Ré wonders if he too has changed, slipped away from the guy he thought he would always be…
And then a warm, wet breath falls on the back of his neck.
Ré jerks, kicking back.
In the dark behind him is a massive shape. The biggest bull elk he’s ever seen. The span of its antlers is as wide as Ré’s open arms, its shoulder taller than Ré himself. It sends goose bumps down the flesh of his ribs.
It can’t be real.
For a split second Réal thinks, Is this it? Is this the Windigo?
But his heart knows it is something else.
This beast, as big as it is, is no demon. Its neck is stretched out. Vulnerable. Trusting. Inside Ré’s chest, a thousand birds burst free, their wings thundering against his bones. He falls back on his elbows in the scrubby grass, heart and breath racing hard and fast.
“What are you?” he whispers.
The elk steps forward, bowing, sniffing. Ré can smell its damp breath, sweet as fresh cut grass. And then it backs away, raising its massive antlers into the night sky, scraping up the half full moon.
Beyond the creature, just inside the tree line, Réal can see the deer peering out, curious, shy. Ré can hardly breathe. Then the bull elk turns and walks back into the woods, silent and graceful despite its great size.
He watches in awe.
Inside his ribs, his heart burns pure white, melting everything else away.
Words come to him then, from his mother’s tongue: Omashkooz gidoodem, Réal.
And he gets it, finally. At last he understands what the deer have been trying to tell him. What the creature has wanted, all this time. He almost laughs at how simple it is.
It’s okay, man. Let it go.
He pulls himself to his feet and follows them all back into the woods.
35
E
Evie woke with a gasp, tail end of a dream slipping away.
She opened her eyes in a darkened room. An edge of light marked a half closed door, and a patterned curtain ran the length of the bed she was lying in. She blinked at these groggily, trying to figure out where she was.
She felt stiff and heavy all over. Something was jabbed in her arm, and a tube under her nose blew cold, dry air. It made her cough.
“Mom?” she croaked.
A voice replied from the shadows. “She’ll be back.”
Evie turned her head. There was a shape in the dark. It gathered itself up and rose from a chair, and the machine dotting out her heartbeat quickened as if it too was scared.
“It’s just me,” he said softly. A warm hand found hers, threaded their fingers together.
“Ré,” she whispered. “What happened?”
The light from the doorway marked a pale outline of him. She couldn’t see his face, but she watched his shoulders fall. “I totaled the Buick,” he said. “And I nearly killed us.”
She tried to remember it. Any of it. But all that sprang up was his arm draped over a steering wheel, golden sunlight painting each tiny hair. The look in his eyes, the shape of his lips, and then…nothing. “I don’t remember,” she told him.
“It’s okay, Ev,” he assured her. “No one’s asking you to.”
But she dug around for the pictures anyway, for all the snapshots leading up to that one, in his car. Images shuffled all out of order. Sunny’s hair flung back, her dark and knowing smile. Alex’s long legs leaping over a bonfire, all sand and spark. And Ré, of course, sleeping outside her door. If she took that old journal from her desk right now, its pages would be filled in an instant.
“I think Sunny hates me,” she said.
Réal laughed. “Yeah, Sunny’s got a weird way of showing how she feels,” he said. “She was here though. She brought flowers.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and she saw the shadow of a vase by the wall, full of blooms.
Even though he was here, hand firmly in hers, Evie still felt a twinge of jealousy. Brittle, brash and scary as she was, Sunny was still the coolest girl Evie’d ever met. And no matter what, she and Ré had History. Evie could never blank that out or pretend it wasn’t there, and neither could they.
Then she remembered Alex. Fire-lit flashes of his angular face, eyes like darts, like a snake’s. She asked, “Does Alex hate you?”
Ré took a long, deep breath and blew it out slow. He said, “Me and him can never be friends again.”
Evie squeezed his hand and felt his sadness.
She remembered the flicker of something else, before the darkness. I should be thinking about Shaun, but I can’t stop thinking about you…
In her living room.
A small silver bead. A ball bearing from a wheel.
She heard those wheels whiz across the concrete floor of the Grains.
The skateboard flung from her hands, out that terrible hole in the wall. Shaun at her feet, hand pressed to the dark-red side of his head. It wasn’t just a dream. That part had been real.
“Ré,” she said, “you didn’t kill Shaun.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, Ev.”
“You guys fought that night,” she said, “and then he came to my house, all drunk. He took me to the Grains, and he hit me so hard I saw stars.”
Réal flinched and sucked air in through his teeth.
“Ré…” she whispered. “I did it. I killed him.”
And she held her breath. But he didn’t say anything.
He let go of her hand, and she thought, That’s it. He’s gone.
Then he turned and pulled himself up onto the bed, spongy mattress bowing under his weight. The movement made her ache all over, her wounds all waking up and crying out, but she didn’t care as long as he wasn’t leaving.
He eased himself down next to her and propped his head in the crook of his elbow. She could just make out the glint of hallway light in his eyes.
She remembered those same eyes from
