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My dad is shaking his head as the headlights of an approaching car slide across the back wall. After a moment, the back door opens and closes and Miranda rushes in, dressed in her pajamas under her coat, hair wild, no makeup. She hauls her medical bag.
“Sheriff,” she says. “You’re up.”
I fill her in on what’s happening, all my words coming out in wild tumble.
“Go,” she says, looking worried. “I’ve got your dad.”
My father groans in protest. He’s trying to say something else, but I can’t understand him. He pounds his hand on the arm of the chair.
But I don’t need to hear his words to know what he’s saying.
Stay here. Call the police. Don’t go up there alone. You have no idea what you’ll find. He’s right, we should call the police. But Badger is already moving out the door. I stand, torn a moment. Because I don’t want to leave my dad. Because I know it’s foolish and reckless for us to go alone.
But I’m going, as if being guided by some unseen cord, tugging at my heart. The answers. The truth that’s been hiding in plain sight. All these years. I have to find it.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say. “I love you.”
And then I’m out in the snow, jogging, slipping, toward Badger’s big pickup.
Once I’m inside, he gives me a look—fear, sadness, something else—then he tears out of there and we head up north.
23
How long have I been running, then walking, now stumbling?
I have no idea. It’s so dark. Will it always be dark? Will the sun ever rise?
My feet are aching beneath a strange numbness, as if pain has become a part of me, a normal part of my existence. The road I’m on is totally isolated. I haven’t seen a single car. Great sobs wrack my body. I have alternately been silent, weeping, screaming for help. But the trees around me just absorb my misery as if they’ve seen it all before. They watch, black and cold. The stars above twinkle indifferently in the sky.
There’s stardust in our bones, my dad, an amateur astrologer always liked to tell us.We are one with the whole wide galaxy.
I feel that now. One with the stars and the snow and the hard earth beneath my feet. If I fell and didn’t get up, the falling snow would cover me up like a blanket. The earth would absorb me into its crust and I would become tree and flower, grass, dew, rain, cloud, star. I keep moving but it’s only a kind of falling momentum that keeps me going. Just one foot in front of the other until the body fails. Until the body overrides the will, which will happen. I think soon.
There’s a sound. A kind of howl in the night.
Wolves?
No. I hear my name carried on the winter night. It’s him. He’s coming.
I would rather be mauled by wild beasts, hungry animals with no malice, only operating on instinct and the will to survive. That seems fair to me. There might be a kind of peace to it, a circle of life essence to my death. I am the weaker animal—no fur, no claws, no hard padded feet. I’d rather go to the wolves in the fairness and savagery of nature, than go to him—a monster, a psychopath who kills and hurts for his own pleasure or deviant need.
No, I won’t let him kill me, not without a fight. I will cause as much pain as I can if I have to leave the world this way.
Is it Christmas yet? Did I miss it? Is my mom looking for me?
There it is again. My name on the night air. Louder. Closer.
I step off the road and into the trees. Branches slap my face, but I go deeper. I find a big sharp rock. Then another. One for each hand.
For the smaller, weaker female, there are a couple advantages. Surprise is one. Turn around quickly. Or hide if someone is following you and leap from the darkness. Use everything you have, nails, teeth, your car keys. In this case, rocks. Come in tight to the body, use all your strength to get to the soft places—groin, throat, eyes. Be vicious. Be fast. Don’t hold back. Scream. Be a bad girl.
I tuck myself into the darkness and wait for Santa.
24
Steph was acting weird when I picked her up. She was quiet, not her usual pre-party self—dolled up, ramped up, loud. My stomach was full of butterflies, and I had been counting on her to be wild and exuberant, but she was subdued.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You okay?”
