Part 10 (1/2)

I resume my stretch. Brandon pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, inhales, blows smoke at me.

I lean deeper into my hamstring stretch. I'm thinking about how much stronger I am than Brandon. I doubt he realizes that. Boys never do. He should be scared of me. Because I really don't like him and I'll hurt him if I have to.

A single runner pads past. A real one this time. I don't have to turn; I can tell from their stride: no drag, no pounding of heels.

”You do this a lot, don't you?” he says. ”Especially here.”

I switch legs, ignoring the foul smoke, ignoring Brandon.

” 'Cause I heard they found the body in Central Park. Not far from here actually-and I thought, s.h.i.+t, Micah's always here. What are the odds? Specially with her and Zach being so . . .” He pauses, takes a long drag on his cigarette, blows the smoke in my direction.

I have to stop myself from looking up. From telling him that Central Park is not exactly unpopulated. Hundreds, no, thousands of people are here all the time. Night and day. Is he blind? Does he not notice the kids on blades who just floated by? All the runners? What about the family on the blanket and the couple making out not six feet from where he was sitting on the gra.s.s? There's hardly an empty patch in Central Park this time of year. Even in winter there are people out in it, tromping through snow, past leafless trees, seeking a respite from concrete and steel.

I want to ask Brandon how he knows where Zach was found. Was it really here? Where exactly? What else does Brandon know? But if he knows, then someone else at school does, too. Maybe I can find out without asking Brandon a thing.

I take off at top speed, knowing he couldn't keep pace even if I went at a slow trot.

FAMILY HISTORY.

I wouldn't mind going upstate so much if my family went with me. Well, okay, they take me up-Mom and Dad and idiot brother-but they don't stay. Just me. Sometimes I'm afraid they won't return. I'll be stuck there forever.

My parents have excuses for not staying but it feels like they want to be rid of me.

Dad says he can't work there. Not without electricity. His laptop has at most four hours of life. He has to go into town to work. Mom hates it. ”I can never get clean,” she says. ”The water is so cold.”

Jordan would stay but the Greats don't want him. He doesn't say anything in front of me but I know he's jealous. I've heard him whining to my parents about wanting to play in the woods. ”Why doesn't Grandmother like me?” he asks. Because you're a sniveling useless brat, I want to tell him. But I'm not supposed to have heard. Our apartment's so small that we always pretend we can't hear the things we're not supposed to. It's a good rule.

I'm happy the Greats don't want Jordan, but I wish my parents would stay.

The Greats have a thing about the oldest child.

Which is me.

The Greats teach me woodcraft-tracking, hunting, skinning, how to find my way in the forest, how to find food, make shelter. It's more work than school. But if the world ends we'll be ready. That's the idea: survivalism.

Some of their neighbors are that way. They have bas.e.m.e.nts full of canned food, dried beans and fruits, secret wells, bows and arrows.

The other neighbors are sheep farmers who think the survivalists and the Greats are crazy. But then they're always complaining about coyote taking their sheep. Coyote bigger and tougher than any coyote previously known to the universe, Grandmother says. ”I've never seen one,” she always says. ”Man with coyote-skin jacket, maybe. What would Hilliard have said about that?”

I never saw any coyote either. Not on our property. Black bears occasionally, but never coyote.

Or deer. Not like on some of the neighbors' places, where there's more deer than flies. Though we have more racc.o.o.ns and foxes, and our forest is much more foresty. Without all the deer chomping away, herbs and shrubs and saplings have a much better chance. We have taller, stronger, healthier trees and birds and insects everywhere you look. In spring there are more kinds of flowers than I can name. Their fragrances float on air, making breathing a plea sure.

It's beautiful. I can admit that.

While I hate music, I like birdsong. Their bells and flutes don't hurt my head.

The Greats aren't happy when I call them survivalists. They didn't know the word when I first brought it up. When I described it to them they sneered. They hate their neighbors. But what they say sounds the same as all the crazy survivalist sites about hunting and tracking and building your own shelters and knowing what's edible and what's not. How to survive when the end-times come.

Grandmother doesn't talk about end-times, though she does say that the world is off-kilter. Everything, she says, is hotter and colder and more extreme than it used to be. She prides herself on having stuck to horse and buggy. On growing her own food. On needing hardly anything from outside.

The Greats think I'm like them.

I'm not. I'm a city girl. I like electricity and running water. I don't want to know how to ride a horse, how to slaughter a calf, how to set a trap, or any of the other things they teach me.

I do not belong there.

Though sometimes it is fun.

Because of Hilliard.

Now I must confess to a lie. Everything I've told you so far has been completely true except for the tiny matter of Great-Uncle Hilliard. Hilliard's alive.

But it's not my lie, it's the family's. Hilliard's in hiding on the farm. I don't know what it was he did or who he's hiding from, but to everyone other than us Wilkins, Hilliard's dead. Grandmother and Great-Aunt hiss at me if I slip up and talk about him in the present tense. Idiot Jordan doesn't know. Only Dad and me.

I love Hilliard.

He taught me how to track and, when I was little, how to run. We run in the forest together. He's not as fast as me-he's old, after all, but it's still fun. He may not be fast but he's better at running through the woods. I still stumble, sometimes I fall. Hilliard knows the woods: every old stump, every tree root, every shrub. He never even gets spiderwebs in his face.

When something warm and breathing and edible is near he goes stiller than a rock. Sees it long before it sees him.

I wonder how it would have been if Grandmother had married Hilliard. If Hilliard was my grandfather. If I'd grown up in the woods. If there was no city in me at all.

I'd never have met Zach.

Would that have been better or worse?

I think some-maybe most-of what Zach liked about me was the country parts, not the city. When I showed him how to find food in Central Park. How to hide. Really hide. Showed him red-headed woodp.e.c.k.e.rs and chipmunks, too. He hadn't thought there was any wildlife in the city-not anything that wasn't a rat or a pigeon.

He thought I was wild.

He liked the wild in me.

BEFORE.

I didn't do it to show off.

We were running, Zach and me, slow, four or so miles in, halfway up Heartbreak Hill, when I smelled fox. I knew they were there. I'd caught their scent before. But not this strong. They were close.

”Want to see some foxes?” I asked Zach, slowing my pace to barely running at all.

”Foxes?” he asked, looking at me odd. ”What do you mean 'foxes'? Hot girls I didn't notice? Other than you, I mean.” He stopped, looked around.

”No, foxes. Actual foxes.”

”Does it mean something I don't know about? 'Cause you can't mean the red animals with the big tails, right?”

I laughed. He was balanced on one leg, staring at me as if I was about to do something weird.

”Yes, doof. Foxes. The animals.” I wrinkled my nose, brought my hands up to my face. ”Red. Tricky. Eat rabbits. Foxes, you know?”