The Hunt

by Chuck Wendig

  She sits up. “What?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “And how is that, exactly?”

  “Phone rang. She told me to take it, so I took it. Had a nice conversation with Holger, but didn’t let on what was being said. And then I set out.”

  Atlanta tries to be suspicious. She works at it, like the way you might snort real hard to hawk up a loogey. Because, she tells herself, it’s a little odd. Here’s this guy, this adult male, and he’s hiding something from her mother. Hiding something about his relationship to Atlanta. He hasn’t said the classic words, yet—it’s our little secret—but feels like that phrase might be in there somewhere, buried under the dirt. And yet, it’s just as likely—likelier, even—that he’s doing this to score points with her.

  Hot dang if it isn’t working.

  “Oh” is all she says, still processing it all. It’s like pulling a wolf’s teeth out through his hiney-hole, but finally, it comes: “Thanks, Paul.”

  “I hear we’re going to hunter safety together.”

  “I hear that, yeah.”

  He leans back as he pulls up to a stop sign at a four-way intersection where Sunbury and Hopcatong Roads cross, and lets the truck idle. “I have good memories of hunter safety when I was a kid. My dad took me because he wanted me to go out deer hunting with him that November. I mean, it was thirty years ago, but back then the whole thing had a 1950s vibe about it—all the filmstrips and pamphlets were all from that era. Dick and Jane type of stuff. My dad was a real mean dude sometimes. He’d whip my ass with a belt just for looking at him wrong, but during those classes, all that went away. He’d muss my hair and put his arm around me and help me take notes. And I still remember the smells of the place, too. His cologne—Old Spice, or sometimes, Stetson. Gun oil. Dust, too, because the animals on the walls of that old gun club were damn near ancient—”

  “Gun club?” she asks. Panic seizes her by the wrists, holds her tight.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The hunter safety. It’s being held at the gun club?” That’s Orly Erickson’s stomping ground. Ground zero for some racist, neo-Nazi trashbag ideology. First and only time she was there, she and Chris ended up tied to chairs and beaten. “The one on old Gun Club Road?”

  Paul suddenly laughs. “That place? Oh, jeez, no. Those guys there are fuckin’—” He clears his throat. “Sorry, excuse my French. Those guys there are pretty scummy. Buncha slimy, racist douche bags. No, we’re going to the course up near Danville. Nicer group of people, I think.”

  And that, she thinks, is how you score points with Atlanta Burns.

  Arlene’s drinking coffee and flipping through a Cosmo when they get back to the house. Smells a little like cigarette smoke, like maybe she’s been puffing in the house again, which means Atlanta will have to have a talk with her. But now isn’t really the time. She sees Atlanta come in with Paul.

  Her eyes light up like a Macy’s display at Christmas.

  “Hey. Look who’s making fast friends,” Mama says, suddenly beaming. Then she smirks and narrows her eyes. “You two look like a pair of cats that just killed the first spring robin. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing,” Atlanta says, feeling suddenly self-conscious.

  Paul says: “Me and Atlanta are gonna try to do something together. Kind of a bonding thing. We’re gonna take a hunter safety course together.”

  Mama looks to Atlanta as if to confirm that it’s real, that this isn’t just some dream going on during a particularly pleasant nap. Atlanta rolls her eyes and gives a small nod. Then Arlene hops up, gives them both a big shared hug, and then says, “Well, I think this calls for a little Irish in my coffee.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Monday morning. School again. Seems like this happens every week, Atlanta thinks, ha ha ha, because of course it does. (She laughs about it because it’s the only thing that stops her from crying.)

  After homeroom but before first period, she catches sight of Samantha—she slides through the halls like a shark slipping through the busted hull of an old shipwreck, always looking like she’s on the hunt. Mandy Newhouse is with her.

  There exists a social code in high school. Nobody ever tells it to you—it’s not like there’s a class where they break it down with an overhead projector or a PowerPoint slide show, but there’s a system in place. She remembers reading about India in tenth-grade global studies class with Mrs. Wanamaker, and how this caste system existed there—like, you have your richie-riches and your working class and your religious folks and the dirty beggars, and each caste isn’t supposed to drift into the other. One can’t become the other. And they don’t even talk to one another because to do that is just, nuh-uh, no-no, no-how, no way.

  That’s high school in a nutshell. At least here, at this school.

  She’s not sure what caste she’s in, but she’s not up there with Samantha and Mandy. But Atlanta, she doesn’t much care for social codes. Propriety can go dunk its head in an unflushed toilet.

  She cuts a line through the crowd, steps in front of Samantha.

  Atlanta knows what’s coming. The disdainful looks. The disgust at one of the unclean coming to speak to the two royals.

  Except, that’s not it.

  Samantha smirks. Mandy beams.

  “Heard you got into some shit the other night,” Mandy says.

  Samantha leans in. “So you are cool.”

  “Wait, how the—” Atlanta starts to ask.

  “My uncle Tyler is a cop,” Mandy says.

  “Which means we can get away with anything short of murder,” Samantha says, smiling but sneering, too. Her eyes are wild, wide, full of crazy.

  To Samantha, Atlanta says: “We have unfinished business—”

  “Oh, that,” Samantha says. “Is it boring? I bet it’s boring.”

  “No, it’s about the party—”

  At that, Mandy gets excited. “Next week’s party? Are you coming?” To Samantha: “Is she coming?”

  “She is,” Samantha says.

  Atlanta scowls. “Am not.”

  “You so are.”

  “So not.”

  “You want me to help you?” Samantha asks. “You want me to tell you what you wanna know? Then after the game, after the dance, you will come to my party. Then, and only then, will I help you. Deal?”

  “No deal,” Atlanta says, and walks past.

  “You don’t remember anything?” Atlanta asks.

  Bee seems cagey about it. The two of them sit outside school between fifth and sixth period. Easiest shortcut between math and English is to go outside—and so there’s a steady stream of kids marching past like a line of ants following a food trail.

  “No,” Bee says, hands on her knees. She’s watching the people go by. Like she’s self-conscious. Nervous.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, I just . . . I’m just a little queasy. The baby. Morning sickness. Ugh.”

  “Sorry.”

  Atlanta wants to ask, but doesn’t: Is there something you’re not telling me?

  Bee says, “I don’t remember anything. I blacked out, woke up in one of Samantha’s bedrooms at her house, and . . . I knew someone had, y’know.” She sighs. “And now I’ve got this.” She pats her stomach as her nostrils flare.

  “Dang, dang, dang, dang,” Atlanta says. “That means I’m gonna have to go to Samantha’s . . . goddang Homecoming party next week.”

  Dang.

  Dang!

  Bee sits up. “You’re going to her party?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be careful there.”

  Atlanta cocks an eyebrow. “Why?”

  To that, Bee just shrugs. “Look what happened to me.”

  He’s there in the parking lot, like he’s waiting for her. Damon Carrizo, smirk like a boomerang, eyes almost a dark bronze like drum cymbals.

  “You get my flowers?” he asks, standing in her way as she heads through the parking lot. She veers past him, forces him to trot
along like a dog looking for a treat. “The roses?”

  “I did. Put ’em in a nice vase called the trashcan in our kitchen.”

  “Oh, sick burn.”

  “It’s right there in my name.”

  “You never gave me an answer about Homecoming.”

  “Then I guess you have your answer.”

  She keeps walking. He stays behind. He calls after: “You’ll fall in love with me yet, Atlanta.”

  Her only response is a middle finger thrust upward. She doesn’t look back as she serves it to him. The high school equivalent of walking away from an exploding building, all cool and shit.

  Later that night, she’s hanging out with Shane on her front porch. Whitey’s rolling around on his back, writhing like a beetle who got turned upside down. Mama’s gone again. Paul’s nowhere to be found—though when he is around, he keeps mentioning the hunting class, which is coming up for them. An event she’s kinda sorta dreading.

  But for now, it’s just the three of them: her, Shane, the pooch.

  “You like my mustache?” Shane asks.

  She’s been eyeing that thing since she saw him that morning. “It’s not really much of a mustache.”

  “I like it,” he says, stroking what little facial hair is there with the length of his index finger. “I’m hoping Damita likes it.”

  “It looks less like a mustache and more like you went to town on a box of Thin Mints.”

  “Whatever.” He sits up. She can tell he’s a little irritated. He asks: “How’s the thing with Bee going?” Way he asks is strange, though: he doesn’t look at her when he says it.

  “It ain’t going nowhere yet.” She tells him everything about Samantha, the party, the rich guy with the polo shirt and the tan beard that matched his tan face. “I don’t even know why she wants to know. Not like she’s gonna find some Father of the Year waiting for her at the end of this crooked road.”

  He shrugs. “Well, this is what happens.”

  Atlanta narrows her eyes. “Whaddya mean?”

  “I just mean—I dunno. If you don’t want to end up pregnant, don’t go to a Mason High rich kid party and drink so much you pass out.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.” Atlanta sits up straight and stares out at the middle distance—same place he’s looking. “But you know that’s bullshit.”

  “Well, I dunno—”

  “I get it, we like to say, you don’t want your car broken into, don’t leave it unlocked. You don’t want to get robbed, don’t walk down that alley. But what the victim did or didn’t do doesn’t change the fact that what happened to them is someone else’s fault. Bee didn’t ask for this. She made a mistake getting drunk, but she didn’t deserve what came to her. You think I didn’t hear that after I ended up in Emerald Lakes? People always asking me what I did to lead that sonofabitch on, like I was trying to seduce him. Hell, even if I was wearing something pretty—or skipping rope naked as a baby bird—that don’t give him the right . . .” She feels her jaw clench. The words dam up behind her teeth. Deep breath. “That’s done now. It’s not her fault. Same as you getting your ass beat isn’t your fault because you’re brown.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He looks at his feet. “And I don’t call myself brown.”

  “Mocha?”

  “I prefer to think of myself as cinnamon.”

  “That’ll make a nice stripper name,” she says. They laugh. But then she gets serious again. “I just feel bad for Bee. Despite what she did to me. Now her future’s gone all wonky.” Atlanta fidgets, picks at a hangnail. “You ever think about what’s coming down the pike?”

  “Like what?”

  “I mean like, what’s next. After school.”

  “College.”

  “Yeah?”

  He gives her a look like, duh, durr, of course. “Are you not going?”

  “To college? No, I don’t think so.”

  “We’re all supposed to go to college.”

  She shrugs, feeling suddenly, weirdly isolated. “I guess I just . . . I can’t figure why I would. It’s not like I know what I want to be when I grow up, so it’d be a big waste of money anyhow. Money I do not currently possess, and I’m sure my mama doesn’t possess.”

  “You could get a scholarship.”

  “With my grades?” She whistles. Whitey’s head perks up and she boops him on the nose with the toe of her boot. “I’m not talking to you, lunkhead.” She sighs. “With my grades, best I can expect is a diploma still warm because they didn’t know if they should print one or not. You’re the scholarship type—your 3.8 average, your AP calculus, AP English, AP underwater basket-weaving.”

  “There’s always financial aid.”

  “More like, financial AIDS. I may have poop-ass grades but I’m no dum-dum. You get saddled with that kind of debt, you never pay it off.”

  “Community college, then.”

  “Enh” is all she says to that.

  Shane looks like he’s experiencing some kind of existential panic. Like he’s talking to an alien being that makes him question his humanity, his world, his very place in the universe. “You have to think about your future.”

  “You know what?” she snaps. “I got this. I got my future all figured.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, since you asked, you know how I’ve been helping people? You wanted to know what I’m doing with that money, right? I got a shoebox. Under my bed. I’m taking that money, and the day I graduate, I’m getting way the hell out of here. Gonna use it to buy a bus ticket or if I have the money, a train ticket. Then I’m going . . . somewhere. Somewhere nice and warm. Probably back down South. Florida, I’m thinking. It’s cheaper down there in places.”

  “So you’re just going to leave.”

  “That’s what you’re gonna do, Mister College.”

  “But . . . what are you going to do there? In Florida, I mean.”

  She shrugs. The question is like biting into a corn chip the wrong way—sticking in her mouth like a sharp stab. But she pretends it’s no big thing. “Whatever I want. My life, I own it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” he says, backing down. There’s this great big abyss between them—stretching wider and wider as evening settles in over the corn. “I think, umm. I think some of us are going to the game and the dance next week. Like, you know, stag? No big deal.”

  “Jeez, why?”

  He shrugs. “I dunno. Last year of school and everything. Seems like a thing to do. You could come. It’ll be fun, we’ll make fun of it—”

  “You don’t have to do everything before you die like you’re collecting Pokemon cards—”

  “I really prefer Magic: the Gathering—”

  But she ignores him and keeps on rolling. “You don’t have to jump out of a plane or swim with sharks just because they’re there. You hear that sometimes like, Gosh, Dan, why did you climb that mountain? And Dan is like, Well, Dave, because it was there. That’s the reason I use for not doing things. Hey, Atlanta, why didn’t you swim with the sharks? Because they were there and that means they’re probably gonna try to eat me.”

  “Sharks don’t really eat people all that often. It’s a myth.”

  “God, you never quit,” she says. She feels hot under her neck, and a pressure at her temples. Anger, irrational anger, rises up inside her like a tornado juking left and right, flinging trailers and sucking up bovines to throw through barn walls. “You’re always actin’ smarter than me. But I was the one who saved your little behind from Virgil and Jonesy, let’s remember.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You know, just . . . never mind.”

  Whitey whines.

  “I should probably go,” Shane says.

  “You should.”

  “I have homework.”

  “I bet.”

  “See you, Atlanta.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She watches him go to his car. Listens to the pop of gravel. Watches the taillights head up the driveway l
ike a demon walking in reverse. Thinks every ten seconds or so, Yell to him, tell him you’re sorry, tell him you don’t know what’s up or why you’re mad or any of that, just get him back and it’ll all be fine.

  But she doesn’t. And he goes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Spirit week.

  Atlanta missed it last year. (Because . . . well.)

  This year, she gets a faceful.

  Monday is Wear Your Pajamas to School Day, and of course that comes with a whole list of prohibitions because otherwise you’ll start seeing guys come in wearing boxers with their things hanging half out and you’ll see girls wearing skimpy frilly nighties from Victoria’s Secret. Some kids do it—the popular kids, the student council kids, those in the middle who think they’re maybe cooler than they are or have better social credit than they do. Mostly it’s fuzzy footy pajamas and flannel pants even though it’s still almost eighty degrees here in late September.

  Atlanta wears what she wears. White T-shirt underneath her Army Navy store jacket. Jeans. Boots. End of story. (It fits the theme, too, because she’s been known to sleep in this very outfit.)

  She spies Shane throughout the day—glimpsed here and there through the crowds or way down the hall. At lunch she sits with everybody but Shane, who told everyone he has some kind of yearbook stuff to take care of. Kyle’s on yearbook, too (and the AV club and the literary mag and he’s also a theater monkey, because Kyle apparently never sleeps and can multitask like a meth addict), and he says he’s not sure what’s going on there. And in classic Kyle style, he adds: “I think Shane is mad at you.”

  Yeah, yeah, she says, that’s probably right on. She tells them she didn’t even get a ride from him, that she left a message early (too early, probably) on his phone saying her mother was going to take her in and he didn’t have to worry about picking her up. (A lie, that. She ended up making the hour-long walk to school.)

  And of course they’re all like, Are you going to the game later this week, are you going to the dance, and she’s like, No, jeez, shut up about it.