The wide pine planks of the living room floor creaked as I crossed them to peer through the sliver of space between the shutters into the backyard. Outside, red and gold leaves dappled the ground. I used to love mornings like this, cold and sunny. I put my fingers on the chilled window, overcome with a memory of my father. I was six, and we’d been having a picnic in a freshly mowed public park. That grass smell was in the air, and my dad had tossed me up into it. Flinging me to the sky and laughing as he caught me with both hands. I remembered screaming with joy at each drop — the scariest moments. Now I avoided that breathless, out-of-control feeling. When had that started?
I found Cosmo in the kitchen sharpening a knife, which sent a crawly feeling up the back of my neck. Rafe entered and dropped other sharp objects on the counter — a screwdriver, a nail file, a letter opener. “Sleep well?” he asked me.
His expression was bland but I didn’t miss the insinuation in his voice. “Nothing happened.”
“Course not,” he said with a smirk. “Two silkies together … Kinda hard to get any friction going.”
I rolled my eyes but wasn’t going to get drawn into that topic. “Not that I care what you do,” Rafe went on as he lazed against the counter. “You being who you are, I have taken myself out of this triangle.”
“What triangle?”
“Come on. One girl, two guys. Oh, he’s so smart and strong,” Rafe said in a falsetto while pressing his clasped hands to his cheek. “But he’s so hot. Anguish, anguish.”
I crossed my arms. “And which one of those is you?”
“Yeah, you’re right. I fit both. Point is, crush on the stiff all you want. Doesn’t concern me.” He held out his hand and Cosmo offered up the knife he’d been working on. “Though you do know Mack hates line guards, right?” Rafe swiped the knife along the back of his wrist. “He thinks they’re evil drones.”
“Killer robots, actually,” I corrected.
“Same thing.” The blade shaved off a patch of the golden hair on Rafe’s arm with the precision of a razor. “Not bad,” he pronounced and then glanced at me. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell on you.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” I headed for the stack of canned fruit.
“Uh huh.” He tucked the knife into his ankle sheath, which had been empty ever since the line guards arrested him in Moline. “When you’re done with those,” he told Cosmo with a nod at the pile, “put ’em in my knapsack.”
I stopped sorting through the cans. “Why are you bossing him around?”
“He likes it.” Rafe turned to Cosmo. “You’re fine, right?”
Cosmo bobbed his head enthusiastically. “A-okay.”
“See?” Rafe said to me. “He wants to make himself useful. Because he knows that if he doesn’t” — Rafe sent him a pointed look — “he can’t come with us.”
“He’s not coming,” I burst out, only to see the little manimal’s face crumple. “Cosmo, you told me that the king locks manimals in cages. Why would you want to chance getting caught again?”
His lower lip curled out. “I want to see my mom.”
“He wants to see his mom,” Rafe repeated, in case I didn’t feel bad enough already.
“What’s in it for you?” I asked him. “You’re not doing this to be nice.”
“He’ll come in handy. He’s strong.”
“He’s eight.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him.” Rafe tuned to Cosmo. “Show her.”
Cosmo curled back his lips and bared his teeth. He reminded me of a puppy, playing tough.
“Scary, huh?” Rafe said and then hunkered near Cosmo like a coach. “Now, gimme some ugly.” Cosmo hunched and lowered his brows. “Growl.” Cosmo did and Rafe stood triumphantly. “Would you look at that? That is the best get-back face I have ever seen. Do that when we’re in Chicago and no one’s gonna mess with us.” He pointed at me. “Lemme see your get-back face.”
“I don’t have one,” I said and selected a can of pineapple chunks.
“Everyone should have one. What if you need to scare off some freak?” he scolded. “You use your get-back face. You gotta work on it. Perfect it.”
“I’ll get on that.” I headed for the table. “He’s not coming with us,” I whispered as I passed Rafe.
While I devoured the pineapple chunks, I practiced holding the letter opener like a weapon. What I really wanted was my dad’s machete, but it was in my messenger bag, which I’d left by the lake.
Rafe made a face at my lame attempt at a jab. “Didn’t Mack show you how to use a knife?”
“Yeah, for self-defense,” I admitted. “But I never practiced.”
Rafe settled on the counter with a can of Dinty Moore beef stew. “He tried to teach me manners,” he said, then poured the stew into his mouth straight out of the can.
“How much time did my dad spend with you when he was here?”
Rafe wiped his chin on his sleeve with an exaggerated groan. “Are we doing the sibling rivalry thing again? ’Cause you win. Every category, every time.”
“I just don’t get why he didn’t tell me he was a fetch. I mean, I understand it logically. But it feels like he lied to me.”
“He did. So what?”
“So what?” I snapped. Cosmo glanced from Rafe to me, looking nervous.
“He didn’t want you worrying about him.” Rafe chucked the empty can into the sink. “He wants you to be happy and safe. And that’s a good thing, having someone look out for you like that.”
How was I supposed to be happy or safe if something happened to my dad? “I’m going out to the lake,” I said abruptly. There was no explaining anything to this boy.
“I’ll come with you.”
I needed to pee. As much as I hated the idea of being outside alone, the thought of Rafe hearing me urinate was worse. “No.” I pulled on my borrowed boots but didn’t tie them. “I want privacy.”
Rafe looked like he was about to argue but then he shrugged. “Yell if you see anything with teeth.”
The morning echoed with woodpeckers’ knocking and the love songs of frogs. Stomping through milkweed and patches of black-eyed Susans, I made my way to the reeds where hopefully I couldn’t be seen from the porch. Nearby a gaggle of geese were preening their feathers in the sun. They were huge birds and made me a little nervous — which was pathetic. I’d come face-to-face with a chimpacabra and piranha-bats, and now I was scared of a few geese? They didn’t even have teeth, so I had no excuse to yell for Rafe. Not that I would have.
My boots and pants were soaked with dew by the time I reached a dense patch of cattails near the water’s edge. After taking care of my most pressing need, I pushed through the stalks topped with fluffy seed heads and found a rocky patch of shore where I could hunker and wash my hands. The lake was sparkling, clear, and excruciatingly cold. I lifted my dial and got some shots of the lake and autumn colors.
I tucked my dial into my shirt, kicked off my boots, rolled up my pants, and waded in. The chill bordered on painful, but it was exactly the kind of jump-start I’d been hoping for. Now I just needed to find my dad’s messenger bag. I pivoted to scan the bank behind me, only to have my guts turn to liquid.
The dogs from last night were back.
They slunk through the reeds, spreading out along the bank. They might be half-starved, but they were huge and, worse, smart enough to stay silent as they surrounded their prey — me. I inhaled sharply, preparing to scream for Rafe to bring the gun when the pack leader stopped short and pricked up his ears. The black mutt lifted his snout to the wind and then dropped into a crouch with a whine.