by S. T. Bende
“Better athlete than you.”
When I glanced up at him, a giggle built up in my throat. “You’re totally checking out my bootie again.”
“What? No. I’m making sure you’re okay. Your face is red.”
“Because some cheater just raced me up a hill.”
“Fine.” Tyr uncrossed his arms. “Two out of three?”
“I have a better idea.” I stood straight. “Race you down to the creek.”
Tyr stiffened. “I told you, Mia, a hiker saw a wolf down there.”
“That was more than a week ago,” I reminded him. “Is that going to freak you out forever?” But my arm throbbed. I’d seen a wolf in the woods, too. Correction—I’d imagined one. There was no way I’d been bitten by a giant wolf, saved by a mysterious blond-haired guy who may or may not have borne a passing resemblance to Tyr, and walked away without so much as a scratch. The whole scenario was just preposterous.
Still, Tyr clung to his story about a hiker seeing a wolf. Well, maybe the hiker had the same hallucination I did. The woods were pretty spooky in the wrong kind of light.
“Let’s not take any chances with you.” Tyr set his jaw.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my hoodie. “You think I can’t take care of myself?”
“I think…” Tyr paused. “I think you can’t be too careful with wild animals. And there are plenty of nice trails we can take instead. Like that one over the hill. Have you been up there yet?”
“No.” I didn’t mean to sound so petulant.
“Then let’s go. It’s a five-mile loop, so we’ll have to double back to get you home in time for class. But even going halfway out is worth it. Especially in the mornings.”
Tyr started to jog and I took off after him. Since he was ahead of me, he’d never know if I snuck a peek at his backside as he ran. Lord almighty, I was a hypocrite.
But it truly was spectacular.
“What’s special about the mornings?” I tore my eyes away from Tyr’s tush and made myself move into position next to him.
“You’ll see.”
He didn’t say anything more, so we ran through the forest in silence. There was no golden sunlight today, only dim grey light filtering through the trees from an overcast sky. It gave the woods an eerie glow. We ran past a cluster of enormous redwoods, each swathed in a fabric of kelly green moss. When the trail bent to the left, I snuck a glance at my companion. He wore the same grey sweatshirt as he had the last time we’d worked out, but this time the hood was off, exposing a disheveled mass of blond hair. His eyes stared straight ahead with laser-sharp focus, but his lips were curved up in a half-smile.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He glanced down at me and my insides warmed. If the twinkle in his eye was any indication, he knew just how he affected me. Drawing my shoulders back, I resolved to play it cool. We rounded a corner, and I skidded to a stop.
“Holy mother of pearl…” I trailed off.
“Told you it was worth it.”
Worth it didn’t begin to describe the view. We’d run up a gentle slope, and now we stood at the edge of a ravine. The dusty dirt trail was lined on both sides with logs, and just beyond the logs on one side, the path dropped into a deep canyon. Lush green ferns and thick blankets of moss grew over fallen redwoods, forming an intricate pattern that looked almost deliberate. The ravine was big, maybe fifty yards wide and thirty yards deep, with a thick wallpaper of greenery snaking up the opposite wall. The oversized ferns and fallen trunks gave the forest a primordial feel—as if a velociraptor might streak through the brush at any moment.
“This is incredible,” I whispered.
“Say it.” Tyr nudged me with his shoulder.
“Say what?”
“Tyr, you were right. Go ahead. Say it.” He grinned down at me.
“You’re ridiculously competitive. You do know that.” I put my hand on my hip.
“Takes one to know one.”
“Good one.” I drew a deep breath, admiring the gorgeous view in front of me… and the one next to me, too. Hmm. The ravine may have been mysteriously beautiful, but the Swede was beautifully mysterious. It bothered me that I still knew virtually nothing about him. I turned to face Tyr. “What’s your story, anyway?”
“What do you mean?” His smile faltered.
“I don’t know a lot about you. How old are you?”
“You want to know about me, eh?” Tyr kept his eyes on his knuckles. His fists were clenched so tight that his veins bulged.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He met my eyes and pointed to his head. “Kind of weird in there.”
“Try me.” I sat on a fallen log and patted the spot next to me, ignoring the way the bark jabbed the thin fabric of my workout pants. Tyr dropped down, and stared into the trees.
“I joined the military after school. Served my term, and followed Henrik here. I’m sorting through a few things while I figure out my next step.”
“That doesn’t sound so weird.” I bumped his arm with my elbow, ignoring the tingling that raced across my skin at the touch. Tyr stiffened, so I pulled away. “Pretty straightforward if you ask me.”
“Yeah, well…” He trailed off. “Tell me something about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Something not a lot of people know.”
I racked my brain, looking for a benign tidbit I’d be willing to share. My life was pretty low-key; the things people didn’t know about me tended to be embarrassing. “Oh, here’s one. I am completely tone deaf.”
“Tone deaf?”
“Couldn’t carry a tune in a basket. Always stuck in the back during elementary school pageants. Was asked to sing quieter in church. And when it’s time for the Star Spangled Banner, I lip sync out of respect for my country.”
“That’s a good one,” Tyr chuckled.
“Now you go.”
“Huh. Uh… I can’t cook.”
“At all?” I asked.
“Correction. I can cook macaroni and cheese, fry up bacon, and man a grill. But I torch anything I put in the oven, set off the smoke alarm when I try to use the range, and I caught a pan on fire trying to make Henrik a birthday cake. Last time I ever baked.” Tyr’s mouth settled into a half-smile. His shoulders had relaxed while we traded stories, bringing his intense-factor down a notch. Thank God.
I giggled as I pictured Tyr’s smoking cake pan. “That’s pretty great.”
“You again.” Tyr rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.
“Okay. I can cook. Can’t paint, can’t draw, can’t sing, but my art is edible. My mom’s a foodie, and she made us amazing four-course dinners every night. My brother, Jason, and I got to help in the kitchen a lot. We were both making roasts, soufflés, lasagnas, you name it by the time we started high school. She wanted to make sure we could take care of ourselves once we were on our own. Jason used to complain about it, but he loves cooking now that he’s figured out it gets him more dates.” I snickered.
Tyr studied me. “You’re very close with your family.”
“Of course. They’re great.” I shrugged. “What’s your family like?”
“How about another fun fact?” Huh? Why wouldn’t he want to talk about his family? “I know you like running and skiing. And cooking. Tell me something that will surprise me about you.”
“Um… oh. I’m a pretty fierce fighter.”
“You? The girl I just schooled on a fun run. You can fight?” Tyr bumped his knee against mine. The familiar burn radiated up my leg, but this time he didn’t pull back.
“I can,” I squeaked. Then I cleared my throat. “I most definitely can. When I ran my ski team’s dry-land training, the girls got bored with the cardio and weights I put them through. So I brought in a mixed martial arts coach to stir things up. He taught us grappling and self-defense and all these fun moves—totally got everyone motivated again. And we were able to have some fun
with the guys from our brother school when they made fun of us for having slower courses than they did.” I giggled at the memory of the boys’ captain laying facedown in the snow. He’d called us snow bunnies, so I’d challenged him to a wrestling match. I hadn’t hurt anything more than his ego, but he and the rest of the boys had to set gates for both courses for the rest of the season… and they didn’t call us names again.
“Mmm.” Tyr leaned over, so now both his knee and his shoulder were touching me. My entire side was on fire. He tilted his face toward mine, and when he spoke his voice came out in a low murmur. “Care to show me sometime?”
“I’d… uh… I…” Oh, hot bejeebus. Tyr’s voice was every bit as hypnotic as his eyes. I was being sucked into a vortex… a beautiful, blond vortex of Swedish awesomeness, that was equal parts intimidating warrior and overprotective boyfriend. Without the boyfriend part. Much as I wanted to melt into Tyr’s touch, I was very much aware he hadn’t properly asked me out yet. But I wanted him to. Boy howdy, I wanted him to.
I leaped to my feet so he didn’t see me blush. “It’s probably getting late. I need to shower before my nine o’clock class.”
“Let’s get you back then. Ladies first.”
Tyr held out an arm, and I jogged past him with a smile. He fell in beside me and we ran back to my street in an easy silence. When we got to my house, I paused. What now?
Tyr raised one eyebrow.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just glad we did this.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
“We should do it again.”
“Okay.” Please just ask me out already. I pushed the thought into his head and waited.
Tyr stared at me for a long time. His eyes moved slowly from my face, down the contours of my body, then settled on my mouth. My internal aerials resumed, and I wanted to leap into the air and pump my fist. Instead, I stared up at him with wide eyes. This was it. He was going to kiss me. We were finally going to—
“Well, see you around.” Tyr nodded as he stepped back. Waves of disappointment crashed over me as he turned on one heel and sprinted back for the woods.
Away from me.
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands, hoping to push down my frustration. Now what?
****
Now nothing. The next few weeks passed without a word. Tyr didn’t swing by Henrik’s class, he didn’t stop by my house, and I didn’t see him on my morning runs. I toyed with the idea of taking the Woodside Trail to see if I could coax him out of whatever hidey-hole he was stored up in, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. There was that alleged wolf roaming the forest, plus, the idea of an angry Tyr was about as appealing as a root canal.
Besides, I wasn’t one for playing games. Either Tyr liked me or he didn’t—the hot-cold thing was just silly.
“Arugh!” I threw my pillow at the wall. I was so done thinking about him.
“You okay?” Heather poked her head in my room. She held open a textbook in one hand, and a highlighter in the other.
“I’m great. Just over boys.” I closed my window against the late September chill, then walked over and sat on my bed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to break your focus. I know you’re working on a paper.”
“Believe it or not, I’m ahead on my outlining.” Heather ran her hand through her hair and exhaled. “But I’d better get back to it. The study schedule you made up for me is going to be a hard pace to maintain. How do you do it? I mean, do you ever take a break? Throw the routine out the window?”
No. No I did not. And it was a source of constant teasing from Jason. “You sound like my brother.”
“I’m just saying the routine is all well and good, but it’s exhausting. What would happen if this order…” Heather gestured around my tidy room, “if it got shaken up a little? Would you be able to handle it? Or would you completely and totally… is that a goals sheet taped to your mirror? Does it really say… ‘Top Five Things To Accomplish Today?’”
I glanced at the piece of paper above my dresser and flushed. “Maybe.”
“Hold up.” Heather looked at the ceiling. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” We waited in silence, until a scratching noise came from overhead. It raked hard nails across the surface above us, as if it wanted to claw through the ceiling and…
We stared at each other with wide eyes, then bolted for the hallway. Heather dropped her book as she ran.
“Oh my God our house is haunted!” I gripped Heather’s arms.
“It’s not haunted. It’s just an animal. But I really don’t want to find out what it is.” Heather squeezed her eyes shut.
“What’s going on, you guys?” Brynn bounded out of her room, with Charlotte on her heels.
“We have a ghost,” I whispered.
“You, of all people, do not believe in ghosts.” Charlotte crossed her arms.
“Oh, yeah? Then how do you explain that?” I pointed at the ceiling as the scratching gave way to a scuttling sound, now over the hallway. “Cheese and crackers, it’s following us!” I wrapped one arm around Heather, the other around Charlotte, and pulled us all together. I motioned for Brynn to join our huddle. “Brynn, get in here!”
“Cheese and crackers?” Charlotte snickered.
“Seriously, it’s an animal.” Heather took a breath. “A creepy animal with freakishly long claws from the sound of it. Ew! I just pictured that.”
I shivered. “Someone go ask it to leave. Charlotte, you do it.”
“I’m not going into the attic. Are you insane?” Charlotte squealed as the scratching moved toward her room. “Heather, you go up there.”
The scratching shifted toward the sound of our voices so the clawing came from directly overhead. I lowered my volume, hoping to throw it off track. “No,” I whispered. “That thing is following us. It’s probably rabid, or full of germs, or I don’t know. No. Just, no.”
“Oh for the love of Odin!” Brynn groaned.
“Who?” Heather asked.
“Odin. God. Never mind. I’ll go see what it is.” Brynn marched into her room and came out holding a flashlight. Then she trounced down the hallway and pulled down the string leading to the attic door in the ceiling. The ladder folded down, and she began to climb.
“Brynn! Wait!” I called. “What if it’s big? Shouldn’t you take a baseball bat or a taser or something?” My mind flashed to the image of an enormous wolf latched down on my arm, and I rolled my shoulders back to still my shiver.
Brynn turned around. “Seriously? You want me to tase a raccoon?”
Charlotte’s eyes grew wide. “You think there’s a raccoon up there? Those animals are evil. There was this one back home—it would walk right up to us in broad daylight and snatch our food right out of our hands. No boundaries.” She stepped closer to me.
Brynn rolled her eyes. “I’m not afraid of a raccoon.”
“You should be,” Charlotte muttered.
“I want you guys to remember I did this for you the next time bathroom duty comes up on the chore chart.” Brynn stepped up a rung. “This buys me two turns, right?”
“I hate that stupid chore chart,” Heather muttered.
“You do? I thought you liked the order?” I blinked.
“No, you like all that order. I just want to sleep until nine on Saturday mornings; not get up at six to clean the bathroom because some chart tells me I have to.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry, I—” I broke off when the thing in the attic clawed its way down the hallway. Now the noise was headed straight for Brynn.
“Look out!” Charlotte squealed. “It’s coming your way!”
Brynn took the last few steps up the ladder. She turned on her flashlight and pointed it through the hole in the ceiling. The scurrying retreated, the scraping now frantic as the creature moved away from the light. “Oh, gross,” Brynn moaned.
“What? What is it?” I yelled.
Brynn marched down the ladder and folded it up int
o the ceiling, looking disgusted. “Rats.”
“Ewwwww!” We screeched in unison. Charlotte tucked her head against my shoulder and Heather shuddered. I patted their backs.
“Shh. It’ll be okay,” I soothed even as I squeezed my eyes shut.
“That’s disgusting!” Heather said.
“It’s not a big deal.” Brynn shook her head, her curls bouncing. “We just need to get an exterminator in here. I’d off them myself, but I’m pretty sure they’ve moved into the walls and—”
“Ewww! They’re in the walls?” I moved Charlotte and Heather away from the side of the hallway.
“I am not sleeping here,” Charlotte declared.
“They’re full of diseases!” Heather added.
“You guys.” Brynn put her hand to her forehead. “They’re just rats.”
“Just rats.” I shuddered. I marched into my bedroom and pulled the pillow and comforter off my bed, and some books from my desk. The scurrying sounded again and I hurried back into the hallway. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll camp out in the living room until the exterminator can get here. I’m sure there’s a crew that can come in before the weekend. Hopefully we’ll be back in our rooms after one, two nights, tops.”
“Sounds good to me.” Charlotte ran into her room and came out with a pillow and blanket, and study materials.
“You want us to camp out in the living room? Like, all share one little room with no beds in it? And study and sleep there?” Heather put her hands on her hips.
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. No. But explain to me just how a big kumbaya girl scout meeting is going to fit with the jam-packed schedule you mapped out for me.” Heather arched an eyebrow.
I stared. “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t put the rats in the attic.”
“Because.” Heather blew her bangs off her forehead. “You think you have the answers to everything. You literally charted out our lives without even asking us, and now you’re telling me I have to write a paper and study for a quiz and get all my reading done while sharing one room with three other girls for God knows how many days?”
