We walk in a line, holding hands like children on a field trip. My sister in front, me in the middle, Brandon at the back.
Lee tried to run, but Brandon couldn’t keep up. We had to go back for him, had to help him to his feet. Maybe he’s just drunk, I thought. All those beers back in the other world. You’d think being shot would sober you up.
But we move as fast as we can. My sister leads the way. Out here, she is a better guide than any star. I follow behind her, try to focus on nothing but her. The back of her head, her snarled hair, her torn tights. Try not to think about how hopeless this is. Even if Savannah somehow manages to drive Dakota or her mother’s car away, surely they’ll notice before she gets very far. I try not to think about that. I follow my sister. In the darkness, the flowers on her new dress are all different shades of black. Everything in the forest at night is black and silver, like a silent movie. Savannah and I watched one on her phone once. A man stood perfectly still and silent while a house fell around him. While the whole world fell apart around him.
We are going downhill now and my feet keep sliding on the fallen leaves. I recognize an uprooted tree that I know isn’t far from Queen of Heaven.
“We’re nearly there,” I whisper.
Brandon’s hand slips out of mine.
I stop, jerking my sister to a halt. Behind me, Brandon’s dropped to his knees. His head bobs forward like he’s falling asleep in class.
“Brandon?”
His breathing is ragged and shallow, his eyes are shut. I kneel too, grab his shoulders and shake him gently. “Come on,” I say. “We’re nearly there.”
He doesn’t answer and I can see, in the filtered moonlight, that our makeshift bandage didn’t keep the darkness from spreading.
There’s too much. Too much of it outside his body. Panicked, I press my hands against his side. My gray hoodie has gone black. It’s soaking wet. There’s blood all down the leg of Brandon’s jeans. I think, wildly, of trying to gather the blood up somehow, pour it back inside him.
I shake him by the shoulders again. He slumps forward, his head falling against my shoulder. I wrap my arms around him to keep him steady.
“It’s okay,” I say, because I think that is the sort of thing you are supposed to say in these situations. What do I do, what do I do? “You’re going to be okay.”
I can feel his chest rise and fall. This is my fault. We need to go to the hospital. His head is heavy as a stone on my shoulder.
His breath rasps out, barely audible. His chest rises and falls. Rises and falls.
Doesn’t rise again.
“Brandon?” I say. I push him away from me, hold him out at arm’s length. He’s gone heavy, motionless. He is drunk on the night, I think. He has passed out. Right?
That must be all. He just needs to sleep it off. Tomorrow, he’ll be fine. He has to be fine.
I shake him by the shoulders. His head flops around, chin banging against his collarbone. I press my ear against his chest, try to hear a heartbeat, feel the rise and fall. It must still be there, but too quiet, too slight. I must just be missing it. I press my fingers against his wrist, searching. I shake him again. I keep saying his name. Over and over.
He isn’t gone. He can’t be. He was just here.
When I look up, Lee’s standing behind him. She’s leaning down, prying my fingers from his shoulders. She pulls him away from me. I’m frozen, kneeling in the dirt. Not sure I could move even if I wanted to.
Lee drags him backward, lays him down, stretched out on the ground. Surprisingly gentle. She kneels and presses her ear against his chest. Her eyes closed, she rests there for a long time, listening.
My sister the wild one. The witch. She’s going to save him, I think.
I watch, afraid to speak, hardly daring to breathe,
She is still, so still, listening.
Suddenly she sits up, scrabbles at the ground beside her, gathering a big handful of dirt and dead leaves. She holds her hands straight out in front of her and drops the leaves on Brandon’s chest. She stands up.
I stare at him. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Right? He has to be.
Lee is behind me now, hands under my armpits, pulling me to my feet. I won’t take my eyes off Brandon. Any moment now, he’ll move. He’ll wiggle his fingers, clasp and unclasp his rough hands. He’ll open his eyes. He has to.
He was just here. Just moments ago. He was breathing. It can’t happen that quickly.
I’m shivering, though it hasn’t gotten any colder.
Lee’s taken off her puffy jacket. She’s tugging my right arm into the sleeve. When she grabs my left wrist it hardly even hurts anymore. She gets the jacket on, though I give her no help. My body feels distant, numb. I don’t want to go. Don’t want to leave him here alone.
She has to pull me away. Has to drag me, my heels scratching long, thin scars in the dirt.
I move like I’m in a dream. My limbs not quite attached. They are somewhere far from me, working on their own.
I can’t stop. He didn’t want them to find me, didn’t want them to catch me, to keep me.
It’s my fault. My fault that he ran when I told him to. My fault he was in the truck. My fault that he had to leave his camper in the first place.
It can’t be for nothing.
He wanted to fix the mistake he made all those years ago, taking me into town. He would want me to keep going. Would want me to run and never look back. I tell myself this, over and over. It’s the only way to keep moving.
Maybe if we’d let ourselves be caught, they could have saved him. Maybe if I’d realized sooner, I could have called 911. Could have gotten an ambulance.
But he didn’t want that. I’ve got to keep going.
When we reach the edge of the cemetery, Lee tries to head toward our meeting tree, but I hold her back, pull her wordlessly up the hill toward Myron’s house. I’ve shown her the house before, though I could never convince her to go inside. We circle around, still shielded by the forest. My heart pounds with how close we must be to people. What if they’re scouring Queen of Heaven? What if they’re waiting for us at Myron’s? Savannah could have told them. Betrayed me again.
The house, from what I can see through the trees, looks how it always looks. Dark. Empty.
“Wait here,” I tell my sister.
I search her eyes, her posture. She looks calmer than she should, when I feel like I might shatter at any moment. I haven’t forgotten what I thought back at the camper. That she was a stranger. That I don’t know her at all, not really.
“Why?” she asks.
“Savannah’s here.” I hope to God that’s true. My sister stiffens. “I asked her to come,” I say. “She’s on our side, okay? And you can’t hurt her.”
Lee’s shoulders are hunching, she is closing herself up.
“We’re running away,” I say, trying to sound hard and sure. There is no room for argument now. “Like you wanted. She’s going to help.”
Lee seems about to protest when we both hear voices, shouts. I whip around, peer through the trees toward Myron’s house. I don’t see anything. The shouting comes again. It is distant, difficult to make out words, but it could have been Jolene, could have been my name.
“Stay here,” I whisper. “Don’t move. I’ll whistle if it’s safe for you to come out.”
I don’t give her time to object. There is no time. I sprint out of the trees to the side of the house and move carefully along it, crouching low.
I peer around the edge of the porch, expecting nothing. Or maybe Margaret. Maybe Aggie. Maybe the pastor. Maybe an angry mob.
There’s a car in the driveway.
I squint at it. The moon is brighter here, pouring down unobstructed into the clearing, and I realize I know this car: a low-slung little sedan, nothing special, scratched gray paint, dent in the hood.
This car belongs to Jack.
No. He can’t be here. Did Savannah send him? Did he follow her somehow?
I back up around the house, heart hammering, reaching for the phone in my pocket, when a voice, small, scared, says, “Jo?”
I whip my head around, unsure at first what direction the voice came from, and then I see Savannah, poking her head out the kitchen window, cigarette in hand, tiny cherry flare in the darkness.
“Savannah,” I say, almost too happy to speak. I run to the window.
Savannah is wearing her plaid jacket with the fake-fur-lined hood, zipped only halfway, so the top of her tank still shows and, bent over as she is now, the top of her breasts too.
“Is he here?” I whisper.
“Who. Jack? No.”
I sag against the side of the house, relieved. Savannah swings her legs over the sill, jumps down. She’s got her Tupperware of cigarettes from the Naked Lady Room tucked under one arm.
“How’d you get his car?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It makes him go to sleep.”
“What does?”
“You know.”
It takes me a second to understand, then it hits me. It shouldn’t matter. Not now, after everything. But I still feel a sick lurch in my stomach and my face must betray my disgust, because Savannah frowns at me.
“You did it again?” I ask
I told myself I wouldn’t judge her. That I would be better than that. But it’s hard, when he’s the worst possible person. How could she let him touch her like that? He’s gross and she’s perfect. He shouldn’t even be allowed to look at her.
“Why?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette on the side of the house. “I didn’t really mean to, the first time. It just kind of happened.”
Which makes no sense. How can that just happen? It’s not like you just trip or something and then suddenly you’re doing the one thing that pretty much everyone your whole life has told you not to do. That everyone in your whole life will judge you for.
I know everyone judged Mama. They judged her right out of town. Judged her to death.
I won’t be like them.
“I guess it doesn’t matter,” I say, and it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. Nothing matters. Brandon is back there in the forest. He looks like he’s only sleeping, but he won’t ever wake up. I know that, but I can’t think about it. I don’t have time to think about anything. They are looking for us. Hunting us. It can’t have been for nothing.
“You brought me a car,” I say. “You’re amazing,”
Savannah smiles at me and I’m hit with this rush of feeling. The end to a longing I didn’t even realize the strength of until this moment. Savannah is back. She’s on my side. Her eyeliner’s smudged a little, and I love that. I missed that. It’s only been what, two days since I saw her? And yet I missed her. I didn’t even realize exactly how much. I can’t help it; I throw my arms out and hug her tight. She hugs me back.
I could cry. I could kiss her.
When we finally let go, I turn back toward the trees. My sister’s out of sight. I whistle, whistle again.
Nothing happens.
“What are you doing?” asks Savannah.
“Goddammit, Lee,” I say under my breath, ignoring her. “Come on.”
I can still remember what it felt like, all those nights when I’d make Savannah wait with me in Grandma Margaret’s backyard. That desperation, that yearning. The woods like a magic eye picture—if I only stared long enough maybe the picture would change, reveal the figure of a thin girl in a too-small dress. But it never did.
The next night, when I was alone again, she’d show up and I’d demand to know why she didn’t appear. You know why, she’d say, or she’d just scowl at me and ignore the question. Please, I’d beg her. Savannah is really cool. You’d like her. It made no difference.
But everything is different now. She attacked Henry. She broke my window. She fought the pastor. And I know that she was never as reclusive as I had always believed.
“Lee!” I shout, risking it.
“Who is—” Savannah starts, but then something shifts in the distance and suddenly there’s a girl standing by the tree, slight as a moth. Savannah sucks in her breath sharply.
“No fucking way,” she whispers.
“I told you.”
I gesture for Lee to come toward us, but she doesn’t move.
“Maybe you should leave,” I whisper to Savannah. She doesn’t answer and when I glance over at her, she’s staring, eyes wide, at the tree line, at my sister.
She lifts a hand, waves.
My sister takes a step forward, out of the trees, and then another, and then she’s running, closing the short distance between us.
I shift sideways, blocking Savannah, thinking of the bridge. Henry. Lee stops abruptly a few feet away, whole body tense as a guitar string.
I turn back to Savannah. She looks terrified.
“Savannah,” I say, “this is my sister, Lee. Lee, this is Savannah.”
It’s so strange. This is exactly what I always wanted, all those years ago. It hardly seems real now. It’s the sun shining at midnight, all the stars coming out at noon.
“It’s okay,” I say, to them both. “She won’t hurt you.”
Lee shuffles closer and grabs my arm with both hands, gripping it tight. She peers over my shoulder at Savannah.
“I can’t believe it,” whispers Savannah. “She looks like you.” She reaches a hand toward my sister, as if she needs to touch her, to prove she’s no ghost. Lee hisses in a breath between her teeth, digs her nails into my arm.
I grab Savannah’s hand quickly to stop her. Her short nails are painted. The glittery polish sparks in the moonlight.
“Thank you,” I say to Savannah. “So much. I owe you forever.”
My sister is making a rumbling noise in her throat, nearly a growl. She’s holding her muscles so tight they are shaking.
“We’ve got to go now,” I say.
Savannah tears her gaze from my sister, finally. Smiles at me. “Where are we going?” she asks.
“You can’t come with us,” I say.
“No.” She yanks her hand out of my grasp, face falling. “No, fuck you.”
Lee tightens her grip on my arm. I think I hear the shouts again, far away.
“We’re leaving,” I say. “We’re not coming back. We’re going on the run.” Going dark.
“So?” she says, defiant. “I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t want to come with us,” I say. I’m sorry to leave Savannah, but she has no reason to run. They aren’t chasing her. And she always fit in better than me, anyway. She belongs in the real world.
“Yes I do,” she says.
I shake my head. She must think this is a game. An adventure. “It’s not—”
Savannah cuts me off. “No,” she says. “Listen. I stole a goddamn car for you, okay? I can’t stay here. Even if I don’t get arrested somehow, Jack will tell everyone what happened. He’ll be mad and he’ll tell everyone and they’ll all know. They’ll know what I did.”
She isn’t talking about the car anymore, I know. She’s talking about the other thing. The thing that even her best friend in the whole world wanted to condemn her for. I know how the girls at our school talk, how everyone in the whole town talks. How they talked about Mama.
“But your family,” I say. “Your mom.”
“Whatever. You know her. She’ll probably be over the moon that there’s one less mouth to feed.”
I shake my head again.
“You need me,” Savannah says. “You don’t even know how to drive.”
Which is true. I guess I’d assumed that Brandon would—
But he can’t.
Savannah pulls something out of her coat pocket, shakes it at me. The keys. She marches over to Jack’s car. I twist to look at Lee, who is staring after her.
“You can’t hurt her,” I whisper. My sister meets my eyes.
She isn’t a stranger. Liar or not, I know her. I’m a liar, too. And I can see she’s as desperate and scared as I am.
I’m all she has.
Savannah isn’t entirely a stranger, either. My sister has been hearing about her for years. She’s seen her, too. Only from a distance, of course. From the dark cover of the forest. The other little girl standing next to me in Margaret’s backyard. The one she used to be scared of. Too scared to get close.
But she’s older now, braver. We all are.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Savannah clutches the steering wheel so hard her knuckles go white. Her shoulders are hunched forward, rigid. In the backseat, I squeeze my sister’s hand.
We reverse out of the driveway, fast, gravel crunching under the tires. Out the back window I can see the lights of the processing plant down the hill. I made Savannah turn the headlights off before we started.
Savannah turns sharply, heads up the narrow ridge road into the forest. Behind and below us, I can see the lights of cars moving on the busier roads through town. I can see all of Lester. So small. And then it’s gone, swallowed by the trees.
“Go faster,” I say.
“I can’t even see the road,” Savannah says. Lee is bent over beside me, kneeling on the seat, head pressed into my shoulder, breathing heavily. She smells like forest floor, like wet leaves and spicy bark and like death, like something rotting. That’s probably her breath. I’m pretty sure my sister has never brushed her teeth in all her life. She chews on bones, instead. Gnaws them to get at the marrow.
As far as I know, she’s never ridden in a car before, either.
It was a struggle getting her inside. I had to tell her that people were going to catch us for sure if she didn’t get in. Had to tell her I was sure they were close. Nearly upon us. That wasn’t a lie, really. We’d both heard the shouts. When she still resisted, I had to whisper in her ear, Mama would have wanted you to. Had to practically shove her in anyway, even after all that.
My stomach jumps as we crest a hill going too fast. My sister gasps. There are headlights coming toward us suddenly, flashing along the trees that line the road.
“Don’t stop!” I shout to Savannah in the front seat. “No matter what. Go around if you have to.”
The other car lays on the horn. Savannah swerves. The other car swerves. My sister howls and topples off the seat. I hadn’t even tried to make her put on a seat belt. The two vehicles zoom past each other so close that our whole car shakes.
I whip around to look out the back window. Before the other car disappears over the crest of the hill I glimpse a hand, sticking out the driver’s-side window, giving us the middle finger.
“Shit,” says Savannah in a shaky voice.
I drag my sister back onto the seat. She hunches down, arms clamped over her head. She’s breathing fast and loud, like she’s running or drowning.
“Is she okay?” asks Savannah.
“Yes,” I say. No. But there’s nothing to do about it.
We come down the other side of the hill, go up another one, down, and then we’re out of the trees and into the open and Savannah’s merging onto the state highway, turning the headlights back on. I haven’t heard sirens yet, haven’t seen any cars I recognize following us, but I can’t stop looking out the back window.
We are well beyond Lester, beyond Needle, rushing through the tiny towns scattered along the highway.
They whip past us, these little towns, many of them small as Lester. Towns I’ve never heard of, never thought of. Are they all the same? Full of the same kinds of people? Full of girls like us, straining at the thin bars of their cages, eyeing the plywood walls with hearts full of sky.
“Where to now?” asks Savannah, her tone a forced casual.
I have no idea. I have no plan at all. But I can’t tell her that.
“West Virginia,” I say. When we left Myron’s, Savannah just turned away from Lester and drove. I said we needed to get away fast. But we’re headed south, so if we keep going, West Virginia is the first state we’ll hit. From what I hear it’s mostly mountains, Appalachian foothills covered in trees. Seems as good a place as any to hide.
Savannah snorts. “Lester wasn’t hick enough for you? We should go to New York City.”
“What the hell would we do in New York City?” I say. I can’t see Savannah’s expression from the backseat. Is she kidding? Probably not, it’s Savannah after all.
“Or at least Cincinnati or something. We can go to my cousin’s.” She twists around in the seat for a moment. Frowns at my sister.
“Watch the road,” I say. “We can’t go to a city. We’ve got to hide.”
“So? Can’t we hide in a city?”
I try to imagine the three of us descending on some poor unsuspecting city cousin, crowding into her tiny city apartment. My sister can’t even handle a town. How in the world would she survive a city? So many people, so many lights. Savannah doesn’t understand.
“No,” I say firmly, “we’re going to hide in the woods,”
“The woods?” asks Savannah.
A semitruck barrels past us with a roar. My sister lifts her head to look and then scrambles into the far corner of the backseat, pressing herself as flat as she can against the door, eyes wide.
“Yes,” I say to Savannah. I try to tug my sister back to the middle. She’s breathing fast again.
“You were just in the woods,” says Savannah.
“Look,” I snap, “I told you not to come.” I don’t even have a plan. They’ll catch us. And now we’ll all go to jail for being in a stolen car. Maybe we should have stayed in the national forest. Found the most remote cave. Hunkered down. Dug deeper into the earth.
“No,” Savannah says. “That’s fine. The woods. Sure. Whatever. West Virginia.”
“Just keep going south,” I say again, rubbing my eyes. I’m so tired.
My sister knocks her head against the car window.
“Be careful,” I say, pulling on the sleeve of her dress.
But she does it again. Her skull makes a hollow thwack as she headbutts the glass. I pull harder on her sleeve. She bangs her fist against the window.
I undo my seat belt with one hand, the other still holding on to my sister’s sleeve. She bangs her fist against the window again, scratches at the glass.
“What’s she doing?” asks Savannah. I meet her frightened eyes in the rearview mirror for a moment, but then my sister gets ahold of the door handle, and she yanks it down and pushes the door open a crack. The wind rushes in, the roar of the tires on the asphalt.
“Shit.” I lunge sideways, grab Lee by the shoulders, hold her down. “We need to stop.”
“Do I just pull over?” Savannah’s voice is panicked, rising in pitch. The car door bounces open and shut.
“I don’t know.” I’ve got Lee pinned under me, one arm hooked around her chest. With the other arm I grope forward, trying to catch the door handle.
The car swerves suddenly. The door bangs open. I can see the road rushing past beneath us like an angry river.
The car swerves the other way. The door bangs shut. We jerk to a stop and I tumble off the seat. My sister is up and out the door before I can unwedge myself.
“Shit,” I say. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Savannah appears at the door a moment later and reaches in to help me up.
“Where did she go?” I ask as I stumble out of the car. We’re stopped in the parking lot of a bank. It’s closed, dark and empty, though there’s a glowing row of ATMs holding vigil outside. Savannah gestures vaguely to the far end of the parking lot, to the line of trees.
It’s no forest. Just an unshaved strip of wilderness no one cared about enough to remove. I can see through the trees to another parking lot beyond. I run over, shout my sister’s name.
“There she is,” says Savannah from behind me. I turn and follow the line of her pointing finger.
My sister’s already halfway up a tall pine, arms and legs wrapped around the trunk. She’s mostly obscured by the needles, but her pale skin gives her away.
“Lee!” I shout. “Come down!”
She shimmies up a few more feet, the branches shaking wildly as she pushes against them.
“What the hell is she doing?” asks Savannah.
“Climbing,” I say, though I know that’s not what she’s really asking.
It’s so strange being around Savannah and my sister at the same time. I’m not sure which version of myself to be. The nighttime or the daytime. I feel like I’ve had to smash together two halves that don’t fit, that don’t quite add up to a whole.
“What’s wrong with her?” Savannah asks as we hurry over to the trees.
“She’s not used to cars.”
“Is she like mentally challenged or something?”
“No. Jesus.” I turn on Savannah, clenching my hands into fists. She doesn’t know my sister. Two days ago she didn’t even believe in her.
“Sorry.” Savannah shrugs. “I mean, she’s not normal.”
“She’s fine,” I say, as much to myself as to her. “She just got scared.”
It’s stupid, because Lee is acting foolish, putting us all at risk, but I feel defensive about her with Savanah. It’s like the pastor saying she was too skinny, saying she couldn’t survive all alone. He and Savannah don’t know her. They have no right to judge her.
I don’t like being forced to see Lee through their eyes. I take it for granted sometimes, how wild she is. When it’s just me and her alone I get a little wild, too. Piss in the dirt and howl, narrow the gap between us. Maybe I’ve never eaten an animal raw, but I’ve touched their dead bodies after my sister kills them. I’ve touched their still-warm hearts. Used the blood, once or twice when we were children, for finger paintings on the sides of trees.
Savannah and I both crane our necks up at the pine. Lee is so high up I can hardly even see her anymore. The tree sways in the wind. I look back toward the road. Cars zip past in the dark, headlights flashing through the trees. We’re in shadow here, but the stolen car parked in the middle of an empty lot is not exactly subtle. We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t get caught now. We just can’t.
“Can she talk?” asks Savannah.
“Of course she can talk.” I hadn’t really noticed until this moment, but it’s true Lee hasn’t said a word in front of Savannah yet. It’s like when she first met me, all those years ago.
“I don’t understand,” says Savannah. “Where did she come from?”
“The forest.” I circle the pine tree, searching for a good foothold. I don’t want to explain this all to Savannah right now. I don’t think she’d understand.
It could be worse. Henry called me weird, so God only knows what he made of Lee. What would Maisie say? Or Nicole? Or Lisa? They’d understand even less. Probably wouldn’t even give her a chance.
“So she just lived out there?” Savannah asks.
“Yes.”
“All alone?”
I don’t want to talk about Mama or Brandon. Not now, not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t even know where I’d start. “Mostly,” I say.
“How did she survive?”
“She’s smart.” Which isn’t strictly true, I guess. My sister has a very narrow field of knowledge. “Here,” I say, “help me up.”
Savannah pushes on my butt as I reach for the lowest branches of the pine tree. She’s not very helpful, but I manage to pull myself up anyway. The branches aren’t thick enough to hold my weight, so I have to climb the trunk, gripping it with my legs and hauling myself up bit by bit, pushing off the flimsy pine boughs, twisting my shoulders up through them like a maze.
“What should I do?” shouts Savannah.
“Just wait,” I call down.
Lee has shimmied even higher up, so high the whole pine sways with her weight. By the time I reach her, my hands are gummy with sap and my thighs burn. I stretch one arm up and grab her ankle, give it a little tug.
“Lee,” I say. “Get down. You can’t stay here.”
“No.” Her voice sounds small, far away.
“We’re going to a new forest, okay? A better forest. You just need to stick it out a tiny bit longer. Just a little more time in the car and then you can climb all the trees you want. Come down.”
She peers down at me.
“We’ll have the forest to ourselves,” I tell her. I pull on her ankle, harder. I wonder if I could pull hard enough to knock her right out of the tree. She’d probably just take me down with her. “And I’ll be there with you all the time. Not just at night. I promise, okay?”
“You and me?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Just you and me.”
Her gaze shifts beyond me, to the ground.
“And her,” she says.
I twist around. Though the needles I can just make out the small figure of Savannah, pacing back and forth at the bottom of the pine.
“Well, yes,” I admit, “and her. But she’s helping us.”
Lee makes a low noise of discontent.
“For fuck’s sake,” I say. “You can trust her.”
The tree sways. I feel queasy. I see Savannah pacing and pacing. So what if she had sex with Jack? People act like that one little thing changes you forever, ruins you, but it’s nothing, it’s stupid. Savannah stole a whole car for me. That’s something.
It’s me and her. Like old times. Me and her against everyone.
“She’s just like Mama,” I say to Lee, and pull on her ankle so hard that she slips and tumbles down far enough to kick me sharply in the side, before she gets her footing again….
When we finally make it down, Savannah is waiting for us, looking absolutely miserable. She’s got her arms tucked in tight against her body, and her shoulders are hunched.
I slide to the ground. Lee leaps past me, landing in a crouch. Savannah jumps back, still terrified. My sister stares. She’s studying her, I think, this strange monster, with her eyeliner and her push-up bra peeking out under her tank top. I always thought that in the pictures I’d seen Mama looked like a cross between me and Savannah. Maybe even more like Savannah than me. Mama wore makeup. Mama was beautiful.
Did she still wear blue eye shadow when she lived in the woods? I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Lee, later.
“We better go,” Savannah says, backing away.
“Start the car,” I say. “I’ll be there in a second.”
I yank on the lowest branch of the pine tree, brace myself with one foot against the trunk, jerk the branch back and forth. Finally it cracks and tears free in ragged splinters like a broken bone. I carry it back to the car.
“It’s a portable forest,” I tell my sister, who has trailed along behind me. “Just for you.”
Savannah laughs. A nervous laugh, which skitters away into the dark.
I shove Lee and the branch into the backseat and climb in after. I attempt to buckle her seat belt, but after she slaps my hands away enough times I give up. She holds on to the pine branch, rubbing her fingers against the bark, occasionally whacking me in the face with it. By accident, I think. Pine needles shake loose and fall onto the floor of the car, steady as rain.
My sister is silent, but Savannah can’t stop talking.
As she pulls out of the parking lot and back onto the highway, she rattles off the plot of every television show or movie she’s ever seen that features people on the run. She says maybe we should all three of us dye our hair. Or at least cut it. Or maybe we could all shave our heads and dress in men’s clothing. You could probably get away with that, Jo, she says, since you’re so tall and flat-chested. Heck, you even have a boy’s name. I guess nobody would believe that I was a boy. Not with these puppies. Anyway, we should get fake IDs. We should fake our own deaths. We should jump a train, ride it to the end of the line.
“We need gas,” Savannah says. She’s lit a cigarette, is smoking it fast, ravenous, tapping the ash into the cupholder. My sister’s humming to herself, head bent down to her chest, eyes closed.
“We can’t stop,” I say.
“The little needle says it’s low.”
“I don’t have any money,” I say, realizing it for the first time as I say it. I think, with regret, of the fifty dollars socked away beneath my mattress. My sad little life’s savings.
This whole thing is impossible. Where are we going to go? What are we going to do? I didn’t think this through. I didn’t think.
“I do,” says Savannah. “I have money.”
“You?” I’ve never known her to save a penny. Every cent she gets she spends on makeup or cigarettes. Something pretty or something deadly.
“I don’t think he was actually in love with me,” she says. She catches my eye in the rearview mirror. “I mean, he said he was, but then, afterward, I don’t know. He acted different.”
“You took his money?”
She laughs and I recognize that laugh. That note of hysterical underneath it, that note of terrified. We are totally off script now. No idea what we’re supposed to do. Nobody writing this story but us.
“The garage pays him cash under the table,” she says. “So he had a lot.”
“Well, goddamn,” I say. “You’re my hero.”
If I could, I would throw my arms around her again. I would kiss her for real. I’m so shocked, so delighted. This is the Savannah I used to know. The wild one, who didn’t need anybody, who never did what she was told. I am so happy to have her back.
“I really think we’re going to run out,” Savannah says.
“Okay,” I tell her, “we can stop.”
I’ve got to pee, anyway. Should have done it back in the woods. Wasn’t thinking.
Savannah jerks us into the turn lane too quickly. Somebody honks. My sister snaps her eyes open, clutches at my sleeve. We swing into the parking lot of a Sunoco.
Light spills into the car. Savannah pulls in behind a pickup truck. It doesn’t even look like Grandma Margaret’s truck—wrong color, wrong size—but my heart seizes up for a second anyway.
My sister presses her head against my shoulder. She’s scared. Her whole body practically quivers with it. It makes me want to forgive her for everything. I can’t stay mad at her when she’s like this. I want to protect her, instead. She seems so helpless, so harmless, a frightened baby animal. I don’t think this is what she wanted, after all. Not exactly.
“Come on,” I say. “Just hold on to my hand.”
I’ve followed her through the forest so many times. But now we’re in my world. Now she’s got to follow me. I coax her out of the car while Savannah pumps the gas. I wouldn’t even have known what kind to use.
Lee flares her nostrils at the scent of the gasoline, flinches every time a car whips past on the road behind us. I start to take off the puffy gray coat she gave me, thinking I’ll make her put it back on, less for the cold than to cover up the scratches on her arms. But there’s blood on my shirt underneath. Dried brown now, the color of earth. I zip the coat back up quick.
I wrap my arms around my sister and hold her while she shivers, trying not to think. Trying not to remember holding Brandon. Trying not to remember whose blood is on my shirt.
When Savannah’s done, we head into the store. Lee has a death grip on my hand. I feel sure that when she finally lets go there’ll be an imprint of her hand on mine, bruised purple, indelible. She’s been in town before, between the houses, been in Brandon’s camper as a kid, I guess. But it must have been years since she’s walked inside a building. She tries to pull me away several times before we get to the door, but I pull her back, trudge forward.
Coming out of the darkness into the store is like an explosion. My sister’s eyes are huge in the bright lights, pupils tiny pinpricks. A bell chimes. The colors shout at us.
Lee freezes as the door swings shut behind us. She is perfectly still except for her eyes, which dart wildly this way and that.
“Come on,” I say, trying to pull her toward the bathroom, which Savannah has already disappeared into, but I might as well not be there. She’s looking at everything except me.
She reaches out to the nearest shelf, runs a hand across a bag of chips, spicy barbecue, the shiny foil crackling like dead leaves.
Whatever spell she was under breaks, and suddenly she’s touching everything. She’s picking up a can of Pringles, shaking it, prying off the lid. When I grab the can from her, she just picks up another one.
I have to drag her by the wrist to the bathroom. She’s still trying to reach for the refrigerator case—all those rainbow bottles sealed behind glass—as the bathroom door bangs shut.
I go to the handicap stall, drag her in with me.
“You’re going to get us caught,” I say. She blinks rapidly, eyes still wide.
She watches me as I pee. She had better manners back in the woods, when we’d piss on trees. She’s seen toilets before, at the junkyard and at the camper, I guess, but I don’t know that she’s ever used one. I ask her if she has to go, feeling like someone’s mom, but she just stares. I shrug and go to wash my hands.
Savannah is standing by the sinks, twisting a paper towel. She side-eyes my sister, who has discovered the automatic dryer.
“What if the cashier is calling the police right now?” Savannah asks.
“They won’t have heard about us this far out.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I say it like I’m sure of it. Some small part of me has been listening for sirens this whole time.
Lee crouches down and sticks her face under the dryer, lets the hot air blow back the few loose tendrils of dirty hair around her forehead. When the dryer shut offs, she blinks up at it, disappointed.
“What if there’s like an ABP or something?” asks Savannah.
“ABP?”
“Or whatever it’s called.”
“Just act normal,” I tell her. I comb my hair out a little with my fingers. My sister goes over to the sink, starts playing with the motion sensor, darting her hands in and out of the water. Savannah edges away nervously. She’s still thinking about Henry, I bet, that night on the bridge. Remembering what this weird dirty girl is capable of.
There’s not much I can do about Lee’s hair without a pair of scissors. She’s got on the brown knit cap, but that doesn’t hide much.
I wet the edge of a paper towel and try to scrub some of the dirt off her face. She yelps, flails her arms, manages to whack me in the face twice before I give up. She looks a little better, I guess. It’s a relief at least that she’s wearing the leaf-print dress instead of her old blue one. With her torn tights and hair that devolves essentially into one giant dreadlock, she could pass, I hope, for some kind of punk rocker. I pick a small leaf from where it’s caught behind her ear.
“This is so crazy,” whispers Savannah.
My sister looks up, takes a step toward her. Savannah shrinks back against the paper towel dispenser.
“Lee,” I say, “what are you doing?”
My sister reaches toward Savannah’s face. Savannah squeezes her eyes shut. I move forward. Before I can stop her, Lee swipes a quick finger across Savannah’s eyelid. Gently, though. She looks down at the smudge of glittery black eye shadow on her fingertip, draws a line with it on her own arm.
“That was very rude,” I say, putting my arm around Savannah’s shoulder. “You scared her.”
“I wasn’t scared,” mutters Savannah, under her breath.
Lee appears unrepentant, though she’s looking at Savannah differently than she used to. Not with hate or fear. I see something else there. Curiosity, maybe. Admiration.
The cashier isn’t paying any attention to us when we come out. She’s playing a game on her phone, the incessant bleeps and bloops audible even beneath the tinny song on the store speakers.
Savannah walks ahead of us down the aisle, toward the counter, but stops abruptly between the slushie dispenser and the coffee machines.
“I can’t do it,” she says, turning back to me, wide-eyed, caught between swirling neon and gleaming metal.
“Give me the money,” I say. “I’ll handle it. Just act normal.”
She pulls a scuffed black leather wallet out of her jacket pocket. Her hand is shaking, so I sandwich it between my hands, like the little old ladies at church, and I look her in the eyes, or try to anyway. She keeps darting glances toward the front counter. She’s worse than my sister. If the cashier isn’t suspicious of us yet, she will be the moment she lays eyes on Savannah.
If I was Jack she’d feel safe. I know she would. If I was any boy. If I had broad shoulders and smelled like cigarettes and motor oil and Axe body spray in Tropical Testosterone or whatever. I know she’d feel safe, then, would trust me to hell and back, at least until I cheated on her.
Boys are strong. Boys are solid. Savannah wants to lean against them, shelter beneath them in a strong wind. I want to judge her for that, but I won’t.
Even though it’s stupid. How many families do we know in Lester where it’s the woman who pays the bills? Who works double shifts at the McDonald’s in Needle, or the graveyard at the Walmart three towns over? That’s how it works in her own family, for God’s sake.
But Savannah still believes it. Like the tooth fairy, or the Easter Bunny. She believes in boys.
I wish I could turn the clock back on her heart, wish I could convince her to see boys the way we both did when we were younger. As nothing special. As not so different from us.
Boys aren’t magic. They can’t save you. The Cantrells didn’t save Mama. The pastor didn’t save her. She had to save herself. Even Grandpa Joe, as kind and wonderful as everyone says he was, just went ahead and drank himself to death and left everything behind for Grandma Margaret to deal with.
You can’t rely on anyone else. You’ve only got yourself. I wish Savannah saw it that way, but I know she doesn’t.
So I put on my Uncle Myron voice, the one I used to tease her with when we cut class. When we talked and laughed in the Naked Lady Room. A world away now. Back when the two halves of my life still knew their place.
“Cheer up, sweet cheeks,” I say. “Give your poor old uncle a smile, put a little sunshine in his life.”
It works. Savannah smiles, stifles a laugh.
“Aw, yeah, that’s the sugar in my tea,” I say, and I lean forward and I kiss her.
She’s still laughing as I do it, her smile going wider, and my bottom lip knocks against her teeth, but she kisses me back. Her lips are soft, her whole mouth is soft, and warm, and for a moment that’s all there is.
Everything else falls away.
My sister yanks on my hand and I pull back, suddenly embarrassed. Savannah laughs again.
It was just a joke, for her.
At least Lee didn’t try to rip her throat out. My self-appointed chaperone. Maybe she really did think Henry was hurting me, back on the bridge. Maybe she didn’t quite understand. That was a different kind of kiss. Not as soft. Not nearly so soft.
“I’m getting a coffee,” I say, suddenly deciding. It’s a grown-up thing to do, buying coffee. I think of Brandon setting two cups on the table back in the camper.
I try not to think about that.
I grab a cup and go straight for the black coffee, dark roast, night sky. Savannah follows my lead, though she goes for mocha vanilla caramel instead. Lee stands at my shoulder, watching the dark liquid piss out of the little machine. She puts out a hand to touch the stream, but I pull my finger off the button.
“It’s hot,” I say.
She scowls, mad at being treated like a baby, I guess. I grab a handful of little flavored creamers, stuff them in my pocket. My sister catches on quickly, loses no time shoving some into her purse. She takes sugar packets too. Napkins. She grabs a package of tiny chocolate muffins from a rack beside the coffee, but I snatch her wrist before she can put those in her purse as well.
The cashier gives us a tired look when we come to the counter. She’s not that much older than us. Dakota’s age, maybe. I smile at her and stand in front of Lee, blocking both of them from each other’s view as much as I can. Savannah wasn’t lying about the cash. When I open the wallet, I see fifties. An actual hundred. I’m thinking maybe Jack was lying about his real source of income, but who knows. I dig out some twenties, pay for the coffees and the package of chocolate muffins and gas on pump four.
Savannah walks too fast to the door, pushes it open, gives me a look like Hurry the fuck up, but I take my time. I stride, acting casual, leading my sister by the hand.
Before we even get to the truck, Lee tears the muffin package open with her teeth and pops three of the muffins into her mouth at once. Savannah laughs and then slaps a hand over her mouth.
But my sister doesn’t pay any attention. She licks the top of the fourth muffin, nibbles a chocolate chip off, then pauses. Reluctantly, slowly, she holds it out to me, offering to share.
“That’s okay,” I say, pushing her hand back. She hesitates, considering.
And then my sister, miracle of miracles, extends her arm toward Savannah, shoulders hunched, muffin offered up on an open palm. Savannah gives me a stricken look. I shrug.
“Uh, no thank you,” Savannah says, overenunciating the words. It’s the first time, I think, Savannah has spoken directly to Lee. It’s progress.
My sister relaxes, pops the final muffin in her mouth. Chews with her eyes shut, content.
A few miles on we hit a stretch of road with trees rising up on both sides. We’re rushing through the forest, going so much faster than we’ve ever gone before. Lee squeezes my hand hard again, as if she means to crush all the small bones. I let her, despite the pain. It feels like the least I can do.
We are farther from Lester now than Grandpa Joe ever dared go his entire life. Farther than Aggie has ever gone, farther than Mama.
The picture of Mama is still in my pocket. I can feel it, light as it is, bending slightly against my thigh as I shift in the seat.
Somewhere back there, deep in the woods, Brandon is opening his eyes. He’s climbing to his feet. I know he is.
And Mama is standing there. She’s holding out her hand. She’s forgiving him, maybe, or thanking him, or just offering him a little comfort. Offering to lead him through the forest she knows so well.
I hope he’s telling her about me. I hope she’s listening, hope she’s realizing that she was wrong, all those years ago. I hope that she’s sorry. But also, just maybe, a little proud.
I’m hers.