One man zips up the tents, while the other loads gear and guns onto the back of a four-wheeler. A few minutes later they leave, the rumble of the four-wheeler fading into the distance. We stay where we are until long after the sound fades. When Baby Bigfoot moves, the boy follows her. “What do you think you’re doing?” I blurt out when they leave. “We can’t just go into their camp!” Realizing they are completely ignoring me, I hurry after them.
The boy leaps in one smooth motion onto the back of the truck and flips open the Yeti lids like it’s nothing new. Baby Bigfoot is playing with the zipper on a tent. The boy pulls out water bottles and a plastic bag of fruit. I peer inside, noting he doesn’t touch anything that’s been processed. Deli meat, cheese, bread, he leaves it all. When he moves to the next cooler, he whistles. Baby Bigfoot strides over and, with a gasp that screams of humanity, pulls a severed deer head from the cooler. She holds it by the horns, staring into the lifeless eyes of what was a very impressive buck. Her thick fingers trace lines down its face, almost petting, and then with a frightening growl she turns and walks toward the forest.
“Where’s she going?”
He nods toward the trees, so I follow her. Not far from the camp, she kneels down and places the head beside her, carefully resting it against the trunk of a tree. Grabbing a fallen branch, she begins to dig into the soil at the base of the pine. Once the ground is broken up, she uses her hands, scooping great heaps of red dirt up from the ground to place in piles around her. I kneel beside her, put my hands in the hole, and dig. She watches me, but I focus on the dirt, pulling rocks and roots when I find them, until there is a hole the size of our kitchen stove between us. I’m pretty sure we just dug a grave.
Baby Bigfoot grunts, reaches for the head, and pauses. She stares at me, human eyes contemplative, and then hands me the remains. “You want me to do it?” Her gaze never wavers, so I place the buck’s head down into the ground.
I know it’s just a deer, like all the others Matt and Dad bring home every winter, but this feels different. She cares about this animal, even though it’s dead, even though she can’t bring it back. I blink furiously, knowing I’ll just get dirt all over my face if I have to wipe away tears. After adjusting the antlers until they are completely beneath the surface, I glance up for approval. She answers by pushing a mound of dirt back into the hole. A few minutes later there is nothing to show we were even there. Pine straw covers our footprints, and any of the dirt we didn’t get back into the hole.
Baby Bigfoot reaches up and pulls on a tree branch until it breaks enough that she can bend it. After tearing off the small branches at the end, she angles it down toward the ground and pushes the end into the dirt. She steps back, studying the formation, and then brushes off her hands.
She stares down at the ground, at the spot where the deer is buried, and against my better judgment, I take her hand. I squeeze, she squeezes back, and I follow her away from the grave. The tears come, and I wipe them away with the hem of my T-shirt.
The boy’s got a pile of things ready to go, but Baby Bigfoot walks by him and heads for a tent. She slowly slides the zipper over, releasing the tent flap, and then crawls inside. The boy shakes his head and motions me in behind him. She’s sitting in the middle of a sleeping bag, and I can’t help but laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of it.
“I think we’ve probably broken a few laws by now, not that either of you care.”
Baby Bigfoot reaches for a duffel bag tossed in the corner. She rustles around in it for a moment, then pulls out a pile of clothes. She gives them a sniff, then a toss, and reaches back in and produces a plastic bag of toiletries, including a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The boy takes the tube of toothpaste out of the bag but shakes his head when she tries to hand him the toothbrush as well.
She stares at it, turning the orange-and-white handle over and over. Her fingernail flicks at the blue bristles, and then I know what is coming next.
She licks it.
I close my eyes in sympathy for the man who is going to wonder where his toothpaste went tonight. I should probably take the brush and toss it when she’s not looking. I’d likely be doing him a favor.
Next she pulls out the hairbrush and hands it to me. “Thank you.” I take it and put it in my lap, not sure what to do with it. She grunts expectantly, and I glance at the boy. “She wants me to brush my hair?”
He shakes his head.
“She wants me to brush . . . ?” I let the question hang.
He points to her.
“Seriously?” It’s like this is turning into a damn slumber party and all I can think is, what if those men come back and find us here? I mean, they’ll have a heart attack for sure, but they might shoot her before they do.
But what the hell.
I scoot forward and pretend this is nothing but normal and I’m not about to actually brush Baby Bigfoot’s hair. I mean, she’s all hair. Am I supposed to groom her like a dog?
I start with her head, pulling gently when I encounter a tangle and praying she’s not tender-headed. The boy slips out of the tent and hurries across the camp into the other one. I continue to run the bristles through her black hair, hearing her breaths grow deep and heavy. “Hey, Bee, are you falling asleep?” The name feels right the second it rolls off my tongue. So much easier than saying Baby Bigfoot to myself all the time. At least one of them should have a name.
Her head droops as I continue long strokes down the back of her head and neck. She’s nothing but hard, heavy muscle beneath all this hair. She could probably snap my neck with a finger. Just as I’m convinced I put her to sleep, the boy whistles and she’s on her feet in an instant, crouched like a bear, making the tent seem even smaller. The sound of a motor whines in the distance. “Oh good, we’re all going to die.” Bee crawls through the opening and I follow, tucking the brush with her hair away in my back pocket. She joins the boy as they gather up their treasures: the food from the cooler, the toothpaste, and a book, and then we hurry out of the campsite. Once we are behind our fallen tree, he runs back with a pine tree branch and moves around the camp, sweeping up where our footprints leave evidence. He even stops to snag a tuft of Bee’s hair from where it caught in the tent zipper.
By the time the hunters return, we are long gone.
We walk in silence, which gives me time to justify what I just did. We destroyed a hunting camp. We stole food and personal items. We buried a deer head. Bee licked a toothbrush. Basically we’re forest pirates. That will look so good on my rap sheet when I’m sent to juvie.
“Do you two do that a lot?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve never gotten caught?”
He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. “No.”
“What do you do with all the stuff? Where do you keep it?”
He stops, and Bee does too. I can see Mr. Watson’s pasture in the distance, hazy in the dusk of a setting sun. They’ve brought me home. I’m suddenly not ready to leave.
“I . . . sh-show you.”
“Now? It’s getting dark.” I’ve been in the forest when it’s dark plenty of times, but always on the other side of night, when the day is coming, not leaving. When he begins walking toward the house, I stop. “Wait. No, I want to go.”
His eyebrows raise like he’s questioning my judgment.
“Yes, I’m sure. Let’s go.”
Wood snaps behind us. Even as we turn around, the boy is already pushing me behind him, and a growl forms in Bee’s throat.
The male is standing there, not ten feet from us. The setting sun reflects in his eyes, lighting them afire. Bee and the boy stand still as statues, waiting. A voice, soft and unintelligible, drifts on the wind. I don’t realize it’s coming from the male until Bee answers him. It’s like listening to someone talk from far away, hearing a voice, recognizing the rise and fall of cadence, but too far to make out any specific words.
They are talking to each other.
Bee goes quiet, lo
oks at the boy, then me. Slowly she walks away, toward the male, and then into the woods beyond. But he stays, watching us still. With a reluctant set to his shoulders, the boy turns around.
“You . . . go home.”
As much as I want to argue with him, plead with him to come with me, I don’t. I’m too busy fighting the fear that threatens to swallow me every time I look into the male’s eyes.
“When will I see you?”
He shakes his head. “Go.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No.” He turns me around and walks with me until we reach the pasture.
“When?” I’m on the verge of begging.
“Go.”
“Dammit, is that all you can say to me? I don’t want to go, and I don’t want you to leave.” The male roars from the forest, and I can’t stop the tears that roll down my face as my body starts to shake. “I heard you!” I scream back, and the boy grabs me by the shoulders.
“Go, Leah.” His eyes plead with me.
“Fine. Go back to your dad or whatever the hell he is. I’m gone.” With every step I take away from him, my body screams at me to turn around, to run back and apologize, but I’m angry. The kind of stubborn anger that I know I’ll regret later, but I’m trying to make a stupid point that he probably doesn’t even understand.
I know this is my fault, that I’m the one who has intruded on them, who sought the boy out. But being with him and Bee is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s more than just being in my forest, and being myself, the one I keep hidden from the world. It’s being that version of me and having someone else see it too and accept it without question.
More and more, it’s getting harder to leave the trees and go back to the old me. I don’t fit into her shell as easily as I used to. I don’t like the weight of her baggage, the expectations placed on her, the rules she has to follow. The forest is freedom, and the boy is now part of that. But even he now comes with boundaries. I’m being forced away from him by something I can’t argue with or lie my way around. Something I can’t even speak to, much less reason with. My claim I think I have on this boy is so strong that I can’t dispel the jealousy that wraps around me like a second skin.
Sharing him is not something I’m sure I’m willing to do anymore. And he’s not even mine.
chapter seventeen
By Wednesday of the next week, I’m quite certain I’m getting exactly what I deserve for being a jerk to the boy. He hasn’t come back.
“You’re acting a little less Leah this week.” Ashley pops a handful of Cheetos into her mouth and passes me the bag.
“I’m fine.”
“But see, here’s the thing. We’re sitting here, watching football practice for the third day in a row, something neither of us cares about, because Ben asked you to, and you don’t really seem excited about it.”
“Well, like you said, it’s football practice.”
“Yes, but you’re dating Ben Hanson and it’s like you don’t care.”
“What do you mean?” I shove some Cheetos in my mouth and try really hard to look like I don’t know what she’s talking about.
“Come on, Leah. You’ve got the thing you’ve always wanted, at least since we’ve been in high school, and you don’t seem happy about it. Ben is your boyfriend. You should be on cloud nine or something. Smile all the time. Or at least when he looks over here every five seconds. Coach has already yelled at him twice about it.”
“It’s just . . . different from how I imagined it.”
Ashley turns on the bleachers to face me. “What? Disappointed he’s not riding on a unicorn and surrounded by a choir of singing cherubs? Leah. He hangs all over you, drools when you speak, and can’t wipe that stupid, gorgeous grin off his face whenever he looks at you. What more could you ask for?”
“Nothing. Ben’s great. And you’re right, he is the perfect boyfriend.” I paste the happiest smile I can manage on my face, wanting nothing more than to tell my best friend what’s really wrong, knowing I can’t because a dark voice in the back of my mind taunts that she wouldn’t understand why I’ve kept it from her.
Ashley stares way too long. “Something’s wrong with you.”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to find out what it is.”
“No, you’re not, because there’s nothing wrong.”
“You’ve never been able to pull a lie past me so don’t start now.” A horn honks from the parking lot, pulling her attention away. “Mom’s here. I’ll call you tonight so we can finish this mind-numbing algebra homework.”
“See you later.” I wave, ignoring the knowing stare she gives me as she stomps down the bleachers in a short skirt, combat boots, and pigtails.
The algebra homework in my spiral is mostly Ashley’s work. I copied, and I don’t really care if I get the concept. I tell myself I’m overthinking this, and that he’s not mad at me or trying to punish me for being mean. I’ve punished myself enough. Especially since the forest has been silent since they left. No knocks, howls, screams, or any apples left at my window. Yesterday a herd of deer were eating the apples on the stump that I left over the weekend as a peace offering. It’s been years since that has happened.
He’s gone.
I pushed him away. Got too close. Went too far. The reasons go on, but the conclusion is the same. He’s gone, and my fear is that he won’t ever come back.
And that’s not the worst of it.
The night he left, I was sifting through my bookshelf, searching for the devotional someone gave me years ago that I never use, except to press flowers in. As I was flipping through, looking for a place to press the white flower he gave me only hours before, I came across a forgotten memory.
Another white flower.
This one given to me by Reed, during that last camping trip, right after he saved me from the snake. Ashley and I were collecting them to make necklaces, and Reed brought me the biggest he could find.
I never used it. I saved it, tucking it safely away until I could get it home and press it within a book.
And as I was looking at them both, side by side, new and old, something forbidden entered my mind. A tiny thread of suspicion, something so devastating that if I followed it to its source, it might shatter my world and that of those closest to me. But it’s not possible. It can’t be. That hope died ten years ago.
But what if? What if? The words whisper to me, even now. And every time, my heart stops.
A shrill whistle signals the end of practice, and Ben jogs over to where I sit. “Hey, you. Have fun?” He leaps over the low cyclone fence separating the bleachers from the track like it’s nothing. Ben charges up the steps, pulls off his helmet, kisses me on the cheek, and kneels down on the step below me. I’m not used to this kind of attention. It makes me uncomfortable, but not enough to tell him. Besides, to everyone else, there is no reason why this relationship shouldn’t exist.
“Um, yeah. Got most of my homework done.” I pat the spiral, feeling a little guilty.
“You don’t like football, do you?” He grins.
“Don’t say it out loud,” I whisper. “You know it’s a crime.”
“Especially in Texas,” Ben whispers back. “It’s like one of the Commandments.”
I can’t help but smile at how easy we are together, wishing it was enough, that it was still what I truly wanted. “You looked good, though. Why was the coach yelling at you?”
Ben blushes. “I missed a pass from Matt.”
“That doesn’t happen often,” I say, baiting him.
“Well, this girl I really like was laughing to her best friend, and it was distracting.”
“Well, maybe I should stay away from practice. Wouldn’t want you getting in trouble over me.”
Ben grabs my hand and pulls me down beside him. “Don’t you dare. I like you here. Especially right here,” he says in my ear, wrapping his arms around me.
“Matt’s watching us.”
Ben looks up at the empt
ying field. “He’s probably waiting to chew me out about that pass, too.”
“Then I guess you’d better go.”
“Will you miss me?”
“Maybe.”
“What? Come here.” He turns my chin up and kisses me, lips tasting like salt. This should be turning my brain into mush, but all I can do is try to rationalize why I’m not melting down to my toes. After a long minute, Ben pulls away, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Now will you miss me?”
“Definitely not.”
“Okay, we’ll continue this conversation later.” Ben grabs his helmet, then pauses. “You haven’t been back into the woods, have you?”
His question takes me by surprise, and he notices my hesitation as I try to process why he would even ask me. “Um. No? Why do you ask?”
“Just some weird things happening out there. Some campers reported their stuff missing last weekend, and Dad was talking about it. Just, you know, want you to be careful.”
“It was probably those rabid ninja squirrels. Why stop at throwing rocks when you can raid a campsite, right?” I say, trying my best to sound like he’s worrying for nothing.
Something about his smile seems forced. The next second, it’s as natural as can be. “Oh, hey, we’re still going to the thing this weekend, right?”
Surely he’s not talking about—
“The homecoming dance, remember?” he prods.
No. “Oh, yes, I think?”
“Did you forget?”
“Did you ask me?” Because I have no memory of it.
“Monday. At lunch.” Ben stares. “You did say yes.”
“Right. I did. Yeah, we’re going.”
“Just checking. You didn’t mention it today.” His eyes narrow, like he’s wondering what’s going on in my mind. I’ve noticed it’s a look he wears when he thinks I’m not looking.
“Sorry. I’m just distracted.” But I did agree to go. I’ve been so caught up in my other life, plus the memorial at church is next week as well. Still, I hate formal dances, so what was I thinking?
The Shadows We Know by Heart Page 12
