he wasn’t wild. He’d known he belonged to Jak. He’d killed him on purpose.
Jak gripped the pictures, deep confusion and anger rocking through him. He set them aside and started reading the journal on the top of the pile . . . about a possum and a deer, and a wolf. All the journals were the same. He read a few of the entries, a lump filling his throat. He stuck the pictures in his pocket—they were his, proof of everything he’d done to survive. Looking at them brought him back to those times and made him feel dizzy. Sick.
He put the journals back where they’d been, and then stood, holding his hair in his hands. Driscoll had watched. He’d watched and he hadn’t helped. He felt a howl rising in his throat but he swallowed it down, made himself stand still instead of tearing the house to shreds, to break furniture, to—
He heard a noise from the bedroom and went into a crouch, a low growl coming from his throat, too soft for anyone to hear. He turned his head so his ears faced up, sniffed the air.
He let out a slow breath. Just a tapping bird in the near faraway.
He stood slowly, walked to the bedroom on legs that felt stiff like tree trunks. The room was empty. Jak moved to the dresser, pulling drawers open, looking for what, he didn’t know. He opened the drawer of the table by the bed. There was a piece of paper with some shapes drawn on it . . . three squares, two Xs, a wavy line and a word at the bottom he didn’t know. He thought he knew what the drawing might be, but he didn’t think more about it right then, even though that sickness rose in his throat.
There was a small piece of paper next to the map that had the name Peg’s Diner at the top. It listed eggs and bacon and had a price next to each thing. Peg’s Diner? Were food places open during wars?
Jak didn’t think so.
He shut the drawer so hard the small table almost fell over.
He looked around the room, trying to understand something when he saw the picture over Driscoll’s dresser, the one he’d gone on and on about. Jak remembered his eyes, and how they’d been filled with so much . . . excitement. He walked toward it slowly, standing in front of it, a man now, when the last time he’d seen it, he’d been a boy, not much taller than the dresser.
His gaze moved over the fighting men who held spears and shields and . . . bows and arrows. What had Driscoll said all that time ago?
Survival is the greatest training of all.
His brain was buzzing again, and he couldn’t grab hold of his thoughts. He looked around again but didn’t see anything else. What he already had was enough though. Enough to tell him something awful was going on. Something that could turn his whole world upside down.
Again.
He left the house in the same way he’d come, closing the window behind him and walking to the road. He’d always stayed away from it because Driscoll had told him to. Driscoll told him a lot of things. Too many things. His head hurt and his skin felt itchy all over, but he ignored the feelings, pulling his heavy coat around himself and walking on. He found the road and followed it, walking for hours, until he came to another road, and then another. No cars passed him, but he was ready to hide if they did.
That third road led to a bigger road that was made of hard stuff. He left his flat shoes leaning against a tree, ducking behind it as a car zoomed by, stepping out after it was only a speck in the close faraway. He walked again, hiding when he heard a car coming and then stepping out when it was gone.
After a while, cars came by every few minutes, and Jak spotted the tops of buildings just over a hill.
He was hungry and thirsty, and he’d been walking for hours, but he moved toward those buildings, his heart beating quickly in his chest like he was walking toward death. Maybe he was. His soul felt like it was dying with each step, each car that drove by, the drivers not looking scared, even laughing.
Jak walked into the town of Helena Springs at almost night, the lights of the town blinking on