He walks over and kicks a fallen branch with his boot, checking to see if there’s anything growing under it. You remember what you’re supposed to be doing and immediately point to a plant with small purple blooms.
“Can we eat those?” you ask.
“That’s bittersweet nightshade,” says Troy calmly. “It will legit kill you.”
“Oh.”
And so you plod on, taking up the back of the patrol. An hour passes somehow. The hunger is an actual ache in your body at this point, clenching your abdominals. Fran manages to find some dandelions, which are on the edible list. And Troy takes some cattail shoots that are supposed to taste like cucumbers when peeled. But all of it only fills a single shirt-basket. It’s a pathetic harvest, and as you stagger back the way you came, you can already imagine the reaction from the hungry troops.
No one speaks when you return and dump it all in the single cooking pan you have. And since the pan has been over the fire, it all starts to sizzle, giving off an awful smoke and a smell you can only describe as burnt lawn. It cooks down to about a handful of food apiece, which is chewy and tasteless and dirty. And when it’s gone, everyone looks a little like they’re about to cry. Even Troy, who seemed so pro-anarchy-foraging in the canoe. Finally, after the shock wears off and Diana starts packing up the cooking utensils, Will stands and looks at all of you.
“Guys,” he says. “We’re going to have to kill something.”
TWENTY-SIX
“Don’t. Let. This. Die.”
Even through two closed doors, those words made it to your ears.
Sean and Diana were fighting. It had been almost an hour. They were trying to keep their voices down, but every once in a while, a phrase or two would break through. You knew you shouldn’t be listening, but you also didn’t know where else to be. Your parents were downstairs in the only common space, watching a reality show calledNaked and Afraid, which sounded too much like your life story to be enjoyable. And Sean needed the car to go to some kind of weekly bike rally he’d joined called Critical Mass.
From what you could tell, it was a group of activists who rode through city streets to lobby for cyclists’ rights. And in the absence of diving, Sean had thrown himself into it with his usual zeal. Suddenly, he was bathing less and chastising your parents about how they imagined “public space.”
“Do you know what he does there?” you’d asked your dad earlier.
He was eating a fried-egg sandwich, only half paying attention to you.
“Bikes around with the other socialists?” he said.
Your mom shook her head.
“I just think it’s good he’s making new friends,” she said.
She reached out and gave your side a squeeze. Neither of them seemed aware of the argument currently going on in their house. Or maybe they were just giving Sean his space, confident he would figure things out the way he always did.
“You okay, sweetie?” asked your mom.
When you glanced back at her, she was staring at your face. You weren’t sure what it looked like, but it couldn’t have been good. Each word you heard from upstairs felt like a jab to the ribs. And the same phrase played in your head over and over.
Things weren’t supposed to be like this.
For the few weeks after you spilled Sean’s secret at Perkins, things had somehow not imploded. Sean and Diana were still talking. And they even went out a few times—to a movie and on a nighttime bike ride with Sean’s new fixed gear, which he was constantly modifying in the garage—and when they came back to the house, they usually sat close on the couch, joking and occasionally even kissing, until Diana inevitably stayed the night and sneaked out the window in the morning like old times. All of this helped to quell the crushing guilt you’d been feeling, but you also noticed that they rarely made time for you, or noticed you much at all.
Until one night when your parents were out.
Sean and Diana decided to make pot brownies, and around nine o’clock, they came upstairs to offer you a half. You’d never liked drugs that much (at least the ones you weren’t prescribed). They affected your anxiety in unpredictable ways, and once, after a few hits from a joint, you ate a raw bratwurst from the fridge and fell asleep in the downstairs shower. But, this time, you wereso relieved that you hadn’t ruined your brother’s life after all that you choked down the little chocolate square against your best instincts.
“It’s a super mellow strain,” said Sean. “Great cannabinoid profile.”
You didn’t know what he was talking about. Some guys he’d met from his biking collective were connoisseurs to say the least, and you had a hunch they’d been educating him. But he was right about the mellow part. That small cube glued you to the couch for a few hours, where you alternately talked to a stuffed animal and sang old songs from summer camp until eventually you felt Diana sit down next to you. She had been in a buoyant mood all night, talking more than usual, and laughing hysterically at Sean’s impression of a confused foal being born. But now she seemed subdued. Drained of something.
“Be honest,” she whispered. “Do you think I’m weak?”
These words made it through the haze and swirled around in your brain. For how long, you didn’t know.
“No,” you said. “Of course not.”
Your high was fading, but the words still vibrated in your chest. Diana reached out and grabbed the stuffed animal you were holding. It was a pink octopus you’d won at a fall carnival when you were six. It was frayed and dirty, but you still kept it in your room because it was the only thing you’d ever won. Sean had tried first to knock over the milk bottles, but he had failed. Then a lucky shot from your right hand had sent them scattering.
