Her lips pursed—not a smile, not tonight, but maybe something close. She came toward me and held out her cuffed hands. I dropped the bag.
Standing this close, I had a hard time focusing on the tiny key. It was hard to believe she was still just sixteen. I remembered the full-faced kid she’d been, all braces and laughter. How, before Mom and Dad died, me, her, and Patrick used to pile into the hammock, all three of us, and stare up at the stars. We’d name the constellations or make new ones up. Orion. Aries. Girl Walking Her Puppy. Angry Hobo. Giant Broccoli. Then one week it was like a breeze blew through Alex’s house and everything changed. She started to wear undershirts beneath her blouses. Some new sparkly lotion made her cheeks glitter here and there in the sunlight. We started taking turns on the hammock. Patrick would sit in the tall grass and watch her sway, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was so fascinating about that.
Until I did.
As I struggled to unlock her cuffs now, she flicked her head to get her long hair off her face.
“Chance,” she said, cupping her hands over mine. “It’s okay.”
She thought my hands were shaking from fear. But that wasn’t it.
I concentrated on fitting the key into place. The cuffs fell away, and she rubbed at her raw wrists. I picked her bag up off the floor, and it gaped wide, the bras showing inside. She gave a little smirk.
“Why don’t I take it from here,” she said, tugging the bag from my hands.
“I was just grabbing whatever—”
“I know,” she said. “And thank you.”
She finished in the closet and headed into the bathroom for a few more things. When she was done packing up, she slung the gear bag over her shoulders like a backpack, then paused.
She walked over and plucked her hockey stick from the corner of the room.
I picked my baling hooks up off her bed.
We looked at each other a moment, then headed out.
We walked down her stone front path. On the far side of the white picket fence, Patrick waited with the kids and dogs. Alex reached down to unhook the latch on the thigh-high gate, and we stepped through. There was something so civilized in the gesture, given everything that was going on.
She closed the gate and looked back at her house. Her eyes shimmered. She lifted her hockey stick off the ground, gave it an expert twirl, and brushed past us.
“To town, then,” she said.
We pressed on, avoiding streets and houses, taking a winding route through the trees. From time to time, Cassius snuck forward and licked my palms. JoJo got tired, and I carried her again, and when my arms started aching, Alex took over. At last we came up over the wooded hill behind Main Street and saw the warm glow of streetlamps through the tree trunks ahead.
Our two-traffic-light town was little more than a few square blocks of stores and restaurants. In the center a big church sat behind a grassy square filled with benches and squirrels. The high school at the edge of town was large for the town’s population, because Creek’s Cause was lousy with kids. Most ranch-and-farm communities need hands and backs, and folks here have kids early and often. It wasn’t unusual to see families of six or seven roll into church on a Sunday morning. What with all the cattle and crops, it was easy enough to fill mouths, and the sprawling countryside provided more space than anyone knew what to do with.
As we wove through the pines toward the familiar lights, we heard the movement of people in action, machinery whirring, doors opening and closing. Everybody was probably preparing to face the threat, like when an F2 tornado blew through last July and the town gathered in the church basement with food and supplies, battening down the hatches. I felt a flicker of relief that we’d lived through the worst and had finally arrived back in the world as we knew it.
We stepped out of the woods and scrambled down the gentle slope onto the tar-and-gravel roof of the general store. Creek’s Cause spread out below us.
For an instant, everything looked perfect. Folks in motion, working together, hauling wheelbarrows, moving back and forth across the square.
Then it all came into horrific focus. It was like some elaborate windup toy, everything running according to a precise but mysterious order, driven by invisible cogs and wheels.