The Moment Before

Chapter Thirteen

THIRTEEN

We walk back down the trail, past the Witch’s House where there are no park ranger types, no people of any sort. Balch Creek is flowing hard just below us, but we can’t see it, as dusk has settled, and any daylight left is just what reflects off of some white granite boulders. The water rush sound accompanies us back to civilization. My feet hurt a lot now, but I have to stride big to keep up with Connor; we need to get out of the forest before it’s pitch black.

            He still has a little deodorant smell, but now it’s mixed with a spring soil scent. Our shoulders are nearly touching. I’m aware of how close my hip is to his hip. The jelly feeling in my gut is both lower and higher now—traveling like water on tissue. We haven’t spoken a word to each other since leaving the clearing. Finally, house lights glow ahead of us. He says, “My parents are pretty close to sending me away.”

            My ears lock down on those words, my throat closes around them. I’m aware of sweat, suddenly, little dots of it at my temples, on my palms. A heartbeat tries pumping blood around, as though I’m a deer in a fight-or-flight stance. “Why?”

            Stupid question, I know, but it’s all that manages to come out of my closed-up throat.

            “It’s the classic stepfather scene. All he needed was one more reason to hate my guts. My dad lives over in Bend, they want to send me there.”

            “But I thought,” I stammer, “you were going to BALC?”

            “Yeah, well, guess not.”

            In the rising moonlight, the shadows on Connor’s face make a jigsaw line from his forehead to chin. I want to capture it so bad that I can almost feel the shape of a charcoal stick in my hand, a blurred edge of gray on canvas. Again, Sabine’s earring, the silver of it, catches white light. I swallow, and have to hold myself back from running my fingers up and down the length of his face. It’s that beautiful.

            “When?” I manage, my question a whisper.

            “Soon, maybe. I’m looking for a construction job or something. Digging ditches, whatever. I’ll be eighteen in a few months, if I had money saved up, I could live on my own. Or travel, you know?”

            That Connor Christopher really believes this makes me want to hug him. “Connor, I think we need to set the record straight. About the accident. Your parents, the school, they’d reconsider.”

            Connor shakes his head. “Here’s the thing. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. I can live it any way I want. Sabine doesn’t have those options.”

            I think of the Classics in Context class, Mrs. McConnell and her duplicity versus integrity lecture. “That’s very Faulknerian of you,” I tell Connor.

            He stares at me like I’ve lost my mind. “You’re such a nerd, Brady. You’re like the opposite of your sister.”

            That should hurt my feelings, what he just said, but it doesn’t. Being around Connor makes me feel realer, somehow. There’s some sort of truth serum thing happening to me, and I’m not afraid. Of anything. I say, “Sabine and me, we’re Irish twins, you know.”

            “I don’t know what that means, but I do know that Sabine thought you were wicked smart. Like, over the top.”

            “She said that?”