The instant Zoe awoke, she knew her father was near.
She lay in a bare wooden hut on a beach in what she guessed was British Columbia, the ocean crashing and sighing on every side of her. She could feel her own version of the Trembling spreading beneath her skin. Her heart, her nerves, her lungs—everything in her body told her how close her father was.
X was not beside her. Zoe remembered only flashes from the night before: the hut had been locked, and X had smashed his fist through the door so they could get in. He’d warmed the place by simply rubbing his hands together, but still they’d slept huddled against each other, as if they were in danger of freezing. X had made a pillow for her out of his coat.
An hour ago—could it have been more? she wasn’t sure—X had opened the door, and a wedge of sunlight had fallen across her face. She’d woken, briefly. He told her he’d be back. He told her to keep sleeping. It was such a lovely thing to be told: “Keep sleeping.”
Zoe’s mind must have churned as she slept because she woke up knowing exactly what she and X had to do about her father. The answer had been sitting in her brain for hours, waiting for her to awake. She knew X wouldn’t like it. She’d have to find the right time—and the right way—to tell him.
She sat up and leaned back against the wall. The place was one of those changing-room huts that families rented on the beach during the summer. It was tiny. There were hooks for clothes and rough wooden drawers. Otherwise the inside of the hut was stark, white, and empty. Zoe could hear the wind whistling outside. When she peered through the slats in the wall, she saw a line of snow-covered trees leaning almost horizontally over the edge of the cliffs.
She pulled her phone from her pocket. It was 8 a.m. There was a string of texts from her mother, beginning with one that read, What do you MEAN you won’t be home? There was also one from Dallas (Do you really like the quilt I got you? I got a gift receipt just in case), and one from Val (Why isn’t your butt at school?! Is your butt malfunctioning?!)
To Dallas, she texted: I love the quilt, shut up, go away.
To Val, she wrote, Loooong story. Who told you about my butt??
To her mother … Well, what could she say?
Zoe stared down at the phone, and began typing:
I’m in Canada, I think.
CANADA? YOU THINK?!
Road trip. Hard to explain. I will be home soon. Pls don’t freak.
Waaaay past freaked. Who are you with?
…
WHO are you WITH?
…
Zoe? Are you there?
I’m with X.
Zoe couldn’t explain the situation. Not in the state she was in. For all she knew, X was on his way back with her father right this minute.
She stuffed the phone in her pocket, put on X’s coat, and pushed open the door.
The hut turned out to be on stilts, and—because the tide was high—standing in three feet of frigid water. The outside walls were bright red. On either side of it, there were identical huts, painted yellow and powder blue. Zoe had planned to walk on the beach, but the ladder at her feet was so swamped with water it had begun to float. She might as well have been on a houseboat.
Zoe sat in the doorway, the cold sun on her face, the wind playing games with her hair.
She tried not to think about her mother. Her mom would understand—eventually.
She tried not to think about her father. When she did think of him, all that came to her was a rage so dark it was like a storm front. Maybe that was for the best. She was going to need her anger.
Zoe caught sight of X coming down the beach. He waded toward her through the water, his pants soaked, his shirt flapping against his chest like a sail in the wind. He was carrying two plastic bags. When he noticed her perched in the doorway of the hut, he lifted the bags high and shouted the most surprising thing she’d ever heard him say: “Breakfast!”
X climbed the ladder, and handed Zoe the bags. For a moment, he stood in the doorway, wringing the cold salt water out of his pants. His face was flushed from the wind. He looked weirdly happy. Giddy, almost. Zoe had seen him twirl Stan like a baton. She had seen him stagger into the ice storm to confront a lord. But she had never seen him as proud of anything as he was of having successfully ordered takeout.
She watched as X converted his coat into a picnic blanket—she made a mental note to get the thing dry-cleaned—and unpacked the bags.
They held three Styrofoam containers, which were still so warm that they perspired slightly. There was also a bizarre number of cans: a Canada Dry Ginger Ale, a Big 8 Cola, a Jolt Cola, an RC Cola, a tomato juice, and a Diet Dr Pepper.
“I demand that you explain this amazing triumph,” said Zoe.
X looked at her sheepishly.
“Surely there are more important matters before us?” he said.
“I can’t think of any,” she said. X seemed unconvinced so she added, “I need to hear something happy. Everything else is too awful. Let’s just talk about food for a little while? Please?”
He said he’d taken the money from Zoe’s pockets as she slept—he still felt bad about it—then wandered along the road until he discovered a restaurant. It was a bright, loud place, full of laughter and clinking glass. Everyone swiveled toward him when he walked in—partly, he supposed, because he wasn’t wearing a coat and his hair was not quite presentable.
Zoe snuck a look at X’s hair, and smiled. It pointed in every direction like a sign at an intersection.
X said that he’d panicked as the diners inspected him. He thought of fleeing, but a woman with bright yellow hair and a pencil welcomed him and set him at ease. X pretended he couldn’t speak English. The yellow-haired woman found this endearing. She toured the establishment with him, miming that he should look at everyone’s plates and point to what he wanted.
“Oh my god, she was flirting with you,” Zoe interrupted. “I may have to go back and have a talk with her.”
X had been telling his story excitedly—breathlessly, almost. He stumbled to a stop now, confused by Zoe’s comment.
“Never mind,” she said. “Keep going. This is my favorite story of all time.”
All the diners, X said, wanted him to choose their food. It became a game. They lifted their plates to him as he passed, hoping for his approval. Whenever he selected something, a cheer would go up, and the waitress would scribble on her little rectangle of paper. His only difficulty had been choosing the drinks because he couldn’t see what was inside the cans. He hoped she found something here acceptable?
She assured him that she did. She took the ginger ale for herself and, when he reached for the Jolt Cola, guided him toward the tomato juice instead, saying, “I think you’re jacked up enough already.”
Next came the ceremonial opening of the Styrofoam boxes. X watched as Zoe gazed inside them. He looked so nervous that it would have moved her to tears if she hadn’t been starving. In the first box, there were two thick, buttered slices of French toast, each with a whorl of cinnamon in the center, and a side of wavy, gleaming bacon. In the second, there was a golden mound of onion rings and a small container of blue cheese dressing. In the third, there was a slice of molten chocolate cake so enormous that an elastic band had been stretched around the box to keep it safely inside.
X stared at Zoe, desperate for a verdict.
“I do not pretend to know what constitutes a meal,” he said.
She leaned over the boxes, put a hand behind his neck, and pulled him close for a kiss.
“These are the best foods on earth,” she said. “How did you know?”
X beamed.
“Should we begin with this?” he said, pointing to the chocolate cake.
“Obviously,” said Zoe.
The waitress had forgotten to give them silverware—or paper plates or napkins—so they ate with their hands.
They ate until there was nothing left but crumbs. They ate until their hands, their shirts, their faces—somehow, even their necks—were sticky with grease and frosting. They ate until the tide had receded, until the sun sat overhead, until X was so high on syrup and cake that he was hopping jubilantly around the tiny hut and doing impressions of Ripper, Dervish, and the Russian guard. Zoe laughed, remembering Banger and all his candy bars. Come to me, ye Men of the Lowlands, she thought, and I shall give you sugar! And maybe even caffeine!
Seeing X so happy calmed everything inside her. She wouldn’t have thought it was possible. She had gotten so used to pain and to loss and to impossible questions—and yet right here in front of her was love, was hope, was an answer.
After the inevitable sugar crash, X slept for hours, his long legs sticking out of the hut. Zoe watched him every moment, just as he had watched over her all night. Her father had abandoned her, but X never would. Not willingly. She smoothed his hair as best she could with her hands. She traced the tattoos on his arms with her fingers: the giraffe, the monkey, a knife, a tree, a band of stars. She worried that it was wrong to touch him while he slept, but she couldn’t help herself. And, anyway, she could have sworn that his breathing deepened whenever her skin touched his. She pressed her lips to the insides of his wrists and the soft hollow at the base of his throat. She kissed his fingers one by one, and took them into her mouth. She did it all softly so he wouldn’t wake. Her face flushed with heat. Everything tasted of maple syrup.
They were so close to Zoe’s father that the Trembling returned as X slept. Being with Zoe always quieted his body, but never cured it altogether. X’s skin became damp and feverish. Zoe opened his shirt wide to let the air cool him, allowing herself the brief pleasure of placing her palm against his chest and feeling his heart pump beneath her hand. As the hours passed, the sickness grew stronger. X shook and thrashed his head in his sleep.
Zoe’s phone trilled in her coat.
The screen said ME!!! was calling. Jonah had programmed himself in.
She stepped down the rickety ladder so X wouldn’t wake, and balanced on one of the narrow rungs. Birds that had drifted in from the water were tracing circles around her. The waves roiled just below her feet.
Jonah began talking before she’d even said hello.
“Why aren’t you here?” he said. “Where are you? What are you doing?”
Zoe answered the least complicated of the questions.
“I’m looking at the ocean,” she said.
“Where is there an ocean?” said Jonah suspiciously. “We don’t have an ocean.”
“I’ll tell you everything when I see you, bug,” she said. “I can’t talk right now.”
“Don’t hang up!” he said. “If you hang up, I will call back sixteen times! You have to come home, Zoe. Right now! Mom said you’ll come home when you’re ready, but I’m ready right now!”
“I can’t come yet,” she said. “Soon.”
“I’m all by myself!” he said.
“Wait,” she said. “Why?”
Jonah gave an exasperated grunt, then poured out the following without pausing to breathe: “Rufus is late ’cause he got in an accident—the bear fell off his van, I guess?—and Mom couldn’t wait ’cause she had to go to work, and now I’m alone and I hate it and it’s scary, and why do you have to look at the ocean when we have stuff right here you can look at?”
It took five minutes to get him off the phone.
Zoe pocketed her cell and climbed the ladder. The birds sensed food now. Zoe eyed them anxiously. Their bodies, their bills, their moist little eyes—everything was jet-black, except for their wings (which had streaks of white) and their legs and feet (which were bright red and reminded her, strangely, of the bottoms of expensive shoes). She ducked into the hut and began bundling up the bags.
She wasn’t fast enough: one of the birds dove through the door.
The instant it was in the hut, it freaked out. It banged against the ceiling and walls, trying to escape. Zoe saw X register the noise in his sleep. She was desperate for him to rest and wanted to protect him like he had protected her, but she just couldn’t drive the bird out. She felt sure it’d been sent to remind them that there could be no sleeping—no touching, no forgetting, no relief—while the Lowlands were watching.
Zoe finally trapped the bird in X’s coat. She carried it to the door. She released it, watched it disappear over the waves, then sank down in the doorway. The agitation had pushed her over the edge. X, who’d slept through all the commotion, woke up the instant she began crying. She found that moving somehow: that he could ignore anything but her.
He touched her shoulder.
“I dreamed you were kissing me,” he said. “I dreamed you were kissing my fingers, my hands, my throat.”
Zoe turned and smiled guiltily.
“Weird,” she said.
She dried her eyes on her sleeves, embarrassed that something as random as a bird had upset her.
“Can you stand?” she said.
He nodded and stood.
“Can you walk?” she said.
He nodded again.
“It’s time to find my father,” she said. “I’ve made a decision.”
X nodded a third time, and took his coat from her. Even the simple act of pulling it over his shoulders seemed to exhaust him.
“What is your decision?” he said. “I must know.”
Zoe stood now, too. The birds were still circling the hut.
“The lords gave you his name to punish us, right?” she said.
“To punish me,” said X. “You have done nothing to chastise yourself for. I beg you not to imagine otherwise.”
“Why do they want to punish you?” said Zoe. “Because you’re innocent—and they’re not? Is that what it is? They’re just … assholes?”
“You may think me innocent,” said X. “But they do not. They think me arrogant and vain, for I have put myself above them. I have put you above them. Now they mean to show me how weak I truly am.”
“Because they don’t think you can do it?” said Zoe. “They don’t think you can take my father, no matter what evil crap he’s done? They think you’d rather go back to the Lowlands forever than do something that would hurt me?”
“And I fear they are correct,” said X.
Zoe opened the door and began descending the ladder again.
“They are not correct,” she said. “You are going to take my father and you are going to come back to me. Not just because he deserves to be punished, but because—even if you’re a dork and don’t believe it—you deserve to be free.”
They headed up the beach to the road, the rocks sliding and clacking under their feet. It was afternoon now. Zoe knew it wouldn’t stay light for long. They walked half a mile without speaking, and she was grateful for the silence. If they talked, they’d have to talk about the fact that X was growing sicker by the minute—that he was tripping over his feet and hanging on to Zoe for support. She had never seen him so weak. Being close to her was not helping him now.
Once again, Zoe’s body told her that her father was near, just as X’s body told him. She saw omens and metaphors everywhere. It wasn’t just the dark birds back at the beach. It was the frigid wind, which pushed at their backs as if goading them on. It was the black road, which was riven down the middle with cracks, as if something was trying to break out of the earth.
After ten minutes, X and Zoe passed a junky-looking truck parked on the shoulder of the road. There was a path just ahead. X led Zoe to it, and they entered the dense, snowy forest. It was like the woods near her house. Every awful detail from the day she had chased Jonah and the dogs came back to her unbidden—everything about Bert and Betty, the fireplace poker, and the hole in the ice. And here she was preparing to collide with another soul marked for the Lowlands.
Zoe looped her arm through X’s. She didn’t know if she could survive another day like that.
The forest was hushed except for the creaking of the trees. Some of the firs were so deeply encased in snow that Zoe couldn’t see the slightest hint of green. They leaned over in every direction—giant, hooded figures bowing to each other. Snow ghosts, she’d heard them called.
Zoe thought of how much she’d once loved the woods. She remembered running through them in summer, patches of sunlight bright on her skin. She remembered snowshoeing through them on days so crazily cold that it hurt to breathe. She remembered Jonah’s laughter lighting them up, no matter the season. But too much had happened. She feared forests would always feel hostile now—claustrophobic somehow, as if the trees were waiting for her to look away so they could rush at her from all sides.
X’s fever was spiking. When they came to a larch that had fallen across the path, Zoe cleared some snow from the trunk and snapped off a half dozen spindly branches. She helped him sit.
“How much farther?” she said.
She was desperate to get there. And desperate not to.
“Perhaps a half mile,” said X, each word draining him even more. He pointed at the path ahead of them, which was tamped down and streaked with mud. “These tracks,” he said, “are your father’s.”
Zoe’s stomach did its tightening thing, where it felt like someone was turning a wheel. This time, it felt as if her skin was caught in the gears.
“My throat is in flames,” he said. “I feel as if glowing coals were being shoveled down it. Still, there is counsel I would give you, if you will hear it?”
“Of course,” she said.
She sat down next to him on the trunk.
“It is not that your father is an evil man,” said X, his voice a husk. “It is that he is a weak one. You will know it the moment your eyes encounter him.” He paused, collecting his energy. “You will also know that he loves you,” he said. “We are not slaying a dragon today, Zoe—just putting a wounded animal to rest. You will find it harder than you imagine. I have never known my parents—and it seems that I never will—so perhaps I have no right to advise you. However, if you find that you pity your father, you need only look at me and I will know—and I will not take him.”
“Stop it,” said Zoe. “Just stop it. He doesn’t love anybody but himself. I understand that now. You are going to be free. Do I seem like somebody who changes her mind?”
They walked for what felt like much more than half a mile. Maybe it was because the woods were strange. Maybe it was because Zoe was going to see her father. She was so tense now, so alert, that time seemed to crack open and expand just to maximize her anguish.
She was going to see her father—it seemed like such an innocent statement. Except that he was supposed to be dead. Hadn’t she prayed for his soul at the cave? Yet, somehow, her father was still alive. He was up ahead through the trees. Doing god only knew what. Pretending to have no wife, no children, no Zoe, no Jonah, no past. Did they mean so little to him?
Rage seeped through her. She knew one thing she’d tell her father for sure: it was a good thing he’d gotten rid of his name because where he was going they wouldn’t let him keep it anyway.
A squirrel jumped into a tree as they passed, sending snow down the back of Zoe’s neck. She shivered as it melted on her skin. They couldn’t be more than a quarter mile away now—but a quarter mile from what? Knowing her father, he could be living in a house, a cave, an igloo, anything. She peered through the trees. There was no plume of smoke, no sign of life at all.
Suddenly, her phone trilled again.
ME!!!! it said.
“Bug, I can’t talk,” she said, hoping to preempt another tirade.
“Why are you looking at an ocean?” said Jonah, his voice more desperate than before. “You don’t even like oceans! You have to come home, Zoe! Right now, right now, right now! I am still alone and now it’s—it’s either raining or snowing, I can’t tell which. But it’s creepy and loud, and even Spock and Uhura are mad at you because I told them where you were.”
Zoe only half-listened.
The forest thinned out up ahead. The light grew stronger.
X leaned close and whispered, “We will soon be within sight of your father.”
Zoe nodded, and squeezed his hand.
“I gotta go, bug,” she said into the phone. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
“No, Zoe, no!” he said. “If you hang up, I will call back! I will call back thirty-two times!”
“Bug, stop!” she said. “I promise to call you back and make you giggle, okay? I will do whatever it takes. I will tickle you over the phone, if I have to.”
“That’s not even possible, obviously,” he said. “Unless I, like, put the phone in my armpit, and probably not even then.”
She felt guilty for hanging up. Jonah had suffered even more than she had. If she’d cried over her father a hundred times, he had cried a thousand. His eyes had gotten so puffy with tears that he could hardly see, and he’d let out wails that she would never forget.
There were only a hundred yards of forest left.
They could see something through the trees—a field of snow, maybe. A gray sky hung above it.
Zoe took X’s arm, and they followed the path as it snaked through the firs. Anger and fear fought for her attention. The woods were so quiet it was as if the silence, rather than being passive and still, were a living thing that devoured all sounds. It was like the snow. It buried everything.
Just ahead, two snow ghosts leaned toward each other, weary under their heavy white coats. They formed a narrow archway—an exit out of the woods, an entrance to whatever it was that awaited them. Zoe peered between the trees. In the distance, she could see a dark smudge on the snow—a cabin, maybe. A hundred feet and they’d be out of the forest.
She needed this to be over, but she kept slowing down, she couldn’t help it. She kept thinking of that day with Stan. She thought of Spock and Uhura huddled on top of Jonah in the snow, saving his life. She thought of Stan throwing Spock into the freezing water and holding him down with his foot. She thought of X doing the same to Stan. The boot on Stan’s head, the frigid water lapping into his mouth—the images were carved into her. They were her tattoos.
They ducked under the snowy archway. The branches groaned above them. Zoe didn’t trust them to hold. She held her breath, waiting for snow to bury them. She thought of the bird that had flown in for their breakfast—but now, instead of being trapped inside the hut, it was trapped inside her. She felt its wings banging and thumping in her rib cage.
“I want to talk to my father alone first,” said Zoe.
X began to object. She shook her head to silence him.
“Just give me a few minutes,” she said. “Then you can come and take him. I want him to know what he’s done to us.”
X agreed reluctantly.
“I will watch from the trees,” he said. “If you want me, I will be at your side before you can even finish the thought.”
They plunged out of the archway. The forest fell away and the world rushed out in every direction.
The smudge they had seen was not a cabin and it did not stand on a plain. It was a dingy shed, smaller even than the hut on the beach.
It stood on a frozen lake.
Zoe felt the bird squeeze up into her throat, scratching and choking her and desperate to get out.
In front of them, a small hill ran down toward the lake. They were out in the open now. If Zoe’s father was in the shed, he might see her at any moment. She thought of hiding, but there were no snowbanks or bushes or rocks and, anyway, she was paralyzed. She couldn’t convince her body to move.
The door of the shed swung open. The sound reached her an instant later, like an echo.
It was her father.
It was her father.
He was skinnier than she remembered, and she didn’t recognize his tattered clothes. But she knew the goofy way he walked—the way his head bobbed, the way his lanky arms swung at his sides.
He carried a fishing pole.
She watched as he loped around, his eyes cast downward to inspect the frozen lake. It took her a moment to understand—to see what he saw—and then the bird in her throat let out a screech so sudden and alien that it shocked even her. X clasped her hand.
Her father turned and saw them.
There were a dozen holes in the ice.