AS I MADE MY way through the forest, I’ll admit I was also straining for a familiar bark or whine. I hadn’t said a word about Kenjii since leaving the store. How could I without making it sound like I put her on the same level as Hayley.
I love animals, but I know they aren’t people. I can’t value them the same way. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t sick at heart over Kenjii. So as I walked through those woods, I was listening for her as much as I was listening for Hayley.
It was Hayley I heard, though. Stomping on dead leaves. Muttering under her breath. Kicking aside fallen branches.
Signs of a trap? Or just Hayley, pissed off because she’d escaped and there was no one around to rescue her?
A few days ago, I’d have gone with option two. Now, though, I couldn’t see Hayley being so careless.
I shimmied up a tree and waited for her to pass my way. But once she got close enough for me to see her through the branches, she sat down to rest. When she didn’t come closer, I started crawling along a branch, planning to cross to the next tree.
She started to look up, then caught herself, waited a moment, gave a loud sigh and slumped back against the trunk, giving her an excuse to look up.
I waited until she looked up, then bent to catch her gaze. She held mine and mouthed “trap,” ending it with a yawn to fool anyone watching.
I looked around. I might still be able to rescue her. Whoever was watching couldn’t be too close.
Hayley rose a couple of inches from the ground, rubbed her butt, and scowled, as if she’d sat on a root or a rock. She got up and made some noise, kicking the ground then shaking a young oak, dead leaves rustling. In other words, assuring her captors that she was trying to attract our attention. Then she walked beneath my tree and sat down again.
She picked up a stick and began idling poking around a patch of bare earth. Then she wrote “Don’t be stupid.” She erased it, doodled a bit, then wrote, “I’m fine.”
I hesitated, but she was right. It was a trap and my chances of foiling it were slim to none. If I got caught, could I trust Daniel not to come after me? No. Could I trust Corey and Sam to make it to safety alone? No.
Finally, I shimmied back along the branch to the trunk. As the needles rustled, Hayley nodded. Then she wrote, “Thanks for trying,” rubbed it smooth, got up, and walked away.
Hayley had sacrificed her freedom so we could escape. She’d refused to let me try to rescue her. If someone told me a week ago that Hayley Morris would do this, I’d have said he was crazy. Or naive, because clearly she had an ulterior motive.
Had she changed? I didn’t think so. The answer was simpler: I’d been wrong about her.
If I’d had a nemesis at school, Hayley was it. Always insulting me. Always challenging me. Always doing her best to run me down, while I’d stood firm and refused to stoop to her level.
Clearly, she was the aggressor and I was the victim. Only … well, it hadn’t started out that way. Back in grade five, I’d caught her cheating. I hadn’t tattled. Maybe, in retrospect, that would have been better, because what I did instead was make it very clear that I wanted nothing more to do with her.
When you accept a leadership role, you take on extra responsibility for your actions toward others. If you shun someone, the effect will trickle down through those who value your opinion. It wasn’t as if Hayley was an outcast. She had her friends, and she was the queen of the “pretty girl” clique. In a bigger school, that would have been enough. In Salmon Creek, it wasn’t.
I remembered what she said about flirting with Rafe to make Corey jealous. I remembered, too, what Rafe had said. That Corey might make out with Hayley at parties, when he could claim he was just drunk and horny, but he’d never actually date her, because his friends—namely Daniel and me—didn’t get along with her. I’d told myself Hayley had been using Corey, too—he was her backup when no summer boys were around. Now, knowing she’d wanted to make him jealous, I realized I’d been wrong.
I’d been wrong about a lot of things. Not just Hayley. I’d misjudged Rafe. Nicole, too. I’d been so sure of my judgments that I’d never questioned them even when the evidence suggested I was wrong.
I’d always thought of myself as an open-minded person. I had no patience with anyone who put down other kids because of their race, religion, or sexuality. But that’s just one kind of open-mindedness. There’s another kind, too, the kind that’s willing to see people for who they really are and admit when you were wrong about them. That’s the part I still need to work on.
I climbed down the tree and started making my way back to the others. I had to put aside my worries for now. Our pursuers could be anywhere. I needed to be careful.
When I was almost back, I heard branches snap as someone barreled through the woods.
I ducked behind a fallen tree. A dark shape sprang, then stopped short, just out of sight. A whine.
Kenjii.
I nudged aside branches until I could see her. She was still wearing the muzzle. A length of rope trailed behind her.
I closed my eyes to listen for the sound of anyone else. More twigs snapped as Kenjii caught my scent and raced around the fallen tree.
I grabbed her and held her close, whispering, “Shhh,” as I kept looking and listening.
Kenjii nudged me, as if to say, That’s no welcome.
I pulled the rope in. The end wasn’t broken, as I’d hoped, but as I ran it through my fingers I saw red smears. I took a better look. Blood. Someone had been holding her and Kenjii had wrenched so hard she’d scraped the skin from his hands as she broke free.
I hugged her. “They couldn’t hold you, huh? Good girl.”
“Maya?”
I stood. It was Sam, coming through the trees. Daniel and Corey appeared behind her. Seeing the dog beside me, Daniel grinned.
“We got one escapee, at least,” he said.
“Only one,” I said as I tugged off the muzzle. “I found Hayley. She managed to communicate with me. It was a trap. There was no way…” I took a deep breath. “I wanted to try rescuing her anyway, but she said no.”
“Too bad dogs can’t talk,” Sam said.
I glanced over at her.
“Um, we’re all feeling bad about Hayley,” Corey said. “Don’t interrupt by wishing we could question the dog.”
“That’s not what I meant. Hayley could tell you it was a trap. He can’t.”
“Kenjii’s a she,” I said.
“Whatever. My point is that your dog has conveniently escaped, just like Hayley did. You don’t think that’s a trap?”
“If it is, then we’ve already been caught.” I looked around. “Huh. I don’t see the guys with guns yet.”
“Because they’ve put a tracking device on her. Or in her.”
I removed the rope. Then I took off her collar and handed it to Daniel to check while I ran my fingers over her, looking for tender spots.
“It’s clean,” Daniel said, handing me back the collar. “If she was still wearing the muzzle and rope, then they—”
“—wanted it to look like she really escaped,” Sam said.
“There’s blood on the rope,” I said. “That means she pulled free from whoever had her.”
“Or they’re very detail-oriented.”
“Oh, please,” Corey said. “Seriously?”
I turned to Sam. “So what do you suggest?”
“Tie her to a tree and keep going.”
I stared at her.
“I hope you’re not serious,” Daniel said.
“How about we tie you to a tree?” Corey said.
“It’s a dog,” Sam said. “I understand it’s Maya’s pet—”
“No, you don’t understand,” I said, barely able to get the words out. “I wouldn’t tie any animal to a tree and leave it to die. Any animal. And certainly not my dog. She trusts me to look after her. I will not break that trust.”
“I’m not saying we tie her and leave her for good. If she’s tagged, they’ll find her. If not, we can come back after—”
“After she’s died of dehydration? Or been eaten by the first hungry cougar or bear that comes along and finds dinner staked out for it?”
Sam backed up and crossed her arms. “This isn’t about doing what we want. It’s doing what we need to survive. You think you’re the only one who’s had to make hard choices?”
“We just made a hard choice,” Corey said. “We left Hayley—”
“There’s a reason I don’t have pets,” Sam went on. “I found a kitten once. I took it from place to place as we ran … until the day we had to run without going back home. My parents said she’d find a way out of our apartment. I’m not sure of that. But there was nothing else to do. Hard life. Hard choices.”
My parents would have made sure the cat got out, called a neighbor from a pay phone or something. As I looked at Sam, though, I knew she wouldn’t agree. She’d been raised to avoid risk at all costs.
“Sam has a point,” I said.
“What?” Corey said. “No way.”
Daniel shot me a questioning look. Not questioning why I was going along with Sam, but wondering what alternative I had in mind, because he knew there was no way in hell I’d leave Kenjii behind.
“She could be tagged,” I said. “And as we agreed earlier, not all of us need to get to safety. That means not all of us need to stay with Kenjii. I’ll take her. You guys go another way.”
Once again, our great escape devolved into chaos, which could be summarized as: “You can’t do that.” “Yes, I can.” “I know you’re upset—” “I’m not upset. We have a problem and I’m solving it.” Expand. Mix. Repeat until one party wears down and surrenders. That party wasn’t me.
Actually, I was surprised by how quickly Daniel gave in. Well, “quickly” being relative. But he did fold fast enough for me to suspect he didn’t plan to actually let me go off alone. So I kept my ears tuned for signs I was being followed. But I didn’t hear any. He’d realized this was the best solution for all.
I’d sent Daniel along the road, which seemed to be slowly veering inland. I stuck to a direct route south, through the woods. Soon I found an even narrower dirt road.
It was dusk when I came across a couple of cottages. They were little more than shacks. Both uninhabited. One was completely empty. The other had furniture. So I broke in and, no, I didn’t feel guilty about that. Couldn’t.
As I discovered, though, the only thing in that cabin was the furniture. No phone. No canned food. I had pop and energy bars from the store, though, so I decided to eat them at the table, which felt oddly comforting. I shared with Kenjii, as I’d done with all my rations.
By the time I finished eating, night had fallen. I considered spending it on the double bed. It was just a bare mattress—a stained and soiled one—but my muscles ached from sleeping on the cold ground, and I’d be better able to escape pursuers with a decent sleep. So I gingerly stretched out, using Kenjii as a pillow.
As everything got quiet, there was only one thing left to do. Think about what happened at the store today. Think about what that man said.
Calvin Antone. My father. I hated the sound of that. Even “biological father” wasn’t much better. As for “bio father,” I’d never used the term, even in my mind. Probably because I never thought about the man who’d fathered me.
I did think about the woman who’d given birth to me. I couldn’t help it. She’d abandoned me. Now, I’d learned that I had a twin brother, and she’d kept him. It didn’t matter if Rafe was right and she’d split us up for our own safety. She’d still chosen which child she wanted to keep, and there had to be a reason—maybe I cried more, maybe I fussed more, maybe she decided she’d rather have a son—but some thought process must have gone into it. She’d chosen him and rejected me.
I flipped onto my stomach and made a noise in my throat that sounded a lot like a growl.
I didn’t want to feel anything toward my biological parents, positive or negative. I remember once my mom showed me an online forum for adopted kids. If I wouldn’t share my angst with her and I wouldn’t share it with a counselor, maybe I’d be comfortable with this. What she couldn’t seem to understand was that I had no angst. On those forums I saw kids bitching about their adoptive parents and how much better their biological ones might have been, and I realized I had nothing in common with them.
I was sure there were others like me—who wouldn’t trade their adoptive parents for anything—but those kids were doing fine, living their lives, just like me. They weren’t complaining on Internet forums.
Now I had angst. Not only had my biological mother rejected me, but Rafe also said she had light hair and hazel eyes, even if she had to be at least part-Native because of the skin-walker blood. I’d grown up thinking I was one-hundred-percent Native, and finding out I wasn’t threw me off balance.
Then I’d met my biological father and he wasn’t just the sperm donor I’d imagined. Apparently, he was the parent who hadn’t rejected me. He said he’d been searching for me since I’d been born. Then he found me, and he’d been there ever since, somewhere, watching me grow up.
Did I believe his story? I didn’t want to. I wanted him to be lying, to be evil. Otherwise, he really had wanted me and when we finally got a chance to meet, he was on the side of the people chasing me. He was my father, and he was my enemy. He claimed to care for me, and he killed the guy I cared about. He wanted to give me a better life, and he seemed hell-bent on destroying the great one I already had.
So yes, I had angst.
More than angst, because when I thought about my biological parents, it forced me to think of the one thing that worried me more than anything else. The one thing I’d been struggling so hard not to think about. My mom and dad.
They thought I was dead. Dead. What were they going through? How were they coping? Were they safe?
Angst. Fear. Stark, gut-twisting terror. It didn’t make for an easy sleep.
I tried to clear my head, but when I did, I realized how horrible this cabin was. Even Kenjii’s dog smell wasn’t enough to mask the stench of the mattress.
There was no place better to sleep inside. I left the cabin and walked until I was so exhausted that I didn’t care how hard the ground was. Then I curled up with my dog and fell asleep.