by Chloe Garner
“No. Having a draugr drag me around by my hair did,” he said. She laughed.
“I’m not even going to ask.”
“Kind of ghost,” Sam said.
“Ghost who pulls hair?”
Sam snorted.
“It takes all kinds.”
“I guess.”
The sun was directly overhead now, and the feeling of damp from that morning was almost completely gone. The valley was dry and full of life as butterflies and birds flitted through the thigh-deep grasses. Samantha ran her fingers through his hair, and the world felt tiny, contained to just this little space that he could see and feel.
“I had a crush on a boy at school who had hair like this,” she said. “Child of the nineties, I guess. Grunge was in. He wore a plaid button-up that he didn’t button, and he made the people at the strip mall angry, skateboarding all the time.”
Sam smiled.
“You go out with him?”
“Ha. He didn’t know my name. If you’d’ve asked him what it was, he’d have said… ‘who’?”
Sam sighed.
“Yeah. I get that.”
She pulled his hair back over his ears, drawing her nails along his scalp from his temples back. His eyes rolled back in his head and he had to stop breathing in order to not make some dumb equivalent noise to purring.
“Sorry. I’ll quit,” she said.
“If you want,” he said.
“I’m acting like a teenager. It’s… Sorry. I’ll be a grownup now.”
Is that how teenagers acted? he wondered.
“Okay.”
“You want to wander back for lunch?” she asked, standing.
No.
“If you want.”
“We’ll see if we can spot any hobbits,” she said. He pushed himself up onto the next level of rock, the muscles in his back remembering the curve of the ones below, and stretched.
“Yeah.”
She looked at him for a minute, and he wished he could have seen her eyes, but then she picked up her backpack and hopped down off the rocks and set off across the valley. He pointed over his shoulder.
“We came from that way,” he said. She pointed, then closed her fist, straight armed.
“Always onward,” she said. He laughed.
“When you can’t find your way back, I’ll get out the GPS and go find the pond again.”
“Oh, Sam, Sam, Sam,” she said. “Never doubt a girl scout. I don’t need your bleeding GPS.”
“You were a girl scout?” he asked, catching up to her and walking alongside through the whispering grasses. She grinned.
“For a couple of years. Didn’t really fit in there. I’d have been a boy scout instead, if they’d have let me.”
“I bet that would have caused a commotion.”
“Undoubtedly.”
She looked up at the sun and rubbed her face.
“Need shade,” she said. “I’m going to burn like this.”
They hit the tree line and he fell in behind her as she picked a way through sections of thick underbrush, following a deer path for a ways before she turned off at a little stream and followed it up hill for a while. She turned off of that on the same side of the stream they had been on before, climbing down a gentle slope through tall pines, and Sam saw a clearing ahead. He narrowed his eyes as they got closer.
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Should be.”
“How did you do that?”
“Trade secret,” she said.
“That’s not fair,” he said.
“Sorry.”
“No. I don’t even know what trade.”
She laughed. They were on the other side of the pond from the tent.
“I figured we’d try to sneak up on them from this side, but it looks like they’ve seen us coming, anyway.”
“Hmm?”
“The hobbits.”
“Ah.”
<><><>
The second night was fine and clear, if a bit cold, and Sam and Samantha lay on the bank above the pond, staring up at the sky. She wrapped herself in a blanket.
“You know how to find the Milky Way?” she asked.
“No.”
She pulled her arm out of the cocoon of fabric and swept her arm in an arc, pointing.
“The thick band of stars through there. That’s where we live.”
He laughed, skin tingling at the sense of proportion. He swallowed.
“You know the constellations?”
“Not many. The dipper is easy, Orion’s belt is trivial. Some days I can find Cassiopeia, but I never know if I’m even supposed to be able to find her. But the Milky Way… it’s always there. You can’t always see it, but…”
“But there it is,” Sam said.
“There it is.”
<><><>
Sam woke early the next morning. The sky was only a faint blue; the brightest stars were still visible. Samantha was huddled up against his side, curled and swaddled in her blanket. His skin was cold and damp with dew. Mist was creeping up off of the pond, and even as he lay there, it poured over him, wrapping him in a space where he could only see a few feet in any direction. Sound was damped out and the air was still. Samantha shifted and he put his arm around her. She shifted again, picking her head up to put it on his shoulder. She mumbled something and he watched her face as her eyelids and mouth twitched. He could feel in the stiff creaks of his back that he was going to pay for sleeping on the ground two nights in a row, but for now he put that off, not moving, staring at the blue-white curtain of fog around them, only half seeing it.
Tonight, if they had done everything right, they’d get Jason back.
<><><>
He changed in the tent, coming out to find Samantha sitting on a stone well down the shore eating a pear. She still held the blanket around her shoulders, but the cool of the morning was quickly giving way to the warmer day. She didn’t look over at him.
<><><>
Sam hoped she would ask if he wanted to go back to the valley again, but she spent the entire morning on her rock.
“Shut up, Abby,” he heard her say. “I know. Yes. I know.” She heaved a huge sigh, exasperated. “And what would the point of that be?”
He found a dry spot on the bank and sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the pond, much of the peace of the place negated by the fact that he wasn’t sitting with Samantha. He did his best not to keep looking over at her, but it didn’t appear she was noticing him at all. Finally, when she got up to find shade, he approached her.
“You want anything to eat?”
She tipped her head, sunglasses preventing him from reading anything on her face.
“I suppose I should.”
He got the third gallon of water out and poured it into the two water bottles, then pulled out a selection of the rest of the food. He left it in the tent to go spread a blanket on the grass, and went to get the food, arranging it on the blanket. She came and knelt on the blanket across from him.
“A picnic?” she asked. He lifted his head and looked around.
“It looked like a good spot for one,” he said. She took her shoes off and sat cross-legged on the blanket, picking at grapes and crackers, then opening a bag of chips. She was too straight, too alert. It wasn’t that she was distant - they had spent most of the week distant - but rather that she was too present, and he wasn’t included in her reality.
“Is something wrong?” he asked when she put her shoes back on and stood up. She looked at him, and he still felt like she wasn’t seeing him.
“Today is it, huh?”
“One rose left,” he said. She nodded.
“Yeah. It’s time to get back to…” she smiled, looking out over the water. “To whatever it is we’re actually supposed to be doing.”
“Is something wrong?”
She looked at him, chewing on her lip.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “What’s going on?”
She looked up
at the sky, then back at him.
“I don’t do change very well.” She rocked back on a foot, swaying the other foot behind her, then rocking back onto it. “Sam… I don’t… go… anywhere. I don’t fit. I want to stay. I’ll stay as long as I can, but…” She turned her head sharply to the side. “It’s true. You know it. I know it.” She paused. “Fine.” She looked back at Sam.
“What do you think happened?” Sam asked. He stood. “Why are you running away?”
She licked her lips and started chewing on the lower one again. He saw blood as the skin tore, and she sucked on it for a second.
“You have people, Sam,” she said. “You’re okay.”
“What does that mean?”
“I will stay as long as I can, but…” She looked up at the tent, still backing away. He didn’t think she was aware she was doing it. “Stuff doesn’t work like that for me. It just… It doesn’t work.”
She turned and he let her go. She went down to the far end of the pond, climbing over the downed pine tree, and sitting on a flat rock next to the stream that fed the pond. He went and sat next to the tree trunk where he and Jason had sat the first day and waited for sunset.
<><><>
Samantha was nearby, leaning against a tree, as Sam placed the last rose. He went and leaned on the opposite side of the trunk from her and they waited.
There was a rustling in the willow, like a breeze, and the dripping branches split as the Iara came out, cautiously looking over at them, then picking up the rose. She held it in front of her for a moment, then looked up at the sky, pressing the stem against her chest. She closed her eyes and faded slowly away to nothing. The willow rustled again and Sam walked over and split the branches. Jason leaned against the trunk, sleeping.
“Hey, man,” Sam said. “Wake up.”
Jason snorted and blinked. He stretched and yawned.
“What the hell, man,” he said, mid-yawn. “What took you so long?”
“Takes a week to get rid of an Iara,” Sam said.
“That’s all that was?” Jason asked. “A week?”
Sam frowned.
“I thought you’d be mad we didn’t leave you a while longer.”
Jason stood.
“Sex with one woman? Who expects you to only be with her for the rest of her life? And who only feeds you salad? Longest week of my life.” He peered around Sam. “That Sam out there? Hey, Sam. You guys have food?”
“There’s jerky in the tent,” Samantha said. “Unless Sam finished it all.”
“Tent?” Jason asked. “You two been getting some alone time out here?”
“It’s a long hike is all,” Sam said.
“Well, I’ll take the jerky, but we’re hiking back out tonight. I want steak.”
Sam laughed.
“That’s fine by me.”
“Not enough room in the tent for three, anyway,” Samantha said. Jason looked back at the willow tree as they made their way around the pond.
“I must say. Iara are genuinely talented women.” He looked at Sam. “Hungry, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t want to hear about it,” Sam said.
They packed and Jason lead the way back toward the road as the night fell dark and the stars started to become visible. Samantha produced an extra pair of flashlights so that they didn’t hurt themselves hiking out.
“So, Sam,” Jason said. “I imagine you’re looking forward to getting back to New York after a week out here on the boonies, huh?”
“Not as much as you might think,” she answered.
<><><>
She kept the light on Jason’s heels, keeping close as much to not be alone as to make sure he didn’t lose the path by mistake. She listened to Sam’s footsteps behind her, wishing she had been able to offer him a better explanation.
She couldn’t even offer herself a good explanation. She was afraid. A lot. She knew that, and she knew she should have expected it, but it wasn’t just that. The other reasons, ones that sounded like they made sense until she tried to form words around them, they were what she’d spent the day wrestling with. There was a sense that she should have asked someone for permission. That she was making decisions for someone else without their input. That she just… couldn’t. She didn’t know what it was that she couldn’t. But this sense of standing with her chest pressed against a wall, unable to move forward… She didn’t know what it was, where it came from.
She was used to having to stifle reactions to people. Her natural reactions were so often wrong. But on the handful of occasions that she thought Sam might kiss her, her first reaction hadn’t been to jerk away, but rather she had had to keep herself from leaning in to kiss him first. Touch had started to be natural again. Again. Even when it had been normal, it hadn’t really been normal. She had pretended it was normal, remembering an even older time when it really had felt normal. Her chest felt squeezed.
She watched Jason’s heels.
One foot in front of the other.
<><><>
At the motel, Sam sent Simon a note asking him to text if something came up, instead of e-mailing.
“In New York by tonight,” Jason said as they set out the next morning. Samantha shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not.”
<><><>
They made it as far as Pennsylvania before Simon sent Sam the next job.
“Oklahoma,” Sam read. Samantha grinned at Jason.
“What’s in Oklahoma?” Jason asked, looking over Sam’s shoulder.
“Livestock going missing in large numbers,” Sam said. “Big enough to hit the newspapers. Everything in a barn being dead the next morning, partially eaten.” He looked up and grabbed the styrofoam cup off of the nightstand behind him and continued scrolling. He nodded. “There it is. An article from yesterday. A drunk guy got kicked out of a bar at closing time and they think he fell asleep in an alley. They found him the next morning with everything in his ribcage eaten out. The locals think it’s wolves.”
Jason looked up at Samantha.
“That sound like your thing, or should we keep on going the way we’re going?”
She pointed back over her shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
He nodded and grinned, then slapped Sam on the back.
“Let’s go,” he said.
<><><>
Jason called Arthur from the road.
“Jason,” Arthur answered.
“We’re on our way through,” Jason said. “Still got Samica with us.”
“You calling her that to be disrespectful?” Arthur asked. Jason tipped his head up so Samantha could see him grinning at her in the rearview.
“I’m calling her that because she won’t let me call her Samantha,” he said.
Arthur sighed.
“I wish I was going to be there to give you a piece of my mind, but Doris and I are seeing her family this week. I think Carson will be there. You remember how to let yourselves in?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jason said. “Give our love to Doris.”
“I’ll tell her Sam sends his love and you’re being a jackass to your lady friend,” Arthur said.
“She’ll know what I meant,” Jason said.
“Be safe,” Arthur told him.
They hit town late. Jason filled up the gas tank and hopped back into the car.
“We’re on our own for dinner,” Jason said as he got in. “What sounds good?”
“You guys go,” Sam said. “Just drop me off at the house. I’m not feeling well.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and Jason shrugged.
“Don’t you go getting old on me, man,” he said. “We used to be able to go a week without sleeping, no sweat.”
Sam nodded.
“I know. I just need to lay down. Too much car time, even for me.”
Jason made his way to the house and pulled up along the front porch.
“Don’t puke on my bed,” he said as Sam got out.
“Feel better,” S
amantha said. Sam nodded, eyes winced closed, then closed the door and let himself into the house.
“So what do you want to eat?” Jason asked Samantha, turning in his seat. She shrugged.
“I’m game for anything, I guess,” she said.
“Barbecue,” he said. “Front seat’s open, if you want an upgrade.”
She grinned, then pursed her mouth playfully and contortionisted herself over and around into the front seat in a complex tangle of arms and legs. Jason leaned out of the way.
“I had thought, you know door… and stuff… but that works,” he commented.
“Dinner,” she answered, putting on her seatbelt.
“Sam hungry?” he asked.
“Sam hungry.”
He handed her his cell phone.
“You know how to find something to eat on that?” he asked. She rolled her mouth to the side and glared at him.
“I do know how to use perfectly standard technology,” she said, paging through screens to find the app that she wanted.
“I just thought… you said you don’t have a cellphone…”
“I’m being unfindable on purpose, not completely ignorant,” she said. He waited at the bottom of the driveway.
“Turn left, toward town,” she said. “I’m pulling reviews.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Fair enough.”
They ended up in a clean but no-frills establishment with waitresses who looked like they were ready for their shift to end, but who were nonetheless friendly to Samantha and Jason. It also had the best barbecue Jason could remember.
“This is amazing,” Jason said. “How did you find it?”
“It’s a review site I use…” she started. He flagged down their waitress.
“Can I get one more order of these to go?” Jason asked. He looked back at Samantha. “For Sam.”
“He didn’t look like he was going to be up for chicken wings, when we left,” she said. He nodded, slurping meat off a bone.
“I know. But this way I can microwave them and eat them in the morning, instead,” he said, “and Sam has to give me credit for thinking of him. Double win.”
He lifted his beer bottle to her and she snorted.
“That’s disgusting,” she said, but drank with him anyway.
The waitress brought the box of wings and the check, and Samantha produced cash. Jason glanced at her, then wiped his hands off and took it.
