As I sit up, the journal topples off my chest. I stick it back in my bag, slip on my high-tops, and creep off toward the shit pit. (Congrats again, Universe. Yours is a suspiciously acute sense of humor.) Circling the dying embers of the campfire, I notice Caleb’s empty bedding, but in the slipstream of such indigestion, it seems almost trivial. In fact, nothing means much of anything right now, other than the immediacy of my bellowing bowels and a permanent embargo on canned ham.
After the silencing of the bellows—well, things begin to mean things again. And Caleb’s empty bedding is a definite something. Before I have a chance to guess what, I hear a noise just outside the clearing.
I freeze . . . quiet . . . listening.
At some point during my time in New Chicago, my ears acclimated to the echoing cacophony of birds chirping, leaves cracking, twigs snapping—the natural sounds of autumnal nature. I shut my good eye and sift through these noises like a forty-niner panning for gold.
Yes, there—right there—definite whispers.
I creep toward the edge of the clearing. Spidery trees and wispy branches, dead leaves crackling like old parchment, and a moonlight subdued—middle-of-the-night-forest is one creepy-ass place. I follow the soft speech toward an oak. At its base, a single shadow, tall and wiry, turned sideways, talking animatedly to someone just out of sight. I squat down on my hands and knees, sinking my knuckles into the soft dirt, willing the sound of my breath away. There are two distinct voices.
“. . . it, that’s the plan. Get the whole stash, though. None of this half-ass horseshit.”
“What about the girl?” asks Caleb. After our little campfire story time, I’d recognize his voice anywhere.
“Sweetheart’s a liability, ain’t she?”
They’re talking about me.
“She’s kinda cute,” says Caleb. “Even with the mud.”
The moon is just bright enough to see Caleb’s outline, but from this angle, I can’t make out the second person.
“Keep your eyes on the prize, Caleb. That girl gets in our way, we’ll just have to take care of her. You can do that, right?” A brief pause. This second voice has a strange guttural quality, as if the person is eating cake while talking. “Caleb?”
“What?”
The second person makes a noise like he’s spitting or something, then says, “If the girl gets in our way, I need to know you will take care of her.”
My heart is at an Olympic pace.
“Yes,” whispers Caleb. “I will.”
“Good. We’re close now, you feel it?”
Holding my breath, I inch closer and picture what I must look like—lurking in the dark woods wearing these ridiculous cutoffs, my hair matted in clumps from the murky lake, and to top it off, my muddy war paint, acting as true camouflage.
“Yeah. Four hundred more should do the trick.”
“Well shit, the kid’s gotta have that and then some stashed away. Now remember, last time we tried, he had the cash tucked down in the bottom of his sleeping bag. So we’ll check there, plus the suitcase.”
I’m closing in now, circling around through leaves and brush. It’s slow-going, but any faster, and I’d lose the stealth factor. I need the stealth factor. The stealth factor is crucial.
“You and I have had enough trouble out here to last two lifetimes, see. What we need is a fresh start. Beaches and girls and, who knows, might even get us a job in the movies. Shit, our story is prob’ly worth millions.”
“Prob’ly billions,” says Caleb.
“You’re an idiot sometimes, you know that? Nothin’s worth billions. Anyway, millions is plenty.”
Fingertips to forehead, I am caked in sweat. I crouch as low as possible, move quickly, quietly, efficiently, dart around the final tree, then duck and roll behind a prickly fern. I can already tell my stealthy instincts have not led me astray; I’m in prime vantage point, the perfect position to see who Caleb is talking to. Still holding my breath, I peer around the fern.
“I could be a writer,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to write.”
My skin crawls as Caleb contorts his face, answers himself.
“Yeah, we’ll write it ourselves. More money that way.”
Now back to his original face and voice.
“Sure, more money. But it might open other doors, see. For other projects.”
I close my eyes, willing this to be a dream. In some miraculous sonic anomaly, I hear the voice of my father, miles and miles away, whispering in my ear: Here we have a rare first-hand account of the Schneiderian First-Rank Symptoms of schizophrenia. Thought echo, voices heard arguing, voices heard commenting on one’s actions, delusions of control, thought withdrawal, thought insertion, thought broadcasting, and delusional perception . . . Suddenly, I’m in the living room back in Ashland, playing bank teller, doing the voices of both the teller and the customer. “Something’s wrong with her, Evie.”
Eyes still closed, I grip the fern for balance. It pierces my palm. A shriek pulls me from the memory.
“Who’s there?” says Caleb.
The shriek was my own.
Now it’s Mom’s turn to whisper in my ear . . .
Run, Mary.
Turning, I Goodwill myself through the woods, darting past trees, hurdling limbs and branches. I am Arrow Iris Malone, Olympic Record Holder in the Wooded Sprint, running straight and true, striking at the heart of my prey, the clearing. I burst through the line of trees, dive into my bedding, pull the blanket up to my chin, and close my eyes.