shadowed silhouette as she watched out the window, the way her finger traced a line down the bridge of her nose. You blinked and remembered blood. You blinked again, and you remembered your mother’s warm hand upon your own, down by the pond before it froze.

  Then you had turned back to the doorway, where Mémé stood waiting for you. And you had gone inside.

  So many things are the same, between that day and this. The same porch. The same rain. On the other side of the door, the same bench, and the same rug.

  But on this side of the door, things are not the same as they once were.

  You are not numb. You feel your hands, fingertips cold. You feel your face. You feel your fear for Mémé—pulsing like a heartbeat, strong and steady.

  You are no longer a powerless child.

  And you are not alone.

  Keisha honks her horn, two short, quick blasts, and you turn the key in the lock.

  You tuck your sickle moon into your shirt, you turn up your hood, and you sprint from the porch, away from the house, and through the rain.

  Over the River and Through the Woods

  “Shit.”

  You’ve almost made it to the freeway when Keisha looks into the rearview mirror at the red flashing lights behind her.

  She uses her blinker and pulls the Bug to the side of the road. You glance into the back seat, at Maggie, whose eyes are wide and round. Then you look behind her, through the small rear window, at the police cruiser. You watch as the driver’s side door pushes open, as a large man ducks out of the car, as he stands.

  It’s Alan Scott.

  Keisha cranks down her window, and frigid wind blows in.

  He crouches, hands on his knees, to peer into the car. “Bisou,” he says. “We seem to keep running into each other.”

  “Is something wrong, officer?” Keisha’s “adult” game is on point. She has both hands on the wheel, and her voice is low and even.

  “Just a taillight.” His eyes flick to the back seat. “Hi there, Maggie,” he says. “I’m real sorry we weren’t able to do anything about that boy. But I want you to know we’ll be keeping an eye on him, okay?”

  Maggie nods, silent. He does seem sorry—sincerely.

  Officer Scott’s eyes flick around the interior of Keisha’s car. “As long as I’ve got you here,” he says, “I wonder if you might be able to clear something up for me. A car like this one was seen on Halloween night, not far from where the Tang boy was found dead. You didn’t happen to be parked at the arboretum, did you?”

  Maybe he doesn’t notice how Keisha’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, how there’s a pause just a second too long before she says, “Yes, actually, my car had a flat. I pulled over, and then a friend followed me the rest of the way into town, just to make sure I could make it.”

  “Mm-hmm,” the cop answers. “Bisou, I don’t suppose you were the helpful motorist, by any chance?”

  “Yes.” Your tongue feels thick in your mouth. “I was.”

  His face looks troubled, like he’s wrestling with something. Rain pours down from the bill of his plastic-covered police hat. He looks carefully at each of you in turn—Keisha, then Maggie, and then you. Finally, he says, “Where are you girls headed?”

  You don’t have to tell him. You don’t owe him anything. But you remember the way he looked at Mémé, and you think of how sorry he looked just now, about the situation with Graham, and you say, “We’re going to help my grandmother with something.”

  “Is that right?”

  Behind you, in the back seat, Maggie shifts uncomfortably. In the driver’s seat, hands still on the wheel, Keisha waits, too.

  “You know,” Officer Scott says, “I’ve lived nearly all my life in this region. My parents moved our family—me and my older sister, Laura—out this way from Alabama when I was a little kid. She was the first person in our family to go to college. And just a few months later, she was murdered.” His eyes cloud with memory. “Killed in the woods not far from her dorm room,” he says, his voice soft now, and all three of you are leaning toward the window to hear his words. “They brought me and my folks into the station the night she was killed. There was a girl there, a young woman, covered in blood. Laura’s blood, it turns out.” He shakes his head, clears his throat. “Has your grandmother ever told you about Laura?”

  You sit still for a long moment, and then you nod.

  As if encouraged by your gesture, he continues. “Your grandmother told the officers that a wolf had killed my sister.”

  He pauses here, as if he’s waiting for you to say something. You don’t answer, but you hold his gaze, and it seems that each of you understands the other.

  “Later, a man died in those same woods. I remember reading about it in the paper. His name was Dennis Cartwright. His killer was never found. I knew Dennis. Laura dated him on and off through high school. Can’t say I was sorry to see him go.” A muscle twitches in Officer Scott’s face. “Not a good guy.” Another moment passes, and he is looking right into your eyes.

  He straightens. “Get that taillight fixed,” he says, and he taps the top of the car once, twice, and then he walks away.

  Keisha waits until his squad car has disappeared before she turns to you. Her voice trembles as she speaks. “That was . . . intense.”

  “Do you think he knows about Sybil?” Maggie says. “I think he does.”

  You remember the way he looked at you that day in the trees. Had he been assessing you? Is that why he came to your house that day? Has he known all this time about Mémé? Has he been quietly ignoring her wolf hunting—maybe even helping to cover it up?

  “Let’s go,” you say.

  Keisha restarts the engine, looks over her shoulder for traffic, and drives.

  It is in Minnesota that the rain turns to sleet. It is wet and sticks to the wipers, a slushy thick mess. You have driven across four states; you have refilled the tank many times. You have wondered a thousand times how Mémé could do this—how she could leave you, after all her talk of togetherness, all her talk of being glad that you have friends, that you aren’t alone.

  There are no answers—just questions. How could she decide to do this on her own, when she’s no longer the hunter? What makes her think she can do it, and how could she expect you to go on, if she fails?

  You have eaten all the food in Keisha’s basket, refilled it, and worked your way through most of it again. You have driven for more than twenty-four hours due east without stopping except to pee, gas up, and buy supplies. At the last stop, near the North Dakota/Minnesota border, you buy tampons along with candy bars and a bag of pistachios.

  After you make your purchases and use the bathroom, the three of you stand close together beneath the overhang of the convenience store attached to the gas station, stretching. It is desperately cold, but it feels good to breathe fresh air and to be outside after all the hours cramped
in Keisha’s tight Bug.

  Maggie folds herself in half, bouncing a little as she flattens her hands on the damp concrete. You hear her phone ping from inside her pocket, but she ignores it. Her parents have texted her twice since yesterday afternoon; Maggie and Keisha both told their parents they were staying at your house for a few days while your grandmother left town to see a sick relative, and as long as they have been answering texts, so far no one has seemed too concerned.

  “I’ll text her when we’re back on the road,” Maggie says.

  Keisha folds her left arm across her chest, and then her right.

  “What’s the matter?” you ask.

  Keisha shakes her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

  “What? You didn’t think of what?”

  She doesn’t answer, just breaks into a run and heads through the sleet to her car, slipping a little but catching herself before she falls. The tank is full, and she puts away the nozzle, twists shut the gas tank, and pulls her car around to the overhang where you and Maggie wait for her.

  “We’d better go sit down and talk,” she says.

  And then you know what she can’t believe she didn’t think of before. It didn’t occur to you, either. You have been so focused on getting to the farmhouse, on getting to Mémé, on her limitations, that you didn’t think about your own.

  The border crossing.

  “We are all minors,” you say.

  “Yep,” Keisha answers.

  “Shit,” Maggie says.

  You drive a short distance to a coffee shop. You and Maggie order three cups of coffee and you sweeten them with cream and sugar while Keisha brings up a map on her phone, tracing her finger along the US/Canadian border.

  You hand her a cup of coffee and the three of you sit around a table. You and Maggie wait for Keisha to finish studying the map. She sips her coffee, sighs, and looks up at last.

  “Bisou, where exactly is your family’s farm?”