The Rains (Untitled #1)(75)

“It’s just north of the Big Dipper,” Patrick says. “It’s called Your Dad Tossing My Butt in Jail.”

“Ooh,” Alex says. “That’s an exciting one.”

“Exciting?” Patrick says, and I can hear the grin in his voice. “I think it’s more scary than anything.”

“Well”—Alex turns her face to Patrick, her hair drifting across my cheek—“I hope it’s worth it.”

“It’s worth it,” Patrick says.

The hammock rocks hard as my brother climbs out. “I need another root beer float,” he says, and pads into the house.

Alex and I lie there for a moment alone. It feels like floating.

“What do you see, Chance?” she asks.

“The Little Bear,” I say.

“Where?”

“There.”

“I thought that was the Little Dipper.”

“It’s called that, too.”

I hear her rustle on the hammock as she turns to me. “How do you remember all this stuff?”

I can feel her breath. We’re that close. I don’t dare look over. I shrug. “I don’t know.”

She turns back to face the night sky. “Is there a Big Bear?”

“It’s called the Great Bear. It’s formed using the Big Dipper. See, there? The hindquarters. Then the rest of him.”

She leans her cheek against my shoulder, peers up the length of my arm.

“It’s much more obvious than the Little Dipper,” I say. “Higher in the sky and way huger. It dominates everything.”

“Hmm,” she says. Her cheek stays against my shoulder, and I don’t want to lower my arm, not if it means she’ll move away. “But the Little Dipper has the North Star in it, doesn’t it?”

I feel my blood quicken a bit at the playful note in her voice. “Uh-huh.”

“Isn’t that the most important star? The one sailors navigate by? The one all the other stars rotate around?”

I finally lower my arm and turn. Our faces are so close that our noses almost touch. Her green eyes are luminescent. It’s such a perfect moment I almost forget to be self-conscious.

“Know what I think?” she says. “I think the Little Bear shouldn’t underestimate himself.”

My breath catches in my throat.

Before my whirling brain can fix on a reply, the hammock dips again and Patrick spills into the netting beside us. His arm slides beneath Alex’s neck, pulling her into him. He’s big enough that if he dangles one leg off the hammock, his foot can touch the ground, and he rocks us, rocks us in the quiet of the night.

Alex has turned her face back to him, sure, but she keeps her arm pressed alongside mine.

We sway for a long, long time.

A splash of bracing cold water brought me back into my body there in the wilds of Ponderosa Pass. A lip of dirt had crumbled away, sending me stumbling calf-deep into a river.

The current was strong, pulling one of my legs out from under me, the weight of the backpack spinning me around.

I lost my footing, found it again, my boots scraping across the mossy bed. Cold water rose to my thighs, but I kept my chest and head out of the water. I bulled my way to the far side and clawed at the clay of the opposite bank, dragging myself up out of the water. For a time I lay there panting and freezing.

Alex’s voice came to me from afar: Would you cross raging rivers?

I would.

I forced myself to my feet and checked the backpack. It was still mostly dry, the plastic bags protecting the perishables and my notebook. Something tingled at my calf, and I tugged up my pant leg. A dark slippery oval clung to my flesh.

A leech.

I scraped it away, leaving a smudge of my blood. I found two more on my other leg and flicked them back into the river. If I wasn’t lost, I was certainly off course, which meant I’d have to find higher ground to regain my bearings. I continued upslope, damp pants clinging to my legs, the pass growing steeper and steeper until I had to lean forward and use my hands to pull myself up a rocky rise.

Would you climb mountains?

If they were between me and you, those mountains I would climb.

At last I reached the top, tumbling over the lip, landing in a mud wallow. My muscles gave out under the burn, and I sprawled there panting in the soothing wet.

It felt so pleasant lying here. It would be so easy to rest, to drift off, to give up.

Would you crawl through mud for me?

I shoved myself up to all fours, shook my head hard, drew in a deep breath.

If mud needed crawling through to get to you, I would.

I stood, sludge caking my hands and knees. Staggering with exhaustion, I drifted into the thickening pines. The branches drew denser and denser, needles crowding in on me from all sides until it felt like I’d be skewered alive. Finally I broke into a clearing, scratching at my aching arms.

At first I didn’t register where I was. Then I saw the ring of Rocky Mountain Douglas firs around me, the forked road beyond, the three cleared spaces on the ground.

The spaces where Patrick, Alex, and I had slept that night we’d made it to the top of the pass.

Though I’d taken a different route up the rock face, I’d wound up in the right place after all.

North and down to Stark Peak.

South and up to Lawrenceville.