Wild (15 page)

After noon, but before sunset. That's how long he had to wait to see Dara again. So he followed Ms. Fourakis quietly and watched the sun drift across the blue, blue sky.

 

“Josh thinks you're avoiding him,” Sofia said as she and Dara walked to her car.

Most of the seniors had a half period at the end of the day. That meant they could leave before the rest of the student body. They streamed into the parking lot, their voices low. It was like they were afraid if they made too much noise, the teachers would call them back.

Dara opened the passenger side door, but didn't climb in. The sun was too warm, the sky too bright. Soaking up the heat, she draped her arms over the roof of the car and sighed. “I'm not. I'm just not going out of my way to see him.”

“I'm hella shocked he never figured that out.”

“That I usually run halfway across the school to see him after class?” Dara shook her head. “I'm not. Josh is a really great guy, but he's not super observant.”

Sofia climbed in, dumping her bag in the backseat and opening her purse in her lap. It would take her a few minutes to find her keys in that mess. Dara marveled that somebody as mentally together as Sofia could have such a cluttered . . . everything. Her car, her purse, her bedroom.

“You wanna know what I think?” Sofia asked, rooting through a tangle of earbuds, necklaces, and lip gloss. “I think you're breaking up with him in slow motion.”

With an incredulous look, Dara lowered herself into the passenger seat. “That's crazy.”

“Lie to yourself all you want. I've been watching you two since freshman year.”

“Whatever, Sof.”

Abandoning the search for her keys for a minute, Sofia reached over and caught Dara's hand. “I know something happened out there. And I'm not talking about Cade, either. I mean, maybe he's part of it. I don't know. But you and Josh aren't the same.”

Dara surprised herself by agreeing. She wasn't big on sharing her relationship details, she never had been. It had always seemed kind of private. Obviously, she told Sofia about big milestones. But when she was mad at Josh, she didn't badmouth him. And when she was thrilled with him, well, she kept that to herself, too. It had always felt like she was protecting something special.

Gently, Sofia resumed her search for her keys. “Spill.”

“He's not interested in anything,” Dara said. Then, she immediately corrected herself. “I mean, he's interested in stuff. But he doesn't . . . like, for example: I found a whole field of little red mushrooms. Like, Smurf houses. Mario mushrooms.”

“Cool,” Sofia said.

“It
was
cool!” Dara twisted in her seat, hands dancing wildly as she explained herself. “I showed him the picture, and he didn't know what he was looking for. They were right there. The waterfall rainbows were right there, and Cade was up in the trees, and he just . . . he didn't care. He didn't want to know. He has no idea what I see when I look through the lens, and he doesn't want to. He just doesn't.”

Sofia accidentally set off an atomizer in her purse. Perfume floated up in the car, and Dara scrambled to roll her window down. So did Sofia, contorting her face and trying to fan the fumes outside.

“It's your perfume,” Dara pointed out, coughing.

“I don't usually spray it on my face,” Sofia replied. “God, I'm never wearing this again.”

“Please don't.”

Tossing the bottle into the backseat of her car, Sofia turned to face Dara. Sympathetic and even, she reached out to pat her knee. There was something soothing about Sofia when she got down to caretaker mode. She could be a total lunatic when she wanted to be. But when it was time to get serious, she slipped into it effortlessly.

“I'm sorry. About you and Josh. I know and you know and probably everybody but Josh knows you guys were going to break up this fall anyway, but . . . you know, it still sucks.”

Dara's emotions suddenly welled to the surface. She wanted to blame the unexpected tears on the perfume bomb, but she couldn't. Sofia was right. Even if things had been hurtling toward an inevitable end, she and Josh had been together a long time. She wasn't sure she even knew how to be herself without him. “I wanted us to be different, you know?”

“Most people don't marry their high school sweetheart,” Sofia replied. Then, she crinkled her nose, smiling and teasing carefully. “You have to go to college and sleep with at least two questionable people before you can think about settling down. Maybe three.”

Dara swiped at her face. “I get a lot more action in your fantasies than I do in mine,” Dara said. But she laughed in spite of her tears. Some of the weight on her heart lifted. Even though it was sad to contemplate, it was good to finally admit to someone that her feelings for Josh had changed.

Now if she could only figure out a good way to explain it to
him
.

Twenty-five

M
s. Fourakis let Dara into the house. Rather than hover, she called Cade to come see his guest. She pointed first at him, then at her. “An hour, tops. I told your parents I'd send you straight home.”

“Thanks,” Dara said. Clutching her bag, she followed Cade down the hallway.

All the rooms had plants in them. There was a hint of humidity in the air. It smelled fresh, like rain might come through at any moment. She didn't know if Mom or Dad had anything to do with Cade's placement here, but it seemed really, really right.

Pushing open a door, Cade slid through it first then waited for Dara. Then he held up his fingers. The pads on each one were stained black. “Fingerprints. And they wiped my mouth with a stick.”

“A DNA test,” she explained. “They're going to . . .”

“Keep the sample on hand and compare it to the genetic loci between me and anybody who shows up who might be related to me. I know what a DNA test is.”

Unnerved, Dara laid her backpack on the bed and unzipped it. “But you've never seen a stove.”

“I've never seen Pluto. I still know it's a planet.”

With a wry smile, Dara looked back at him. “Actually, it's not anymore. It got demoted.”

The look on Cade's face was priceless. He hopped up on the chair by the window, peering down at her with utter bafflement. Tipping his head from side to side, he seemed like he was sloshing that idea around in his head. Finally, he shrugged. “It's still a planet to me.”

“You're not the only one,” Dara said, laughing. Taking a deep breath, she turned and sat on the end of his bed. Pulling her camera into her lap, she took in her surroundings with her eyes, first.

It was comfortable. Neutral, kind of hotel-like, really. But that was probably a good idea. If Ms. Fourakis did a lot of temporary fosters instead of permanent ones, it made sense to keep the room blank. There were plants in here, too, though. Probably because there wasn't room for them anywhere else.

Cade leaned forward. “What do you see?”

The question startled her. A flush stung her cheeks and she raised her shoulders, uncertain. “Well. It's a nice room. Not too big. Nothing fancy. Sort of generic art on the walls, which would be weird if one person slept in here all the time. But since they don't, it's okay. The plants are obviously Ms. Fourakis' thing; do you like it? Do you feel kind of like you're outside?”

“No,” Cade said. He pointed up. “I can't see the sky.”

“Well no, I know, but . . .”

“A house is not the same as my home.”

Dara's heart ached. But she mustered up a smile for him, waving for him to come sit with her. “You're right, it's not the same. But come here. I want to show you some cool stuff here in town. Just, you know . . . so you know it's not all hospitals and police cars and stuff.”

When he didn't move immediately, she wondered if she should go sit over there. Since he sat exclusively on the back of the chair, there was plenty of room for her in the seat.

What kept her from standing though, was the realization that his knees would frame her shoulders if she did. He'd have to lean over her to see. The thought alone sent a strange quiver through her belly.

Definitely not doing that. So Dara held out her hand and raised her brows expectantly. “Please. I think you'll like this.”

Sliding from his perch, Cade wound back to the bed. He sat next to her, but not too close. Suddenly, he darted a hand out. His finger pecked the body of the camera, once, then twice. Dara clutched it to her chest before he tagged it again.

“Stop,” she told him. “You'll break it.”

“Ticky box,” he said. Clasping his hands in his lap, he nodded toward the camera. “That's your ticky box. There was one at the police station, too.”

Dara squinted at him. “They took your picture at the police station?”

Wiggling his blackened fingers at her, Cade nodded. “After the fingerprints and the stick in my mouth.”

She felt a little cheated. It was irrational. It's not like anyone at the station had tried to capture Cade's true self on film. They just needed a record, something to show to other cops, or to possible parents. They hadn't taken anything away from her, but it felt like they had. She wanted to be the one to take his photo first.

“Okay, well, this is a camera. You know what pictures are, this is how you get them.”

Holding it up, she fired off a few quick shots of him. For the first time, she really noticed the sound the shutter made. Ticky box indeed. Smiling crookedly, she leaned over to show him the LCD screen on the back. Thumbing the buttons, she made his image appear.

“See?” she said. “These aren't very good, but that's how it works.”

Quiet for a long moment, Cade considered the screen. Then, his brow slowly knit. “You were taking pictures in the forest. Of the mushrooms and the trees. Why?”

Resting the camera in her lap, Dara rolled her head to look at Cade. His face was so sweet. So curious. Though he waited for her reply, his gaze kept straying toward the camera. “I wanted to see their true nature. I wanted to capture everything about them in a single picture. So that later, I could show that photo to somebody and they'd understand. They'd feel like they were right there, looking at that flower for the first time.”

Cade leaned over. “Why aren't these very good?”

“Because I was just showing you how it worked. I didn't try to get you in the picture.”

“I'm right there.”

“Right, but it's not the same thing.”

It was hard to explain. Even harder to explain to him, when she wasn't sure what he knew and what he didn't. So rather than mess around with words, she scooted closer to him. She pulled out an SDHC card, not much bigger than her thumbnail. Showing it to him, she popped the current memory card out of her camera, and slid that one in.

Running through the menus, Dara put the camera in slide show mode. Then, she reached over and cupped his hands. Carefully, she placed the camera there. She was a little bit nervous. She didn't know what he would do when the pictures started to flash in front of him. Her gaze danced from the screen to his face, hungry for his reaction to each photo.

“Sofia laughing,” Cade said, trying to touch the blur of black hair and red lipstick on the screen. His touch glanced off, and then the next picture slid into place. Brows lifting, he tipped his head to one side. “I saw lights like these. Outside.”

Dara nodded. “Streetlamps, exactly.”

“A machine,” Cade said, but he sounded uncertain.

“That's the engine of Josh's car,” she told him. “He rebuilt it himself.”

Cade made a dismissive sound and then leaned his head back when the screen changed again.

Slowly, the slide show introduced him to glass doorknobs in old houses, mourning doves perched in the glow of a scarlet sunrise. A stained glass window at night, and a gargoyle spouting water in broad daylight. The silhouettes of children playing on a playground, a dog barking at its own, long shadow.

None of the pictures were of nature things; that was on purpose. Dara figured he knew the forest better than anyone, so why not share her world with him? It had so many beautiful details, and most people walked right on by without seeing them. When the reel ended, Dara was surprised to find herself leaning on Cade's good shoulder.

“What do you think?” she asked, tension winding her tight. He was so close, or she was. Idly, she wondered why guys always had the nicest eyelashes, long and dark and curled.

Cade's gaze drifted downward. “You smell like someone else.”

That broke the spell. With a thin laugh, Dara reached for her camera. “Yeah, Sofia accidentally sprayed me with perfume in her car.”

“You smell good without it.”

Now Dara's blush darkened. What could she say to that? There was no ready response for that kind of observation. Clearing her throat, she put a little space between them and busied herself with her camera. “Um, thanks. So . . .”

Cade reached out, curling a knuckle against her cheek. “You're all red now.”

Catching his hand, she shook her head. “Because you're embarrassing me. You can notice stuff like that about people, but you don't usually say it.”

“Why not?”

“It's just a little awkward,” she said. “What if I told you that you have pretty eyelashes?”

Frowning, Cade closed his eyes and touched his own face thoughtfully. “I never thought about them. Thank you.”

For some reason, that made
her
blush more. It was a conversational trap, and she had no idea how to escape. So, she retreated into the one thing that always made her feel certain.

Sliding to her feet, she pushed a new memory card into the camera. Raising it, she pointed a toe and nudged his shin with it.

“Let me take your picture.”

“You already know the true me.”

An electric thrill raced along her skin. He said it so certainly; his eyes looked right into her. Swallowing hard, Dara shrugged off her body's feral response. That's all it was; something animal and automatic. He was handsome, and there was something about the way he looked at her that made her feel alive.

“But I want to see if I can capture it,” she said, and raised the camera instead. Looking through the viewfinder, she felt certain she couldn't. Cade wasn't himself when he was still. Sitting next to him, she could tell that even when he didn't move, that he was ready to. That his muscles could flicker to life at any moment. She'd never get that with a single picture.

That didn't mean, however, that she wasn't going to try.

 

After Dara left, Cade lay across the foot of the bed.

The false scent hung heavily in the air. But when he closed his eyes, when he concentrated, he could smell her skin. Her heat and warmth.

Careful not to pull the edges of his bandage, Cade rubbed the middle of his chest. Everything inside him ached, but it wasn't quite pain. It was a new kind of hunger, one he'd never felt before.

He had to learn to tell their kind of time. She promised to come back on Saturday and he didn't know how long that was. There was too much waiting here. At home, his plans were never specific. Some days, he knew he had to hunt—but he never knew exactly where. If he had to go to the lick, there were lots of paths to take.

Except when he doused his fire for the night and fell asleep, Cade never waited on anything. There was always something to do. Somewhere to go. Now, in Dara's town, it was waiting. Waiting for the police. Waiting at a drive-through to get medicine. Waiting for tests. Waiting for answers.

Waiting to see her again.

Pressing down on the ache in his chest, Cade closed his eyes tight.

 

Dara didn't know what she expected to see out her window. Maybe she hoped that Cade would follow her home. That was just plain ridiculous, and she put the thought from her mind. But not entirely. Even though she was supposed to be doing homework, she kept getting up to check the window.

Until that moment, she saw nothing but an empty street. But this time, when she pushed the curtains back, she frowned.

There were news vans parked in front of her house. The kind with satellite dishes that rose high into the sky above them. Two different reporters stood in the street, their camera operators revolving in their orbits. One reporter stalked toward her camera, her face incredibly serious. The other kept waving a hand, gesturing at the neighborhood.

Anxious, Dara watched them, probably longer than she should have. One of the cameras turned, angling up on her house. Probably recording her. After a few minutes, she realized the reporters weren't going away.

The neighbors had figured that out, too. They stood on their porches watching. They filled their windows and leaned in door frames. Makwa was a quiet place to live. News vans from Lexington, ninety miles away, were rare blooms.

Bounding down the stairs, Dara startled her mother when she careened into the kitchen. Holding up a hand, she said, “Sorry.”

Dropping the pepper mill, Mrs. Porter slumped against the counter. “Jeez, Dara.”

“There are reporters out front,” Dara said.

Mrs. Porter's eyes widened. Leaving dinner behind, she walked to the front windows. Parting the curtains carefully, she peered out. Sure enough, the vans were still there. And now the reporters were branching out, talking to neighbors.

“You've got to be kidding me. I need to text your father,” Mrs. Porter said, stalking back toward the kitchen. Producing her cell phone, she let her fingers fly across its screen. Electronic ticks filled the air, and Dara felt weirdly trapped.

Lia strode into the kitchen and announced, “Did you see the news trucks out front? They're talking to Sasha. I don't know why she can't just shut up for once.”

Lia's honeyed hair fell over her shoulders in waves, velvety pink streaks peeking out fashionably. She looked like she'd walked out of a magazine, which meant she was probably on her way out. Or had been, before the invasion of the newscasters.

Mrs. Porter frowned. “I hope her mother's there with her.”

“She is.”

Turning back to a messy array of ingredients that threatened to become dinner, Mrs. Porter seemed lost among them. Dara locked the door, then pulled the shade for good measure. Then she shouldered up to the counter, trying to figure out where her mom, or more likely, her dad had left off.

“I don't get it,” Dara said, dipping chicken in the electric- orange crust mix. Disgusting and tasty, her favorite kind of meal. “What do they even want?”

“To get famous,” Lia said, rolling her eyes. But she slipped in on the other side of their mother and took over the salad. Chopping carrots into slivers, she cut her sister a dark look. “Don't you know what they're saying?”

Mrs. Porter excused herself to set the table. “Let's not.”