hardly more than a trickle, really. Teddy’s bathroom sink had generated a bigger body of water than this, back when it developed a disastrous leak last July. But Romeo paused to crouch and gaze at it. “I bet this comes from snowmelt at higher elevations. I wonder if it runs all year.”
“It’s really small.”
“Yeah, but it forms its own ecosystem. I bet if we could analyze some of this water it’d be full of all sorts of critters.”
“Like great white sharks?”
Romeo flashed him a grin. “Unlikely. It’s not salt water.”
In the very unlikely event that Teddy had been taking this hike by himself, he might not have even noticed the tiny stream, and he certainly wouldn’t have stopped to inspect it. But there was Romeo, acting as if it were the most fascinating damn thing in the universe, and that made the stream interesting to Teddy too. It was as if proximity to Romeo made Teddy’s world open up in unexpected ways.
“I guess we should move on.” Romeo stood and wiped his hands on his jeans even though he hadn’t touched anything. They continued up the trail for ten or fifteen minutes.
The sky had clouded over without Teddy noticing, and now a light rain began to fall—hardly more than a mist, really. He debated whether to pull up his hood, but Romeo hadn’t, and Teddy didn’t want to look like a wimp. He’d endured blizzards, fierce lightning storms, tornadoes, and humidity levels high enough to soften iron. A little falling water wouldn’t melt him. He sniffled, though, and wondered if Tish had packed some Kleenex.
“This is a long walk.” Teddy knew that sounded more like a complaint than an observation.
“Not really. Sometimes on my days off, when the weather’s nice, I like to walk around Chicago. Just...you know. Take in the sights.”
“Yeah, and sometimes I walk to work. But Chicago’s flat. And it has way less nature.”
“True. Although, you know, Chicago has some nature too. If you know where to look.” A bit of wistfulness had crept into Romeo’s voice.
“Brookfield Zoo?”
Romeo shrugged. “I guess. But we never went there when I was a kid. It gets expensive if you have five kids.”
That hadn’t occurred to Teddy, whose family was smaller. Anyway, his parents weren’t much interested in animals and believed that zoos were only for young children, so he’d rarely visited. “So where’s all the nature? Lake Michigan?”
“Dad would check out guides from the library—bugs, plants, birds—and we’d go to parks and see what we could find. Did you know there are four thousand coyotes living in Chicago?”
“Coyotes?” Teddy looked around quickly, as if one might jump out from a behind a tree. If there were that many coyotes in a metropolis, how many lived here in the forest? And then there were other predators. Bears. Wolves. Mountain lions. Elk, maybe? Teddy didn’t know whether elk were dangerous to humans, but he knew that moose were; he’d seen videos of them attacking people. But he had no idea whether there were moose in the greater Seattle area.
Teddy pictured himself mauled to death by beasts. That might make the headlines back home. Local Man Gobbled by Grizzly. Maybe Gregory would even hear about the incident, and then he’d feel guilty for dumping Teddy so rudely. And be impressed by his—sadly now demised—adventurous spirit.
Romeo patted Teddy’s shoulder. “I think we’re pretty safe here.”
Think wasn’t the same as know, and besides, Romeo wasn’t from here and so he had little basis for that assurance. It was nice that he was trying, though.
“It’s funny,” Teddy said. “I never would have pegged you for a nature lover.”
“I don’t know, I guess the science part of it appealed to me. Like, if you look closely enough at things, if you really study them, they make a lot of sense. Like ferns, for instance.” He knelt beside the trail to point out one of the plants in question.
“Ferns.”
“Just sort of some frilly, leafy things, right? Except did you know that they’re some of the earth’s oldest plants? Some species have stayed basically the same for almost two hundred million years.”
Teddy blinked. “Wow. Impressive.” Actually, he was more impressed with Romeo’s knowledge than with the ancient history of forest plants.
“You know where I always wanted to visit? The desert.”
“Like...the Sahara?”
Romeo laughed as he stood upright. “I’d be satisfied with the Mojave. My parents gave me a book about American deserts for my birthday when I was eight, and—” He stopped with a wince. “Sorry. This is dumb.”
Teddy planted