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Chapter One
June
There’s a crash behind me, and I jump, duck, and look over my shoulder without stopping.
The forest is pristine, still, and silent. There’s no sign of whatever made that noise. Bears? Mountain lions? A bear and a mountain lion doing battle for the honor of being the first to get at a tasty human snack, i.e. me?
I turn back around straight into a mouthful of twigs.
“Augh!” I shout, hands flailing in front of myself.
“Almost there!” Silas calls over his shoulder, twenty feet ahead of me, utterly unfazed by the wildlife battle that’s clearly threatening our very lives.
“What was that?” I shout, grabbing one sleeve of my t-shirt.
“Squirrel or something,” he calls as I push my feet to a jog again, rubbing my t-shirt sleeve on my tongue in an attempt to wipe the tree taste off. “Could be a black bear, I see ‘em in trees sometimes.”
“Oh,” I call, too out of breath and exhausted to say anything else, because now, in addition to watching every step I take on this narrow hillside trail, I need to watch the trees for bears.
I love nature. I love the outdoors. I love trees and rocks and dirt and… nature stuff. It’s just so peaceful and calm and nice and definitely not full of murderous animals with large teeth and poison ivy, which is why I like it so very much.
“We’re almost there!” Silas shouts. “C’mon, pick it up, Bug.”
He stops in the middle of the trail, jogging in place, and glances over his shoulder at me as I slog up to him, careful not to trip over rocks or tree roots.
I’m sweaty. I’m sticky. Dirt is plastered to my lower legs from this trail run, and I’m fairly sure there’s tree in my hair. I don’t need to look in a mirror to know that I’m currently fire-engine red, my SPF 50,000 sunscreen dripping down my face and neck in long white streaks.
Okay, fine. I don’t actually love nature yet, but I’m trying my hardest, and that’s why I let my dumb older brother talk me into going on this trail run with him. Because I am not only the sort of person who enjoys going outside and being on trails, I enjoy running on them.
Really. I do. For real. This is great and I’m having a great time.
“Race you?” Silas says, grinning and jogging in place as I finally get closer.
He’s not bright red or streaked with sunscreen. He’s sweaty, sure — it’s eighty degrees, even in the late afternoon, and at least 90% humidity — but he looks like a normal human right now. I guess he got the good workout genes.
“I’ll kill you,” I gasp under my breath, and Silas just laughs. Then he starts running again.
I can tell he’s going slow for me, and I try to be grateful that he’s not just sprinting off and leaving me in the middle of the forest, because even though I’ve declared myself a nature-loving person who loves nature, I’m not quite ready to get that up close and personal with it.
Up until recently, I’ve been a solid run-on-a-treadmill-and-watch-CSI kind of person.
“Watch out!” Silas calls back, still running ahead of me.
“Why?” I pant, my head swiveling side-to-side for the danger. “What’s — AIEEEE!”
I leap backward mid-step, flailing my arms and going off-balance. My foot hits a root and half a second later my ass is on the ground and I’ve tumbled into the trailside foliage.
Across the trail, the tail of the enormous black snake slides into the dense greenery and disappears.
“June!” Silas shouts, already sprinting back to me. “You okay?”
He offers me his hand, and I take it, lifted instantly to my feet. I brush dirt off my butt and step into the middle of the trail, nervously inspecting the spot where I landed.
I just want to make sure there are no more snakes, because those sneaky bastards could be hiding just about anywhere, and I want no part of it.
“Sorry,” he says. “I thought you saw it.”
I shake my head, still gasping for air, one hand to my chest. My heart is thumping like a two-year-old banging on pots and pans, wild and arrhythmic.
“They’re specifically designed to match the dirt, Silas,” I manage to pant. “No, I didn’t see it, they’re practically invisible—”
“We’ve got another hundred yards before the parking lot,” he says.
“—they look like sticks or logs and then it turns out they’re alive—"
Silas pats my arm mock-comfortingly.
“C’mon,” he says, then turns around and starts running again.
I follow him, because I’ve got no real choice.
“—they move wrong,” I call. “Things shouldn’t move that way. It’s not right.”
“Sorry,” he calls back, clearly not sorry.
I continue cataloging what’s wrong with snakes — poison teeth, swallow things whole, too smooth — but for once Silas wasn’t lying to me, and after about thirty seconds we’re back at the parking lot.
