“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I wanted to, but when you didn’t remember me... I don’t know. I thought for sure you’d remember me.”
I touch my cheek where he touched it, smooth my hair like he smoothed it, to feel what he felt. My cheek is winter cold, but soft, and so is my hand. His grip had been gentle and warm; hesitant, at first, and then bolder once we’d fixed things.
A starburst of headlights penetrates the front window, and it can only be one person. I search the face of the chiming clock as the beams wash over it. Five minutes to one, with our curfew extended an hour from the usual midnight. She’ll just make it.
I hang my coat and take the stairs two at a time, closing the door to my room and forgoing the light. I hide the photographs under a sheaf of papers on the desk. I’m not ready to share them yet.
It was an awesome night, Saint Joseph. Did you hear Ryan play?
I barely breathe as Delaney climb the stairs. Hallway light spills under my door. The shadow stands there, walks away, then returns.
“Good night,” I call out to her sarcastically, waiting. But there’s no fun in it.
The shadow hesitates.
Before I can rethink it, I throw open the door, grab her by the upper arm, and pull her in.
13
“Hey!”
She tugs her arm from my grasp and turns up the light.
“Like that hurts,” I say, bolder after tonight. “Why do you have to be such a bitch?”
“ ‘Bitch’? The high-and-mighty Carey, cussing? Where’d you learn that?”
“From the high-and-mighty Delaney. Get over it.”
“What’s your main problem, Blackburn?”
“You! You calling me ‘backwoods freak’ in front of people. Enough, already!”
Delaney rolls her eyes. But I refuse to let it go. I say the next softly, like a sucker punch to the gut.
“You know, if you call me a freak, you’re calling Jenessa a freak, too.”
My words pain her. Her eyes shift from angry and flashing to ashamed.
“Anything else?”
“I reckon there is. I want the letter from Mama—all the copies.”
“Oh, you do? And what do I get?”
Like she doesn’t know.
“My silence. I won’t say anything to my father or your mom about tonight.”
We size each other up like the waddle badger and the shuffle fox, those few times they’d crossed paths. Claws and teeth ready, but not necessary unless absolutely necessary, and everyone knows absolutes are rarely absolute. Especially after feasting on fermented blackberries.
“Fine. And for your information, I wasn’t planning on showing the letter to anyone anyway.”
“Oh, so you reckoned you’d blackmail me with it instead? It’s obvious how much you hate me.”
And it’s like I flipped a switch—one waiting, all this time, to be flipped.
“I don’t hate you. For someone so smart, you can be so dense. I’m just—” She hatts and begins again, the clouds speeding up across her face. “It’s not all about you, okay? I mean, I get it. You lived in the woods, cold and hungry with a drugged-up mother doing who knows what to survive. You have dibs on the monster bites of attention. I get that. But it doesn’t make it any easier for me. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, to be constantly shoved into the background.”
The shame washes over me in waves. She’s right. She’s absolutely right.
“I didn’t mean to make it all about me. I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know. And that’s exactly what I’m saying—it’s complicated. The whole effin’ thing is complicated. You . . . me—we’re complicated.”
She crosses her arms and turns away. I take the leap.
“I reckon it’ll take time, Delaney. That’s all. That’s what Mel— your mom said.”
She collapses onto my bed, her head on my pillow. She looks like someone different. Just a girl, like me.
“It was tough in the woods, huh?”
I swallow hard, nodding.
“I saw your sister’s back.” Her eyes are sorry, sharing the weight. “I die, thinking of Nessa out there,” she whispers.
“I protected Nessa right fine.”
“I’m sure you did. I didn’t mean— Dad said—your father said you had a shotgun.”
“Yup.”
“Did you ever have to use it?”
I curl up in my mind like the accidental- hedgehog into a prickly ball of leave-me-alone. And then, whether a shift of light or shadow, the walls crash back into place. I’m the old Carey again. She’s the old Delaney.
I lie. “How do you think we ate?”
“Meat well- done, I hope. Or you’d both have worms.”
I blush.
“So, Blackburn. A secret for a secret. That’s the deal, right?”
She holds out her hand, and I pull her to her feet.
I think of her and Derek and their kind of sex. Smiling. Not for money. Enjoying themselves.
A whole different world.
“A secret for a secret.”
She makes a fist and holds out her pinkie like a hook. I stare at it.
“Just do it.”
I do the same, and she hooks her pinkie through mine.
“Pinkie promise. Say it.”
“Pinkie promise.”
She lets go and wanders my room, her finger trailing the bindings of the poetry books lining the shelf above my desk.
“Hey, what’s this?”
A corner of one of the photographs catches the light. Delaney moves toward it, sliding it out from under the papers. She studies it for a long, long time.
“Oh. My. God. I get it now.” She holds out the photograph. “I can’t believe it. Is that—”
“Me and Ryan. We knew each other as children.”
“Oh. My. God.” She stares at me, then back at the photograph. “Wow. Just wow. No words.”
She puts the photo down and picks up the other. A tiny smile plays across her lips.
“This is a beautiful picture of you, Carey.”
“Thank you.”
I check her face. She really means it.
“Make sure you keep them somewhere safe. If it were me, I’d want to keep them forever.”
I nod, not sure how to respond to this new, softer Delly. I think of the woods, the winter chill melting off into spring, how it’s natural. Maybe this is natural. Maybe Melissa was right, and Delaney just needed time. Like all of us.
“On that note, I need to catch some z’s. Night, Carey.”
“Night.”
She smiles at me from the doorway, and the chink, the tiny crack that let us in, remains.
I am the night bird, perched in the window seat. I reckon I love the concept of window seats. The world outside hums in black and white. It’s 2:00 a.m. The snow wears the moonlight like perfume.
My conversation with Delaney plays on a loop, powered by surprise, I reckon. Because I picture Delaney throwing up her hands at the kitchen table. Screaming at the party. Glowering at me in the halls at school. And I realize it’s all bluster.
Snow begins to fall, this boneless water turned mighty.
It’s all bluster out there, too.
A world is a world is a world.
Or, as Jenessa says, “human beans.”
Not so different.
14
It seems like a dream at first, but by the second scream, I’m wideawake and sitting up in bed.
“HERE, BOY! WHERE ARE YOUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUU!”
Some kid is outside yelling, and I wish who ever it is would shut up. Sunday is my day to sleep in, and after last night, and with an English lit and a physics test coming up this week, I need all the sleep I can get.
“SHORTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
I open my eyes wide.
No way.
The words are thick with tears. My bedroom door flings open and Melissa rushes in, her expression a mixture of pain an
d awe.
“You do know who that is, don’t you?”
The whole world stops as I listen, and I shake my head in disbelief, making it look as if I’m saying no, when I mean yes.
“SHORTYYYY! COME ON, BOY! WHERE ARE YOU!”
In what feels like slow motion, I rise from the bed and hurtle toward the window. The scent of scrambled eggs wafts through the open door, and the wood is cold beneath my feet.
“SHORTY!!!! You come here this instant!”
I stare out the window, then turn to Melissa.
“Your sister’s been out there like that the last hour or so.”
Melissa sounds half-hysterical herself.
“I told you she could talk,” I say, adrenaline strumming my veins. It feels like that moment before a lightning bolt hit in the Hundred Acre Wood, with the hair on our arms standing on end and the air humming with electricity.
I watch Jenessa stomp through the snow, her curls whipping left and right. She disappears into the barn, but I can still hear her screaming at the top of her lungs.
“SHORTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”
It’s been so long.
“What’s going on?”
“Shorty’s missing. We’ve been out searching for him since seven. When Jenessa woke up without him, she came running downstairs, talking. It was the damneest thing. She suited up, and she’s been searching ever since.”
“That’s a lot of land to search.”
I fly past Melissa and down the stairs, stuffing my feet into the boots I abandoned just hours earlier.
Hesitantly, not in her usual spear-head-dripping-with-toad-poison voice, Delaney calls to me from the kitchen table.
“The snowdrifts will ruin those boots, you know.”
I jab my hands into my mittens and coil the scarf around my neck, pulling the hat over my head and whipping on my coat.
“Use my snow boots,” Delaney offers. “They’re right there in the closet.”
“Thanks!” Quickly, I switch boots. “How about your sunglasses?”
“Go ahead.”
I take them from the table and flip them on. I trudge out the door, and Melissa is right behind me, zipping her coat as she picks her way carefully down the frozen steps.
“Shorty!”
My voice echoes off the snow, the whiteness dizzying. I cut around the house in time to see Nessa back out of the barn, her cheeks sparkling with tears.
I run to her and hold her. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
We split up, Melissa going in one direction and Ness and me in another, checking under bushes and even in the scoop of the back-hoe, scanning the horizon where the gray squints through a smattering of trees farther out. I sniff. Weather. It’ll snow again tonight, I reckon, if not this afternoon.
“It’ll be okay, Jenessa,” I say, squeezing her hand.
But she’s no longer the meek, dependent little girl, believing in my every word.
“We’ll keep looking until we find him,” I say, my voice firm.
“Alive,” Ness demands, her eyes darting around the hillside.
“Definitely alive,” I say.
He has to be.
Please, Saint Joseph? Ness can’t bear to lose this dog. It’s her one good thing in a long, long time. Please help us find him. Please!
“Here, boy!” Ness continues to yell, her voice crackling with the effort.
Saint Joseph, please! Ness and Shorty go together like beans and brown sugar. It’s like they were always waiting to find each other. They need each other! Please help us find him!
Jenessa plops down in the snow, her face hidden in her mittens, her shoulders heaving.
“Don’t you dare give up! That dog would never give up on you, Jenessa Joelle Blackburn!”
She startles at the reminder of Mama, scowling at me.
I know exactly how she feels.
If you lead us to him and help us bring him back alive, I promise I’ll come clean. I’ll own up to what I did in the woods. I’ll tell our father and I’ll face the consequences. Please, Saint Joseph. Please!
I pull her to her feet.
“Melissa! Girls!”
We spin toward our father’s voice.
I squint around the glare of snow, past the shiver of red maple to the clearing beyond. My father’s arms cradle a still form, and my heart leaps sideways with fear and hope.
Oh please, Saint Joseph, let him be alive! My promise stands! Please!
Ness breaks out in a run, clouds of breath trailing behind her. From here, I wait, wait to read her sisterly braille, sagging in relief when a smile breaks out and she shakes her fists in the air.
I love you, Saint Joseph.
So many different kinds of tears in the world. I continue my clumsy trek, plucking my boots from the snow and crashing back down, my calf and thigh muscles screaming. Behind me, I hear Melissa doing the same.
My father stops to open and rezip his coat around Shorty’s body, warming the hound with his body heat. Ness walks next to them, tearing her eyes from Shorty to share a kaleidoscope of emotions: worry, fear, exhilaration, shock, bewilderment, and, finally, joy.
I reach their side in four strides.
“What happened? Do you know?” My heart plummets when I glimpse a wide smear of blood on my father’s coat sleeve. “Is he going to be okay?”
Please . . .
“I found him out past the clearing. He was probably chasing rabbits. Seems his collar snagged on a section of the old fence I’d been meaning to tear down. Damn fence. I had to scare off two coyotes. Looks like Shorty’s been mauled. If Jenessa hadn’t gone looking for him like she did . . .”
We both turn to Ness, who coos to Shorty and strokes his head, quite a feat as she keeps stride with us at a half run.
“I had a dream,” she tells us breathlessly. I bite back tears at the sound of her voice, her clear, sweet voice. “Shorty needed me to come get ’im. I thought it was just a dream, but I woke up and he wasn’t there.”
My father meets my eyes over her head.
“Will he be okay?” Ness chatters. Her entire body vibrates with cold.
“I think we got to him in time. We need to get him to the vet, though. But I dare say you saved his life, sweetheart.”
Jenessa breaks out in a dance of joy. I feel light as snow.
“If you give me your keys, I’ll warm up the truck,” I offer.
He twists his body toward me, his coat pocket displaying a small bulge. I reach in, grab for the keys, and take off at a run, my breath melting into mist against my frozen cheeks. I tear into the driveway and scramble into the truck, starting the engine and blasting the heat.
“Mel, can you get Jenessa into the house? She’s frozen stiff!”
They rush over the hill, and I notice how Nessa and my father walk the same way—Mama’s long legs, his long legs, with the similar placement of feet. She’s imitating him, without even realizing she’s doing it. Belonging to him, regardless of blood. I throw open the driver’s side door.
Jenessa shakes her head vehemently, curls snaking every which way, like Medusa.
“I’m going with you! Shorty wants me to go!”
I take Shorty from my father’s arms and slide across to the passenger side. I hold him on my lap, cradled like a baby, as my father drapes his coat over us. Ness runs around the truck and stands on tiptoe, framed by the window glass. I lean down and kiss Shorty’s head for her. He licks my cheek weakly, trembling down to his tail.
“Mel—get her warmed up, and then meet us at Doc Samuels’s.”
Melissa nods and turns to my sister, who stomps her boot and bursts into tears.
“If you don’t warm up, we’ll be taking you to the hospital, too, honey. Shorty will be fine—we’ll meet them there. You trust your sister, don’t you?”
Nessa nods, crying in loud, gulping sobs. My father peels out as Melissa holds my sister firmly by the shoulders. I turn to look out the back window, watching her guide Nessa up the porch s
teps and into the house.
I remember Ness as a baby, how I had to use my own body heat to warm her during those endless nights in the camper when she cried and cried for Mama, not realizing the mama she cried for was me.
It makes me shiver inside, just thinking how lucky we were.
Now, if only Shorty can be that lucky.
We sit side by side in Doc Samuels’s waiting room, my cheeks and toes burning as they thaw. We handed Shorty over on arrival, unloading him into the doctor’s arms. Now, in a back room, Shorty rests comfortably beneath warming blankets, his wounds debrided and sewn.
Turns out that coyotes hadn’t mauled the old hound after all. It was the barbed wire that had ripped his flesh when he fought to free himself. The coyotes must’ve smelled the blood.
I shudder at the thought of what could’ve happened if my father hadn’t gotten to Shorty in time.
“He’s doing fine,” Doc Samuels says, coming out to talk to us half an hour later. “You’re lucky you found him when you did.”
Doc Samuels looks me over with interest. “You the one who saved ol’ Shorty?”
I shake my head. “My sister knew he was in trouble. It’s like they have a psychic connection or something.”
“Love is like that,” he says, his eyes flitting to my father and then back to me. “The cold kept him from losing too much blood. Most dogs with body temperatures that low wouldn’t have survived. That’s one tough dog.”
The doctor leaves us in the waiting room after pointing my father toward the full coffeepot. My father pours a cup and passes it to me, and I drink it black like he does, only caring about the way it warms my hands and my insides simultaneously.
He looks over at me every once in a while but says nothing. I can feel it in the room, though, beside the National Geographic magazines on the table, the laboring heater in the corner, the threadbare couch we sit upon. It surrounds us both, like an aura: our amazement over Jenessa’s talking.
And now it’s my turn. A promise is a promise. I turn to him, my eyes on his boots. I take a deep, shuddering breath.
“Remember you asked about Jenessa and what might’ve caused her to stop talkin’?”
It’s like I’ve revered. Like I’ve never left the woods.