Exalted (31 page)

“Sayonara,”
she said.

And
that was that.

My
plan for the afternoon involved a dart gun, a tracking bracelet, and my beat-up
copy of
The Great Gatsby
.

I
had a seasonal reading plan I’d stuck with each year since fifth grade:
Walden
in the spring,
Pride & Prejudice
in the summer,
The Great Gatsby
each fall, and
Wuthering Heights
every winter (my dad's
dad, Gus Mitchell, had been a tenth-grade English teacher). I liked to imagine
the rock-strewn, fir-dotted fields that rolled out toward the mountain range as
my moors. In the privacy of my favorite woodsy spot, I savored my cold-weather
reading with a gusto that made me feel like a walking liberal arts student
cliché.

With
Gatsby
in my pack and the dart gun in
my gloved fist, I drifted through the fields, watching fir needles tremble,
tracking birds as they rose and fell, formed flocks and scattered. They’d be
leaving in the next month, before it got too cold for anything sans fur.

I
wondered if my herd of mule deer would already be there: by the creek that
threaded through the northeast edge of our land. I hoped not. If they were
waiting, I couldn’t sneak up on them. Encroaching winter made it especially
important that I tag the last of the year’s fawns—
now
. When the snow came, their grazing patterns changed. The creek
would ice over and the herd would scatter, seeking out the Bancrofts’ hot
springs or one of the freeze-proof waterfalls just north of our property, on
the land owned by Mr. Suxley.

As I
walked, arms stuck in the pockets of my dad’s giant hunting coat, I thought
back over the night. I was a cataloguer of events, but like too many other
times lately, I felt like I didn’t have enough to file. I seemed to be moving
at a different pace from all my friends. Halah—Halah with her unabashed love of
Martin Lawrence movies and her closet full of oversized softball t-shirts—had
shot off, three light years ahead of me. She had a senior boyfriend on the
wrestling team, and she didn’t have a curfew.

Bree
was just…Bree. I didn’t even have a scale for how she and I compared. While I
thought about everything ad nauseum, Bree never seemed to think about anything
that wasn’t practical. The week before, she’d spent half of lunch on her phone
trying to find the area’s best dry-cleaner.

And
then there was S.K. Sara Kate, my best friend. My other half. My favorite
person on the planet—other than my Dad, who wasn’t on the planet anymore. S.K.
who’d gone with (guess who?) Ami to ComicCon the weekend of my birthday. Who’d
recently decided she needed more time to herself. “I’m getting too stressed out
by all this
stuff
.” Stuff being me.
The quad. Our fun.
  

Lately,
the thing I liked best about this deer gig was how
somewhere
else
it made me
feel. With the sky over my head and the grass crunching under my boots, I could
be anywhere. Add a book to the equation, and I wasn’t Milo Mitchell, girl
pianist, airheaded over-thinker, tenth-grade chemistry straggler, secret
wallflower, lover of anime. I was Catherine. Well… maybe someone slightly less
insane. Daisy Buchanan? Okay, someone moderately less shallow. Haruhi Suzumiya.

Made-up
(and insane!) though they were, those people knew what they were about. Knew
what they wanted. Whereas me… I got my kicks sedating mule deer.

I pointed
myself left, toward the mountains, and picked up my pace for the last half-mile
to the pine grove. There was a bluff oak right at the front of the grove,
beside a big pancake-looking boulder; next to the skinny evergreens, it
resembled a pom-pom in mid-cheer.

When
I was growing up, this had been my dad’s favorite spot. He and mom had come to
Colorado to build the turbines—Mitchell Wind Turbines, his own patented
design—but his real passion was outdoors stuff. As a little girl, I’d gone
tromping through the fields and scaling cliffs with him. He’d taken me to
Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Death Valley and Yosemite, but he’d really loved
to take me to the bluff oak.

“It’s
an anomaly,” I could hear him say. “Supposed to be down South. Not out here
with all the firs.”

And
yet, it was.

I
walked under its limbs and stared down at the etched stone marker:

Faulkner
Dursey Mitchell
1964-2010

And
then, under that, in tiny, sharp-edged caps:

IN WILDERNESS, THE PRESERVATION

OF THE WORLD

I
didn’t like the marker, though I knew my dad had chosen it. In his absence, I’d
grown irritated with the message. Preservation. What a stupid concept. My
father wasn’t preserved under the headstone. He was gone, and he was becoming
more and more gone all the time.

Still,
that didn’t stop me from my pilgrimage. Since that awful day almost two years
ago, I’d visited the marker and the bluff oak often. Actually, I’d treated this
place like Mecca until two months ago.

It
had been the first Saturday after school had started. S.K. spent the night but
left early the next morning for her first date with Ami. Halah was at a cheer
retreat, and Bree was…somewhere. I don’t remember.

I’d
left at the same time as S.K., and by the time I got to the pancake boulder I
was falling asleep on my feet. I took a nap—the boulder was that flat—but maybe
an hour later, I was jerked awake.

I
felt like someone was over me—I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. I
rolled off the rock and jumped to my feet, ready to bolt. But no one was there.
I ducked a second
later, because I felt it again, and then I yelped. A needle pricked where my
head met my neck, and the pain was inside my
brain
.

The
terrifying thing was, it felt invasive. Like someone was reading my diary—while
I stood naked in front of my class.

I
left immediately, and spent the walk home freaking out. But I found my way back
the next day. And felt the same thing. It wasn’t as sudden, or as potent, but
the feeling, like I was being
measured
,
was still there.

And
it was there Wednesday, when I went back after half a week: that
stripped-down-to-the-cells, stuck-under-a-microscope, known-inside-and-out,
freaky deaky looked-through feeling. Was I hallucinating? The last thing I
needed was another mental health issue to deal with. Obviously, I needed to
find another way to feel close to Dad.

After
a lot of working myself up to it, I called the Department of Conservation and
Wildlife, posed as my mother, and got permission to continue Dad’s mule deer
tracking project.

I
had all his old folders, stuffed with diagrams and data, so it hadn’t been hard
to figure out who was who among the herd. After that, it was just a matter of
coming out on Saturdays and tagging them.

It
was easy to shoot the sedative gun, bring the deer down, and snap a bracelet over
their hard, dark hooves. I spent my weeknights, after studying, watching the
gob of blinking lights move across my laptop screen. I knew where they slept
and where they roamed. I knew where they went mid-afternoon: the creek.

I
made my way over to it now, crunching over fallen leaves from the seasonal
trees that blazed orange, yellow, and red between the firs.

I
heard the creek before I saw it, a gentle tinkling like a bowl of glass marbles
pouring out. The smell of dirt and pine filled my nose and throat. The cold air
whipped my cheeks. The sunlight swirled in spirals over the leaf-strewn bank. I
thought about
Gatsby
and felt a dorky
burst of excitement. I was right at the start of Chapter 9—the last chapter.
I’d gone through the book too fast.

Reading
the end made me feel either bursting full or empty. I walked faster, hoping
this would be a day that I could enjoy the story without letting it gnaw at me.
Otherwise it was going to be a long afternoon.

The
tree house hung above a bend in the creek. Dad and I selected the strongest
tree for its base: a horse-chestnut on the opposite bank. To get to it—if I
didn’t want to wade through chilly, waist-deep water—I had to climb a spiral
staircase around a buckeye tree and sway across the rope-and-board bridge we made
the summer after second grade.

The
wooden stair rails were cold, even through my gloves. I slid my palms over the
ropes and crossed the sanded cedar planks. Waiting for me on the other side,
the tree house was a thatch-roofed dome attached to the chestnut’s trunk by
beams that angled peaceably through its branches.

I
pushed through the small door, surprised, as always, by how pretty it was here.
The walls were warm cedar, and my Dad had built a bench that wrapped around the
circular room. We used to get new cushions every year, but the green and red
plaid we’d put out two Christmases ago would probably stay until the years ate
through them. I had no plans to replace them.

I
found my binoculars in the box where I’d left them, along with a blanket, a tin
tub of almonds, and a little pile of air-activated hand-warmers.

I
sat my pack down, grabbed the binoculars, and shed my gloves. Much as I wanted
to stay warm, I couldn’t fire the darts with padded fingers.

I
gave myself a few minutes inside the house, designed with small gaps in the
floor for circulation, but no windows (to hold heat in). Then I stepped back
onto the bridge and sat with my back against the door. My gaze roved the
forest, stopping at stray branches, odd-shaped stumps—anything that remotely resembled
deer. Too early. I’d spotted them this morning near Mr. Suxley’s woods, where
they sometimes bedded down. It would take a little while for them to reach the
creek.

I
read. Nick Carraway, meeting up with Tom downtown. Leaving the West Egg. I sipped
warm water from a metal thermos and tried not to think about my hunger, which
couldn’t be satiated in nose-range of the deer. The sun climbed higher, raining
a kaleidoscope of golden light over Dad’s bulky suede jacket and my camo pants.
As I read, my hair sparkled in my periphery, a blanket of glossy brown, with
red highlights glinting in the sun. I blew into my balled-up hands. Applied a
scentless beeswax chapstick.

I
couldn’t warm up. I cursed, Klingon swear words S.K. and I had looked up in
sixth grade. Tracking deer was a terrible idea. I could be playing paintball.

I
flipped to my favorite scene.

“Gatsby
believed in that green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes
before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster,
stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the—”

I
heard a loud crunch, and my eyes leapt from the page. Blitzen! The herd’s
largest male had a star-shaped scar across his shoulder and a weathered coat.
He stood by a holly bush ten or fifteen yards away, sniffing the air, his
nostrils snorting out puffs of steam. Right behind him was Madonna, the alpha
female, and then Brutus, a younger male who sometimes challenged Blitzen. Soon
they were all there, including little Ashlyn, one of the youngest fawns, and my
target.

Crap!

I
should’ve been crouching, but I hadn’t expected them until closer to four.
Since there was no way I could sight Ashlyn—or any of them—from my spot flat on
my butt, I stood slowly and ducked through the bridge’s two rail-ropes, rising
into a sort of squirrel-eating-nut position, with my arms up near my face and
my feet balancing on the edge of the cedar planks. A lesser woodswoman might
have fallen, or scared the deer, but I’d been doing this for years.

My
fingers folded, steady, around the handle of the gun. I leaned my head down,
peering through the sight. A breeze rocked the bridge; the rope above my head
brushed against the top of my hair. My body felt pinched. Stiff. And then,
finally, I had her. Ashlyn side-stepped, her small flank bumping into teenage
Aiden’s long, strong throat. Aiden strode forward, and there!

In
the moment that the dart shot out, I felt a rush of pure elation. As it sailed
toward little Ashlyn, I watched the frozen herd, processing the milliseconds
till the dart would hit, Ashlyn would fall, the rest would bolt.

But
that’s not how it happened.

As
my breath puffed out, creating a pale cloud that lent the scene a gauzy haze, I
felt a bite of what could only be described as shock. My limbs and torso
locked; my lungs went still. There was a flash of golden light, like a solar
flare, except for one protracted second it was all there was. All there ever
would be.

Then
it receded, twisting the trees’ shadows, mangling the forest floor. The creek
spilled forth on fast forward. My blood boomed like a gunshot in my ears. I
searched for Ashlyn’s body but she wasn’t there. A boy was.

CHAPTER
TWO

He
lay just beside the water, curled over on his side with his arms around himself
and his knees drawn to his chest. From my perch up on the bridge, I could see
he had hair the color of burnt rust and looked about my age.