Twenty Years Ago

They made a careful return to the front entrance of the cave, Jake guiding Harper step by step on where to stand and walk so as not to leave a trail. After they’d returned, he went back into the second cave and the cliff ledge to retrieve the clothing they’d left there before their dive. When he returned, Harper had pulled their extra shirts out of the pack.

Once they’d dressed again in dry clothes, Jake insisted on checking Harper’s abraded wrists beneath the plastic bandages she wore. He was pleased to see the signs of Emmitt’s cruelty healing. He thought of suggesting that he doctor her again, cleaning the cuts in the waterfall and applying the ointment and bandages that he’d brought. It was a good excuse to touch her. But she stood close as he inspected her wrists, and he could smell her skin and the soap they’d used in the river, and his body was again reacting like it had a mind of his own. Instead, he gave her the ointment and bandages, and told her to go and wash and dress the cuts. When she returned, he’d steeled himself.

“I’m going out for a little bit, just to look around,” he said.

“Let me go with you. Please?” she added when she noticed his stern expression at her request.

“I’ve got to sweep our trail from the river, just to make sure.”

“But we were so careful coming back up!”

“I know, but . . . if you come with me, it’ll just cause the problem all over again,” he stated in a rush of frustrated honesty.

“Oh. You mean because of my lead feet,” she sighed, looking hopeless.

“You’re getting better,” Jake offered, to ease the sting. She was looking around the cavern anxiously. The early morning sun no longer streamed into the opening between the rocks, making the large chamber shadowed and dark. He knew she was probably scared of being alone, but would never want to admit it.

“If you want, I’ll build you a little fire. You can find a stick and toast some Pop-Tarts over it for our breakfast. But you’ve got to be real careful so they don’t burn or fall in the fire ’cause we can’t waste the food. Want to do it?”

She nodded eagerly. He built a small fire in the stone enclosure he’d fashioned years ago when he first discovered the cave. He left satisfied that she was less anxious with something to occupy her.

He returned after a twenty-minute scout, reporting to Harper that he saw no obvious indication that Emmitt was in the vicinity.

They spent the afternoon holed up in the cave, talking nonstop the whole time. Jacob wouldn’t have believed he had so much inside him to say. Even though they came from very different worlds, they had their school life in common. They entertained each other by describing kids from school and who liked whom. They gossiped about their teachers. He listened with fascination to the activities of a city girl: going with her friends to the mall or to the movies, eating Thai or Italian takeout on Sunday afternoons and watching a movie with her parents, traveling around the DC area and suburbs for swim meets and lacrosse matches. He didn’t tell her he didn’t even know what lacrosse was.

Despite their differences, he was happy to learn that kids in Georgetown weren’t all that different from kids in Poplar Gorge. There were nice ones, smart ones, jocks, populars, nerds, and loners. Then there were the crack babies and basket cases, names that mean kids called kids that just couldn’t seem to function in the world.

“I know which ones you are,” Jake said at one point, standing to gather some sticks for the fire. He kept a stash of fuel in the cavern.

“What do you mean?” Harper asked him from where she sat.

“You’re a popular. And a brain. A nice one, too,” he added, ducking his head to hide his embarrassment.

She laughed, and he thought her cheeks had turned pink.

When he returned, he carefully laid some dampened twigs on the fire to keep it smoldering versus burning high. He was thinking of the animal scat he’d seen in the second cavern. He needed a good fire ready at a moment’s notice. He kept a pretty decent store of fuel in the cavern, but he’d still gather more before nightfall.

“I think I know which one you are, too,” Harper told him smugly after several minutes, and he knew she was talking about the kinds of kids at school. His stomach sunk a little.

“A loner?” he mumbled, averting his face as he tended the fire. He hoped she didn’t think he was a crack kid, given what she knew about where he lived and Emmitt’s many crimes.

“Maybe a little of a loner. A little of a geek, too, but in a really good way. But mostly, you’re the one to rule them all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, frowning. He laid the last twig and sat next to her.

She laughed. “It’s from Lord of the Rings. You’re not evil, like the ring is in the book. I don’t mean that. I just mean you’re in a category all your own. You’re different. You’ll probably rule over all of us someday: populars, geeks, and jocks combined.”

He thought she meant it as a compliment, but wasn’t sure. Maybe she was laughing at him.

As the sun started to dip in the sky, Jake left the cave again to do a little reconnaissance and retrieve more wood. Harper looked relieved when he returned and said he hadn’t found anything of significance. She helped him stack the armful of wood he brought. For dinner, they shared a can of chicken noodle soup and a sleeve of saltines. Afterward, they drank cool water from a shared cup and continued talking.

As it got darker, their voices gradually grew more hushed and their laughter died. By the time full night settled, they huddled around their tiny fire, and their conversation waned. Jake wondered what she was thinking as she watched the flames so soberly.

“Jake?” she asked after a while.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going to happen to you? After we get to Barterton?”

“I’ll go with you to the police station. Don’t worry. I’ll tell them the truth about Emmitt,” he said, staring at the glowing embers of the fire.

“But . . . what then?” He could tell by the wariness of her hushed voice she hadn’t considered the question before.

“I’ll go back and live with Grandma Rose.”

“But I thought you said she was really sick, and they said you had to go with your uncle or into child services.”

“That was when I was younger and couldn’t take care of myself,” he said dismissively, tamping down his anxiety over the topic. “I’m older now. I can take care of both myself and Grandma Rose.” She didn’t reply. His sideways glance told him she was worried. “They’ll let me stay with Grandma Rose. Don’t worry.”

“But what if they don’t?” she whispered. “You’ll have to do whatever the police tell you to do.”

He shrugged. “I’ll run away, then. I’ll come live here, in the cave.”

“But what about school and everything?”

“Don’t worry about it, Harper,” he repeated shortly. Guilt immediately swooped through him for snapping at her, but he didn’t know what to say to make her not worry. He certainly didn’t have any good answers for her.

He stood and went to his pack, returning with an apple. Neither of them spoke as he retrieved his multi-tool from his jean pocket, extricating the sharp, six-inch blade. The tool was a treasured prize he’d found and claimed after a particularly drunken, wild party at Emmitt’s after a vicious dogfight. He cut off a slice of apple and handed it to her. He cut a piece for himself, then for her again, trading off until only the core was left.

“I’ll tell my parents about everything you did for me,” she said after she’d swallowed her last bite. “I’ll ask them to talk to the police and stuff, try to convince them to let you go stay with your grandma.”

“Thanks,” Jake muttered. In truth, he hadn’t thought much about what would happen once he got Harper to the police. That had become the period at the end of the mission. He didn’t like to think about the fact that he didn’t have a home anymore, and that he’d possibly enter a world of strange adults and the courts and confusing, cold government organizations like Child Welfare Services.

Increasingly, he didn’t like to think about the fact that once he got Harper to the police, her parents would soon be there to claim her and whisk her far off to Washington, DC, where he’d probably never see her again.

“I’m going to tell them about everything you gave up for me,” Harper continued so forcefully that he glanced over at her in surprise. “I’m going to tell them, Jake. Don’t worry. My parents are really nice, for adults I mean. I’m going to tell them that we want to stay friends. You could come and visit me in Georgetown.”

He nodded, because he sensed her excitement on the topic and that she wanted him to agree. He tried to imagine it for a few seconds, him traveling all by himself—maybe in a train?—to Washington, DC, and finally seeing Harper’s big house and her bedroom and the shelves filled with all her books. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite picture himself in her world. It was like he couldn’t squeeze the concept of his mean existence into her shiny, clean one.

“I hate being a kid,” he said dully after a moment.

Harper opened her mouth to reply, but that was when they first heard it: the distant, eerie shriek. The hellish sound seemed to echo off the walls and ceiling of the limestone cavern, amplifying it.

Jake leapt up and started feeding the fire, intent on creating a blaze.

“Jake? What was that?”

“Go get more wood,” he told her, stirring the sparking embers forcefully.

She hurried to follow his direction. Maybe she sensed his urgency, because she didn’t say anything else as he added fuel, building a healthy fire.

“What was it?” she repeated breathlessly when he finally straightened and stood next to her. Before he answered, they heard the ominous shriek tear through the dark night again.

“Mountain lion,” he replied quietly, his head tilted as he listened intently.

“Will it come in here?” Harper asked in a high-pitched voice.

“Probably not,” Jake said, glancing uneasily from the front to the back of the cave. “It’s the first time I’ve seen spoor in here.”

“Spoor?”

“Shit,” he stated concisely. “It’s the cat’s. The mountain lion must have just found the cave. It’s a new discovery for it, not a permanent den. I was hoping it wouldn’t try and come back. I’ve never seen signs of one anytime that I’ve been here before.”

“What do we do?”

Jake blinked and focused on Harper’s face. She looked panicked. He could understand why. A mountain lion’s scream was hair-raising. The first time hearing it would shake anyone.

“Nothing. We stay put.” He urged her to sit next to him by the fire. “That’s another thing you have to learn about the woods. A fire means warmth. But more importantly, it means safety. Mountain lions are afraid of fires. Most animals are.”

She just stared at him for a moment, her face looking pale and her eyes huge in the light of the now-leaping flames. Another scream ripped through the silence. Harper jumped against him, her arms flying around his waist. He felt a shiver tear through her. The mountain lion sounded closer this time, but because of the echo factor of the river canyon, he couldn’t discern if the wild cat was prowling at the front or the back of the cave, or even above them on the bluff. He couldn’t know for sure which entrance the animal had used the first time, or whether it was familiar with both openings. That’s what had him most worried.

For a few seconds, they waited tensely, listening. They heard only the crackle of the flames and the distant trickle of water.

“You’ve been keeping the fire going all day,” she said tremulously. “You knew this might happen?”

He shook his head. “I was just worried it would. That’s not the same thing.”

Another terrifying shriek tore through the cave. Harper put her hands to her ears. “It’s horrible.”

“I know, but it’s harmless. And it sounds closer than it is,” he assured, desperate to calm her anxiety even while his own mounted. “They come around Emmitt’s place a lot, not only because of all the trash Emmitt leaves around, but they smell the dogs and puppies. They try to intimidate you with their screaming and squalling, but mountain lions are big bullies. All talk and no action.”

“You mean they won’t try to get in here and attack us?”

“Nah,” he scoffed.

Slowly, she lowered her hands from her ears. She jumped when the demon cat growled again, but he saw that increasingly familiar resolve on her pale face. She was straining to hide her anxiety.

“Tell me about the swim team,” he said impulsively when the mountain lion tore off another screech. It was definitely getting closer, and he was determined to keep Harper occupied. He thought the cat was circling closer toward the entrance at the back of the cave, but he couldn’t be entirely certain. The only thing he could do was distract Harper while they waited, and he figured out which entrance the predator stalked. Once he knew that, he’d move them to the opposite side of the fire from where the cat approached. For now, he kept them cautiously at the side of the flames, both entrances to the right and left of him. “What’s your stroke?” he prodded her.

“Freestyle and backstroke.”

“Did you win many races?”

Their previous talk resumed, and this time they were even more animated, both of them determinedly ignoring the earsplitting screams and growls of the mountain lion as it prowled outside the cave. Jake knew the animal stalked them, so there was no call for being extra hushed. They talked for more than an hour, until a wild shriek resounded so deafeningly through the cavern, even Jake jumped. He crawled over Harper and pulled her along with him, so that their backs were now turned to the front entrance of the cave.

“Jake, what—”

But Jake had stood and grabbed more timber, feeding the fire.

“He’s at the cliff entrance,” he said tensely. “I wasn’t sure if he was at the front or back before.”

“Oh my God.”

“Shhh, it’s going to be okay,” Jake said, gathering more wood and moving it closer to the fire, within easy reaching distance. He came down next to her, trying to see in the deep, murky shadows at the back of the first cave. His arms went out without thinking, closing around Harper when she crowded against him. He hugged her close. The mountain lion screamed again, the piercing sound enough to freeze his heart.

“It’s in the stalactite cave,” Harper whimpered the obvious. The mountain lion’s shriek had echoed and rolled like thunder across the cave walls this time, the sound terrifyingly close. He could feel her shaking against him. He pulled her closer, and she smashed her face against his chest.

“What’d I tell you about the fire. Harper?” he prompted, and she knew she was listening with dread for the approaching cat.

“That it’s not only for warmth, but for safety. And that mountain lions don’t like it?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“That’s right,” he said, resting his chin on the top of her head and peering toward the entrance of the second cave. “He’ll lose patience when he sees he can’t get to us. He’ll go hunt somewhere else when his hunger pains get the better of him.”

“Really?” she asked in a quavering voice, her nose still pressed against his chest.

“Really.” The bully cat shrieked again, seeming to rattle the whole cave. Harper shuddered.

“Jake—”

He stroked her hair, never taking his eyes off the back entrance. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve got the fire. Trust me. Tell me about The Lord of the Rings.”

“What?” She sounded a little incredulous at his request.

“Yeah. Like a campfire story. We’ve got a fire. Tell me about it.”

He sensed some of her terror receding slightly at that. If he was urging her to tell stories around the fire, maybe things couldn’t be that bad. She started talking in a muffled, quavering voice about something called hobbits, which sounded to Jake like these easygoing, fat dwarves who lived in the woods. Just as she mentioned someone named Frodo, Jake saw it: the eyes of the mountain lion glowing at him from the cloaking darkness. The cat was about twenty-five feet away from their fire.

“What kind of a name is Frodo?” he muttered, still stroking her hair, subtly urging her to keep her face against his chest.

“It’s a hobbit’s name,” she scolded, sniffing. “Just listen to the story, all right?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. She resumed the shaky telling of her story. He held her against him all the while, never flinching from the demon cat’s stare.