Animals We Are

by Valerie Brandy

  ***

  No one ever talks about the ordinary miracles.

  I breathe one in as I watch the trout jump. These little beings can’t even speak— at least not in the way humans do— and yet somehow they mutually agree to leap from the water, together. Counting the fish is impossible. There’s too many blasts of light, jumping out of the blue and twirling in the air like silver fireworks. A thousand scaly wonders come in and out of focus, all of them deciding to do something remarkable at the same time.

  How do they know when to jump? Maybe it’s when the lake is low and cool, and the night is soft enough so as to be inviting. Maybe it all starts with one fish, itchy and dissatisfied, his impatience so palpable it causes him to jump, creating a contagious reaction in each of his friends. They’re impossibly in tune with each other; no great divide to be crossed. Even within themselves, they find unity, becoming for a moment not just fish, but also birds, embodying two opposing forces in a single being. It’s an effect that extends beyond their own school, sending ripples across the forest as their fins reflect the moonlight, bridging the gap between earth and sky. It’s the kind of ordinary miracle that forces a person to either stop and stare, or commit a crime against the Universe by ignoring the magical mundane.

  Respectful silence settles on our party, as if we’re in a big, open church, where acoustics turn whispers into echoes, and stain-glassed windows turn light into rainbows. Without saying a word, our group disperses to different rocks to watch— to pray. Mike and I find a boulder that’s all our own, and for a moment, we’re the only two people in the world.

  “They’re just fish, but they’re—” I search for the word.

  “They are.” Mike nods. He takes my hand in his. “I’m glad I’m here with you,” he says the right thing, like he always does. I like to think of Mike as an anchor. He has a heavy bottom that keeps him grounded; invisible cords that keep him tethered to the Earth in a reliable, oaky kind of way. He’s whiskey on the rocks, warm and inviting, the sort of thing you drink when you just need one piece of the world to make sense.

  My thumb traces circles over the veins below his knuckles. It’s a strange thing to like about someone, but the blue-green veins that stand out on Mike’s hands really do it for me.

  “We should make a list of magical things to see together before we die,” I say, not really thinking about what it means, or the way it implies permanence.

  “There’s a lot of magic in the world. Seeing it would probably take years. A lifetime, even. To do that…” Mike chooses his words carefully. “We’d have to stay together for awhile.”

  A splash from the lake as another fish finds its way back into the water. My head lightens, and I can feel myself rising into the air. If Mike is an anchor, I’m a balloon. If Mike is a fish, I am a bird. We’re exactly what the other person needs, and we could be together forever, if we could only find the place where the earth turns into sky. They call it the horizon, but experience has taught me that it always moves away, no matter how fast I run towards it.

  Mike’s looking at me like I’m supposed to say something, but I don’t, because there’s no way to tell him that I’m still waiting for some unseen side of him to make itself known. If I explain about the monster, he’ll want to know when I’ll stop looking for it. That’s an answer I don’t have.

  “Zoe,” Mike pauses, looking for the right words. “Anywhere you go… that’s where I want to be.”

  It takes herculean effort not to say too much back. I bite down on my tongue, seeking the safety of my walls. Giving away my feelings— all of them, at least— isn’t safe. Not yet.

  “Same,” I say. It’s the best I can do.

  Mike seems encouraged by my answer, despite the limited verbiage.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk you about where you see us going. About a bigger commitment.”

  Bigger commitment? We already live together. What does he want now, a dog?

  “You like to move at your own pace, and I don’t want to scare you away” he adds, his tone laced with the self-conscious caution of a hostage negotiator. I can’t blame him. It took me eight months to call him my boyfriend.

  “You don’t have to say anything now. This could be way off in the future. But I wanted to bring it up so you don’t feel blind-sided if one day I ask for more.”

  Is he talking about marriage?

  “Are you okay,” he asks, the pained look in his eyes making me hate myself, “with starting the conversation?”

  My heart skips a beat, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s a good skip or a bad one. I’m thinking about the fish, and birds, and how I’m so aloof that I’ve made Mike get that look in his eye— the one that says he’s expecting to be disappointed. The word “conversation” splits open the sky, and I want to tattoo it on my arm as a reminder that Mike’s making room for me, here, and it’s not a demand, but a walk through the woods, with both of us deciding which direction to go. The seconds tick by and I’m supposed to say something— any normal person would say something— but my inner ogre wraps his fists around my throat, making me choke down some words that sound like “I love you,” and “Forever.” I scan Mike’s eyes for a monster, and even though I still don’t see one, some piece of me is waiting, waiting, waiting for the sharp glint of teeth.

  A high-pitched whistle splits through the night, and we turn around to find Brock, fingers in his mouth, motioning for the group to get back together. Mike looks at me again, and I have to do something before the moment is gone, so I squeeze his hand and smile. It’s a vague action, but it’s there. He seems to take my reaction as a positive, looking relieved as he helps me climb down the slippery rock. But in the back of my mind, I wonder if he isn’t tired of being with someone who moves so slowly. Maybe one day he’ll start looking for monsters in me, too.

  ***

  Our flashlights criss-cross against the black as we head back toward camp. Halfway down the road, we’re joined by Logan, who’s pushed aside his disappointment at missing the trout to annoy Brock with chit-chat.

  “I took two Tums and I felt way better. How does it work?”

  “It’s the calcium,” Brock repeats himself, irritated.

  “Yeah, but how?” Logan presses. “Calcium isn’t related to lightheadedness, unless you have a serious deficiency, and a little change in altitude wouldn’t cause that…”

  “It’s a mystery,” Brock shrugs. Evidently Logan hasn’t heard of the placebo effect.

  When we get back to camp, everyone retreats to their individual tents. Mike and I curl up in a sleeping bag.

  We roll over, and his body feels warm and perfect on top of mine. I really could be with him forever. Why didn’t I just give him a definitive ‘yes?’

  He kisses my neck, running his hands over my body, putting so many unspoken words into it. The walls around my heart shake again and, for the first time, I seriously think about taking them down, brick by brick, if only because I can’t deny one thing about Mike:

  My heart recognizes his.

  It’s impossible to talk about without sounding like a new-age weirdo, but if past lives are real, Mike and I met in one. I’ve never been the type to believe in soul-mates, but I can’t deny a cosmic, magnetic pull between us. When Mike looks at me, he looks through me, straight past my exterior into something hidden. It makes me hope he might fix that ache within— the one that makes me feel like I live in a world of the imagined, a place filled with things no one else can see. Even my careful management of the space between us doesn’t bother him. He just waits across the divide, hoping I’ll close the distance. If I explain to him that I’m working on it, he’ll understand. Mike always understands.

  I’m about to tell him so, when I notice something over his shoulder. It’s a photograph, pinned to the roof of our tent. I freeze, and Mike stops, sensing immediately that something’s wrong.

  “Are you okay?”

  I don’t answer, but point wordlessly at the offending object, spoiling the
aesthetic of the temporary home we built together. When Mike looks at it, his mouth drops open.

  It’s a photograph of us at Magic Mountain. We’d only been dating a few weeks when we decided to brave the theme park together. I remember it, because Mike made me feel so comfortable. He never pressured me to try a ride I didn’t want to try. He didn’t even give me a hard time for skipping the Goliath coaster, even though I made him wait in line for an hour before chickening out. So many guys would have been annoyed at the inconvenience, or gotten a sick enjoyment out of my fear— the kind of person who needs someone else to be small so he can feel big. But Mike just put his arm around my shoulder and said, “There’s plenty of things I’m scared of too. You shouldn’t hide stuff like that. When one person is weak, the other one is strong. And I hate heights, so when we go on Superman, I’m gonna need you to be really strong.” Then he led me straight to a food cart and bought me a cotton candy, which I smashed in his face. I’m not sure why I did that, except that maybe his smile was too cute, and the moment had grown too serious. The photo documents the second after I caught him by surprise, his smile wide, beard covered in pink, spun sugar, fingers peeling it from his cheeks to pop into his mouth. Seconds later, he chased me around the cart with blue-raspberry swirl, which ended up in my hair and took three days to completely remove.

  It’s the kind of moment I wish I had photographed— the type of thing you remember forever which, ironically, renders a photograph unnecessary. So I’m not too bothered by the picture’s existence, even though it’s taken by a third party without our knowledge, our goofy faces un-posed and oblivious, blurry from excessive zoom.

  No, it’s the words scrawled at the top of the picture in black sharpie, handwritten in all capital letters, that leave me cold:

  DEAD.

  My voice catches in my throat as I try to say her name. I can’t speak, but I don’t have to. Mike says it for me, but his voice doesn’t betray fear— only white-hot rage.

  “Cassandra.”

  5

  A crackling sound fills the forest as Brock fiddles with the channel on his radio.

  “Right, that’s better…” he says to a ranger on the other end. “It was in their tent. Yeah, just the one picture tacked to the ceiling…”

  I shiver, and Mike pulls me closer, rubbing my shoulders even though we both know I’m not shaking because of the cold. My skin prickles, aware of some shift in the electromagnetic field that I can’t see. There’s a primal, instinctual knowledge rippling through my blood, and I’m certain of its veracity, even though I can’t explain why:

  Someone is watching us.

  “I’ll let ‘em know,” Brock nods, as if he’s about to give us the weather forecast for the week. He holsters his radio.

  “She’s not on the list of permit-approved campers, and no one’s seen her,” he says. “In fact, they haven’t had a single person stop by the station since we left. Not even to ask for directions, which happens more often than you’d think. It’s a confusing landscape, what with the roads all looking the same…”

  I’m about to tell Brock I don’t give a shit about how similar the roads look and that I’m more concerned about the stalker following us up the trail, but Mike beats me to the punch.

  “It had to be her,” Mike says, his cheeks reddening. “Isn’t there someone they can send? The police or…” he waves a hand in the air, as if to indicate “or whatever you people do out here.”

  Brock spits out the husk of the sunflower seeds he’s eating, an action that feels a little like seeing a priest piss in the middle of a church. Isn’t it part of the Ranger oath that he respect the forest?

  “Sheriff’s about twenty miles out, but I’m not sure what good it would do. She could be anywhere. We’d need to cover a lotta ground; it’d be tough out here in backcountry, seeing as there’s fewer trails…”

  “Why is she mad at us all of a sudden?” I whisper, partly to myself and partly to Mike. It’s a stupid thing to say, and the words tumble from my mouth like pebbles. Even though I’ve never met her, and even though I tend to see the worst in people, something about Cassandra has climbed under my skin and built a home there. Over time, her presence has become comforting— a reminder that there are people in the world with brains that are more of a mess than mine. I like her. She’s like my invisible friend, even though she makes Mike’s life miserable sometimes. Mike groans, like he can hear what I’m thinking.

  “Zoe, she’s insane—”

  I cut him off, trying to sound less like a kid whose best friend banned her from the school lunch-table, and more like an expert in psychological evaluation. “She’s never threatened us. Not once. It’s not part of her profile. Why now?”

  Mike considers the question, and his face floods with horror, like he’s just realized he’s left the stove on. If he’s made some connection, he doesn’t share what it is.

  “It doesn’t matter why now,” he swallows hard, turning to Brock. “How’d she follow us on foot, without a horse? We camped overnight, so she’d need to have been watching us the entire trip.”

  Brock mulls this over, chewing on yet another handful of seeds. “Well, if it were me I’d have brought only what I could carry, probly a sleeping bag and some water. Maybe set up a camp behind that ridge over there, so I’d be able to keep tabs on things while staying out of sight.”

  Great, I want to say. Thank you for the class, “Stalking 101.” I want to rip the package of sunflower seeds out of his hands and hit him over the head with it. Instead, I smile and nod.

  “Right, that makes sense…” I hear myself say, hating that I’m giving Brock a gold-star just for stating the obvious. Still, the only way to get what we want from Brock is to make him feel useful, even though he isn’t.

  Brock is proving to be about as helpful as a rock. The rhyme momentarily reminds me of my poetic pen-pal from Tinder, but I push the thought away to focus on the more pressing issue of Cassandra, and the wild.

  “What about a permit?!” Mike’s almost yelling now, his eyes wide, hands balled into fists. “Everyone needs a permit to camp in backcountry, right? Isn’t that what we paid you guys for? This super exclusive, backcountry experience? How’s she out here without a fucking permit?”

  Brocks shrugs. “She’s breaking the law, that’s for sure. And it’s not wise to camp alone this time of year, what with the weather. Hopefully she turned around already, otherwise we could be sending a search and rescue party.”

  Mike exhales, trying to hold it together. “I’m so glad you’re concerned for her safety,” he snarls, and I step back from him. I’ve never heard Mike’s voice get so low.

  Confusion swims in Mike’s eyes, their dilated irises not understanding Brock’s refusal to take the situation seriously. I don’t know how to tell Mike that Brock’s vision of Cassandra is a skewed portrait. He sees her as a teenage girl doodling hearts in a notebook, leaving angry post-its on Mike’s locker. To Brock, she’s a desperate and harmless little gnat, not a life-altering tornado that casts a shadow over every day of Mike’s existence. Brock doesn’t take her seriously enough to call for backup, and nothing we say will change his mind.

  “We should cancel,” Mike turns to me, exasperated. “We’ll go home. I’ll file for a restraining order. I should’ve done that a long time ago.”

  The words sting, if only because they’ve introduced a question into the narrative of our relationship; one I know I’ll obsess over now. It’s a question that will nag at me off and on over the years, spontaneously surfacing when I’m doing the dishes, or stuck in traffic, or out of Real Housewives reruns.

  Why didn’t he get a restraining order?

  Mike took every life-changing, drastic measure he could to avoid Cassandra, from changing his phone number, to moving. Wasn’t a restraining order the obvious first choice, long before resorting to extremes?

  I want to pick the mystery apart, to tear at its seams, but something Brock says stops me.

  “She won’t
be able follow us much further. Two days, maybe, and after that she’d need to be towing supplies,” Brock states simply, scratching at his chin like he’s working out a puzzle. “She’ll turn around soon as she runs out of food and water. Don’t have to be a Ranger to know that. It’s basic survival instinct.”

  Survival instinct.

  The blood rushes to my head.

  “Mike?”

  He doesn’t answer. I move to reach out to him, but he’s not next to me anymore. He’s crouched on a nearby boulder, his head in his hands. He looks untethered, like an astronaut in space, orbiting far outside my atmosphere in a place where I can’t reach him.

  “Mike,” I whisper, stepping closer to him, trying to close the distance between us. I’m about to ask him if there’s something I should know— something he’s not telling me— but he waves me away before I can.

  A yellow flower pokes out of the ground by Mike’s feet, a lone pop of bright color on soil otherwise coated by the burnt shades of leaves in the winter. Mike looks at it, then crushes it under his boot, pulverizing it into pieces. His face is expressionless while he does it, and I almost think I hear the flower cry.

  The gesture is so unlike him that it sends a tingling chill down my back.

  For a second, I imagine myself as the flower, tiny and alone, pulverized into nothingness beneath Mike’s boot. It makes me want to agree with Mike, to call off the trip, to go home and move out of our house. I’ll have to make up some excuse as to why I don’t want to be with him anymore, because “I saw you crush a flower and it made me think you might do it to me, one day,” is not something normal people say.

  But then I think about the way Mike always gets up before me to make coffee in the morning, and how he brings me a cup in bed. I remember how he once helped me jumpstart my car when it died on the side of the freeway, and the time he packed my purse for me the night before I had a big meeting with the owner of the hotel I manage. “So you won’t have to hunt down your keys tomorrow,” he said. Later, I found a note in the zip-pocket that read, “You’ve got this. Love, M.”