“So do you want to look around outside?” asked Joe.
I opened my mouth to say “Are you kidding?” but Dad beat me to it.
“You bet we do,” he said, gulping the last of his coffee.
Seriously? I looked around at them all. There’s a roaring fire right here, and the idea is that we wander around outside?
“Yeah, good idea, before it gets dark,” said Mom, reaching for her coat. Ellen grabbed a huge hand-knitted sweater.
“You guys go. I’ll look after the fire,” I said, pulling my chair nearer and stretching my feet out toward the cheerful blaze. No way was I going to wander around outside in the bleak dusk, freezing and pretending to be interested in septic tanks and sump pumps.
“Flynn,” Mom said warningly as the others headed for the door, “I think we can take a quick look outside. Joe and Ellen are very proud of this place. And it’s interesting. Here.” She handed me a baby-blue fleece jacket. A woman’s jacket. “I knew you wouldn’t dress for the weather, so I brought in an old fleece I keep in the car for emergencies. Just put it on under your hoodie.”
Mom zipped up her winter coat.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun! Let’s see what kind of evening Cassie has for her camping trip.”
Ellen turned at the door. Her friendly face was creased into an expectant smile.
I sighed and hauled myself out of the comfortable chair by the fire.
Now normally, obviously, I wouldn’t be caught dead in my mom’s clothes. That goes without saying, I hope. But out here, with nobody to see me, what did I have to lose? My choices were “freezing” and “less freezing.” I put on the fleece under my hoodie. It was too small and too short, but whatever. I quickly zipped up my hoodie.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” I called to Ellen. Then I whispered to Mom, “But can we go soon? There’s a game on, and it would be nice to catch the last, oh, three minutes of it.”
Joe marched us around the perimeter of the house, pointing out obscure little things that made their life at this edge of the world possible. Solar panel this, geothermal that. A lot about being “net zero,” whatever that was. I wasn’t really listening. But Joe and Ellen were so obviously enthusiastic and, really, were such great people that I tried to mask my desperate boredom.
“Energy efficiency relies mostly on one thing,” Joe continued. “Insulation. That was the biggest thing we learned. Extra-thick insulation in the walls, tight seals on triple-glazed windows, southern exposure…”
A whole lot of hassle, I thought, when you could just buy a house on a city street and get heat, Wi-Fi, malls and pizza delivery. I reached for my cell phone, then remembered (again) that it was dead.
We looked at some outdoor furniture Ellen had made out of willow branches.
We were shown some large rocks Joe had hauled in from the forest for a rock garden in the spring.
After we had examined in minute detail the shed they had built and the huge woodpile Joe had “split,” we exclaimed over the large, flat, empty patch of dirt that would be Ellen’s vegetable garden in the spring.
“…lettuce there, then beans, peppers, carrots, tomatoes…” Ellen sketched out the plan of the garden for us, gesturing at imaginary rows. Even while I was literally dying of boredom, I smiled at her enthusiasm.
“And now,” Joe said with a laugh, looking like a huge outdoorsman in his padded, checked flannel jacket, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The one, the only, state-of-the-art…septic tank!”
I hung back, looking around at the gray forest surrounding the house. It was one of those forests where none of the trees are huge; in fact, all of them seemed to be spindly and tall, but there were about nine billion of them. Mostly leaf trees. Deciduous, I surprised myself by remembering. But there were patches of dark spruce and pine, which were cone-bearing. Coniferous, in fact. My grade-six “Trees” unit was coming in handy. There seemed to be an undergrowth of bushes and a thick carpet of dead leaves. It was bleak but kind of ruggedly beautiful. Mysterious.
“Wow, it looks so much like Skyrim,” I breathed.
“Or nature,” Dad said, passing me on his way to view the disgusting plumbing.
I’d had enough of Mom and Dad and this whole thing. I’d done my duty, stumbling around out here on the frozen ground, faking interest in every miserable bush and rock that Joe and Ellen had, for some reason, hauled to the middle of nowhere. I liked them, they were nice people, and they’d done a good job of being pioneer types when they didn’t have to be, but enough.
I just wanted to be alone. This was unusual for me. Usually, I had a friend over or was over at a friend’s or was texting friends or bugging Cassie. But right now, alone seemed to be the best option.
“Hey, guys, I’m just going to go for a little walk in the backyard,” I said, gesturing at the forest. Mom was getting on my nerves with her nagging about staying warm and being polite, and the taunting about me being soft and clueless. I would spend a little time out in the forest and show her that I could appreciate nature like anyone else.
“Sure, okay,” Dad said, looking pleasantly surprised.
“Hope you find waldeinsamkeit, Flynn,” called Joe.
Yeah, that was the word. That word for feeling at peace alone in the woods.
Okay, I was up for trying this walmartkenshdat thing. I usually had a good feeling playing Skyrim. How different could it be?
“Just be a little careful, Flynn,” called Ellen. “The path peters out after a certain point, and there’s a steep—”
“Ellen,” interrupted my mom, laughing, “this is Flynn we’re talking about. Flynn. It’s cold. It’s nature. Believe me, he won’t go far. Have fun on your big hike, honey!”
Joe, Ellen, Mom and Dad turned away, laughing and talking, and disappeared around the side of the house.
I stalked straight into the forest.