Jasper tugs me forward again. We’re running now through the restaurant, but in a way that feels slow and useless. Like with every step forward the way out is getting farther away.
“You! Stop!” It’s the hostess. She’s standing in front of the door with a phone in her hand. Pointing at us. “I’m calling the police. Don’t you go anywhere.” She waves at a couple of big guys in a booth at the back. “Come on. We can’t just let them leave!”
“Sorry, but we’ve got to go.” Jasper shoves her politely but firmly to the side.
We pound out one set of doors and then the next. Fly down the rickety steps. When I glance back, I can see a pack forming near the diner doors, maybe around Doug. I can’t see him. But who knows what he’ll convince them of? He is a really good liar.
“Look,” Jasper says as we hit the gravel of the parking lot. “Over there.”
Lexi and Doug’s car is on the other side of the parking lot. Engine running, pointed at the exit. Whatever Doug’s plan, Lexi was his getaway driver. Slowly, she turns in our direction.
“She’s looking at us,” I say.
But she doesn’t jump out of the car like I brace for her to. She just stares at us for a long moment before dropping her face into her hands. Why? It’s such a weird, weird thing to do. Is she hiding? Crying? Not because of what I did to Doug. If she knew, she’d be running back inside to help him.
“Let’s go,” Jasper says, sprinting ahead toward the back of the diner, in the direction of the woods. “They’ll be coming.”
Branches whip across my face, snapping back against my arms as we rush headlong through the darkness. Soon the forest is so dense that we have to slow. Can’t go much faster than a walk, each of us hiking our knees up over fallen trees, tripping into small ditches. Not moving fast enough to outrun anyone.
With each big marching step farther into the pitch-black woods, deeper into the silence, I feel more and more lost. The branches feel more tangled, our path less and less clear. And yet we can do nothing but press on. For us, there is no turning back. Not anymore.
After five, ten minutes—I don’t know how long—the trees finally open up a little. But just when the going gets a little easier, lights flicker off the tall trees in front of us. We stop short. But it’s not lights up ahead. They’re coming from behind us.
Flashlights. Someone following. We knew they would. Probably not the police, not that fast. Doug for sure, assuming he isn’t bleeding to death. With some people from the diner, maybe. I think of that truck with the NRA sticker and the dead deer. There were people with guns in that diner. I wonder if it would be legal to shoot us in the back. I was the one with the knife. The one who did the hurting first. I am the one who is a danger to others.
Even in the dark, I can see Doug’s blood staining my fingers. And I can still feel the way my mom’s little knife bounced back when it hit flesh and bone. I shake my head hard. Because I have to focus. They, whoever they are, are closer now, their voices echoing through the trees.
We’ll never outrun them. I’ve done my share of hiking, sure. But no amount of that experience will make the going any easier. The woods are just too dense. We need another plan. Alternatives. Climb? It could be our best chance. Our only one, actually.
I head over to where a log is rested against another tree with a few thick, low-hanging branches. I stare up the length of it, reaching forever into the dark sky. The only thing my mom ever taught me about climbing trees was not to do it to escape a bear. But I do know how to adjust my balance. How to test a foothold. I know that my arms are much stronger than I think.
“Hey,” I call quietly to Jasper. “Up?”
It’s so dark I can’t see the look on Jasper’s face. Part of me is hoping he’ll say no. That he’ll have another idea.
“Shit, seriously?” he whispers.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No. I don’t have any ideas at all.”
Climbing the tree is way harder than I expected. Not at all like the rock faces with my mom. There we were always sliding over and up, over and up. This is just up, up, up. We aren’t far and already my arms have started to shake. Jasper seems to be having no problem, though, and him being right behind pushes me higher, until finally, he reaches up and puts a hand on my calf.
Stop climbing, the touch says. Don’t make a sound.
Sure enough, there are voices below. Cracking branches and crunching leaves. I pray that the tree holds when I hear Doug’s voice, clear as day.
“Isn’t there some kind of path somewhere?”
I am relieved I didn’t hurt him so bad they had to call an ambulance. And I am also terrified that I left him well enough to come after us.
“There’s trails a ways back, up to the right,” another man says. “We use ’em to hound the bears. That’s where they must be headed. We should cut them off before they get there. On the trails, they’ll be off like a shot.”
“But they’d have no way of knowing the trails are even there,” Doug says quietly. He’s almost right beneath our tree. “They’re not from here.”
“What we need is a warning shot,” a third man says. Younger, more jacked up. Like he’s looking for any excuse to blow something away.
“Sheriff will beat your ass if he catches you firing again outside—”
Bang! Bang! Bang! So loud, so close to my head. I almost let go of the tree.
“Screw the goddamn sheriff.” The young guy laughs stupidly.
“You dumb fucking—” Doug shouts. “If I wanted to get the police up here, I would have called them myself.”
No police. Because Lexi and Doug do have something to hide. Of course they do. My arms shaking as I squeeze my eyes shut. I’m gripping the tree so hard it feels like my hands might start to bleed. And the way my heart is racing—if Doug doesn’t kill me, passing out from this height surely will.
“Hey, shithead,” the young guy laughs at Doug. He sounds high. “You’re the one who asked for our help.”
“Finding them. Not killing them, you idiot!”
“Listen, you motherfucking—”
“He’s right,” the older hunter growls. “Knock it off. I’m not getting my ass locked up because of you.”
“Now, come on,” Doug snaps. “Let’s get to that trailhead. Maybe they know this area better than I thought.”
After the flashlights bounce away and the voices fade, Jasper starts back down the tree. My whole body is trembly and weak by the time my feet are back on the ground.
“Good call on the tree,” Jasper says, brushing himself off. “And thanks, you know, for back there. The diner. That was—” He can’t even find words. “No offense, but I wouldn’t have thought you had that in you.”
Like stabbing someone is a thing to be proud of.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” And I don’t. “I want to pretend it never happened.”
“Okay, but he would have killed me. You know that, right?” Jasper asks. “You had no choice.”
“Everyone always has a choice.” All normal people anyway.
“Okay, whatever, feel bad about it then,” Jasper says, sounding annoyed and exhausted. By me. And why would he understand? He doesn’t know what my dad said to me. Doesn’t know how bad it could be if I am a proven danger to others, even if that “other” is Doug. Jasper steps forward into the darkness. Like we’ve already decided which way to go. “I saw a light this way when we were up there. Maybe they’ll let us use their phone.”
We move on, scratching and slipping our way through the rough woods once more. In the darkness, I lose all sense of time. Lose all sense of everything, except the rhythm of the crunching leaves and my shifting feet. Jasper flips on his flashlight app now and then, only long enough to be sure we’re not headed off a cliff. Having to focus so hard on not falling down, not tripping, not getting whacked in the eye with a stick has calmed me. In the midst of the very worst, I am once again at my best. So twisted, and so pathetically true.
“Hey,” Jasper calls after a while. “We should head more to the right.”
When I look up, I can see we have been drifting to the left of the lights. Or light. A single house, it looks like now. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, a little town, maybe, but I can’t help feeling disappointed. We’ll just have to hope that they, whoever they are, are actually good people this time. And not just pretending to be.
I don’t get far left before there’s some kind of dip in front of me. A wide swath of dark that could be a real ditch, a deep one. “Can you flash the light over here? It goes down. I can’t tell how far.”
Jasper flicks on his phone, shining its metallic yellow haze on the branches before panning to the spot in front of me.
And that’s when my eye catches them. At the faded edge of the light. Boots. With someone’s feet in them. Someone right there. Close enough to grab me.
“Run, Jasper!” I shout as I leap forward into the shadows, then stumble downhill with a jerk.
Just as fast I’m back up the other side, a slope, not a pit after all. And then I am running. Fast over all those sticks and leaves. I wait for my foot to catch something. For some kind of pain.
But nothing happens, and second by second those lights in the distance are closer. Jasper is right behind me. At least I hope that’s him. Feet fast, his breath coming in strong, even puffs. Which one was it in those boots? Can’t be the young crazy one. I’m pretty sure he would have shot us on sight. And not Doug. He had on some kind of sneakers or hip, urban shoes. Didn’t he? The third one then, maybe. At least that one seemed reasonable.
We don’t slow down until we come up on the back of a run-down cabin in a small clearing. Haunted-looking, but not abandoned, apparently. The lights are on. Jasper marches up the steps and pounds on the door. When no one answers, he peers in the windows.
“I don’t think they’re home,” he says, going back to the door to try it. He turns back and shakes his head. Locked. “We could break a window, but I didn’t see a phone.”
There’s a rusted truck parked nearby. Maybe the keys are inside. Amazing how easy it is to consider stealing a truck once you’ve stabbed someone.
I walk over and push up on my toes to look in the open driver’s-side window. In the pale light from the cabin, I can just make out the ignition. No key. I should check under the mat and in the glove box. People who live in the woods always leave their keys in their cars. Don’t they? I press the stiff button on the door handle, but it takes a few pulls to finally get the heavy rusted door open. I’m looking in the glove box when Jasper calls my name.
His voice sounds weird. He’s not judging my trying to take the truck, is he? Because we are way past caring about that. Ignore him, keep on looking for the keys. “Wylie, come out of the truck.”
This time Jasper sounds scared. And not about the truck.
“Wylie,” he says again. “You should come out. Right now.”
When I finally slide back out, I see the boots first. Someone close enough to grab me again. Between me and Jasper, too. I suck in some air as I look up to see who’s wearing them. But the man himself is not nearly as scary as I’d been bracing for. Creepy, to be sure. He’s superthin and really old with wild, white hair and a gnarled beard. Not one of the guys from the woods, though. He’s much older than they sounded. The owner of the cabin, probably. It would explain why he’s got one hand resting on his chin, the other on the back of his neck, like he’s contemplating what to do with a trespasser. He’s breathing hard, too; definitely the one who was chasing us. At least he is small. Jasper could definitely take him. I could probably take him.
And so why does Jasper look so worried? Eyes wide, color all gone. That’s when the man moves his hand. The one I thought was resting on his neck. It’s not. I can see that now. He’s holding something, resting it against his shoulder. Something long and thin, with a handle. And a big, curved blade.
“Tourist trapping is still illegal round here,” the man barks at me finally, like the last shot in a long argument we’ve been having. “So is trespassing.”
“Tourist trapping?” I ask. Better to focus on the part I know for sure we haven’t done. Might make him think less about our trespassing.
“The damn hounds? The doughnuts? I know how you people do it.” The man points his huge knife toward the woods, then swings around and points it right at me. Its long blade is so close I could lean forward and touch the tip with my nose. “It’s shooting fish in a goddamn barrel.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. None. Though that seems to matter much less than his big knife.
“We’re just trying to find our friend.” I hold up my hands. “We didn’t mean to bother you.”
I look over at Jasper and he nods. Good, keep talking, the look says. But the man’s not even listening.
“I didn’t give a shit about those damn animals before. That’s the damn honest truth. Kill ’em, don’t kill ’em, makes no difference to me. I sure as hell didn’t care how they did it.” He’s having a totally different conversation. Not even with me. “But if it wasn’t for the goddamn doughnuts, the bears never would have even been over here. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ that’s what Sarah said, when she come up on them. Like she’d just walked in on someone pissing. You know the sound someone makes when they’re being eaten alive?” He shakes his head, the anger twisting his face.
“We aren’t bear hunters. Look at us,” I say. “We’re kids from Boston. We don’t know anything about hunting or guns. But there are some bear hunters in the woods right now.”
I have no idea whether those men hunt bear, much less whether they trap them with doughnuts. But they did almost shoot us. Doesn’t seem totally unfair to send this guy their way. I feel confident he will have the upper hand even without a gun.
“Where?” he snaps, eyes flashing toward the dark woods.
“Behind the diner,” I say. “They were headed for the hounding trails.”
“Goddamn assholes,” he mutters angrily as he starts toward the woods, knife gripped at his side.
“Wait,” I call after him.
“Wait?” Jasper snaps at me. “Are you insane?”
“Can we use your phone?”
“No phone,” the wild man shouts back without slowing down.
“Then your truck, please. Can we borrow it?”
Now he does stop.
“Ha!” he barks, then shakes his head angrily, before starting again for the woods. “My truck. Fuck off.”
“Wylie,” Jasper hisses. “Just let him go.”
But we need the truck, and for some insane reason I feel like there is a chance he’ll give it to us. Maybe because he is crazy and paranoid and it takes one to know one, but it’s still worth a try.
“Listen, my mom is dead and now my best friend—these people have her and they might hurt her. I haven’t left my house in three weeks because I’m so messed up, but I came all this way because my best friend is all I have left. If I lose her, I don’t know what will happen to me.”
The old man stops again. But this time he spins and starts back toward me, fast. Head tilted down like a charging bull. Not the response I had hoped for. Not at all. And the knife is gripped tight in his fist now like he’s getting ready to swing for maximum effect. The only small mercy is that he’s headed toward me and not Jasper. If someone is going to pay for my gamble, it should be me. I press back against the cold truck as he gets closer. Pull my chin in when he shoves his face in close to mine. His breath smells sour, his clothes ripe. This is how it ends? I think as I close my eyes and wait for the pain.
“Hey,” he barks then, right in my face. And when I finally squint open my eyes, I do not see the knife. Just his dirty fingernails cupped around a set of keys. “Now, get the fuck out of here before I change my mind.”
Jasper drives away from the cabin fast. So fast, down the dark and bumpy dirt road cutting through the woods in front of the cabin that it feels like the old man’s truc
k might fly apart. After we’ve made it a safe distance from the cabin, Jasper pulls to a stop so hard that I have to brace myself against the dashboard.
“Okay, what the fuck now?” he asks, like everything so far has been of my design.
“Why are you asking me? How would I know?”
I pull out my phone, hope for a signal, to call who, I’m not sure—my dad, Karen, the police? All of them and none of them feel like options. Definitely, we can’t just keep going anymore. But can we stop? Go home? And what will I even be going home to? What’s going to happen when they find out I stabbed someone? How can I expect anyone to believe that it was necessary, when I’m not even sure?
“I mean, who the hell was he?” Jasper asks.
“Some crazy, sad old guy whose wife or girlfriend or somebody got eaten by a bear.” It’s amazing how ordinary that seems to me. “I bet he was a real jerk even before that happened, though.”
“Not him!” Jasper shouts. “Doug. Who the hell was he? He tried to kill me. You seriously think that has nothing to do with Cassie?”
“We asked them for a ride,” I say, because that’s what I’ve been relying on to keep myself from connecting Doug and Lexi to Cassie. Because that would be the only thing worse than them being random bad luck.
“And so it’s just a coincidence that we’re trying to find Cassie and we run across this guy who tries to choke me for no reason outside the bathroom?”
“No,” I say quietly as my stomach starts to churn. “Probably not a coincidence. There’s somebody who doesn’t want us to find her, but why?” I stare at the side of Jasper’s face as he stares at the bright patch of rocky dirt road in our headlights. “Is there anything else about Cassie you’re not telling me? Something else she was mixed up in?”
“I don’t know.” Jasper turns and looks straight at me. “I swear. She got arrested, that’s the only thing I know about, and that was months ago.” He’s telling the truth, at least it seems like he is. Or I have no way of knowing if he isn’t. “But like I said, I think there was something else going on that she was hiding. Or maybe somebody did kidnap her and they don’t want us to find out where they have her.”