I am paralyzed up there on the embankment, watching Savannah flick her cigarette and play with her hair. I can’t hear her or the man. Can’t see the man’s face. He’s standing with his back to me. I think of Jack. The pastor. The man from Walmart.
Lee watches beside me, though I can feel her growing restless.
“What the hell is she doing?” I ask. “She should get out of there.”
“Run,” agrees my sister, tugging on the back of my shirt.
I inch forward, trying to get a better look at the man. He laughs at something, throwing his head back. It’s not the pastor. Not Jack. I don’t recognize him at all. A cop, maybe? Plainclothes? He’s wearing jeans and a white tee.
Lee tugs on my shirt again.
“Stop it,” I say.
“Man,” says my sister, as if it were the worst curse word. She grabs my arm, tries to pull me backward.
“Quit it. We can’t just leave Savannah. You like her better than me now anyway, don’t you?”
She pulls harder.
“This is all your fault,” I snap, pushing her away. “You know that, right? If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here. We’d all be back in Ohio and safe and nobody would be chasing us and Brandon wouldn’t be dead.”
She lets go of my sleeve, deflated. I turn back to the junkyard, but Savannah and the guy are gone. Alarmed, I creep closer, eyes straining for movement.
There’s a shuffle of leaves behind me and I turn to see my sister running. Not back toward camp, though, but off to the right, down the slope of the embankment toward the junkyard. Shit. Just what I need. Is she going to attack this guy? We need to stay hidden.
I run, too, trying to overtake her, though I know I probably can’t. I’m nearly down to where the ground levels out when I see Savannah up ahead, trudging back into the forest. Alone, thank God.
Lee skids to a stop about twenty feet in front of her. Savannah looks up, startled. She’s clutching her Tupperware of cigarettes and she nearly drops it. “Hey,” she says uncertainly, stepping backward. Lee snatches a pebble from the ground, throws it at Savannah’s head. Savannah tries to duck, but the pebble hits her in the arm.
“Ow,” she says. “What the fuck?”
“Knock it off, Lee,” I say as I push past her, though I’m not even sorry, really. What the hell does Savannah think she’s doing?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I shout, marching up to Savannah. I meant to say it nicer.
“I was getting these.” Savannah frowns and shakes the Tupperware at me.
“You just disappeared.”
“Chill out.” She tries to move past me, but I block her. She sighs and marches off to the left instead. I hurry after her. I see Lee, out of the corner of my eye, running back in the direction of our camp.
“You could have gotten us all caught,” I insist to Savannah. “You should have waited until dark.”
“It was fine, Jo. I just snuck in and got the cigarettes.”
Now who’s the liar?
“Who was that?” I demand.
“What?” Savannah turns to me, startled. She didn’t realize we’d seen her.
“You were talking to a man.”
“Yeah,” she says, reluctant. “Briefly.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.” She waves a dismissive hand at me. “He asked about the car and I said I was camping with my family. Said my parents were trying to avoid parking fees or whatever.”
She turns away and keeps walking, circling around to head back toward camp. I should be impressed, I guess, that she managed to find her way to the junkyard on her own. Although I suppose she just sniffed the air, homed in on the scent of testosterone.
I kneel and prop a stick at an angle against the base of a tree. A sign, for next time. Just in case.
“You shouldn’t talk to anyone,” I say, when I catch up with Savannah. She needs to understand. She can’t do that again.
“He saw me digging around in the car. I had to say something.” She pulls a cigarette out of the Tupperware, pops it between her lips.
“You should have just run.”
“Come on, it was fine.” She lights the cigarette with her plastic lighter, takes a thoughtful puff. “He doesn’t even work there or anything. His uncle owns it. He just likes tinkering with the cars. Making broken things whole again.”
That seems awfully personal. And there’s something about the way she says it. A buoyancy in her tone. The way she waves one hand through the air, fingernail polish catching the morning sun. My guard goes up.
“So you know his whole family history now?” I say, trying to keep my tone light, teasing. “Had a nice long chat?”
“Oh, shut up,” she says. But I can see the hint of a smile on her lips and I know: she’s been caught already, fat little squirrel, fur gleaming. She ran right up to that loop of wire, thrust her neck through with glee.
It’s Jack all over again. Are Savannah’s loyalties so flimsy that all it takes is a man smiling at her and all bets are off?
“How old was he anyway?” I ask. I don’t bother to sound teasing this time. I’m angry.
She shrugs. Older than us, I’m sure. Probably too old.
“What if he reports the car or something?”
“He said it was fine if we left it there for a few days. Said his uncle probably wouldn’t care.”
“We aren’t leaving it there for a few days, Savannah. We’re ditching it.” Does she really not get it? This is it. This is our life now. “We can’t keep driving a stolen car.”
Savannah shrugs again. “I still think we should go to New York. Ditch it there.”
I open my mouth and then shut it. You aren’t taking this seriously, I want to shout. You put us all in danger. You shouldn’t be here.
But I want her here. That’s the problem. This idiot would-be mechanic is a danger to me and Lee, but he’s a far bigger danger to Savannah. I don’t want her to leave. I don’t want her to hate me.
I still need her on my side.
Lee is far ahead of us, crouched down to inspect something on the ground. I run from Savannah, catch up to my sister, and help her pick oyster mushrooms off a rotting log until I’m calm enough to think.
When we get back to our camp, I build another fire. Savannah helps me, her spirits notably lifted after her visit to the junkyard. She lights her cigarette on the fire, laughs at my clumsy attempts to whittle a fallen branch to a point with my sister’s folding knife.
The fire crackles and spits. Savannah’s face glows in the light of it. Lee experiments with dropping different items into it. A pine cone, some leaves, one of the mushrooms. She watches them burn, little flames dancing in her eyes.
I try to put the incident at the junkyard out of my mind and focus instead on plans for the short-term future. Next time my sister catches a squirrel, I will make her skin it somewhere that Savannah can’t see. We will cook it out of her sight too. It really doesn’t taste so different from other meat. Perhaps, presented with the final product, but ignorant of the process, Savannah will be willing to try it.
We can find more mushrooms. Savannah refused to eat those too, claiming they were probably poisonous. But she’ll come around. We can cook the mushrooms. Maybe we can find some dandelion greens or berries. I’m not sure if it’s too late in the season for those or not. Maybe walnuts. I think the wilderness book said that if you soak acorns in water for a while you can eat those, too.
My sister knows things about the forest, knows which leaves won’t make you sick, which mushrooms, which berries. She’ll gather resting grasshoppers from leaves in the morning, crunch them up like chips. I’ve seen her shimmy up a tree to pluck bird eggs from a nest. She pokes a hole in one end with her knife, sucks the yolk out raw. I suppose some of it she learned from experience, some from Brandon, maybe some from Mama. I know Grandpa Joe would take his daughters hunting with him when he was still alive. Aggie used to say it was a pity he wasn’t around to take me. Margaret hunts, too, but she never took me with her. I wish she had now.
I honestly think Margaret hated me, still hates me. I was painful to her, a reminder. Of the daughter she lost. The daughter she failed.
I pop open the can of biscuits from Walmart and shove a ball of sticky dough onto one end of the pointed branch. I hold it over the fire, turn it slowly.
Despite my best efforts, the dough catches and burns black as coal. But when I pull the little biscuit cinder from the branch and take a bite, I find that it is delicious. Warm and soft and buttery in the middle, the burnt skin only enhancing the delicacy of the inside.
There’s no use rationing them, since we can’t very well store the raw dough, so we run through the whole can of biscuits. Savannah finds her own stick and manages, through extreme patience, to cook the dough without burning it. Lee, on the other hand, delights in setting the balls of dough on fire and then running around in a circle, waving her stick, blowing the small flames out like birthday candles.
When the biscuits are done we pass the orange juice jug around. Lee watches Savannah and me carefully and when it’s her turn she copies us, taking a delicate sip, licking her lips, checking the jug to see how much is left. She’s been a bit cool toward Savannah since the junkyard incident. Not that she’s said anything, but she hasn’t been looking at her as much.
I shake the jug. It’s nearly empty. “Tomorrow, first thing, we need to find some fresh water.”
“We could just drive to a gas station,” Savannah says. I glare at her. She rolls her eyes. “Fine, whatever, no car.”
“Water,” says Lee.
“Right,” says Savannah encouragingly, turning to her with an exaggerated smile, “very good.”
“She’s not an idiot,” I snap.
Savannah shrugs.
“Use full sentences,” I tell Lee. “Stop being lazy.”
She scowls at me. “Water,” she says. “To drink.”
“That’s not—” I protest, but before I can finish, she snatches the juice jug out of my hands and bolts.
“Wait!” I shout after her. “Where are you going?”
But she’s already gone. I can’t even see her in the gathering dusk. I guess she found water earlier. I guess that’s good. But I’m tired of still being caught in the middle here, halfway between Savannah and Lee.
“She’s so weird,” says Savannah. She shoots me an apologetic glance. “Sorry, I mean—”
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “You’re right. She’s weird.” No use pretending.
I let the fire burnish my cheeks and warm my hands. Savannah smokes another cigarette. We sit in silence, listening to the crackle of the branches, the hum of the heated air, the distant calls of birds, the rustles and grunts of squirrels.
“I guess it’s kind of nice out here,” says Savannah.
“Yeah,” I say, heartened to hear her say something positive for once. She’ll learn to love the forest, surely, the way that Lee and I do.
Savannah turns to look at me. “I was so miserable those times you made me wait out in the yard.”
I’m surprised to hear her say that. I try to remember if Savannah seemed unhappy those nights, back at Grandma Margaret’s. I remember how reluctant I was to give up and go inside, sure that any moment my sister would appear. Maybe I never much noticed, or cared, how Savannah felt. I will have to try to do better now.
“I just wanted you to meet her,” I say, lamely.
“I thought you were the biggest liar.”
“Well,” I say a little more sharply than I intend, “now you know I’m not.”
Savannah turns back toward the fire, her eyes glittering in the light. “It was so scary. Waiting out there.”
I snort. “You weren’t scared.”
“I was. I tried not to let on, but I was terrified. The woods were so dark. And I was scared that your grandmother would come out of the house and catch us. She always seemed mean.”
“She was,” I say quietly. You have no idea. I almost tell her about Brandon then, but it’s like saying it out loud will make it too real. If I don’t talk about, don’t think about it, I can pretend it never happened. “She still is.”
I close my eyes. I can see the headlights again, from the two trucks. See the dust drifting slowly through the beams, swirling in lazy eddies. I can hear the gunshots.
“Did she know?” asks Savannah.
“About my sister? No.”
“What about Aggie?”
“No. Nobody knew.”
“Someone had to know, though.”
Someone did, yes. He’s gone now.
“You did,” I say instead, teasing. “I told you. You just didn’t believe me.”
“Yeah, but I mean how—like when she was a baby—who took care of her?”
The fire is burning low, coals pulsing with a deep orange glow. I could just say it. Brandon Cantrell. And Mama.
“Wolves,” I say instead.
Savannah laughs. “Goddammit, Jo. You really are the biggest liar in the whole world.”
“I doubt that,” I say.
I should tell her everything, I guess. She deserves it. But I can’t make myself. I can’t even open my mouth to start. Mama, Brandon. Even the words are like broken glass. I’m afraid my tongue would bleed.
I change the subject instead. We talk about school, about all the things we don’t miss. About the teachers who thought we were stupid. About the boys Savannah didn’t love. About the girls who made fun of us, who called Savannah a slut for the way she dressed, who called me a prude or a dyke for the way I did.
“Fuck everybody,” says Savannah. “I’m glad we got out.”
The sun drops lower. Lee isn’t back yet, which makes me a little nervous. But that’s stupid. I used to see her for only a few hours out of the day. Less than that even, most of the time.
Savannah says she’s getting cold and retreats to the tent. I get up and kick dirt onto the fire until it seems like it’s out, then I hear the sound of the tent unzipping behind me. I turn to see Savannah reemerging. She shoves her hands in her jacket pockets and walks away.
“Where you going?” I ask, thinking I’ll tease her about forgetting her roll of two-ply quilted leaves.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” she says, and there’s something about the way she says it. Like she’s trying too hard to sound casual. My stomach sinks.
I run over and catch hold of her arm so she’s forced to stop, forced to meet my eyes.
“Where are you going?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.
She wrenches her arm away. “You’re not in charge of me, you know.”
“Where the hell are you going, Savannah?” I give up trying to sound calm. My anger is rising. I think I know where she’s going, think on some level I’ve known it all along, though I still hope I’m wrong.
“It’s none of your business.” She turns away, scuffs the toe of her sneaker against some moss.
“It is my business,” I insist. “You’re putting us at risk.”
Savannah snorts.
“It’s not the same for you,” I say, moving around so I’m in front of her, so she has no choice but to look at me. “You can go back. If you get caught, it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s not true.” She looks hurt. “I stole a car.”
“You could blame me for the car. Everyone thinks I’m an insane criminal anyway. I wouldn’t mind.” The corner of her mouth quirks up in a smile when I say that. Encouraged, I go on. Maybe she really doesn’t understand. Maybe I just need to make her see. “You could go back to your life. But if we’re caught we can’t go back to our lives. If they get ahold of Lee, they’ll lock her up. Study her. Try to force her to act normal.”
“Maybe that would be a good thing.”
Savannah barely gets the last word out before I slap her.
I regret it immediately.
“I’m sorry, Savannah,” I say, rubbing my palm, which stings. “I’m so sorry.”
Savannah has her hand to her cheek. There are tears in the corners of her eyes, the moonlight catching on them. I think of Aggie. How she looked after she hit me.
I guess it’s true what they say, about becoming your parents. No matter how hard Aggie tried not to become like Margaret, ultimately there was no avoiding it.
But Aggie isn’t really my mother.
Mama.
Is that who I’ll become? She pushed everyone away. They called her wild because she didn’t act the way she was supposed to, but she was more than wild. She was crazy, I think. And if she really was crazy, then they should have helped her, but nobody did, except Brandon, and he couldn’t give her the kind of help she needed.
Maybe there’s no help for me, either.
“You don’t give a shit about me,” Savannah says. “You didn’t even want me to come. You just needed a car.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true. You said it yourself.”
“No.” I reach for her arm, but she flinches, shoves her hands deep in her pockets, walks away fast.
It’s true and it’s not true. I hadn’t planned to bring her with us, and she’s putting us at risk, but the thought of her leaving now makes me want to cry. I need her. Need somebody to talk to, somebody who understands how much I’ve left behind. Without Savannah, I’d fall apart. In a way, I’d be alone. Even with my sister here, I’d be alone.
Mama had Brandon, after all. Savannah can be my Brandon. I run to catch up.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say, breathless, as I speed walk alongside her. “I really am. I’m sorry I told you not to come. I was just worried you wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
Savannah stops, shoots me a disgusted look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No, shit, I’m sorry,” I sputter. “That came out wrong. I just meant that it was a lot to ask of you.” I stop, trying to pick the right words. Savannah’s watching me, face set, daring me to say the wrong thing. “I knew it wouldn’t be fun. We’ve got to stay hidden.”
“So?” she says. “I know that. I don’t want to go back, either.”
“You—” I start, and then stop myself. “My sister,” I say instead. “I have to take care of her. I’m all she has. She’s weird, like you say. But it would kill her if the state took her or they sent her to a mental hospital or something. I know it would. You’ve got to understand. I can’t let that happen to her.”
Savannah wipes her eyes with a sleeve. Her expression has softened. She understands, I think.
“Clayton and I agreed to meet up again around ten,” she says.
“Clayton,” I say dully.
“The guy you saw. At the junkyard.”
“You’re going to see him?” I know the answer. I just want to hear her say it.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, as if it’s not a big deal at all.
I can’t help myself. The anger comes washing back over me. “Are you going to fuck him or something?”
Savannah wheels around, marches away through the woods.
“Wait.” I chase after her, fear washing in just as quickly as the anger did. If she hates me she might not come back. “I’m sorry I said that. Just be careful, okay?”
“He’s really nice,” she says, stopping short. “You’d agree if you met him. He’s going to bring me a Big Mac.”
I snort. “How romantic.”
“Shut up,” she says. She’s smiling, though, and I think she doesn’t hate me after all. Maybe this will be okay. Maybe it isn’t a total disaster. Clayton isn’t Jack. Clayton is…well, it doesn’t matter who he is. He doesn’t matter. She’ll get tired of him. Right? She’ll get this out of her system. One final goodbye to her old life. I can’t stop her or I’ll be no better than all the people I ran from.
“Don’t tell him about us,” I say. “Please, promise me, not a word.”
“I promise.”
“You’ll come back?” I almost add to me at the end of the question, but I stop myself.
“Yeah,” she says. “Of course.”
She reaches out, gives my hand a squeeze, and then she turns and walks away into the dark.
I lie awake in the tent for a long time, straining to decipher every little sound outside. Being alone makes everything sound threatening. It makes the ground harder, the air colder. I become aware of how badly I smell, like sweat and dirt, find myself longing for a hot shower, a real bed. I suddenly miss Aggie, her sporadic cooking. I imagine her tapping on the flap of the tent. Time to wake up, Jo. Get your ass out of bed. Time for school. I imagine this so hard that I can almost smell the pancakes cooking in the kitchen. How long ago was that? A week? A year? Forever?
I was wrong. This is impossible, hopeless. It’s cold out and only going to get colder. We don’t know what we’re doing. Even my sister has never lived like this, not really. I used to think of her as nearly invincible, strong and independent. Almost magic. Seeing her at the gas station and Walmart showed me how, out in the real world, she can barely function. We might be twins, but she’s younger than me in a lot of ways.
Even back in the old woods, it turns out, she was never quite as independent as I thought she was. Brandon gave her food. The puffy coat, the brown knit cap. I thought she’d stolen them or found them, but she didn’t. He gave them to her. He took care of her. There’s no one to take care of us now. No one to turn to. Just us, all alone.
That other world. The one I left behind. I can see into it, a bright little window in the dark. If I hadn’t run. If Brandon hadn’t run. Maybe I could have saved him. Maybe I could have saved everyone.
There is rustling outside and I leap up, unzip the tent. There’s a girl-shaped shadow moving through the trees.
“Lee!” I call. “Did you find water?” I run toward her, equal parts relieved that she’s back and disappointed that she isn’t Savannah. I have to keep myself from hugging her. She doesn’t like that. It makes her feel trapped or something. I wonder if Mama ever hugged her.
Lee holds out the jug, which is nearly full.
“Where?” I ask.
She waves a hand vaguely at the woods behind her. “In some rocks.”
The water doesn’t look clean exactly. There are bits of dirt swirling around and a thin layer of sediment gathering at the bottom, but I decide I don’t care. I take a sip and it’s cold and refreshing, even if it does taste somewhat earthy.
Tomorrow, I’ll get her to lead me to where she found the water. Maybe I can even figure out how to filter it. It will be fine. We can live like this. We will figure it out.
We’ve got to.
I make Lee come sit in the tent with me for a while, which she does, but it’s clear she doesn’t like it. She startles at noises from outside that normally wouldn’t faze her, appears preoccupied with the faint spidery shadows cast by the moonlight onto the rain fly.
We share a banana from one of the Walmart bags and the water from the jug. I read her the big white warning tag sewn into the side of the tent. Do not smoke in tent. Do not cook in tent. Do not light candles in tent. Basically, don’t set the tent on fire. Lee plays with the zipper on the flap. She’s shredded her tights even more. Her toes and heels stick out completely. I add that to my regretful Walmart wish list: more tights.
“Please, Lee, will you tell me about her?” I don’t say the word. Don’t say Mama. I don’t want to upset her more than strictly necessary.
My sister zips the tent flap all the way open, zips it all the way closed.
“She wore eye shadow,” I suggest, to get her started.
“Sometimes.”
“She looked like her picture?”
My sister shrugs. She won’t look at me. I wrap the sleeping bag around my shoulders. It’s turning into a chilly night.
“Did she tell you about me?” I ask.
“No.”
My heart sinks. I know I shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. “Did she ever mention me at all?”
“No.”
So my sister didn’t know about me, the same way I didn’t know about her, until we were five. Until after Mama was dead.
Did Mama think about me? Had she forgotten me? She can’t have forgotten. Right? She was wrong about me. When she said, That one isn’t mine. She was wrong.
I try to forgive her. She was crazy. She was scared. She needed help.
But it still hurts.
“What about Brandon?” I ask. There’s a lump in my throat. “He told you about me, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?” I press.
She stops playing with the zipper for a moment and closes her eyes, the same way Brandon did when he told me about finding Mama, as if calling the memory up from a long way off.
“Your sister,” Lee says, finally. “She’s lost.”
For some reason, that’s what does it. The tears come flooding in. I look away so my sister won’t see.
“Why didn’t you tell me about him?” I choke out.
“Don’t you ever tell,” she says, playing with the zipper again.
“Yeah, but it was me. You could have told me.” I put a hand on her ankle. She flinches and turns. “You could have trusted me. Why didn’t you?”
“I was scared,” she says slowly.
“Why?” I say.
She hesitates a long time, working out the sentence maybe, staring straight at me the whole time, an intense gaze. I try to blink back the tears.
“I didn’t want him to die,” she says finally.
I let go of her ankle. For a moment I don’t understand, but then with dawning horror I see how it must have looked to her. She told me about Brandon, despite years of secrecy drilled into her by Mama. She brought me to him because he had medicine and it was the only way to keep me away from Lester, which in her mind she had finally saved me from.
A day later, Brandon was dead. Because she told.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. Because in a twisted way she’s right. It’s my fault he’s dead. “I’m so, so sorry.”
We sit in near silence for a while. I sniff, wipe roughly at my face. There’s more I want to ask her, but I think if I speak again I will start sobbing. Eventually, I tell Lee she can go back to her tree if she wants. She hesitates, puts her hand out, and brushes it across my arm a few times, like I’m a cat and she’s petting me. It’s funny, I guess, but soothing too.
“Thanks,” I say. She brushes my arm once more and then she scrambles out of the tent and I’m alone again.
I zip myself into the sleeping bag and close my eyes.
I try not to think about Mama or Brandon or Aggie or the pastor or any of the things I left behind. Instead, I think about Savannah.
What she is or isn’t doing right now. Who she is or isn’t doing it with.
When I wake, the sun is up and Savannah’s still gone. I’m hit with a stab of panic and, nearly as strong, an overwhelming thirst. My lips are cracked and my tongue feels like a dryer sheet. I chug the gritty dregs of the water and then scramble out into the morning.
Lee is crouched by the makeshift firepit, bending little loops of wire.
“Have you seen Savannah?” I ask, trying not to completely lose it. “Did she come back last night?”
“No,” Lee says flatly.
“Shit,” I say, heart racing. “I’ll be right back. Don’t leave.”
I jog off in the direction of the junkyard, build up speed until I’m running.
I follow the signs I made for myself last time we walked back from the junkyard. I tried to be subtle: a stick propped at an odd angle, a half-broken branch. Things only I would recognize.
I’m not sure what I’ll do when I reach the junkyard. Not sure if I’ll even find anyone there. Savannah could have left with that guy. They could be anywhere. I have no plan. I’ve never had a plan.
If I wasn’t running I would cry. If I wasn’t running I would scream.
But then, about halfway to the junkyard, I spot Savannah shuffling through the leaves ahead of me, hands in her jacket pockets, head down, looking at her feet. Alone again. I nearly collapse with relief.
“Hey,” I say when I reach her, forcing myself to sound like it’s no big deal, voice slightly hoarse from exertion. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” Savannah says, holding her palms out upright, with a shrug.
“I was worried,” I say, though I try not to make it sound like an accusation. Is that why she stayed away so long? To punish me for the things I said last night?
“I saved you some fries.” She pulls an oil-soaked paper bag from one pocket, holds it out. I remember the woman back in Needle. The milkshake she brought me. What I would give for a milkshake now. I feel sorry, for a moment, about letting her birds out.
I’m sure she loved them in her way, even if she wouldn’t let them be free. The same as Aggie loved me. Loves me still, I hope.
That other world. The one that’s safe and warm and bright. There it is, the window open just a crack, just enough to let in a sliver of light.
I fall into line beside Savannah and we walk together, sharing the soggy fries. I can’t tell if it’s the salt or my relief at having Savannah back and safe that makes them taste like the nectar of the gods, but they are gone too soon. I lick my fingers, tear open the bag, and lick the inside of that, too. I’m too hungry to save any for Lee.
Savannah’s quiet, doesn’t even laugh at me for licking the bag. She walks slowly, kicking at the leaves. Is she upset or just tired? I can’t tell.
“What happened?” I ask. I would have thought she’d be in a better mood, after a night with a boy she likes. Usually she can’t wait to tell me what went down. Is she still mad?
“Nothing,” she says.
“I was scared when you didn’t come back.” I hear myself getting close to recrimination. It’s like I need her to say sorry. Or to scream at me and say I deserved it. I need her to say something, not just act like nothing happened.
“I’m coming back now,” she says, without looking at me.
“Well, yeah. I was worried, though.”
“Sorry,” she says, with another half shrug, a kick aimed at a mossy stone. It seems clear she isn’t sorry at all.
“I mean, what did you—” I stop myself. I don’t want to fight. I just want her to talk to me. Her reticence is freaking me out. Did it go badly? Did something happen? “How was it?”
“Fine,” she says, but she sounds even less convincing than when she said she was sorry. She walks faster, gets ahead of me. I catch up, but I’m afraid that if I ask more she’ll think I’m gloating, saying I told you so. I’m afraid that I’ll drive her away so soon after getting her back.
When we reach the campsite, Savannah sits beside the empty firepit, smokes cigarette after cigarette. She has a pack now. Marlboros. Clayton must have given them to her along with the food. What did she give him?
“You want the last Pop-Tart?” I ask her. She just shakes her head, pokes at the remnants of the fire with a stick. I don’t think she’s punishing me for last night. I think she’s upset about something else. She seems distant, lost in thought.
I eat half the Pop-Tart while I mull it over, give the other half to Lee.
“What’s wrong?” I ask Savannah, sitting down beside her.
“Nothing.” Little gray plumes puff into the air as she swirls her stick through the ash.
“Are you upset? You’re so quiet.”
“I’m just thinking.”
“About what?” Leaving?
“Stuff. Just thinking stuff over.”
This is nearly as bad as a conversation with my sister. Something is definitely wrong. Savannah is always chatty. She can’t help herself.
“What happened?” I ask again. She’s different this morning. Even last night, when she was furious at me, she wasn’t nearly so tight-lipped as this. Something must have happened.
“We just hung out and talked and stuff.” Savannah jams her stick into the ground, sends up a thundercloud of ash.
“What did you talk about?” Did she tell him about us? Did he force her to? I can hear the frustration in my voice, the suspicion, though I’m trying to keep it from erupting into anger.
“I didn’t tell him anything okay?” Savannah stands up and stalks toward the tent.
“Okay,” I say, standing up too. “Sorry.”
“I made stuff up,” she snaps. “I lied. Like you.”
Savannah crawls into the tent and zips it shut, forcefully. The closest we can get to a door slam out here. I stare after her for a while, trying to decide what to do. All my plans to survive feel like sand rushing through my fingers, slipping away faster than I can catch them. What do we eat, what do we drink, how do we stay warm and safe? How do I keep Savannah from leaving?
Lee comes over and pokes me in the arm with the half-burnt stick Savannah had been using to stir the ashes.
“You go talk to her, then,” I say, entirely kidding, but to my surprise Lee drops the stick, lopes over to the tent.
She scratches at the door.
“Go away, Jo,” comes the muffled voice of Savannah.
Being neither Jo nor particularly obedient at the best of times, Lee ignores her and unzips the tent, sticks her head in.
“Oh,” says Savannah, and then something I can’t hear. My sister crawls the rest of the way into the tent, tracking dirt, no doubt.
I hear Savannah’s voice again, but I can’t make out the words. I creep closer. Lee says something, then. Probably no, knowing her, but I can’t hear it.
It’s bizarre. I don’t know if I’m worried or jealous, but I don’t like it. I can hear Savannah talking again, just low enough that the words are unintelligible. What the hell is she saying?
I’m trying to decide if I need to barge in there, protect one or both of them from the other, when the tent unzips again and Lee clambers out, clutching the empty water jug.
Right. If we want to survive out here, that’s still the most important thing. Don’t die of dehydration.
Lee strides over to me. Savannah zips the tent shut behind her. Maybe the best thing I can do right now is give her some space.
“How far away was that water you found?” I ask my sister.
Lee shrugs. “Not far.”
“You want to come get water with us?” I shout at the tent.
“No,” Savannah, unseen, shouts back. “I had a soda.”
So my sister and I head off alone.
“What did you talk about in there?” I ask as soon as we reach the edge of our little clearing. Lee doesn’t answer.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I say, “is nobody going to tell me anything?”
She shoots me a condescending look. I swear it. My sister. Condescending.
“The city,” she says.
“Oh.” Is that all? “You’d hate the city.”
My sister pauses at a rotting log, orients herself, and sets off running. I run, too, and for ten minutes, maybe twenty, all worries are carried away on the wind and it is just this, just me and her and the dirt and the trees and freedom.
The water source, when we reach it, turns out to be a tiny waterfall. Although maybe waterfall is an exaggeration. More of a trickle, really, spluttering between some rocks. There’s no flat ground right next to it, no caves that I can see. Still, maybe we can move the campsite closer. It would be worth it for water.
I press the empty orange juice bottle against one of the rocks. It fills so slowly that my arms grow tired from holding it. I try propping it but can’t get the right angle. My sister has been amusing herself by turning over rocks, snatching up bugs she finds beneath them, popping them in her mouth. I make her stop and take over for me.
I spend a while trying out different questions in my head. Maybe I could ease into the conversation somehow, get the information I want without upsetting her. But then again, why should I protect her feelings? I’ve done enough. I’ve done everything to protect her.
“Did Mama talk about anyone else?” I ask.
My sister stiffens, nearly lets the jug slip out of her fingers. I shout and she catches it just in time.
“I know you said she didn’t mention me.” I pause for a moment, hoping, irrationally, that she’ll remember something, say, Oh, wait, never mind, foolish me, she talked about you all the time. “But what about her mother? Or her sister?”
“Sister?” she asks, puzzled now.
“Yeah,” I say. “She had a sister. Has a sister. You know that. Aunt Aggie.”
“Oh.” She’s frowning. I’ve talked about Aggie plenty, referred to her as my aunt. As your aunt too. Mentioned, I’m sure, things Aggie had said about Mama. But maybe on some level my sister never quite put it together. Sisters. Like us.
“Well, did Mama mention Aggie? Or Margaret?”
“I don’t remember.” She’s still stiff, every muscle in her body contracted, her arm muscles quivering as she holds the jug, hands clenched into unnatural-looking claws. She is so uncomfortable, but she owes me this. This and more.
“Do you remember when you two lived in the camper?” I ask. “You would have been pretty little, but maybe you remember something.”
She shakes her head, so slightly it might be nothing. Brandon didn’t give me an exact timeline. I don’t know how old my sister would have been when they lived in the camper. Two? Three? As old as four? I have some vague memories from around three years old. Just little flashes. The time I fell down the stairs, for instance. Wearing a lacy Easter dress and hunting plastic eggs, but finding an actual robin’s egg instead. That unreal blue.
“You hid,” I prompt, remembering the caches I helped Brandon stock. “Under the ground. In a hole.”
“Yes,” Lee says. She is shaking now; the water jug is shaking. “We ate dirt.”
“Oh.” That shuts me up, for a moment. So she does remember, but she doesn’t want to. Could eating dirt have been a game? Or did they spend so long down in those holes that they got hungry? Got desperate? There seems to be an almost infinite darkness hidden in those three words. I feel sorry for her, despite myself. “It must have been scary in the dark.”
“Monsters,” she says. She’s talking so quietly I have to lean in close to hear her.
“What?”
“I was scared of monsters.” She’s staring straight ahead, at the stream of water, the rocks.
“What monsters?”
“People. Evil people.”
“Is that what Mama said?” I’m talking louder now, too loud. I’m excited. I can’t help myself. Finally, something.
“Evil gets inside them,” she says, her tone gone flat like when she’s reciting. This is what I want. This is what I went out into the church of the wilderness, the quiet, to hear. Mama’s words. Mama speaking to me, through her. “It sneaks in under their fingernails. If you look at their eyes you can see it. If they touch you it will go inside you. If you see someone you run.”
I recognize the last part. Lee said it before, back at Brandon’s clearing. I think maybe she’ll run again, like she did that time. I’m bracing myself to catch the water jug. But she doesn’t. I’ve broken through to something. She’s gone very still, stopped shaking.
“If they ever catch you,” she says, and now I’m the one nearly shaking. This is what I wanted. “If they ever get you. If they ever try to touch you.” She turns to look at me, stricken, her eyes darting back and forth between mine. She looks terrified. “Kill them.”
She does drop the water jug, then, and runs. I dive for the jug, manage to grab it before too much spills. I let the sediment settle for a moment, let my racing heart settle, take a sip.
It’s what I wanted. Mama’s words. But I’m not sure I’m happy. I feel sort of sick. Evil gets inside them.
I think Mama was really messed up. And she messed up Lee, too. I don’t know.
Here I am, trying to be Mama. Trying to follow in her footsteps.
But maybe Mama was wrong about more than just me. The people in town were wrong to judge her, it’s true, but she pushed everyone away. Even Brandon, in the end. Even her own daughters. Both of them.
You can’t live totally alone. You need somebody. Not everybody is evil. That was just her fears talking. Right?
I walk off in the direction Lee ran, calling her name. I’d howl, but my throat is scratchy from breathing the cold night air and crying so much over the last couple of days.
I’m worried maybe she’s run off so far that we won’t be able to find each other. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find my way back to camp without her. And I don’t know how she’d manage alone out here. These aren’t her woods. She doesn’t have all her traps, all her hideouts, all her little stores. She doesn’t have Brandon.
She finds me, though, after a while, runs up. She doesn’t say anything about what happened. I offer her the water jug and she chugs about half of it.
“I guess we can go get more later,” I say. I take the jug from her, twist the cap back on. I hesitate. “Mama was wrong,” I say softly. “You know that, right?”
In answer, Lee picks up a small handful of leaves. She tosses them at me and darts off. She’s trying to get me to chase her, to play, but I don’t feel like running.
“We should go back to the camp,” I shout at her. She trudges back toward me, sweeps past, clearly disappointed. I follow her.
I don’t want to leave Savannah on her own for too long. I’m worried about her, too. I’m worried she wants to leave, worried she’ll sneak away again when I’m not watching and never come back. Maybe it was wrong of me to bring us into the woods. Maybe we should find a motel or something. The money wouldn’t last long, maybe a night or two, but at least Savannah would be happy.
Maybe we just need to go to another Walmart, stock up more thoroughly. Get that air mattress, that portable charger. Ease into this lifestyle. Do it right.
It takes me longer than it should to realize that my sister isn’t leading me back to camp. Or if she is, she’s taking a strange and circuitous route. We pass by a rocky outcropping that I swear I don’t recognize, down into a small valley that rings no bells either.
She’s following a sort of path, I realize suddenly. Not a wide path, not a human path. But a narrow and inconsistent line of tamped earth and crushed weeds. A deer trail.
I grab Lee’s arm.
“We can track deer later,” I tell her. “We need to get back to camp, okay? We need to get back to Savannah.”
She frowns, but makes a sharp turn, away from the deer trail. I curse myself for not paying more attention on the way to the water source, not paying more attention now.
Ahead of me, Lee suddenly freezes. She turns her head one way and then the other. She sniffs the air like a damn dog or something and I laugh.
She waves a frantic hand at me, telling me to shut up.
“What?” I whisper. I don’t hear anything or see anything.
In response, she grabs my hand firmly in hers, turns us around in the opposite direction. She walks quickly, half dragging me behind her.
“What’s going on?” I say, panicking a little.
We seem to be backtracking. I see the rocky outcropping up ahead. Lee hesitates and then pulls me around the other side of it, hugging the rock.
We round the outcropping, and there, about ten feet ahead, facing us, is a man.
We freeze.
So does he.
He’s older than us, older than Jack, I think, but not too old, maybe mid-twenties, his cheeks covered in stubble. His jeans are streaked with rust, the sleeves of his brown jacket stained with what I assume is grease. He looks every bit as shocked to see us as we are to see him.
“Hey,” he says, after a moment. “You girls know Savannah?”
“No,” I say, and I realize this is Clayton. It must be. The man I saw through the trees. He’s coming to find Savannah. He’s going to take her away. He’s going to steal her away from me.
“Maybe you’ve seen her?” He holds a hand out in front of his chest, indicating height. “Kind of short. Brown hair. Seventeen.”
“No,” I say again. Seventeen?
“She’s camping with her family.” Clayton frowns, eyes darting back and forth between us. “You two out here all alone?”
“No,” I say. My sister squeezes my hand.
“Okay,” he says, still frowning. His eyes linger on my sister, taking in the torn tights, the matted hair, the scratched legs. I take a half step sideways, trying to shield her from his view. Maybe he’ll tell his uncle about the strange girls he saw. Maybe his uncle will have heard something already. News bulletin. Amber Alert.
Maybe Clayton will force the truth out of Savannah next time he sees her. Maybe he’ll look at her like she’s the only girl in the world and she won’t be able to resist.
“Well,” says Clayton, “if you do see her, tell her I’m looking for her. Tell her I meant what I said.”
He turns off the path, takes a few steps, planning to go around us, I guess, to keep looking. What did he say to her? You’re the only girl in the world. Run away with me.
I can’t let that happen.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” I say.
Clayton stops. Turns. “What?”
“She never wants to see you again.”
“I thought you didn’t know her.”
“She hates you,” I say. I hate you, I should say. You’re trying to steal her. You’ve barely known her for a full day, but I’ve known her nearly all my life. She’s mine. You’re ruining everything.
He scowls. “Who are you?”
My sister squeezes my hand harder. I squeeze back.
“And she’s only fifteen,” I say, thinking of Jack. Thinking of what he and Savannah did. There’s no way nothing happened last night. “So you’re probably going straight to jail.”
Clayton’s expression darkens. He takes a step toward me.
My sister’s hand slips out of mine.
She lunges forward, closes the short distance between us.
Clayton barely has time to react. My sister barrels into him with all her strength. She knocks him to the ground. Knocks him right over. My sister. Doing what I’d love to do, but would never dare. My perfect sister.
The man is on his back and she is pinning him down, straddling him, her dress bunching up around her hips, and I have seen this before, except her dress was blue then and now it’s green and black, like the night sky seen through the leaves.
Her hands are on the man’s neck. He didn’t hit his head, though. He’s moving. He’s flailing his arms, kicking his legs. He’s making a fist. No no no.
The man punches my sister in the shoulder and she screams, but she doesn’t let go. Her hands are twisted into his shirt. He is twice her size, but she’s holding on tight. He slams a fist into her side. I’m paralyzed, afraid to move, watching.
My sister’s face is down by the man’s neck. His hands are closing around her throat.
I have seen this before.
I drop the water jug and run forward. The same way I did on Crybaby Bridge. I throw myself down, just fall really, let the weight of my body drop heavy on the man’s right arm, ripping it away from my sister, pinning it to the ground with my hip. A bruising pain. The man struggles, shouts, and I reach out to grab his left arm with both of mine, tug it toward me with every ounce of strength I have.
He’s shouting something, but I can’t hear it. There’s blood rushing in my ears. A river. There’s blood.
My sister’s face is against the man’s neck, nuzzling like a lover. His right arm writhes beneath me like a snake. His other arm wrenches free of my grasp. It flails wildly, hits my sister.
She yanks her head up and back, hard.
More blood.
There’s something in my sister’s mouth, held between her teeth. A scrap of skin. She spits it out and bites the man again, her teeth scraping his neck, catching a roll of flesh, snapping shut, hard.
The man bucks suddenly, screaming with rage, and manages to throw us both off. I roll. He’s up and he’s running. There are drops of blood shaking off him like rain.
There is a river in my ears. A far-off ache somewhere in my body. I push myself up.
He stumbles, drops to his knees. Both his hands are around his own neck. Trying to hold himself together.
My sister’s cheek is swelling already, one eye squished shut. Her lips and chin are dripping and bright, her teeth bared, in grimace or grin I can’t say. Her teeth are oil-slicked red. She’s breathing hard, her ribs pumping like wings. She’s making a huffing, grunting sound. There are fresh scratches across her clavicles, the insides of her elbows. She holds one arm away from her, bent gently, suspended carefully in the air.
She coughs, spits blood.
I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, but no sound comes out.
The man has fallen down. I don’t know if I should help him or if we should run. I crawl toward him with no plan, stop a few feet away.
There is blood pooling around him, spreading slowly through the dirt like an egg cracked into flour for pancakes.
“Clayton?” I ask.
I reach out and nudge his shoulder. A rivulet of blood reaches my knee and soaks into my jeans.
I pull Clayton’s right arm toward me, press my shaking fingers against his wrist, searching for a pulse. I press harder. Harder. Press hard enough that it would hurt him if he was in any position to be hurt.
But he is not.