The Weight of Feathers

“This is the border between my family’s part of the woods, and yours,” she said. “Right here, we’re not standing anywhere that belongs to anybody.”


“Yes, we are,” he said. “Because it’s water.”

“I was careful,” she said.

He held a wet palm to her cheek. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Everybody gets hurt,” she said. “You know that.”



Jamais couard n’aura belle amie.

Faint heart never won true love.

He gave Lace a head start, so she’d get back to the house before he did. He’d wait a few minutes and then follow. The last thing they needed was Dax seeing them both together, soaked in river water.

His wet clothes stuck to him. He turned his back to the river. Every glint off the water felt sharp as a glass shard. Every rustle of the current through the tree roots stung. In a few days his family would pack up, leave Almendro for the next town, and put a long stretch of highway between them and this river.

Lace’s shadow disappeared into the farthest trees, and all the sharp edges settled into his chest.

It wasn’t this river he’d miss. It was the girl who kept pulling him into it.

He went after her. He wanted them both to stand in the winter rain of the Carmel River, the shallows like topaz. He wanted to show her blue hour Mexican jays and vermillion flycatchers, bright as flames, lured hundreds of miles outside their range by the silt of the Pajaro. He wanted them both to find their footing in the glacier-carved bed of Fallen Leaf, the water new from the rain turning over the whole lake every eight years.

“Lace.” He caught up and put a hand on her arm.

She turned into his touch, but said, “I thought the whole point was showing up at different times.”

He dropped his hand from her arm. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna do when we leave town?”

The shadow of a few leaves crossed her face. “Not really.”

He tried not to nod, knowing his nod would look slow and heavy. With her two-word answer, the disappointment crept up on him. He hadn’t realized until he’d asked the question that he’d wanted her to say yes, she’d worried about it like he did when he saw the light on the water. Or no, that it hadn’t occurred to her. Something surer than “not really.” “Not really” was her version of a shrug.

Maybe after this week, he wouldn’t be anything more to her than the guy who showed her how to climb a tree. She’d remember him putting white feathers on her back, but she’d forget, one color at a time, the way the sun hit them.

It was still worth asking. She’d already covered him like beads of river water.

“Would you consider coming with me?” he said.

The sky flashed gold in her eyes. “What?”

“I mean coming with us,” he said. “We’re heading out on Monday. Madera County, then Mariposa. I know it means you wouldn’t be near your family, but how much are you really seeing them now?”

“I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said.

“I don’t. I’m saying you have a job with us if you want it.”

“You don’t have to look out for me.”

“Do you have somewhere else you want to go?” he asked. “Do you have somewhere else you want to be more than you want to be with me?”

Her lips parted, her eyes going over the ground like she was searching for the glimmer of something lost. But she didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” he said. “You don’t have to answer right now. You can think about it.”

She lifted her eyes from the ground. “No.”

“No, you don’t want to think about it?” he asked.

“No, there’s nowhere I want to be more than where you are.”

He felt the sky shifting deeper blue, falling toward the dark of the water.

“What?” he asked.

“I haven’t thought about what would happen when you left town because I didn’t want to,” she said. “I didn’t want to think about being somewhere you’re not.”

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

She smiled, and the woods turned from shadow to all blue, pure and dark. “What do you think?”