“I’m glad you almost died.”

I stopped, frowned, and turned to look at my brother Jethro over my shoulder.

“What did you say?”

His brown eyes stared back at me, his expression thoughtful and distracted.

“I said I’m glad you almost died.” He smiled a crooked smile and crouched next to the water’s edge. He picked up a flat, smooth stone and turned it over in his palm.

My eyebrows arched and I opened my mouth to respond, but then couldn’t think of anything to say. Eleven days had passed since my waltz with the raccoon, and eight days had passed since the episode with Drew at the Friday night jam session. Both felt momentous, but for different reasons.

One made me feel more alive and more aware of my surroundings.

The other made me feel muddled and scared and more aware of my surroundings (especially if those surroundings included Drew).

Instead of responding to Jethro’s disturbing statement, a sound escaped the back of my throat, similar to an Uhhhhhh.

Seeing or sensing my confusion, Jethro waved his hands through the air, still holding the stone, and shook his head. “No, no, no—you don’t understand, Ash. You’ve changed. We were worried about you. You’ve changed since the thing with the raccoon; it’s like you’re finally awake.”

“Oh,” I said, immediately understanding what he meant, because he was right.

My relationships with my brothers were becoming a real thing. I credited the raccoon attack for waking me up, but I also recognized that two other important factors had improved interactions:

1) I now used the downstairs bathroom exclusively; I’d surrendered to the fact that the upstairs bathroom was an ophthalmic hazard as well as dangerous for my blood pressure and mental wellbeing.

2) I made loud noises everywhere I went outside of the den, downstairs hallway, and kitchen. This consisted of banging pots and pans, singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” at maximum volume, and—if I was in a particularly goofy mood—shouting, “Ready or not, here I come!” If I announced my presence, the chances of walking in on a scheduled or unscheduled sausage-packing session decreased exponentially.

The summer heat was becoming autumn temperate. I took walks, sometimes more than once a day. I enjoyed the woods and all the beauty of the surrounding wilderness. I removed my shoes and waded into the stream behind our house, which was where I was now, out with Jethro, hopping from stone to stone in the stream.

It was Saturday and his day off; he was spending it with me. We’d spent most of the day in the den with Momma, then later in the kitchen making turkey potpie. I made the crust; he made the filling.

But for the last hour or so, we’d been quietly exploring the wilderness of our childhood, reliving old memories, visiting old haunts.

“Hey, so….” Jethro paused, his attention on the stone in his hand. “I ran into Jack again the other day. He asked about you.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah, you know, Jackson James, the dumbass that broke your heart in high school.”

I wrinkled my nose then snorted. “He might have broken my heart, but it’s not the way you think.”

“I remember, Ashley. You were pretty torn up about it. No one knows why.”

“First of all, I wasn’t in love with him; I didn’t like him that way.” I wiggled my toes and shuffled a few steps forward, aggravating the floor of the stream and causing a little sand cloud to float over my feet.

“Then why were you his girlfriend?”

I shrugged and glanced up at my brother. “Because he was nice to me, and everyone else was an asshole.”

He opened his mouth to respond then closed it. His eyebrows danced around a little on his forehead before he finally said something. “Well, you shocked the hell out of everyone when you chose him. And then he shocked the hell out of everyone when he dumped you.”

I sighed at the memory and twisted my lips to the side. I’d broken things off with Jackson—romantically—during our last week of high school. I’d explained to him that I didn’t see a future for us as boyfriend/girlfriend, but I’d desperately wanted to remain friends. I guess I misjudged his feelings because he told the whole school that he’d dumped me, which basically meant that the whole town knew within days.

Then he wrote me a letter telling me that he never wanted to see me or speak to me again.

Looking back on it now, it felt silly and ridiculous—high school, dumping, letters, rumors, drama! I no longer cared about who dumped who. I cared about losing my best friend.

“Hey! Where are you guys?” The sound of Billy’s voice calling through the woods pulled both our gazes in the direction of feet crunching on fallen leaves.

“Over here.” Jethro called back then turned to me, rolling his eyes. “Billy is the smartest guy I know, smarter than Drew even, but he doesn’t know shit about tracking in the woods.”

I smirked in response, my black skirt gathered in my hands as I stepped down from the stone and into the cool water. The stream was up to my knees and rushed past with purpose. Therefore my skirt—which fell to mid-calf when I wasn’t trying to keep it from getting wet—bared my legs to my thighs.

“I heard that,” came a stern response.

I stiffened and my head shot up, because the stern response was Drew’s voice, not Billy’s.

Drew and Billy finally emerged and, upon catching sight of their approaching forms, I turned away and walked further into the water. I felt confused and flustered. My heart was beating like it wanted to escape, and my neck was hot and itchy. I didn’t know where to look.

This was now my body and brain’s response to Drew, especially after our hallway conversation and our very disorienting maybe-friend-kiss.

Since our conversation at the jam session, Drew and I hadn’t talked much, not about anything of substance. But he no longer felt like an enemy or an entitled usurper.

He didn’t feel much like a friend either.

I continued to study him in the mornings. And in the afternoon if he was around. And in the evenings if he stayed for dinner.

All this watching and no speaking or touching had yielded a whole lot of mixed-up emotions.

Yet, somehow, watching him from afar felt a lot more natural than interacting with him up close. Maybe this was because on some level Drew felt like a fictional character, too good to be true, too perfect to be real. This nagged at me. I felt like I was missing something obvious, or maybe I hadn’t yet asked the right question to determine his ulterior motives.

Yes, I was a creeper, but I didn’t care. Drew brought these compulsions out in me, so he could just suffer through my leering and take it like a man.

Or a girl. Because, if there’s one thing a girl grows up learning how to do, it’s suffering through leering.

“Jethro, I need the keys to the Chevy,” Billy, always one to get down to business, hollered at us through the trees. He did this even though he was close enough to be heard if he’d employed a normal voice.

Growing up, Billy always seemed perplexed by the forest. He’d talk louder than necessary, do stupid stuff like throw rocks at beehives, and try to walk on stepping stones with his shoes on. It’s like the woods made him dumb.

“Butter on biscuits, Billy! I told you I hung the keys up in the kitchen.”

If I hadn’t been so disconcerted by Drew’s presence, I definitely would have given Jethro shit for saying butter on biscuits as a means to express his frustration. We’d all been raised with the notion that butter on biscuits was just as bad as the f-bomb.

I heard the footsteps retreat along with the sound of Jethro and Billy’s irritated voices and mild insults.

Jethro: “They’re right there on the hook, how could you miss them?”

Billy: “They’re not on the hook. I’m not blind. I can see your ugly face, can’t I?”

Jethro: “I don’t know, can you? You couldn’t find a tree in these woods.”

Billy: “I can too. See? That’s a tree.” I heard him smack it for emphasis.

Jethro: “That’s not a tree, dummy. That’s a bush. I’ll give you five dollars if you can find a leaf.”

I pressed my lips together and laughed to myself. Their bickering was nearly constant. They reminded me a bit of the roosters in our backyard, crowing at each other just for the sake of crowing.

I hiked my skirt higher and crossed to the other side of the riverbank. The bottom of the stream was sandy in some spots, rocky in others. I walked slowly, enjoying the feel of the cool water coursing between my legs and the quiet sounds of the forest.

I should have felt peaceful and at ease, but I didn’t. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled and a shiver raced down my spine. Instinctively, I glanced around and over my shoulder, finding the source of my disquiet.

Drew stood in Jethro’s abandoned spot. His thumbs were hooked in his belt loops, his white T-shirt was tucked into the waist of his blue cargo pants, and he was wearing the thick brown belt with the large buckle that spelled SAVAGE.

And he was watching me. His face was neutral except a whisper of a smile curving his lips and lighting his eyes.

My gaze widened, surprised to find him on the other side of the bank. My steps faltered and stopped. We stared at each other silently, and the song of a nearby bird filled the air.

When the bird finished its solo, Drew lifted his chin—this had the effect of hooding his gaze—and said, “Good to see you out of the house again.”

I gave him a tight smile. “And not being chased by a rabid raccoon, right?”

“Right.” His grin widened and he nodded once. “So, you call your girls yet?”

My tight smile became soft and sincere. “Yes. Yes I have. Thank you again for that.”

I knew he was referring to my knitting group back in Chicago. The first thing I’d done after logging on to the Internet was send off several emails to my friends, letting them know how things stood, how I was, and apologizing for not contacting them earlier.

Since then I’d Skyped once with my friends Janie and Fiona, once with Elizabeth, twice with my friends Marie and Kat, and two times with Sandra and her husband Alex (who I also considered a close friend). Alex shared my passion for novels and, therefore, we were frequently arguing the merits of one author or another. He’d just finished re-reading one of my favorites, Lonesome Dove, and was eager to debate the virtues of a happy ending versus a true-to-life ending.

He preferred a happy ending. I preferred a true-to-life ending. We argued about this often.

“No need to keep saying thank you.” Drew shrugged, his eyes serious. “Whatever you need.”

I felt suddenly shy and we fell silent again. I looked away, though I was sure he was still watching me. I let myself steal a glance at him from the corner of my eye and found I was right. In fact, his eyes were on my legs; specifically, where my skirt was hiked up to my thighs.

My bizarre burst of shyness was joined by an abrupt dose of self-consciousness.

Not helping matters, Drew picked that moment to say, “‘My friend must be a bird, because she flies...’”

I stilled, aware of the sound my heart was making between my ears, and swallowed the rising sensation of delicious disquiet down, down, down.

Of course, I recognized the words he’d just said as the beginning of a poem. But the original Emily Dickenson poem was about a he, not a she; as in, My friend must be a bird, because he flies. It was a love poem, and it stirred something in my stomach and chest. The forest felt close and overwhelming, like I was being wrapped in a blanket of tree trunks and leaves.

Yet I managed to clear my throat and recite the next line: “‘Mortal, my friend must be, because he dies’.”

I could hear the smile in Drew’s voice when he continued, “‘Barbs has she, like a bee. Ah, curious friend…’”

I lifted my eyes and held his. We finished the poem together, saying in unison, “‘Thou puzzlest me’.”

Drew’s smile was immense. I returned it because I was randomly powerless against the sight of him. He was bathed in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees and casting him in a golden glow. So, basically, he was dazzling.

After a long moment, looking at him made my chest hurt, so I moved my attention elsewhere and said, “What? No Nietzsche quotes today?”

“How about this one: ‘Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine’.”

I smiled at the water and nodded. “That’s a good one. I can’t stand the guy. But I admit that’s a good quote.”

“What’s not to like? His well-constructed arguments against the insanity of group think and forced societal mediocrity? Or is it his magnificent mustache you can’t stand?”

My eyebrows lifted, though I kept my attention affixed to the water’s surface. “Nietzsche didn’t have a mustache.”

“Yes he did.”

“No, that wasn’t a mustache. That was the pelt of a moderately sized woodland animal and a lifestyle choice.”

Drew’s laughter filled the air, danced around my head, and landed softly on my ears. I was gratified to hear it, a deep belly laugh that—paired with his behavior the night of the jam session—further contradicted my earlier estimation of him as joyless. His laughter receded, leaving me with rosy cheeks, flushed with pleasure, and a wide grin claiming my mouth.

Since I was on a roll, I added, “I like this one too: ‘Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood’.”

I glanced at Drew and regretted it. The force of his gaze nearly knocked me over. I frowned at his expression and tore my eyes away. I decided to vehemently occupy myself by studying the pebbles on the bed of the translucent stream, separating the orange rocks from the others with my toes.

But my feet halted their movements when I heard him recite several lines of poetry:

---

“Fire burns blue and hot.

Its fair light blinds me not.

Smell of smoke is satisfying, tastes nourishing to my tongue.

I think fire ageless, never old, and yet no longer young.

Morning coals are cool; daylight leaves me blind.

I love the fire most because of what it leaves behind.”

My frown deepened because I didn’t recognize the poem. I dared to give him a curious glance. His returning gaze felt heavy somehow, demanding and fierce in a way I couldn’t immediately grasp; or maybe I wasn’t ready to understand.

Regardless, I asked the question that was on my mind. “I don’t recognize that one. Who wrote it?”

Drew removed his thumbs from his belt loops and stuffed his hands in his pockets. His gaze still unnerving in its intensity, he shrugged and said, “I wrote it.”

My mouth dropped open slightly in surprise, and I blinked at his admission. “You wrote it?”

He nodded.

“You write poetry?”

He nodded again, glanced at the toes of his boots, then at back me.

I thought about the poem, or at least the lines I could remember. If I’d known he was going to recite one of his own, I would have told him to hold that thought so I could write it down, pick it apart later, and memorize it. I never, in one million years, would have guessed that Drew was a poet.

It seemed he had a gift for shocking the butter off my biscuits.

In what felt like a sudden departure, but what might have been after several minutes of me staring at him completely dumbfounded, Drew tossed his thumb over his shoulder and said, “I need to head out. I’ll see you later.”

With that, he turned to leave.

My heart did a weird clenching thing in my chest and my feet moved toward him without me telling them to do so. When I realized that I was basically chasing after him, dredging my legs like heavy weights to the edge of the stream, I instructed my body to cease and desist the pursuit.

But before I could stop my mouth, I blurted a question at his retreating back. “What does the fire leave behind? Destruction? Death?”

Drew didn’t respond until he was almost out of sight. Then he turned and, walking backward for a few steps, he called out, “Ash—the fire leaves ash.”