We rattle up the hill, away from Needle, away from Lester. My plan is to go back to the camper. Maybe my sister will be there, waiting for me. If she isn’t, I’ll check the cave. I’ll check every place I can think of until I find her. Will people still be out searching now that it’s dark? I have to get to her before they do. I should never have left her alone out there. She was only doing what she was told. What Mama told her to do.
Never tell a goddamn soul.
Not even me.
We pass the narrow gravel drive that leads through the woods to Grandma Margaret’s house. I wish we could drive with the headlights off, but there are no streetlights up here along the ridges and the moon is hidden by clouds, and in the darkness we’d probably just hit a deer or something and then where would we be?
“Is that the turn up there?” I ask. The sooner we’re off the public roads, the better. “Did we pass it?”
“No, it’s a little farther.”
There’s a light up ahead and I think it’s someone with a flashlight and my stomach clenches, but it’s too bright for that, I realize. Up over the crest of the hill ahead of us, another truck appears, headlights blazing.
These roads are narrow, so Brandon steers to the right shoulder, slows a little, but the other truck doesn’t go rumbling past us. It veers suddenly, swings sideways, and stops, blocking the road.
“Shit,” I say, sliding down in my seat. Brandon slams on the brakes.
The driver’s side door of the other truck opens and a woman steps out with hair like a gray thundercloud. Face hard and thin as Aggie’s face. Mouth pulled down at the corners.
Grandma Margaret. She turns and reaches into the bed of the truck for something. I slide down farther, crouch below the dash. Did she see me?
“Who’s that?” I hear her shout.
“She’s got a rifle,” Brandon whispers. Shit shit shit.
“Girl went missing round here,” Margaret shouts, her voice muffled only slightly. “We got to stop everyone.”
Brandon cranks his window down a few inches.
“I haven’t seen anybody!” he shouts back.
“Well, all the same,” Margaret says. I can tell from her voice that she’s walking closer. “I’m just going to have to—”
She stops speaking. My leg is starting to cramp from the awkward way I’m crouched. I wish I could see what’s happening.
“Brandon,” she says.
He flinches.
I sit up.
Margaret’s eyes dart to me, but she doesn’t move. She’s standing about five feet in front of our truck with the rifle braced against her shoulder. Pointed right at the windshield. Right at Brandon. An easy shot.
“Jolene, baby,” she says, “get out of that truck.”
She’s wearing a camouflage jacket printed with false trees. She is out here hunting me. Brandon and I don’t move a muscle. My heartbeat ticks in my ears, loud as a hammer.
The headlights from the two trucks stare each other down, the beams dissolving into one another. Dust swirls in the light. I focus on that dust, the little dancing motes.
Margaret tilts the rifle up and fires into the sky, a crack like a falling tree. Brandon sucks in his breath. If anyone is searching nearby they would have heard that. I glance at the trees, half expecting to see the whole population of Lester come streaming out of the dark.
I wonder if Margaret is thinking about Mama, if she’s picturing that day fifteen years ago when Brandon showed up on her front porch before the sun was up.
Behind her, the passenger door of the truck opens. A moment later, hobbling around the side of the truck, comes none other than the goddamn pastor, his ankle in a brace.
“Come on out, Jolene!” he shouts. “It’s okay.”
He’s talking to me, but both he and Margaret are staring at Brandon. They must think they know the situation. He is a murderer. A monster. They must think he’s kidnapped me or something. Must think that this evil man has got ahold of their innocent little Jolene. Lured her away from the flock. Little lost lamb. Big bad wolf.
They are writing their own stories. They think they know me, but they don’t. They think they are going to save me, but they can’t. I don’t need saving.
I want them to understand that I chose this, that I made Brandon come here, not the other way around. I’m the one in charge here, the one with the power.
I want to hurt them. To show them how little I care what they think. So I do the only thing I can think of in the moment. I click my seat belt free and let it slither back across my chest into its holster. I turn and I grab Brandon’s jacket in one hand and with the other I yank his face toward me, and I lean forward and in full, perfect, view of Grandma Margaret and the goddamn pastor I press my lips against his. The most wrong thing I can think of. It’s not much of a kiss. Dry and too hard, his beard scraping my face, but it only matters how it looks to those two.
Their worst nightmares come true. Mama all over again. Wild girl. What I would give to see them now. What I would give to see their faces.
A gunshot cracks into the silence. Brandon jolts away from me. I think for a second I am dead. I think we’re both dead. Maybe I went too far. I slide down quick, off the seat, crouch again beneath the dashboard. There’s a hole punched clean through the windshield, little silvery cracks spiderwebbing out from it. There’s no pain in my body, though. No wound. Brandon’s folded up beside me. His breathing is fast, loud. I can feel it against the side of my face. My hands are shaking, heart going way too fast for sitting still.
“Oh Jesus Lord!” I hear the pastor shouting. “You could have hit her. Did you hit her? You didn’t hit her, did you?”
“You just stay back.” Grandma Margaret’s voice. “You’ve done enough.”
“Are you hit?” I whisper to Brandon. I can’t see his face, can’t see anything but the underside of the dashboard. I’m already regretting the kiss. That wasn’t like me at all. Savannah’s the one who would do something like that.
“No,” Brandon whispers back. Should I explain to him why I did it? I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.
I won’t pretend it wasn’t a little thrilling, to do something so wrong. But I don’t like him that way. He’s probably my uncle, after all. There’s another shot, then, and a sort of pop, and the truck slumps a little to the left. It’s even more terrifying than when I was a kid and Margaret shot out the window at the trees. She’s insane.
“Brandon Cantrell,” shouts Grandma Margaret, “you get the hell out of that truck with your hands up.”
“We should do what she says,” Brandon whispers.
“They’re monsters,” I say. “You were right. They’re the monsters.”
Brandon gives something between a cough and a laugh.
“You really are just like her,” he says.
And this time I know he doesn’t mean my sister. He means Mama. I know he does.
I grin, in the dark, despite myself. I would almost kiss him again, though maybe on the cheek this time, just for saying that. It’s the best gift anyone could give me. “By God if you don’t get out of the truck I will come in there and get you!” Grandma Margaret shouts. “Don’t think I won’t. You all know me.”
Brandon shifts beside me. I think of him cowering in the forest as the men with guns came to kill him and his brother. How scared he must have been. He was only sixteen.
Well, I’m only fifteen, but I’m not scared.
I’m just like her.
I sit up.
“Grandma,” I say, one hand on the door. My hand is still shaking slightly but that’s just adrenaline, not fear. I’m not scared. I refuse to be scared. “Don’t shoot him. I’m not moving until you promise.”
“Little girl,” she says, “you don’t know what you’re playing at.”
I think of saying please, of begging, crying even, pretending to be frightened or sad. But I’m not going to give anybody here the satisfaction. They think they know me, but they don’t.
“If you shoot him I’m telling the police you did it in cold blood.”
We stare each other down through the tiny cracks in the windshield. Brandon is still crouched under the dash, powerless. I’m thinking of all those daydreams I used to have in school. Henry and I fugitives, persecuted, living in the woods. It’s like those dreams are coming true, but twisted.
“Fine,” says Margaret. She swings the rifle up to rest on her shoulder, threatening only the stars.
I slide out of the car.
My feet hit the gravel at the side of the road. The trees are so close. The dark of the trees. Leaning toward me, welcoming. I could just run into their arms, run and run and never stop.
But I won’t. I’m not scared. I refuse to be scared. I’m going to stare them down. I’m going to face them. I take a few steps forward. I feel like I felt back at the camper. I am strong, electric.
Mama was wrong. She was wrong.
I’m hers.
I’m more hers than my sister could ever be.
“Come on over here, baby,” Margaret says, her eyes on the truck. The left front wheel is flat, slumping down in a black puddle.
The pastor is limping toward me, a funny lopsided almost-run, going faster than you’d think a person with an ankle in a brace could go. Margaret shouts at him to hold still, but he doesn’t listen. The pastor barrels into me and I’m so confused. Is he trying to knock me down, is the truck rigged to blow and he’s going to shield me from the blast?
But he’s hugging me, squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe.
“Fucking hellfire,” says Margaret. I try to twist to see what Brandon is doing. He should run, I suppose. Get away into the woods. Hide. Like he’s so good at. Like he’s been doing all his life. Like Mama. Like my sister.
I will not hide.
“The devil got you,” the pastor whispers into my hair. He sounds like he’s crying, voice thick and clotted with snot. “I won’t let it happen. Not again.”
I can see Brandon out of the corner of my eye. He’s sliding over to my side of the truck. He’s climbing out. Is he going to run?
“My baby,” the pastor says.
“I’m not your baby.” I try to push him away, but he holds tight. Like he held my sister. Everybody always trying to tell me who I am. Who I should be. Trying to hold me back.
“Let go of her,” says Brandon, beside us now. His voice is steady as still water.
The pastor ignores him.
“You might be,” he says to me.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Jo.” The pastor leans back just far enough to look me in the eyes. There are tears in his. “I should have told you sooner.”
And it hits me, hard. I understand.
Everyone always said Mama was friendly, too friendly. I knew what that meant. Everyone always said Logan was probably my father, but not for sure.
You might be.
“I said let go of her.” Brandon grabs the pastor by the shoulders and yanks him away from me. I’m stunned, thankful. Brandon isn’t gentle. The pastor stumbles, then pivots and throws a punch, which Brandon dodges.
“You should have stayed the fuck away,” the pastor says. He throws himself at Brandon, knocking him against the side of the truck.
I might be. Might be his baby.
The pastor lands a punch in Brandon’s side. Brandon hits him back hard, right in the jaw. The pastor stumbles back, nearly falls. Grandma Margaret swings her gun down from her shoulder, aims at the two men.
The pastor must have had sex with her. With Mama. I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to think about what that means. Did Aggie know?
With a chill I remember the things he was saying in the woods. The Lord brought me here for a reason. I’ve got a second chance. I knew I had to come back for you.
“Jolene,” says Grandma Margaret, “you get your ass over here.”
I move toward the front of the truck instead, getting between Brandon and the gun. I don’t know if he’s my uncle or not anymore, but he as good as raised my sister and I’m not letting Margaret shoot him. The pastor is hissing swear words under his breath. I’ve got my back to him and Brandon, but I can hear them grapple, hear someone slamming against the truck again, a grunt of pain.
“Do you even know what you’ve gotten yourself into?” Margaret shouts at me. “Do you know who that man is? That’s one of the rotten pieces of shit who murdered your mama.”
“No, he—”
She cuts me off. “I warned her, but she didn’t listen. I’m warning you, too.”
“He didn’t kill her,” I shout. “You did.”
“That what he told you? Little girl, you ain’t that dumb.”
“You didn’t even care about her,” I shout. “She was alive. After she had me. She hid in the forest. She didn’t want you to—”
Before I can finish, someone slams into me from behind, knocking me to the ground. My face hits the gravel. Things start happening very fast. Out of the corner of my eye, a swinging fist. A crunching sound. A shout. Grandma Margaret standing over me. Light glinting off the barrel of her gun.
I try to push myself up. Brandon is kneeling over the pastor, who is down on the ground, on his back like Henry. Brandon’s got his hands around the pastor’s throat, the muscles of his arms straining, twisting like snakes under his skin. He is stronger than my sister. There is blood on the pastor’s face. You might be. I don’t want him to die. Not really. I don’t want either of them to die. This is too much.
Grandma Margaret is aiming.
“Lord Jesus, give me strength,” she whispers.
I throw myself forward, knock into her legs. She pulls the trigger. Her shot goes wide. She shouts at me. “Idiot girl!” The pastor rolls out of Brandon’s grip. His nose is bleeding, broken-looking. His eyes meet mine for a moment, a split second. Bright blue. Pleading. I scramble to my feet.
“Run!” I shout at Brandon, and I am doing just that.
I am running headlong into the dark. It’s hard to see, but I just blow ahead, don’t give a shit when branches whip my face, my arms. When I stumble, when I fall, I just get right back up and keep going. There are gunshots, but they are hardly louder than the sound of sticks snapping beneath my feet. I can hear Brandon running behind me.
Flashlight beams come swinging at us through the trees, but all they do is light our way. The pastor and Grandma Margaret can’t keep up. We know the forest better than they do. We belong out here, me and Brandon. We are cut from the same night sky.
We run and the darkness opens up to receive us. This is home, as much as the bar ever was. The trees are silent old men, gently drunk, swaying in the wind. They watch us go with sad eyes, thinking of their own sons, their own daughters. The wind picks up and for a moment they are all dancing, waving their thin arms out of rhythm, moving to some song only they can hear.
“Stop,” Brandon gasps from behind me. I skid to a halt.
I don’t know where we are. The top of some hill in the national forest. There is moonlight pouring down on us, brushing the ground, the wildflowers, frosting the little bundles of dead leaves that hang from a shrub beside me. That’s the work of the cicadas, I know, from the heart of summer, when they drilled holes in the tips of the branches to hide their eggs.
Brandon is leaning back against the trunk of a white tree, hand to his side.
When those eggs in the branches hatch, the baby cicadas drop to the ground, their first act in life a long fall with no one to catch them. The instant they hit the dirt they start digging, don’t come back up again for years.
Brandon’s eyes are shut, his face is pale. I think he has a stitch from running, but then I see it, beneath his hands—a shadow, a patch of darkness.
The darkness is spreading and for a moment I think it’s the night sky, leaking out.
But it’s blood. Grandma Margaret hit him. When we ran, she shot into the dark, and she hit him.
“You’re okay, right?” I say. “You’re going to be okay.”
“It burns,” he says, between clenched teeth.
She can’t have hit anything important. He was running. He’s still standing. In movies people just drop like a sack of potatoes. I move closer to him, push his hand out of the way. The blood is coming, I think, from a spot above his hip. Nowhere near the heart. He’s fine. He’s still standing.
I pull off my hoodie. I’m hot from running, sweat cooling against my skin. I wad the hoodie up and push it against his side. He grunts in pain.
“You’ve got to put pressure on it,” I say.
“I know,” he says, “I know.” His eyes look wild in the dark. But he’s fine. He’s standing.
We work together, peel his jacket off, one whole half of it wet with blood. We use that to bind the folded hoodie against his side, tying the sleeves of the jacket together, pulling it tight, tighter, tight as it will go, while he gasps, sweat beading on his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. I knot the sleeves, wipe my bloody hands on some leaves.
Brandon leans back against the tree.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. I’m scared he will pass out and leave me here alone. I don’t know what I’d do. I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, like falling and falling through endless darkness. But I’m standing still.
I reach out and shake Brandon by the shoulders. His eyes flutter open.
“Fuck,” he says.
“Should I call 911?” I ask.
“What? No.” He presses his hands harder over the hoodie, grimacing. “They’d kill me.”
Of course we can’t call 911. We’re on the run. We’re fugitives now. My daydreams coming true, but twisted.
I think of kissing Brandon in the truck. I think of what the pastor said. You might be. A horrible thought occurs to me.
“Did you sleep with her?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“Mama,” I say. “Did you sleep with Mama?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Jesus,” I say, reeling, “are you my father too?”
“I’m not,” he says.
“You might be.”
“No,” he says firmly. “You were already— It was after.”
“Oh.”
Were you in love with her? I want to ask. But I think I know the answer. He’s told me as much already. I’d give her anything, he said. Anything she wanted I’d give it to her.
“Is Logan my father?” I ask instead. I always assumed he was. Always assumed he was a murderer, too. But even innocent of that crime, he sounds like an awful guy.
Maybe it would be better, to know that I’m not half monster.
Brandon shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
Any scrap of certainty I once had in my life is gone. I don’t know anything anymore. Don’t know who I am. Don’t know what to do.
The plan was to find my sister. To get her somewhere safe. I’ll stick to the plan.
“Cover your ears,” I tell Brandon. He blinks at me, confused, but puts his one free hand over his left ear. Good enough.
I take a deep breath, lean back my head, and howl.
I do it loud and long, do it until my throat aches and my lungs burn. The air here is cold. I take a deeper breath, howl again.
If there are searchers nearby, let them hear it. Let them be afraid. They won’t think it’s the sort of sound that could come from a girl. Must be some kind of animal, they’ll think. Some kind of monster.
The sound dies away. I gasp for breath. Brandon pulls his hand away from his ear, presses it back against his side.
The adrenaline has worn off and I feel shaky and weak. Feel like my limbs might float away. I squint at the dark trees around us. I see no shapes detaching themselves from the shadows. No searchers, but no sister either.
Brandon coughs, his body bent in pain. I want him to tell me what to do. I want someone, anyone, to tell me what to do. I’ve always wanted the opposite of that. To be free. To do exactly as I please. To need no one.
But right now I need help. With trembling hands, I pull the phone from my pocket, power it on, ignoring the missed calls from the bar, and dial Dakota’s number.
Pick up pick up pick up.
“Oh my God, Jo. I’m so glad you called,” Savannah says before I even get a hello out. Her voice seems like something out of another world. A world I’m leaving farther and farther behind. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, though I’ve never been less fine in my whole life.
“Where are you?”
“The woods.”
“I still haven’t told anyone about talking to you,” she says. “Not a single soul. I swear.”
“Thanks,” I say, searching for the right words. Should I tell her everything?
“But look,” she rambles on, oddly cheerful under the circumstances, “I’ve got to tell you something. You won’t believe it.”
Brandon is leaning his head back against the tree, eyes squeezed shut. He’s pressing both his hands into his side. His breathing is heavy, loud.
“Savannah,” I start. I’m going to need a lot of help. Margaret and the pastor must have raised the alarm by now. “Can you—”
“I had sex,” she blurts out.
“What?”
“I had sex. Like one hundred percent all the way.”
“What?” I can’t help myself. It should be nothing compared to the things I’ve learned today, but I’m still shocked. “With who?”
“I just had to tell someone,” she says, “or I thought I’d explode.”
I just got shot at, I should tell her. Savannah’s news doesn’t matter at all. But I can’t help confirming an awful suspicion.
“Was it Jack?” I ask. She doesn’t answer, so I know it must be true.
Jack. I can see him leaning over me, shouting. The veins in his neck. The scraggly hairs on his chin.
“I haven’t told anyone else about it,” Savannah says. “Not even Dakota.”
“How could—” I say, but I stop myself. How could you, Savannah? How could you let him touch you, let him do that to you? I want to hate her for it. Why Jack? Of all people? I want to be disgusted. It makes me uncomfortable, the thought of letting yourself be so vulnerable with another person. What pleasure I’ve had is a secret, a private thing, something I do alone. Something I’m a little ashamed of, if I’m being honest.
But Mama had sex when she was our age. A lot of it, if what people say is true. With Logan. With the goddamn pastor. Grandma Margaret threw her out of the house because of it. Pastor Nelson turned her away at the door. They thought she should be ashamed. They wanted to make her ashamed. I’m better than them. I can be better than that.
“Look, Savannah,” I say, urgent, “I need your help right now. If you care about me at all—”
“Jesus, Jo,” she cuts me off. “Of course I care about you. You’re the only one I wanted to tell.”
“Well, then please just do this one thing for me.”
“Yeah, of course. Anything.” She has no idea. If she did she wouldn’t sound so eager.
“You’ve got to get a car,” I say.
“What?”
“A car. From Dakota or from—I don’t know. Just, I need to borrow a car. I need you to take it to Myron’s house. I need you to meet me there. Alone.”
I’m expecting Savannah to protest, to say that’s impossible, that’s too much to ask, how the hell is she supposed to get a car, that’s crazy. It is.
“I think I can do that,” she says.
“Oh my God,” I say, overwhelmed with relief. “Thank you. I’ll meet you there. As soon as you can get it.”
“What’s going on?” Her tone is more subdued now. She gets it. This is serious.
“I’ll explain everything when I see you, okay? I’ve got to get moving.”
“Okay,” she says, “okay.”
“Thank you, Savannah. I owe you.” I could kiss you.
I hang up.
“Can you walk?” I ask Brandon.
“Yeah,” he says. He tries to push himself up with one hand, keeping the other pressed to his side. I rush to help him and he leans on me. I can smell his stale beer breath and his sweat and something else, a smell that reminds me of the rusty fire escape outside my old window.
The two of us stagger along, our progress awkward, Brandon leaning heavily on my shoulder. I don’t even know which direction to go. I can’t tell one tree from another, can’t tell north from south. Every darkness looks equally deep. The trees are too thick here to see the stars.
We move forward and with every step, the voice in my mind grows louder. The one saying, I am lost, I am lost. How did I get here? How did everything go wrong so quickly?
There is another world where everything went differently. Another world unfurling behind me like a white flag. I could have gone home. I could have made it so Brandon got away unscathed. I could have stood like a shield while he escaped.
I could have stayed. That instant before I ran, when I met the pastor’s eyes and they looked sad and scared and kind. There was a whole world in there.
I take a step and then another step and then I stop. I think I’m going to cry. I think I’m going to collapse. Just curl up in the dirt and wail until someone finds me. They’re looking for me, aren’t they? They’re out here trying to find me. I could just let them.
“What is it?” asks Brandon.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m lost.”
He shifts his weight, grunts in pain. I turn to look behind us. Maybe we should just try to find our way back to the road. I open my mouth to say so.
And then she is here.
From the darkness beside me she appears, stepping forward as silent as a ghost. She stretches a thin hand out to touch my arm.
She has put on a pair of black tights, though they are so crisscrossed with runs and tears that they can’t be much warmer than no tights at all. It’s cold tonight, getting colder. She has on the big puffy coat, too, and the brown knit cap, and her shoes, a pair of sneakers I got from the thrift store double discount bin. They were white when I got them, but are now unrecognizable, gray-black with caked mud.
“Lee,” I say. “I’m sorry.” For what, I’m not entirely sure. She should apologize to me, too, but I won’t hold my breath.
“There are too many people,” she says, quietly, and I know what she means. The once-empty forest, infested.
“I know.”
“They want us.” She looks very afraid, very tired. She sleeps during the day, usually, but she wouldn’t have been able to with people nearby.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll run away. They won’t find us.”
She glances over at Brandon. Neither of them says a thing, but something unspoken seems to pass between them. This is what they wanted. What they both wanted.
“Take us to the tree,” I say. “Our meeting tree by the cemetery. Please.” She’s the only one of us who could find the way in the dark. She knows these woods so well.
Her little plastic heart purse is strung by its rope strap across her chest. It’s like she knew somehow. Got all dressed up, all packed up, ready to go. Maybe she and Brandon had been planning this for years. A way to lure me away from town, to paint me into a corner so tight I had no choice except to run. Just another story that isn’t mine.
But I could still go back, could still give up. It isn’t too late. I am choosing this. Choosing the same way Mama did.
I take my sister’s hand, reach my other hand out for Brandon. I pull him forward and he stumbles along after us.
Once, in the distance, I hear people shouting my name. But we keep going, moving through the dark like we are part of it. Nothing but shadows. Nothing but ghosts.