Chapter 15

Chapter 15

M ore time passes. The moon waxes and then wanes again. During the day, the air gets so hot that the heat shimmers between the trees. Even the chipmunks are only making their appearances in the cool of the morning and the evening, always hoping to snag a few crumbs.

Something's changed between me and Brendan. Not long ago, I started noticing changes in the forest itself, like how the needles on the trees were getting darker and the willow herb was shooting up. But those are just signs that it's midsummer; Nature's got that under control. The changes between me and Brendan are harder to pinpoint. He's still the kidnapper and I'm still the kidnapping victim, obviously. I wear the bell-bracelets during the day, and the handcuffs with the chain at night. The power dynamics around here are as clear as ever. And sometimes I still get scared of his dark side, still panic at the thought of him losing control of the shadow inside him, the way he did that night of the thunderstorm.

But those moments are fewer and further between now. Maybe I'm starting to accept him as he really is: not good, but maybe not pure evil through and through, either.

I've realized I sneak glances at him a lot when I think he won't notice. I look at his slim, sinewy body, at how the belt with the hunting knife fits around his narrow hips, at the pale scar on the back of his left hand, the same side as the leather armband with the silver coin. The day before yesterday, as we were piling up campfire logs, I finally caught a glimpse of the design on the coin. It's a bird with two different wings: one has normal feathers, the other branches out like a tree. I didn't get a proper look at it, because I didn't want to ask Brendan to show it to me. He wears the armband all the time, so it must be really important to him, like the charms on my pendant are to me. I wear the pendant constantly, even when I sleep or shower, and when it gets in the way during the day, I stick it under my shirt. Maybe Brendan associates the coin with some similarly painful memory. Maybe it has to do with the darkness in him, with his fear of abandonment.

Part of me thinks that I shouldn't care who or what made him into the person he is now, that I should go on hating him as much as I did in the beginning. I'm trying to, but for some reason it's not working anymore. If my escape plan works, I'm not even sure if I'll press charges. If I do, it will probably only be out of fear that he might get his clutches on me again.

But then there's this new, trembling part of me that wishes Brendan hadn't kidnapped me. That things between us had gone how they did with Delsin and Istu. Part of me wants to like him, to trust him... but no, he's my kidnapper, and obviously you have to hate your kidnapper. My escape plan is the only reason for me to have anything to do with him at all. I have to understand him better in order to outfox him.

I don't know why everything is suddenly so confusing. I'm probably letting his emotions influence me more than they should. Maybe I even pity him, as sick as that sounds. The logical part of my brain tells me it's wrong to feel anything but contempt for him, but I still can't quite shake it off. Sometimes I'm glad when I have another reason to be mad at him. Because he refuses to tell me what day it is or where we are, for example. I have no sense of time out here in the wilderness. It's like some kind of parallel universe—time, the forest, Brendan, everything. Like I'm living a life adjacent to real life, and I just have to find the portal to take me back to my old life.

I've started collecting spruce needles to help me keep track of the days. I could kick myself for not starting sooner. I'm dying to know what day it is, or at least what month. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll completely lose my grip on reality.

Brendan put Hero of the Week on a few days ago—reception was better this time—and I listened closely, waiting for them to announce the calendar week. "Ladies and gentlemen, that was Hero of the Week 30," or whatever. That's how David O'Dell always finishes every show. But Brendan shut off the TV before that tall blonde woman had finished talking, so I didn't get to hear that last, crucial sentence.

Later, I asked Brendan what the date was, but all he said was that time wasn't important anymore.

He's right, as far as day-to-day life in the wilderness goes. Every day is pretty much the same as every other. But I can sense how fast time is passing. I see it in the phases of the moon, and in Grey, who's getting bigger every day and now follows us, tumbling and bounding, when we fetch water or wash clothes. And I see it in my hair, too. It's growing steadily, though still not down to my shoulders yet. If hair really grows half an inch per month, it'll be winter before it's shoulder-length again. Brendan says winter lasts six months here, and spring and fall are short. Maybe it's just the approach of fall that's making me so nervous. Wherever we are in Canada, it's far enough north that it gets down near freezing at night. The days are getting shorter; the midday heat takes a long time to develop and then fades quickly, long before twilight.

Which means I don't have much time left to escape.

When I open my eyes this morning, the air is already scented with browning pancakes and fresh coffee. The spot by my head where Grey always sleeps is empty. I sit up and lean to the side, peering out. Brendan's sitting on the bench. He's wearing the hoodie he had on the day he kidnapped me. Same black cargo pants, too. Grey's on his lap, drinking his first helping of milk for the day. He doesn't have to be fed as often anymore, and now Brendan's the one who prepares his morning meals. I sit there quietly for a moment, studying Brendan's face. His dark-brown hair is up in a short ponytail, and I can tell he's smiling. Faintly. Other people might not even recognize that it's a smile, but I know it is. When I realize how well I already know him, I try to make myself avert my eyes, but I can't. There's something about that smile that makes me sad and happy at the same time. I feel a dark, despairing flutter deep inside me, like some small, winged creature struggling to free itself from a drop of amber.

"Hey!" Brendan lifts his head and looks at me.

I startle, and the fluttering stops, as though the moth has folded its wings. It's still sitting there, though, trapped by something that won't let it out. I rub my face, pretend to be sleepy so Brendan won't notice how confused I am.

Without another word, he tosses me the key to the handcuffs. Every morning, he sets them on the table beside him so that he doesn't have to go through the whole process of unhooking them from his carabiner. He hasn't actually said so, but I think he does it so that I'll be free faster.

I unlock the chain and unwrap the neck scarf around my wrist. As I walk toward the bathroom, I inspect my hands and arms closely so that I won't keep staring at him. The wounds are all healed now; the last of the bruises has faded.

Once I've shut the door behind me, I start doing knee bends, as far down as the tight space will allow. Physical exertion seems to be a good way of driving away what's left of that fluttery feeling.

I feel more life returning to my body with each passing day, and since I'm eating regularly now, I think I'm almost as healthy again as I was before he kidnapped me. But I know I'm not in good enough shape to survive alone in the wilderness for days on end, even though I take every chance I get to move around: I help Brendan with whatever work needs to be done, run around the camper with Grey, and do gymnastics while Brendan's sitting by the campfire in the evening, drawing pictures he doesn't show me.

I decide to do more knee bends than usual today, but I stop at twenty-five so that Brendan won't wonder what's taking so long. If he discovers that I'm exercising, he might draw the right conclusions about why.

Still slightly out of breath, I wash my face with the blue soap, and then study it in the mirror. Still thin, but not as pale anymore. I look older than I did just a few weeks ago. I venture a smile, and it scares me—the face in the mirror is a complete stranger, and the smile looks fake, as fake as Brendan's laugh. Thinking about him makes me think of the feeling I got earlier, and I pluck at a stray strand of hair, suddenly deeply insecure about myself. For the first time, it actually bothers me that my hair is like this, a shock of blonde sticking out in weird directions. I haven't cared one way or another about my appearance, but all at once, I really want to look in the mirror and feel pretty again.

I open the door. "Do you have a pair of scissors I can use?" I call out.

"For what?" Brendan sounds surprised.

"I want to even out my hair."

"Check the closet."

What?

It takes me several seconds to process this new information. My fingers are suddenly quivering in excitement. The last time I looked through the shelves in here was just a few days ago—searching for stuff I might need when I escape, as usual. I grabbed a couple Band-Aids and stuck them in the plastic baggie I've hidden among my clothes. I couldn't quite work up the courage to steal an entire gauze bandage—I'll have to wait on that until a few hours before I'm planning to leave.

Now, when I open the closet, I see the scissors right away, sitting there on the bottom shelf.

As I snip my hair, I wonder whether this means Brendan trusts me now, or whether he's testing me. The urge to hide the scissors under my clothes is overwhelming, but obviously I can't do that. I scoop up the trimmed ends and toss them into the pedal wastebasket, and notice that the sink isn't draining properly. The tank needs to be emptied. Brendan's normally the one to do that, because I was too weak to carry full buckets to the creek. Today, though, I feel like I could do it. Anyway, that would give me a chance to scope out the area surrounding the creek unnoticed.

"The grey-water tank is full," I tell him immediately as I sit down on the bench with a cup of coffee.

"I know. There's standing water in the sink, too." Brendan reaches across the table to pass me Grey, whose little wolf's tongue immediately runs across my entire face, making me giggle. I set him on my lap.

"Looks good. Your hair, I mean."

"All I did was trim the ends." I wait for my shoulders to tense up the way they usually do when he comments on my appearance, but it doesn't happen. I don't know what to make of that, but I decide I'd better get back to my original plan rather than dwelling on it. I try to smile, hoping it looks more real than the one I did in the mirror earlier. "Want me to empty the tank later?" It comes out maybe a touch too sugary, and the smile might be overly sweet, too.

A suspicious shadow flickers across Brendan's face, though it could just be because I've never offered before. After hesitating for a long moment, he nods slowly. "I'll show you which levers to pull."

"I could carry the buckets to the creek, too. I think I'm strong enough." I give him an innocent look.

"Alone?"

I shrug like it's no big deal either way.

"Give them an inch, they take a mile," he says with a taunting smirk and rises to his feet. "Did you put the scissors back, or are you going to stab me in the neck with them later?"

"I put them back. You can check if you don't believe me." The scissors were a test. Of course they were.

One corner of Brendan's mouth twitches upward. "I will later... if you let me live that long."

As I eat, he threads the bells onto a new cable tie, the way he does every morning. I can feel him watching me as he does it. I keep glancing up at him, but then looking away just as quickly, like his gaze burns my eyes. There's that feeling again, the feeling of something inside me trying to break free, like millions of golden moths underneath a bell jar. Their wings are light, so light, but they can't get out. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. Cheeks burning, I force myself to keep my eyes on my pancake.

"Done," he says after a few minutes.

Confused as I am, I still extend my wrist automatically—the usual routine—and he pulls the cable tie gently, like he's putting a piece of jewelry on me. When his hand brushes mine, my stomach tenses in shock. Not from the touch itself, but from the faint puff of air that seems to explode on my skin, tingling. I just sit there for a few seconds, so confused I'm almost light-headed. I can't look at him, even though I can tell he's waiting for me to. Instead, I pet Grey, who's still lying in my lap.

"Lou?"

"What?"

"Stop running."

My heart nearly stops. The golden feeling inside me collapses, leaving a strange darkness in its wake. "I'm not trying to escape," I lie, but my voice sounds too squeaky.

A moment later, his hand is underneath my chin, and he's lifting my head, forcing me to look at him. "That's not what I mean," he says, sounding tense.

I'm not sure if I'm relieved or horrified by his answer. His eyes are large and wide, the pupils flooding out over the brown. I stare into them, letting the waves crash over me, giant tsunamis dragging me under. Do you want this?

All I'd have to say is yes and he would kiss me. Then right and wrong would officially be switched around forever.

My heartbeat is thundering through my head. Hundreds of wings are beating inside me like a sea of fans, but I still don't have enough air to breathe.

"You said you... weren't going to touch me... not like this..." I whisper, sounding frightened. Frightened of my own feelings, not of his.

He withdraws his hand, but I can still feel the pressure of his fingers, the echo of his touch. It was neither gentle nor hard, but my chin is still burning like it's on fire.

I take a deep breath and force myself to keep eating breakfast as though everything is normal, even though every cell in my body is in chaos. I can't make heads or tails of what I feel or why I feel it or anything. It's one big tangled mess.

But there's one thing I do know: I need to get away from here before whatever this feeling is gets any stronger.

I stay sitting there, clutching Grey in my hands, and I don't start breathing normally again until Brendan goes outside.

I make myself a mental deadline. Three days. I can't wait longer than that. I can do without most of the things on my list. The only thing I definitely need is the lighter. The scissors can take the place of the knife. They're pretty sharp. I've got the Band-Aids, and I can get gauze. I tell myself that I don't only need to escape because of Brendan—I mostly need to get going while it's still summer. But deep down, I know that the thing I'm most afraid of is that dark, frantic fluttering inside me. I've never been so terrified of a feeling.

Involuntarily, I clench my fists, though there's nothing specific for me to fight against. A few weeks ago, I'd have punched Brendan in the face if I'd gotten the chance, if I'd been strong enough. Now I've run out of hate. I don't even feel contempt for him. I'm desperately searching for reasons to see him as a monster, but he's just not. When I think about him, all I get is that fluttery butterflies-under-glass sensation. Warm, golden, terrifyingly strong.

Abruptly, my thoughts turn to Ethan, to his haggard face. To him sitting at home worrying day and night. Maybe I really am a bad person, because otherwise I wouldn't feel this way. I'm trembling inside. This time, I'm not going to disappoint Ethan. I'm going to find a way back to him, no matter what it takes.

Half an hour later, I'm freshly showered, and I've changed out of the jogging pants and T-shirt, into the yellow blouse and a pair of jeans. I wrap a thick sweater around my hips just in case, and put on my hiking boots.

When I get outside, Brendan's already kneeling near the side door, in front of the open hatch containing the grey-water and black-water tanks.

He's all business—nothing about his expression is anything like how he looked at the table earlier—so I pretend it didn't happen right along with him. I set Grey on the ground between us, feigning nonchalance. Grey immediately begins chewing on Brendan's boot laces.

"Hey, you!" Brendan nudges him away, but Grey wants to play, so he sinks his teeth into one of Brendan's cargo pants pockets. Brendan sighs, plucks Grey off, and growls at him. Whimpering, Grey tucks his tail between his legs and jumps over to me.

"We need to start training him," Brendan says, nodding in the wolf's direction. "Otherwise, he'll start thinking he's the alpha."

An odd thought, as small as Grey is. "Can we actually keep him?"

Brendan gives me a sharper-than-usual look, and I wonder if it has anything to do with what happened earlier. "Of course, why wouldn't we?" he says then with a shrug, and sounds perfectly casual. "Wolves act more or less like dogs when they grow up around humans."

"Won't he want to go back someday? He can hear the other wolves in the forest, too..."

"It's a possibility, though I'm not sure whether the pack would accept him. Maybe one day he'll disappear into the woods and won't come back."

I have to force myself not to stare at Brendan constantly. What does he think about what happened earlier? Does he think I have feelings for him? And if so, what did I do that made him think that? Is it the way we're living together here, the way I'm acting cooperative? How can he know something I'm not even sure about myself? I'm pretty sure the only reason I feel like this is because I'm so lonely. I mean, basically, I just feel sorry for him. I've stopped hating him. Maybe I even like him a little bit. And I'm reacting to him this way because he's the only human being for miles and miles. It's not unheard of—lots of kidnapping victims fall in love with their kidnappers. I heard that years ago, back in Ash Springs. But I'm not in love with him, not really. It's pity, I think. Maybe a mix.

I'm so deep in thought that I only catch half of Brendan's explanation, so it startles me when he says, "Okay, go ahead!" and points to the silver pipe, which he's put a bucket underneath.

I blink at the two grey levers at the end of the pipe. Crap. I don't want to admit to Brendan that I missed the most important part because I was too busy brooding over how I feel about him. I'm guessing the grey water has to be emptied more often than the black water, so the lever is further forward because that's the one that gets used more often. As I'm reaching for the lever, Grey leaps in and sinks his tiny teeth into Brendan's pants pocket. Brendan shakes him off, cursing, and accidentally knocks the bucket over just as I pull on the lever.

And then a lot of things happen at once. A dark gurgling noise comes out of the pipe, followed immediately by a horrible stench.

"Fuck!" Brendan shouts, and a second later, brown sludge starts shooting straight at us. It spreads across Brendan's lap, spraying in every direction, and when he tries to leap out of the way, he catapults Grey backwards in a high arc. The wolf whines so pitifully that I can't help jumping in to rescue him from the spray, even though it means taking a direct hit straight to the back. Grimacing, I roll onto my side and set Grey on my stomach. A river of piss, crap, chemical tabs, and who knows what flows past my head, and I have to suppress a wave of nausea. It's worse than the time we had a butyric acid leak in chemistry class. I may puke. Brendan's already started, or at least it looks that way—he's kneeling on the ground a few feet away, spitting something out. Maybe he got that stuff in his mouth. It's so gross I don't want to move a muscle, for fear of spreading the sludge any more. Cautiously, I lift my head and look at Grey. His fur is soaking wet—he's completely covered. It's a pathetic sight. At first he just sits there, like he's not sure what to do with himself. Finally, he settles on doing what he does best, which is whimpering and hoping someone comes to his rescue.

"That was... goddamnit!... the wrong lever," Brendan wheezes after a while, sounding furious.

"Sorry." My whole body seizes up. Is he going to have another one of his attacks now? On top of everything?

Brendan props himself against his hands and curves his back like a cat. "You have poop in your hair," he manages to choke out. "Looks... funny!" Dark-brown sludge is dripping from his head and running down his cheeks. He wipes it away, checks his hand, and then bursts out laughing. He laughs and laughs like this is all the funniest thing in the world. Occasionally, the laughter turns to retching, so the overall effect is a mashup of a coyote howling and a plugged drain.

"You don't even want to know how you look," I retort once he's calmed down. Fat flies are already swarming around us, and the stench is everywhere. I glance over at the pipe, which is barely dripping now.

"Last one to the lake's a rotten egg!" Brendan suddenly cries, scrambling to his feet, and runs off. I stand up and trot after him, clutching Grey. We tear through the trees, stamping on ferns and jumping over roots, and finally scramble past the rotted tree trunk. Brendan leaps straight in without a second thought. He dips underwater for a moment and then emerges, snorting. "Fucking cold!" he exclaims before diving down again.

I set Grey in the ferns near the water's edge and struggle to kick my shoes off. "Be right there!" I promise and start wading slowly into the lake, picking my way across the mixture of sand and gravel at the bottom. It's really not that deep, but better safe than sorry. I can barely even dog-paddle—hell, Grey can probably swim better than I can. I plop into a sitting position, and then get on my hands and knees and slowly sink back. It's viciously cold. I dunk my head into the icy water a few times to rinse the worst of it out of my hair, and then start scrubbing the rest of my body with my hands. After a couple of minutes, my teeth are chattering. When I stand up, my wet clothes are clinging to me, but obviously I have to keep them on. Brendan's ripped his hoodie off, and his shirt is drifting toward the stream, but I barely notice it because I'm too busy being hypnotized by the sight of Brendan's sinewy back. I already knew he had a tattoo, but I'd only ever seen it in the dim light of the camper, and I thought it was a dragon or some other bad-boy thing, but now I see that it's the same design from the silver coin. The bird itself stretches across one of his shoulders. Its right wing is covered in dark feathers, and the left is made up of white tree limbs that extend over the bird's head as black branches, with fine, dark twigs spreading as far as Brendan's neck, so it's kind of a mix between a wing and a treetop.

Something fascinates me about the tattoo. I don't know if it's the design itself, or the combination of black and white on his smooth skin, or what. The limbs could be roots, I realize. Like a heaven-and-earth thing. My fingers twitch with the desire to touch Brendan, to trace the path of the branches up to his neck.

"Lou? Are you deaf?"

"What?" I shake my head, dazed. Brendan's turned around and is giving me a quizzical stare. What the hell was I just thinking? I must be completely batshit crazy. How can you use your head when you've already lost your mind?

"You can wash Grey back there near the waterfall if you want. There's one spot where the water is a little warmer."

"Oh, okay. Sure!" Still horrified at myself, I trudge back and pick up Grey, who's standing on the flat shore now, dunking his furry head in the water. Holding him as far away from me as possible, I wade over to the waterfall.

Brendan's calling to me, but the waterfall's so loud that I can barely hear him.

He shouts it louder now. "Left! Further left!"

Fine droplets of water spray my face and body as I maneuver through the spray, with Grey hanging limply in my grasp like a smelly, miserable lump. I take another step to the left and feel a warmer current against my calves, so that's where I dunk Grey into the water, just far enough that his head is still poking out. He whimpers and shivers, completely dumbfounded that I would subject him to this torture, mere minutes after he nearly drowned in a puddle of liquid waste. I scrub his small head clean with one hand and then lift him to cuddle him. Before heading back, I give the waterfall beside me a quick once-over. Here, up close, I can see the rock wall behind it. There's at least three or four feet of space between the waterfall and the rock. Freezing mountain water runs down the stone in steady rivulets, so it's worn completely smooth, like yellowish-brown marble with black pockets here and there.

Then I get an idea. I turn to look at Brendan. He's wading toward the stream, dragging his soaked hoodie behind him. I take another step to the left. There's a niche in the rock wall, barely big enough to hide in, and it's completely invisible from the other side of the rushing waterfall. My heart skips a beat. If I can distract Brendan with a fake propane-gas alarm, he'll want me to get far away from the camper. He'll go around to the back of the camper to turn the gas off, and I'll make a break for the lake and hide here behind the waterfall. Eventually, he'll start wondering if I've run off. Maybe I'll manage to leave a false trail. He'll go looking for me, and then the flashbacks will hit him, and I'll have plenty of time to go back and get everything I need in order to escape.

And then I'll leave.

I get butterflies in my stomach when I realize that it might seriously work. They rise into my chest, the way they did earlier when Brendan was gazing at me so intently.

I look in his direction again. He waves at me with the hoodie and laughs. His eyes are twinkling. He looks happy. Maybe his plan might actually have worked. Maybe I really am his medicine, his light, his sun, whatever it is he's expecting of me.

The butterflies turn into a dead weight that drags my legs down, like I'm wading through cement. The realization that I might be helping him gives me pangs in my chest. Knowing how miserable he'll be when I'm gone makes me feel like a traitor. Like I'm destroying something. Destroying him .

Grey starts wriggling and kicking, which brings me back to the here and now. I shake my head energetically. I don't owe Brendan anything. Not a damn thing. And I want to go home. I want to be back with my brothers.

Still... part of me wishes Brendan would come with me.