Bite: A Shifters of Theria Novel (38 page)

CHAPTER NINE

TO THE MOUNTAINS

Maddy was right—had she not been there, I would have died. I lost count of how many times she caught me from falling, how many times she reminded me to watch my feet while I walked. She stopped me from filling up my water bottle in a stream, which ran through a small beavers’ dam. She explained that I would have almost certainly fallen ill with something called Giardia. “A parasitic worm lays eggs inside of your intestines and then you poop yourself to death,” she said. Apparently there were many things out in the woods that make you poop to death.

When the sky began to darken and the sun crept below the horizon, we decided to stop. Maddy set up the tent and instructed me to collect some firewood. She stopped me within seconds as I was apparently collecting over a bush of poison ivy.

“Just sit there and don’t move. I’ll set everything up,” she said to me.

Maddy had the tent up and a fire crackling before dark. She showed me how to dig a fire pit, so that air could filter in and smoke could filter out. I was impressed when the smoke rose straight up, instead of straight into my eyes, like I was used to.

She sharpened a stick and skewered a dozen different mushrooms that she’d collected throughout the day. She made me taste each one. Flaunting her impressive mushroom-knowledge seemed to fill her with a sense of joy that I hadn’t seen from her.

She’d even picked out poisonous mushrooms throughout the day, to point out the differences. She said she wanted to teach me enough to survive on my own, but I think she just wanted to show off her survival skills.

“In Ilium, do you have a job?” I asked.

“No.”

“Did you go to university?”

“For a year. I dropped out.”

“Why?”

“Wasn’t for me,” she said.

“What were you taking?” I asked.

She looked at me and smiled. “Earth sciences. What about you? What are you running away from?”

“I work for a big insurance firm. Never went to college.”

“Why not?”

“Wasn’t smart enough.”

“Really?” Maddy asked. I detected a hint of sarcasm. She passed me another mushroom. I was full, but she insisted that I try it. It tasted like cookies and cream.

“Besides, I didn’t feel like wasting four years in college just to be replaced by a machine in five years,” I said.

It was a moonless night. It was a cloudless night. The entire cosmos shone clear in the black sky. You could make out the entire band of the Milky Way as it stretched from horizon to horizon. Even Maddy was impressed by the night’s magnificent clarity.

A streak of cobalt flashed through the sky, turning to violet before fading away.

“Shooting star—make a wish,” she said.

I didn’t have to think long before his face appeared in my mind—his smile and his chiselled, stubbly jawline.

“What did you wish?” Maddy asked.

I laughed. “If I tell you, doesn’t that mean it won’t come true?”

“That’s boring,” she said. “Just tell me.”

“No way—then it might not come true! I’m not taking that risk.”

“Lame,” she said.

We sat in silence and watched for another cosmic spectacle.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked.

She was slow to answer. Her face turned red and she looked at her feet. I still wasn’t convinced she wasn’t fourteen years old. “No,” she finally said. “Do you?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Not really?”

“Not at all,” I clarified. I don’t know why I said otherwise. “I have a freezer with six different half-eaten tubs of ice cream and my phone background is a cat dressed like James Gandolfini.”

We both laughed.

“Tell me about him,” Maddy said.

“About who?”

“About the guy you like so much.”

My face flushed and a lump grew in my throat.

“Oh, don’t get all flustered on me,” she said. “I imagine that kiss last night wasn’t intended for my lips—so tell me about him.”

I bit my lip and his face returned to my mind. “He’s tall,” I said.

“What’s his name?”

“I’m not sure.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Not off to a great start.”

“He’s handsome—brown eyes, dark hair.”

“He sounds pretty cute,” she said.

I blushed. “Yeah.”

“Why don’t you know his name?”

“I’ve never talked to him. Well—One time I walked into him, and he stopped me from falling over.”

“Sounds about right…”

“He’s out of my league. Everything about him is just too—too perfect.”

“Perfect teeth?” Maddy asked.

“Perfect.”

“Perfect teeth—that means he’s from a rich family.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Because no one really has truly perfect teeth. Only rich kids who got braces and retainers young have perfect teeth.”

“I had braces,” I said.

“Let me see your teeth,” Maddy said. I showed her. “Yeah—see? You were a rich kid. Where are your parents now?”

“Retired—living in Florida.”

“Rich kid,” Maddy concluded.

“Your parents didn’t have much money?” I asked.

“My dad had money sometimes. When I was really small, he was the boss of some big company. He got laid off when the recession hit and he lost all of his savings on some bad investment. We were really poor for a while, living off meal stamps and whatever. Then, he started doing consulting work. Some weeks, he would make a few thousand—other weeks, he made nothing.”

“What about your mom?” I asked.

“She’s gone.”

“Oh—I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, she isn’t dead. Well, I don’t think she is. She took off right after I was born. I never actually met her.”

“Where’s your dad now?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”

Maddy was silent. Her eyes glazed over.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiled. “Tell me more about this guy,” she said.

“He comes down to the floor I work on, and he talks to the managers every now and then. I think he’s one of the bosses, but he doesn’t sit in on any of the meetings. He always smiles at me.”

“Maybe he’s just afraid to talk to you.”

“No way—I mean—there’s just—no. No way,” I said. “He doesn’t want to talk to me. He could have any woman he wanted. You should see him.”

“Sounds like he wants you.”

“I don’t know…”

“Ask him on a date,” Maddy said.

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“What if he says no?”

“Then nothing changes.”

“But he’ll always look at me like, oh, there’s that weird girl who eats ice cream and marathons bad Canadian sitcoms all day.”

“You need to get over your Netflix obsession,” Maddy said.

“I’m working on it.”

“Have you ever thought that maybe his favourite thing to do is to eat ice cream and watch bad Canadian sitcoms all day? Maybe that’s what he’s doing upstairs all day.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I had too much respect for the mysterious man to think that he was as lame as I was.

“Next time you see him, just ask him out. He already knows you like him. So if he says no, nothing will change. He might say yes—you never know.”

“What do you mean, he knows I like him?”

“If your face lights up when you see him the way it does when I mention him, then he knows.”

Maddy placed another log onto the fire and then looked back up to the sky to watch for more shooting stars.

My gaze turned inward as my mind ran rampant. Even in my fantasy, I awkwardly stuttered as I tried to ask the man from upstairs out on a date. His eyes would become wide and dart from side to side, looking for an escape. Before I could finish my stuttering proposition, he would be back on the elevator, heading up to the safety of his own floor. Even my fantasy didn’t have much faith in me.

Maddy looked towards the woods.