Some Kind of Animal

by Maria Romasco-Moore

  She found me, finally. Dropped down out of a tree one night when I was searching, scared me half to death. I cried with relief and tried to hug her, but she just bit me, gently, on the shoulder and then ran off, slowing only long enough to let me catch up.

  Since then, she won’t step foot inside Lester.

  Our current meeting spot is a big sycamore at the far edge of Queen of Heaven. The cemetery’s not too far from Savannah’s house, though Lester is only about a mile across, so nowhere is too far from anywhere, really. When I reach the tree, I climb up through the broad branches until leaves blot out the sky. Lee made a rough hammock up here a few years back by looping thick rope between two branches.

  She’s not here now. I knew it was unlikely.

  I point Savannah’s phone at a small hollow in the trunk, about squirrel-sized, right above one of the hammock branches. The weak light of the screen glints off a couple of nails, a brown knit cap, and a blue plastic horse with a chewed-off hoof.

  My sister has stashes like this all over the national forest. Somewhere, I know, she’s got a big winter coat stowed. It’s a man’s coat that she stole or found somewhere. She’s got some tights, too, that I gave her, and some of my old shoes for when the temperature dips below freezing.

  I could use one of the nails maybe, scratch a message in the trunk of the sycamore, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to sneak out again. This might be my last chance for a while.

  So I do something I haven’t done in ages. I take a deep breath, open my mouth wide as it will go, open my throat, and I howl.

  Long and loud. A big round vowel sound that would make the chorus teacher proud. I tend to sing quiet in chorus. But out here I let loose. Put all my air behind it.

  I think of Lee, of Henry, of Savannah, of Aggie and Jack and Margaret and the pastor, of Lisa and all the kids who hate me, of everything that’s gone down in the last day and a half, and I put that behind it too.

  When I run out of air, I breathe deep and I do it again.

  AAAAAAOOOOOUUUUUUUUU is how it sounds, more or less.

  Free, is how it feels. Like my voice is running barefoot through the woods.

  If my sister is near, she’ll hear it. She’ll know it’s me. She’s the one who taught me to do it, when we were kids. Who threw her head back and let out a sound so big it seemed like it couldn’t have come from a girl so small.

  When I’m out of breath, throat ragged, I scramble down from the tree and run toward the center of the cemetery. From there I can see the tree line all along the border of Queen of Heaven.

  I don’t know if she’ll come. Even if she was close enough. Even if she heard me.

  I wait, scan the trees, heart pounding.

  In the beginning, my sister’s appearances were always unpredictable. Some nights she would come, some nights she wouldn’t. I would often wait like this, standing at the edge of Grandma Margaret’s backyard.

  I blink and then there she is, melting out of the trees.

  She’s at the opposite end of the cemetery, closer to the processing plant than to Myron’s house, just a pale smudge against the dark of the forest.

  I run toward her, weaving around gravestones. I look down once to keep from stumbling. When I look back up she’s gone.

  I push myself up to full speed, sprinting like hell. I skid to a stop at the edge of the trees, duck under a branch, crash into the underbrush. She’s waiting for me just beyond the first layer, standing with her knees slightly bent, one hand resting on a thin tree.

  “Lee,” I say, fumbling to pull the phone out of my pocket. “I need to talk to—”

  She’s off again, running.

  “Wait!” I shout, scrambling after her. The ground slopes swiftly upward, so I have to climb instead of run, grabbing rocks and roots and thin trees to haul myself up.

  Up ahead, Lee stops and watches me. She doesn’t usually show her feelings the way other people do. She smiles sometimes, sure, or snarls, but she tends to default to blank. I’ve got to look at her posture, how she’s standing. Right now she’s holding herself tense, ready to bolt again. She’s jiggling her left leg. This is a game.

  I scramble up the last few feet between us, lunge forward, but she’s too fast for that, she’s off again. Her legs flash in the dark, that piece of loose lace still trailing from her hem.

  I run after her. At the bottom of the hill the ground is crowded with plants, but the higher we go up on the ridge, the more the forest floor clears out, like it’s making way for something. Making way for us, maybe.

  The dirt feels more real than pavement. My sister runs barefoot, with calluses hard as hooves, but even through my shoes I feel it. The give of the soil. The rise and fall of the hills. Slick fallen leaves. Little sticks cracking like bones.

  I’m matching my sister’s pace now, weaving through the trees at the top of the ridge. She’s still ahead of me, but then she feints left. Acting on instinct, I veer right. Lee doesn’t look back to see if she fooled me. Trusting that she did, she makes a hard right.

  I throw myself at her, tackle her sideways to the ground. She yowls, trying to wrench herself free.

  Her heart purse knocks against my leg. I brought that to her when we were seven. It’s made of translucent, glittery plastic. She’s replaced the strap, which broke off ages ago, with a length of rope so she can wear it strapped across her chest. “Hold still!” I shout at her.

  I twist my fingers into the fabric of her dress. She jabs me with her elbow. Flashes of last night. Has she lost her mind? “Stop it,” I say. My voice is hoarse, comes out half whine. “I just want to talk to you.”

  My sister twists herself around and closes her mouth, carefully, over my left wrist. She doesn’t bite down. Just rests her teeth on the skin. My wound throbs from the pressure. I hold my arm as still as possible, but I don’t let go of her dress.

  “That boy,” I say. “That was Henry. I’ve told you about him. He’s my friend.” My sister grunts. I feel the vibration, painfully, in my wrist. There a twig poking me in the hip but I don’t move. This close, I can see how Lee’s collarbones jut sharply from the ragged lace collar of her dress. I can see the scratches on her arms from branches and thorns. I don’t think my sister even notices scratches like that anymore. She always has so many.

  “You could have killed him,” I say.

  She doesn’t answer. She’s turned away from me, so I can’t see her face, but she doesn’t even flinch.

  “Were you trying to kill him?” I demand. “Why?”

  “He hurt you,” she says.

  “No,” I say. I squint at her, trying to determine from her body language whether she’s being honest. “No, you don’t believe that. You’re not that stupid, Lee. I know you.”

  No response. Savannah said Henry was stable, so I hope that means he’s out of danger. Still, he’s got a weak heart. He died once when he was younger. Didn’t see anything.

  Just darkness.

  “People think it was me,” I say. “If you’d killed him, they would have put me in jail.” I don’t know if that’s true. It might be. “They would have locked me up and I would never be able to see you again.”

  That gets to her, finally. At least she still gives a shit about me. She releases my wrist, turns to look me in the eyes.

  “Run away,” she says.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Lee?” I scoot backward, clutch my wrist protectively to my chest. “You really hurt me, you know. Why were you even there? Did you follow us?”

  She stares at me so hard I swear I can feel it on my skin. The moon is bright. There’s a fresh cut on her cheek. She must have nicked it on a rock when we were struggling. “Run away,” she says again. “Run away Aggie.”

  I sigh and sit back, brush leaves and dirt from my jeans.

  “The pastor’s watching me now
,” I say. “Because of what you did. He put a light on my window.”

  “Run away light.”

  “From the light. Run away from the light. You sound like an idiot.”

  My sister can talk right, but only if I force her to. She’s not stupid, not really. She can read. Only kid books, sure, and she prefers it when I read to her, but whatever. I used to make her play school with me. I’d teach her whatever I’d learned that day, give her quizzes, yell at her when she ran off in the middle of class. She was decent at memorizing things, repeating them back to me.

  Still, left to her own devices she prefers to use as few words as possible. As if words were a precious resource, to be hoarded, treasured, doled out begrudgingly if at all.

  “You sound like an idiot,” she says. Like an echo of me.

  “Well, you are acting like an idiot. What the hell is wrong with you? People saw you.”

  She flinches a little at that, but she must know. Must know, at the very least, that Henry saw her. Maybe she really did mean to kill him.

  “Run away,” she says. Her face twists up a little. If she were anyone else, I might think she was about to cry. But I’ve never seen my sister cry. Not once. “Please.”

  “I’ve told you. I just can’t.” It’s no use having this argument again, but it’s almost comforting, to fall back into our old patterns, as if last night hadn’t changed everything. “I’ve got school and stuff. I’ve got to—”

  “Run away from school,” Lee cuts me off, urgent. “Run away from Aggie. Run away from bar. Run away from everybody. Just you and me.”

  That’s practically a speech, by her standards.

  “I can’t leave,” I say, sighing. “They’ll send the police after me.”

  “Stop them,” she says.

  “I have a life, Lee. I have friends.”

  “Slut.”

  “What?”

  “Slut,” she repeats flatly.

  “Do you even know what that means?” I ask. But I think she does.

  And I think I must have been right, about what happened last night. She was jealous. Not of me kissing a boy. Of me being with anyone. She doesn’t want me spending time with anyone else. Just you and me.

  My sister doesn’t show her emotions well, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them. She must have been far more upset than I realized, when I said I was going to come see her less. More afraid, maybe, more lonely. I guess I can understand that, though it doesn’t justify what she did.

  “We’re going to go back to how it was before,” I say. “Okay? We managed before, didn’t we? I’ll still run with you on Saturday nights. And it’s just until we turn eighteen. After that, things will be different. Things will be better.”

  “No.”

  “But you can’t do anything like that again,” I continue, ignoring her. “You can’t hurt anyone.”

  “No.”

  “I mean it,” I say. “You can’t just attack people.”

  “No,” my sister says again, as if that’s the only damn word she knows. Maybe she’s scared, maybe she’s lonely, but she’s acting selfish and stupid and insane and I don’t know how to make her see.

  “If you do something like that again,” I say, “I’ll have to tell everyone about you. Then they’ll catch you. They’ll lock you up.”

  She jolts away from me. She doesn’t look angry, just terrified, and I immediately regret my words. Regret, too, what I’m about to do, even before I do it. She’s scrabbling backward, pushing herself up, ready to run.

  It’s too late to take it back. I fumble the phone out of my pocket, hold it up, stab at the screen. My hands are shaking. The camera flashes once, twice.

  Lee yowls, slaps the phone out of my hand, jumps at me, knocks me to the ground. She stands over me. Her eyes are wide, showing too much white. She is breathing too fast and too loud. She looks insane. Not like a girl at all, but like a wild animal.

  I’ve been scared of my sister before. The first time I saw her kill something with her bare hands, for instance. It was a squirrel, I remember, caught in one of the traps she’d set up around the forest. They were simple things, made of sticks and string and a loop of wire. They were supposed to snap an animal’s neck, but this squirrel had been caught by the leg instead. It was struggling, I remember, twisting around, trying to bite through its own leg to get free. Lee reached down with her small hands, her child’s strength, and she took the squirrel’s head in one hand and its body in the other and she gave a quick sharp jerk and the squirrel went still. I was only five and had never seen anything die before. Later, lying awake in my bed at home, I reassured myself that what my sister had done was, in its own way, a kindness.

  Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to her violence. We fight sometimes, wrestle as a game or out of annoyance with each other. Skinny or not, she is stronger than me. She usually wins, pins me to the dirt. Still, I’d always believed that she would never truly hurt me. Not badly. Not on purpose.

  After last night, I don’t believe that anymore.

  She stares down at me for another moment, then turns on her heel.

  “Wait,” I say, “I’m sorry.” I swing myself forward, grab at her, manage to grasp the lace at the hem of her dress, but she lunges forward and it rips away in my hand.

  I’m left sitting in the dark, alone, holding the tail of dirty lace.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I spend a while down on my knees, sifting through the dead leaves, until I find Savannah’s phone. I brush the dirt from it. The screen lights up okay. I don’t think it’s any more cracked than it was to start with, though it’s hard to say for certain.

  In the first picture I took, you can clearly see my sister’s face. She’s washed out from the flash and her eyes are shut. But it’s her. The second one is just her arm and shoulder, with some motion blur as she ducks out of the way.

  I feel guilty for threatening to tell people about her, felt guilty the moment I saw how scared she was, but she’s the one who should feel guilty. She’s the one who revealed herself. She’s the one who chose to attack Henry. She’s fucking up my whole life and she doesn’t even seem sorry.

  It was an empty threat anyway. Savannah is proof that I can barely reveal my sister’s secret even if I try. Maybe Savannah will believe me when I show her the pictures. I can hope.

  I put the phone back into my pocket. Of course now my night vision is shot. I blink hard at the trees around me.

  I’m definitely lost.

  I’ve spent a lot of time in these woods. I know their night faces. Their smells and sounds. How they change from season to season. But I couldn’t draw you a map. When I’m with my sister I never worry about where we’re going. She always knows the way.

  If we ran straight, and I know we didn’t, but maybe the lefts and rights balanced out somehow, then Queen of Heaven should be to the east.

  It’s a clear night and the stars hang bright as berries from the tops of the trees. I don’t see any constellations, so I jog until there’s more sky showing. I locate the Big Dipper, the North Star.

  I point myself in the right direction and run.

  When I finally emerge from the forest, I’m a long way from the cemetery, at the crest of a hill past the meat processing plant. The lights of Lester are spread out below me. I scramble down the hill into a drainage ditch. The weeds are tall and thick and I have to wade through them as if they were water.

  I could book it toward Savannah’s house, sneak back in her window, but the chance that the pastor is still waiting patiently out front, unaware of my absence, seems slim. I’ve been gone too long. Maybe Savannah even ran right out and told him. I wouldn’t put it past her. In any case, this might be my last chance for a while to move freely through the world, unwatched. I should take advantage of it.

  * * *

  —
<
br />   Henry’s house is bordered by forest, so it’s easy to get to without being spotted. I stand at the edge of his backyard, just within the shadow of the trees. Now that I’m here I’m not sure what to do.

  In the movies everyone is always throwing pebbles at windows. But I don’t know which bedroom is his. I throw a pebble and I’m probably twice as likely to get Jack’s window.

  I’m hatching a complicated plan that involves climbing onto the roof when I remember. Henry has a phone. I’ve seen him use it. And now, for once in my damn life, I have a phone too. I pull it out, scroll through the contacts. Savannah has Henry’s number. I have a quick stab of suspicion.

  I’m not proud of this, but I read their past texts. They’re all from last year, just a back and forth about a chemistry group project. Feeling relieved, and a little guilty, I text Henry.

  Hey, are you at home?

  Something hoots in the dark behind me. Something chitters. Something shrieks. The phone lights up.

  Yeah. They let me out of the hospital. Are you okay?

  I’m in the middle of typing a reply when another text comes through.

  Is Jo okay?

  My heart fucking soars.

  Can you come outside right now? To the backyard? Alone.

  Why?

  Please.

  The screen times out. There’s no reply. I’m thinking maybe I should tell him that it’s me, not Savannah, but then I hear a door open and shut. I squint into the darkness. There’s a figure padding around the side of the house. I tense myself, ready to run in case it’s Jack.

  But he steps forward, out of the shadow of the house, into the backyard, where the moon can touch him, and it’s Henry. Alone. He’s wearing camo-green pajama pants and an enormous gray cardigan.