Some Kind of Animal

by Maria Romasco-Moore

  “Poison?” Lee whispers, eyes still narrowed.

  “Yes,” I say, thinking fast. I can’t lie to my sister, but maybe I can stretch the truth. “They treat some things with dangerous chemicals.” That’s true, in a way. God knows what they use to manufacture this junk. Lee knows about chemicals, knows not to drink from Monday Creek because of them. “It’s so people don’t try to steal stuff. If they steal, they die.”

  And that’s true enough. If we stole, security would catch us. If my sister keeps messing with stuff, they will catch us and I will lose her forever.

  I’m afraid. Genuinely afraid, and she must be able to feel the truth of that, at least, because she gasps and struggles to pull off the skirt. I help her, replace it on the hanger.

  “We’ll be okay,” I tell her. She’s shivering a little. A few stray pine needles shake loose from her pocket and fall to the floor. “Just don’t touch anything else.”

  My sister nods gravely and lets me lead her away. She keeps her eyes down now. Savannah catches up to us by athletic equipment. Lee seems happy to see her. She doesn’t say anything, just shifts a little so she’s standing closer to Savannah as we walk.

  “Did you have any trouble?” I ask Savannah.

  “No,” she says, though she sounds as nervous as I feel. “You?”

  “Let’s just hurry,” I say. It takes all my willpower not to run.

  My heart is racing by the time we reach the camping aisle. I hand Lee my basket, tell her not to move a muscle, not to touch a thing. Savannah and I scan the tents until we find the cheapest one.

  I grab a lantern. A sleeping bag. Savannah gets a frying pan with a folding handle. Both our red plastic baskets are already overflowing. I snag a couple of cheap disposable rain ponchos.

  My sister has gone very still. She is staring toward the end of the aisle.

  The man is there. The same one as before. Pretending to look at the fishing gear. He glances over at us. I meet his eyes for a moment before he looks away.

  Shit. I grab Savannah’s arm, whisper into her ear. “Don’t look, but there’s a guy following us. Store security, I think.”

  She turns to look. “That guy?”

  “Dammit, Savannah, I said don’t look.” I force myself not to turn around. It’s not a coincidence. Four times is way too many. “We’ve got to go now.”

  My sister is reaching for a hunting knife in a plastic package, but she stops herself, fingers hovering at the edge of the shelf.

  “That’s poison,” I tell her. She drops her hand, shoulders sagging. I should have left her in the car. Locked her in. Let her scratch her fingers bloody trying to get out.

  “You need to take her outside,” I tell Savannah.

  Her eyes go wide. “I can’t do that.”

  “You’ve got to.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m going to buy this stuff. I’ll meet you.”

  I grab the basket of food from Savannah, grab the basket of camping stuff from my sister.

  “Lee,” I whisper to her. “Follow Savannah outside. You can trust her, okay? As soon as you’re out the doors, run.”

  * * *

  —

  I carry the baskets to one of the two open checkouts. It takes all my strength to keep my hands from shaking as I pile the items on the conveyor belt. I smile at the cashier.

  “Going camping?” she asks as she scans the tent.

  “Ha, yeah,” I say. “Astronomy club field trip.”

  “Oh yeah? You must know all the constellations.”

  I shrug.

  Somebody gets into line behind me and I know who it is. Even before I look, I know, but I look anyway. The man grabs a single pack of sugar-free gum, puts it on the conveyor.

  “You here by yourself?” the cashier asks.

  “My dad’s in the car,” I say, loud enough for the man to hear. “He didn’t want to come in.”

  The total comes to just over a hundred dollars. I pay with the hundred and one of the fifties.

  The cashier hands me the plastic bags containing my purchases. The tent already came in an oblong canvas bag with a zipper and a strap. She asks if I want that in a plastic bag, too, and I shake my head, wishing she’d hurry up. She hands it over, finally, and I sling it over my shoulder.

  “Have a nice day,” she says. “Hope you see lots of stars,” and I can’t stop myself. I run, skidding across the shiny linoleum, pumping my legs full-out to the doors.

  I whoosh through, burst out into the freedom of the cold night air, and keep running toward the car, bags banging against my legs.

  I’m halfway across the parking lot before I realize: the car is gone.

  I stop short, scanning desperately. I know exactly where it was parked: third row from the left, two spots down from a cart return. That space is empty. And the cars around it are not Jack’s car. An SUV, a pickup, but no beat-up gray Nissan-or-something with a big dent in the hood.

  I spot a gray car at the far end of the parking lot. My heart leaps and I run toward it, but I don’t get far before I see: there’s a bike rack on the back. Jack’s car did not have a bike rack.

  Jack’s car is gone.

  It’s really and truly gone. I stop again, spinning one way and then the other, panic growing.

  I glance back toward the store. The man is standing in front of the automatic doors, watching me. Watching like the pastor used to watch. Like Brandon even, back at the house of birds. The man is suspicious, the man knows I am up to no good. He is talking into a phone. Calling the police. Calling reinforcements. Calling it in.

  I can’t think. I don’t have time to think. I just run.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I huddle with my back to a brick building, breathing hard. It’s dark here. I’m shielded from the road by a bank of shrubbery and from the Walmart by the solid hulking mass of the building behind me. An empty parking lot stretches out in front of me. Any second now it will probably fill up with cop cars, lights screaming. It will fill up with searchers, hunters, flashlights, spotlights, guns. Every one of them pointed right at me.

  I try to slow my breathing and collect my thoughts. But instead I start crying. I squeeze my eyes shut, rub the heels of my hands against them until I see fireworks, flares in the dark.

  I couldn’t bear to drop any of the Walmart bags, even though they slowed me down. They’re all I have now.

  Savannah is gone. The car is gone. My sister is gone.

  They just left. They left me behind. I grind my hands harder into my eyes. Did Lee freak out and hurt Savannah? Did Savannah decide to turn us in? Did she just give up and turn back toward home?

  Hopefully the man from Walmart didn’t know who we were. Hopefully he wasn’t on the phone to Lester PD. Hopefully he just thought we were shoplifting. It would make sense. Three teenage girls, alone at this hour. I don’t actually know what hour it is, but it must be late. My sister’s time.

  But even if that man didn’t know who we were, even if he wasn’t calling it in, they will still be looking for us. They must be alerting every station in the state. They won’t stop until they find us. We stole a damn car. You don’t just get away with that. We need to run faster. We need to run farther. We need to go somewhere nobody can find us.

  Well, no, not we. It’s just me now.

  There are trees. To my left, across the wide parking lot. If I run I’ll be visible from the road. But maybe I could make it to the trees. Maybe the police aren’t here yet. Maybe they aren’t even coming.

  I push myself up into a lunge. Take a few deep breaths. Adjust the Walmart bags and the tent bag.

  One two three.

  I run. The bags swing wildly, knocking against my legs, slowing me down. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the street, headlights whizzing by. The trees seem so far away. A bag bangs i
nto my knee, and the plastic twists up, tightening around my arm. I stumble. The tent bag whacks me in the back.

  My leg starts buzzing and I cry out and tumble forward. I drop some of the bags, bang my knee on a cement parking curb. The buzzing feeling continues. A pinched nerve? Some kind of stroke? What the fuck?

  I writhe on the ground for a moment before I realize.

  Savannah’s phone.

  I push myself up, feeling like an absolute idiot, and pull the phone from my pocket. The caller ID says Dakota.

  “Savannah?” I whisper into the phone.

  “Where did you go?” her voice crackles back.

  “Where did you go?”

  “We’re in the car. Are you still at the Walmart? I circled back, but I didn’t see you.”

  “I had to run. I’m by some building.” I scan the parking lot, feeling exposed. There’s a sign at the far end, by the road. I squint, make out the words Wahama Senior High. That’s some irony, all right. I ran away and ended up at a high school. I tell Savannah to come and get me. I gather up the bags as best I can, ashamed of my panic, but angry, too.

  Moments later, headlights swing into the parking lot. I run to meet the car. Savannah brakes hard when she sees me.

  I open the door. My sister’s sitting rather primly in the middle of the backseat, holding the pine branch against one shoulder like an ersatz seat belt. She doesn’t appear to be hysterical, or even particularly upset, which I don’t understand. Less than an hour ago she was beating her head against the window.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I say to Savannah. I slide in beside Lee, dump my bags on the floor.

  “You said a guy was following us.”

  “So? You should have waited for me.”

  “Sorry,” says Savannah, though she doesn’t sound like she means it. She circles around the school parking lot and merges onto the main road. “Anyway, she was really freaked out. She kept repeating run over and over again and wouldn’t calm down until I said we could drive away and then come back for you.”

  “Jesus,” I say, surprised that my sister spoke to Savannah at all. “What if she’d jumped out of the car and run into traffic or something? Did you even think of that?”

  What if she’d attacked you? Tried to tear out your throat like she did with Henry?

  “Well, she didn’t. She’s fine.” Savannah turns around for a moment and smiles at my sister. “You’re doing fine back there,” she says, “right?” and her voice changes as she says it, becomes the kind of voice people use to talk to little children.

  I clench my fists, glance at my sister. I’m mortified on her behalf. Savannah shouldn’t talk to her like that, like she’s an idiot or an infant, but Lee doesn’t even seem to care. She’s looking at the back of Savannah’s head with the sort of warmth she usually reserves for candy bars.

  “Should I keep going south?” Savannah asks.

  Maybe Savannah really does remind my sister of someone else. Someone with black eyeliner, a small nose. Someone she knew a long time ago.

  It isn’t fair. I wanted them to get along. I wanted Lee to like Savannah. I always told her she would. But I didn’t want her to like Savannah better.

  “You abandoned me,” I say. Now I’m the one who sounds like a baby. I know I do. Savannah has no idea, though, how it felt back there, alone in that parking lot.

  “We didn’t,” says Savannah. She sounds annoyed now, too. “We came back for you.”

  “Yeah, well. You should have waited.”

  Savannah scowls at me in the rearview. I look away.

  “Let’s just get away from the river,” I say.

  Savannah pulls into the turn lane, makes a left down a side street.

  My sister drops the pine branch to rustle through the plastic Walmart bags. She digs around in one, comes up with the box of Pop-Tarts. I try half-heartedly to take it from her, but she jerks away from me, hugging the box close to her chest.

  “I still can’t believe you stole a car,” I say to Savannah. I mean it as a peace offering. I shouldn’t be mad at her. She was only trying to help.

  “Me neither,” she says with a small laugh.

  “Did you steal Dakota’s phone, too?”

  “Nah, she gave it to me. She wanted a new one.”

  My sister sniffs the Pop-Tart box, scratches at the picture on the front with her fingernails.

  “We should get rid of the phones,” I say.

  “What? Why?” Savannah sounds horrified.

  “They can probably track us.” It’s what Brandon said, back at the camper. I thought it was stupid at the time, but who knows. Maybe they can. Phones have GPS. They’ve got all kinds of things. People say Facebook listens to your calls so they know what ads to show you.

  “I’ll just turn it off,” says Savannah.

  My sister gnaws on the corner of the Pop-Tart box, spits out a wad of damp cardboard.

  “No,” I say, and I’m not thinking of GPS, not really. I’m thinking of Aggie. That other world. How easy it would be to pick up the phone, to say, No, I’ve changed my mind, I want to come home. “We need to get rid of them.”

  I pull Savannah’s old phone from my pocket, roll down the window, and throw it out into the dark.

  “What the fuck?” shouts Savannah, hitting the brakes, twisting in her seat to glare at me.

  “Keep going,” I say calmly. I’ll get rid of Dakota’s phone, too, when I get a chance. Savannah’s even more likely than me to have a moment of weakness. “We can’t stop.”

  “You’re as crazy as she is,” says Savannah, but she presses on the gas.

  “She isn’t crazy.” I glance at my sister. She’s still gnawing on the box, tearing up the cardboard with her teeth. Well, whatever. She isn’t crazy. She’s just who she is.

  I twist around and look through the back window. This road is dark. No streetlights. Just the occasional house or building whipping past between long stretches of trees. There are no police cars racing after us. No cars at all in fact. Not yet.

  “We need to get rid of the car, too,” I say.

  “That’s stupid,” says Savannah. “We can’t get rid of the car.”

  “Jack will probably report it as stolen, right? They’ll know to look for it.”

  “So? We need it.”

  She still doesn’t get it. I’m only just getting it myself, really getting it. We’ve got to be like Mama. Leave society behind for good. There’s no place for us there. I put a hand over her picture in my pocket.

  I can’t do this halfway. I’ve got to prove she was wrong about me.

  “We don’t need a car in the forest,” I say.

  “We’ll still need it to go places, though, won’t we? Like the store and stuff?”

  “We aren’t going to go places.”

  “What about for food?”

  My sister has successfully bitten through the Pop-Tart box, but she’s having trouble with the foil envelopes inside. She twists one, tries to tear it with her teeth.

  “You don’t understand,” I say. “You haven’t understood from the beginning.”

  “Well, you didn’t tell me anything.” Her voice rises to a whine. “How am I supposed to understand? Jesus, Jo.”

  “I told you not to come.”

  “Oh, don’t even start with that. I’m here, okay?”

  “This is for real, Savannah.”

  “I know.”

  I grab the foil package from my sister. She yelps. I rip the package open. The Pop-Tarts inside are broken and crumbly. I pull out a large sticky piece and hand it over.

  “This isn’t just some fun little getaway,” I say. “This isn’t a vacation.”

  Savannah whips around in her seat to look at me. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”

  “Watch the
road!”

  Savannah huffs, but she turns around.

  My sister tries to snatch the Pop-Tart box from me. I shove it back into one of the plastic bags, guard it with my feet. Savannah messes with the radio, switching from static to static to slightly different static.

  My sister returns to her pine branch, amuses herself by plucking off the needles one by one and throwing them at me.

  I stare out the window, into the dark.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for until I see it. And even then we’re about five minutes down the road before it really hits me.

  “Turn around,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Turn around. Just do a U-turn. The road is clear.”

  Savannah keeps driving straight ahead. She gives no indication that she even heard me.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” I say. “I’m just stressed out, okay?”

  No reply.

  “I really am sorry,” I say. “And I shouldn’t have told you not to come.” That’s a lie. “I’m glad you came. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” That’s not.

  Savannah still doesn’t say anything, but a moment later she makes a right turn onto a tiny side road. She stops, backs out, returns the way we came.

  “There,” I say, pointing, “turn there.”

  We pull into a small junkyard. Or at least I think it’s a junkyard. Maybe it’s just where rusty old cars instinctively go to die. Whatever the case is, there’s a lot of them, pointing this way and that, weeds growing up around them. Weeds growing through them in some places, branches poking out through broken windshields. Piles of twisted scrap metal here and there between the cars.

  There’s a small wooden structure at the far end with a light above the door. But there’s no light coming from inside the building. The junkyard itself doesn’t look nearly cared-for enough to warrant an overnight security guard. There’s not even a fence.

  I direct Savannah through the maze of vehicles, as far from the road as we can get. She pulls in between an ancient-looking pickup and an upside-down tractor, bumping over stones and branches. I dig around in the plastic bags at my feet until I find the lantern.