Wild

by Mallory, Alex

  But those were inside thoughts. Secret, keep-them-in-her-head thoughts. Secrets to be deployed later. After the rawness healed, and everybody moved forward to real lives that had nothing to do with crazy 24/7 news coverage and broken hearts.

  “Ready for a mop up?” Sofia asked.

  The tissues were at hand, and she offered a sympathetic smile when Dara rolled over. Stuffing Dara’s hand with Kleenex, she let her swab her face. Then, she replaced the nasty bundle with a nice, new, clean one.

  “How about some pizza therapy?” When Dara shook her head, Sofia offered, “We could go find Kit and beat him with the lacrosse stick some more.”

  That made Dara laugh. Not long, or hard. But enough to break the misery for a moment. Sofia plastered a hand on Dara’s forehead, looking down into her sad, puffy face. The girl was not a good crier, not by a long shot.

  With a groan, Dara peeled herself off the bed. Padding into Sofia’s bathroom, she turned on the tap. Water splashed, and Sofia slumped on the bed. The usual tricks probably wouldn’t work. It’s not like she could say, “Hey, you’re going to be fine. And when he sees you being fine, he will suffer.”

  Well, she could have said it. But it wouldn’t have made very much sense. No, Cade had wreaked a special kind of havoc on her best friend. Sofia kind of hoped he’d gone back to the jungle. Because if he had, she could wish for him to get ticks. And lice. With a lovely parting gift of rhinovirus. That was the change she wanted to put into the world.

  “I think I know where he is,” Dara said, reemerging. She dried her hands on her shirt, slumping to lean in the door frame.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does to me.”

  Ugh. The statute of limitations on talking smack about the guy who just trashed her best friend’s heart wasn’t up yet. Not even close. And Sofia was pretty sure it was going to take a monumental effort to keep her mouth shut. “Honey, I know you feel responsible for him . . .”

  “I do,” Dara agreed. “But it’s more than that.”

  Don’t call him a jackass, Sofia warned herself. To Dara, she said, “Here’s the thing, Dare. Let’s say everybody’s in love, it’s healthy, you were going to settle down and have his litter of puppies . . .”

  “Ew.”

  “Right, I know.” Sofia nodded, wildly agreeable. “But look, he bailed. He had his reasons, whatever, I don’t care. You don’t leave without saying something. So much for Mr. I’ll Fight a Bear For You, everything got crazy and he ditched!”

  Brows furrowing, Dara blinked at Sofia. Then she melted, sliding over to the bed to flump beside her. Throw her arms around her even. She pressed her face to Sofia’s shoulder and rocked her with a hug. “Aw, boo, you’re hurt, too.”

  “Get offffff,” Sofia said, trying to peel her way out of Dara’s embrace.

  “No, but you are. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you be sorry,” Sofia said. “You’re not the one who blew.”

  “Awww, Sof.”

  “You let somebody beat you at Mario Kart, and look what it gets you.”

  Sofia succumbed to the wallowing. It was good to share things, sometimes. Though she knew she didn’t have near as much invested into Cade, her feelings were hurt.

  It’s not like the last couple of weeks happened in a bubble. It spilled out through town—in her brother’s bedroom, and on the side of her house. In her car, in parking lots, in big old box stores that didn’t, Cade had pointed out, seem to sell boxes.

  Resting her head against Dara’s, Sofia nudged. A bump to say hey, I’m here, you there? She smiled, just a little, when Dara nudged back.

  Things weren’t okay, but they would be.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  FORTY-FOUR

  An eerie quiet seemed to dog Dara. Sitting at her computer, she flicked a finger against the mouse. She toyed with opening a single file on the desktop. A specific file—all the photos from the camping trip.

  Uneasy, she wondered if she wanted to do this to herself. A tremor passed through her finger, and suddenly, the file was open.

  Once again, she was struck by the stillness in the photographs. No portraits, no selfies. The fleeting images in this set featured tiny red mushrooms. The curve in an ancient oak. Rainbows on mist, and trees full of sunlight.

  This time, she looked up. Above the frame of the photo, into the forest beyond. It wasn’t empty; she knew that now. It was alive with so many secrets. Cade was there, somewhere. Maybe in every single shot.

  With a sharp pang in her belly, she realized he was out there again. The first time, his parents carried him in the forest. They wanted to protect him from the world. And now, he’d gone back—why? To protect himself this time?

  Closing the folder, she didn’t hesitate. Instead, she dragged it into the trash bin, and erased it forever. The still air in her room suddenly felt stifling. A walk, what she needed was a walk. Heading down the front stairs, she was careful when she opened the front door.

  Stepping into the sunlight, she shielded her eyes and watched as the last of the news vans pulled away. There was one left at the corner. Far enough away that Dara felt safe walking onto her own front lawn.

  Scraps of trash littered the street like confetti. Black tire tracks stained the curb, but there was no permanent damage. It was like the siege had never happened. Just for fun, and how sad was it that she considered this fun, she decided to get the mail.

  It was stuffed with magazines and bills. Kind of funny that the postal service still delivered the mail, even when the Porters couldn’t get down the drive to check it. Fingering through the envelopes, a glint of metal on the ground caught her eye.

  Dara picked up the brass button. Unremarkable, in every way, she put it in her pocket anyway. A souvenir from the plague year in her yard.

  When she looked up, she realized the last reporter was heading straight for her. For a moment, she was torn between running and standing her ground. But there was no camera this time. No microphone. And the reporter actually stopped a few feet away. It was nice to have some space.

  “Hi, Dara?” the reporter asked. “I know I’m probably the last person you want to see . . .”

  “It’s okay,” she said. And it was.

  Now that Cade was gone, they couldn’t do anything anymore. They had nothing to chase, and no story to tell. Since Dara had no intention of talking about the secret things—their private moments—it didn’t matter if somebody from a small town paper wanted to get a quote.

  The reporter rewarded her with a thoughtful smile. “Thanks. Thank you for that. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts about where Jonathan Walsh might be right now.”

  None, Dara thought. Because she didn’t know a Jonathan Walsh. That name belonged to a face in an old photograph. To another time, and another life, and other people’s decisions. That was a little boy who’d once had a birthday party with balloons and cake, friends and family . . . then disappeared entirely.

  Jonathan Walsh was a stranger. He always would be. So without the slightest bit of guilt, Dara shook her head. “I don’t. I have no idea, I’m sorry.”

  There was never just one question. The reporter nodded, then followed. “Now that the hunt is on, do you have something you’d like to say to him when we find him?”

  Just then, the wind kicked up. It was cold, and it carried blossoms off the trees. White flecks swirled through the street, beautiful to look at. But they smelled off—that was the ugly trick to a flowering pear tree. Pristine, pale, and pretty—bound up with the scent of decay. Dara tried not to breathe it. And she tried not to react to the word when. The certainty of it.

  The press had driven away, but they hadn’t disappeared. They had to follow the story. And now, the story was Primitive Boy escapes! As if he’d busted out of the zoo to prowl the countryside.

  Folding the mail against her chest, D
ara looked past the reporter. All down the street, petals fluttered to the ground. It was never going to stop. It might change shape, there might be new details, but this would never stop until there was nothing left to find.

  Because she was quiet a little too long, the reporter prodded. “Dara?”

  That was it, then. She’d have to end it. She hoped her thoughts didn’t show on her face, but even if they did, who could translate them? They were too specific. Exact and unknowable, they fired her from within. Her bones and body were ready to move, run even. But first, she spoke.

  “I don’t think you’ll find him, so no. Thank you, though.”

  Dara refused to hear anything else. She jogged up the walk to her door. And just outside it, she pulled the brass button from her pocket. Then she flipped it into the yard, to disappear among the mulch. She didn’t need a souvenir.

  And she was going to make sure no one else had one, either.

  Nature moved faster than most people realized.

  Cade was plenty aware of it. Rolling to his feet at dawn, he ached. But he couldn’t laze around. In his absence, animals had moved into the cave. Marked with urine and scat, it had to be scoured out.

  Cutting down a fir branch, Cade shook the spiders from it. Then he carried it inside, brushing the cave floor and the walls. Evergreen sweetened the air, but only a little. It would take air and exposure and time to really improve it. After the long run home, he realized he didn’t have the strength to move south. Not yet.

  So he unpacked his things, and slept a little. When he woke, he started to clean.

  Cade kept his arm as still as he could. It was awkward, trying to work left-handed. But the thick, scabbed edges on his chest pulled when he moved. Beneath that, the muscle felt dangerously liquid. Bright sparks of pain shot up occasionally, threatening to spread. He’d done too much—climbing, trying to swing through the trees.

  Stupid, he thought.

  He should have known a wound like that hadn’t really healed yet. Just because the surface had closed didn’t mean it was better.

  In town, he’d never had to exercise it. Food came on plates, and stairs walked for you. He’d been in a cocoon. Now he was soft and weak, and had to wait out the injury. Hopefully, when fall came, he’d be able to hunt. Until then, he’d have to make do with fish and foraging.

  Lifting the furs on his pallet, he sighed. Bugs scurried out, hiding from the light. He hadn’t been there to shake them out, or to dust them with dried cedar and sweet fern.

  They weren’t ruined, but he’d have to clean them before bed. That meant more fir branches to beat them, rope to hang them in the sun. The very thought of it exhausted him, and he was so, so hungry.

  “Should have brought some bacon,” he told himself. Ms. Fourakis’s fridge had been full of things. Bacon would have been good. Yogurt, too. Or cheese, or leftover dim sum. A piece of spinach pie. Even the eggs. Rows and rows of eggs, just sitting there. His stomach clenched with a growl.

  Walking outside, he used a notched stick to lift the cooler from its rope. It wouldn’t be bacon, but it would be fine.

  Peeling open the lid, he recoiled. A pungent, sour cloud engulfed him. The wild onions and leeks he’d collected weeks ago were ruined. Blackened with mold and disintegrating, they reeked. Next to them lay a pouch of pemmican. Sometimes it went bad, but Cade prayed. Not to any god in particular, just to the universe: Please, please, please.

  He untied the pouch, then gagged. A whiff of rancid grease was like a punch in the nose. So much for prayers—the universe didn’t meddle in the affairs of physics. Rot was rot, and his entire store of food was ruined. The cooler toppled when he stood. Just great. Something else to clean up, something else he had to replace.

  Rising slowly, he took in his camp. Small and compact, well-hidden. But the back of the cave was full of shattered secrets. Everything else had started the slide toward ruin. Though he didn’t want to admit it, his home was gone. He needed to move on. He needed his strength to do it, he needed food to make the journey. But he couldn’t stay long.

  Eventually, the rangers would stray across his path. They weren’t infected. He didn’t have to worry about that anymore. They probably wouldn’t shoot him. They didn’t need to steal his supplies, he understood that now.

  Cade’s chest tightened, anxiety that refused to subside. It was different because they knew about him. The whole, living, teeming world did. There were other people who remembered him now. Dr. O’Toole, Sofia. Josh for sure; that long, silent ride in the dark had imprinted them on each other. It was a pact they alone shared.

  And Dara.

  The words had been on his lips. He’d almost let them slip out. Come with me, he’d longed to murmur. Stay with me and be with me. But then she’d said stay. So beautiful with her eyes green like spring, so alive and matched to him perfectly.

  It was never clearer than at that moment. She couldn’t imagine living in his world. It wasn’t possible, even thinkable. And she couldn’t fathom how foreign and alien her world was to him. There was no middle. He couldn’t stay; she wouldn’t leave.

  So it was time to move.

  “Soon,” he said.

  He told the trees and the sky, and the fire pit that was wet from rain and needed to be shoveled out. He had to pack his furs and his tools. He needed water, enough food to get deeper into the woods. More rest, because his chest hurt and he didn’t have a cabinet full of pills to fix that.

  Weary, he picked up his water bladders and headed for the river. Soon, he said, and he meant it.

  “Tampons,” Sofia said.

  “I’m not staying out there for a year,” Dara replied.

  Ignoring her, Sofia stuffed some into the backpack. It already bulged like a tick. Rolls of clothes competed for space with a flashlight and a box of granola bars. Bug spray, bear spray, rope, all tied up in plastic garbage bags. Water purification tablets, Swedish steel, sunblock, and Benadryl.

  This time, she had real maps, too—paper ones. A compass and pencils, and a wind-up emergency radio. Finally, her cell phone, and a booster antenna. It was amazing how much she’d learned by doing it wrong the first time.

  She thrummed with nervous tension. Everybody from the park services to CNN were out there looking for Cade. They had a head start, and a crapload of equipment. More than that, they had an uncontrollable desire to get to their quarry first.

  But Dara had participated in a search before, when a man with Alzheimer’s had wandered away from his home in the night. Regimented, planned searches were slow. Methodical, they followed grids because that was the best way to cover all the ground.

  Lucky for Dara, she didn’t need to cover it all. Just the right bits of it. She pulled the laces tight on her boots, running over a mental checklist. “Hopefully, I’ll come back out near Whitley City. I’ll text you with my GPS coordinates.”

  Humming, Sofia rearranged the backpack a little. Then she straddled it. Without her weight, that thing was never going to zip up. Just another service provided by Dara’s friendly neighborhood best friend. “You’re my very own little geocache.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Yay for me,” Sofia replied with a grunt. The bag would close, or else.

  “I emailed you a bunch of notes and stuff. Everything I remember about getting to our camp. If you don’t hear from me in, like, three days, give it to my dad.”

  Sliding off the backpack, Sofia sprawled on the bed. “I really hate the sound of that.”

  “Then pretend I didn’t say it. For at least three days.”

  “Oh, aren’t you so very hilarious?”

  Dara flashed her a smile. “I try.”

  Hopping to her feet, Dara looked herself over. She had her layers. She had her supplies. She even had her evacuation plan. A sudden heat swept over her. Her skin flushed, and her breath thinned, but she pulled the backpack on anyway.

  Tightening the straps, she tried to calm herself. There was still an hour drive to get through, and she
would need that adrenaline.

  Footsteps echoed in the hall, and Dara turned to find Lia peering past the partially open door. Bounding over, Dara pulled the door open rather than slamming it shut. This so surprised Lia, that whatever sarcastic comment she was about to let loose just faded away.

  The sisters looked at each other. It was the ideal moment for Lia to lord over Dara. There was so much blackmail packed in Dara’s clothes and her obvious intentions. It wouldn’t just be car rides to school and back. This was enough leverage to own Dara. Rides everywhere! Never-ending free passes off dishwasher duty. Party covers for life.

  Lia slowly tipped her head back. They stared at each other. Not really waiting. Letting the quiet happen. Waiting for things to balance.

  Hands on her hips, Lia wrinkled her nose. “Nice boots.”

  “Thanks,” Dara replied.

  Sofia slid from the bed, but she knew better than to screw with delicate sister dynamics. Instead, she gathered her purse and her keys. La la la, nothing to see over there by the window, even though she couldn’t help but listen.

  “So anyway,” Lia said, waving lazily. “You’ll never guess who called.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  Lia made a face. “Kit. He said all the news vans are down at the rally point, but he’d forgive me if I would come give him the inside scoop.”

  “Jackass,” Dara muttered.

  “I was thinking maybe I’d go give them an interview. I mean, I have unique insight, don’t I? I’m completely objective, and I eavesdropped on you guys all the time.”

  Dara stiffened.

  “And it’s going to save them so much time if they start looking in the right place. I mean, you said yourself that his best bet was to start hitching I-75 North to Ohio.”

  It was a perfect lie. Totally plausible. Why wouldn’t she tell Cade how to get to Cleveland? Everyone wanted to believe he belonged in cities—they’d want to believe he fled to find his home. Dara threw her arms around Lia and squeezed her until she squeaked.