Now they were slightly larger with surprise. “Why do you know that about me?”
“I looked you up,” I said. “I thought I was going to your house and I wanted to see who I was getting involved with.”
“Smart idea. I didn’t look you up, so is there anything wrong with you? Criminal history, traffic tickets, a love of figure skating?”
“I do like figure skating. Not to do it, but to watch it. Besides that, no,” I said, considering. I’d had issues with roommates incollege who didn’t enjoy some of my habits, like waking up early and neatness. But those wouldn’t bother him since we wouldn’t be living together.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
That was a difficult question because there wasn’t one, single answer. I didn’t have to come up with anything, though, because another of his friends came over to hug him and say they’d had a great season, and then to ask for money.
I figured it was a good time for me to walk away, and I wandered into the crowd. I got stopped by one person, but I wasn’t interested in his offer and I moved on. Where were the bathrooms here? I didn’t need one immediately, but were we just supposed to stumble into the empty field? Again, I hadn’t come prepared for a nature excursion.
I put down the mostly full beer, because I definitely wanted to avoid the need to pee. Then I thought more about having to squat in some plants and also about walking back to my car as the night wore on and people got drunker. I decided it was a good time to leave. I looked around for Ed so I could tell him goodbye, but I didn’t see him so I stepped out of the barn through a hole in the wall rather than the door at the front.
Apparently, I would have to start carrying a flashlight. I’d needed one during the rat scare/circuit breaker problem and I really needed one now to negotiate this path. I had lived in a lot of different places in my life but I’d never been so totally in the dark before I came here. When the sun set and unless there wasa huge moon or you were in an actual town with other people, buildings, and cars, then it was pitch black.
The moon must have been behind a cloud tonight because this reminded me a lot of when there had been the problem with the electrical panel in the Woodsmen practice facility and Ronan and I had stood on the table—it was that dark. Who knew what was out here with me? The noise from the party would have masked any sounds of someone approaching—
I screamed when the hand touched my shoulder and I turned fast, ready to fight.
“Cate, it’s me,” Ronan said. “I wasn’t trying to scare you, I swear.”
“You snuck up on me in the dark!”
“No, I was calling your name but you didn’t hear me.”
I had thought that I had a lot of situational awareness. That was incorrect.
“You’re leaving so early?” he asked.
“I don’t know anyone there,” I said. “I met one guy and he asked if I wanted to go behind the barn with him to talk, but that was it.”
“I wouldn’t have done that,” he told me. “I think most people here are ok, but I don’t know everybody, either.”
He had sounded pretty serious. “It’s better to be careful,” I agreed.
“Where are you going? A bar? Home?”
I shrugged. Home, probably, but I didn’t really want to. “I don’t have any plans.”
“Then let’s go somewhere,” he suggested.
“It’s your party,” I reminded him, but he shook his head. I could at least see that with my piss-poor phone light.
“I don’t care. I’ll come back later,” he told me. “They’ll be here all night.”
I thought for a second before I answered. “Ok, where do you want to go?”
“I’ll show you,” he said, and started down the path. “Walk right behind me because I know the way.”
Unfortunately, the length of his stride made it impossible to “walk right behind” because my legs (and I, as a whole) were about a foot shorter. According to the Junior Woodsmen website, he was six and a half feet tall, so I’d been correct in what I’d originally thought. He was a mountain. He had gone a ways ahead when he seemed to realize that I was no longer close. I’d gotten even more held up because I’d managed to step in some mud that was rapidly freezing as the nighttime temperatures dropped back down.
“What are you doing back there?” Ronan called. “Are you hiding?”
“Does that make any sense? Would I hide in a cold, muddy field?” And there might have been rats, because I thought that I’d heard some scrabbling. I’d also been hearing that in my dreams, though. “My shoe is trapped in the muck.”
He laughed but he did come right back. He also let me hold on to his arm as I pulled myself free, but by that point, I wasn’t thinking about going out to a bar or club with my foot encased in mud. “I’m heading home,” I announced when we reached the road. “You should go back to your party.”
