a secret from my friends. That couldn’t have been easy.”
I let out a hoarse laugh. The ghost hand clenches tighter around my throat. “Easier than it probably should be.”
“What was his name?” Sulli asks, then cringes. “You don’t have to answer that. Fuck, you said you wanted to keep it in the past. I’m bad with words—”
“His name was Skylar,” I say quickly. “And I like your words.”
She lets out a soft breath. “One day, if you want to talk about him, I’ll be here to listen.”
“Me too,” Akara says.
Pressure eases off my windpipe.
I breathe in. “Thanks,” I say into a strong nod. One day, I hope I can tell them more. How my parents’ divorce is wrapped like a vice around Skylar’s death. How everything goes back to that one moment. How one night changed my whole world.
Tonight could’ve done the same thing.
Maybe it already has.
Like the turn of a car, heading in a new, unexpected and unknown direction. One we didn’t plan or map out, but one that was meant for us.
For whatever reason, we’re here together.
I lean the shovel against a tree to pluck another cigarette from the pack. “So we’ve got Adam Sully…” I put the cigarette between my lips. “My older brother.” I light it with a Zippo and suck on the end. My eyes hit Akara and blow out smoke. “And your dad.” With the cigarette pinched between fingers, I motion between the three of us. “What does that make us? Some sort of Death Brigade.”
“The Death Brigade,” Akara repeats with a short laugh and peeking smile.
“We all just made it out alive,” Sulli tells us. “Maybe that actually makes us the Life Brigade.”
“I guess we’ll see.” I grab my shovel and keep digging.
Not even five minutes later, Sulli curses loudly, “Fuck.” The handle of her shovel just broke off. I’m more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.
I look to Akara. “Too strong for her own good.”
“A travesty,” Akara quips. “Do we need to bury her in a third hole?”
“Fuck off,” she curses, frustrated, and she collapses on her ass.
Akara and I stop joking around with Sulli, and we all take a break. Grouped together in the dark, we pass out the only snacks left in the hiking backpack.
Teddy Grahams and applesauce.
With sweaty, bloody clothes and dirtied hands, we eat together, and as I finish off a cup of applesauce, I look around at where we are, what we’re doing, and I start laughing.
Sulli puts a hand to my head. “Are you concussed?”
My chest rises in a bigger laugh. “I was just thinking about how we’re eating food that first belonged to a baby, digging graves with shovels meant for shitholes, and we’re in a meadow with a Meadows.”
Akara and Sulli flash their headlamps around the grassy clearing we chose. Sure enough, they realize we’re in an actual meadow. And they both start laughing with me.
“Shit,” Akara breathes into the light sound. “I needed that.” He touches the back of my head.
“It’s what I’m here for.” I swig my water that I wish were beer. “The Meadows-in-a-meadow jokes.”
Sulli sways into me like she means to slug my arm, but instead, she just leans her weight against my side. I wrap an arm over her shoulder.
Akara keeps a hand on her knee.
Laughter has faded, but resting among each other carries a solace and comfort that I’d rather not leave behind.
24
AKARA KITSUWON
After heaving the cougars in the graves, we shovel dirt on top. Covering their bodies, I crouch down while Banks hangs his head and Sulli presses her fingers to her lips.
I touch the packed-in dirt.
It was you or us.
I’m sorry it had to be you.
After a quiet moment, I rise. Banks makes a sign of the cross, and Sulli exhales a deeper breath.
“Let’s go,” I tell them.
They nod and follow. We make our way back to camp. It’s late. We’re all filthy and cut-up. Most of my pain centralizes on the bite mark around my elbow. Stinging escalates whenever I shift my arm, but I wash the ache down with some over-the-counter pain meds.
Sulli is rigging a makeshift shower. A plastic sack, resembling an IV bag, is full of boiled water that’s been warming in the sun all day. She hooks the bag to a tree limb, but there’s only enough water for one warm shower.
Before the cougar attack, we talked about just washing off in the river. Now that’s not happening. I don’t trust how well we’ve bandaged our wounds, and wading in a river