“Rosa, this is important.” Her head was a flaming hue with the sunrise penetrating through the curtain of her strawberry hair. It matched her temper.
Pietre had a handheld and he was showing us where the spinner would stop and how far we had to walk. It looked like we got the worst town. Pau Brasil was at least sixty kilometers from the train line.
My mind receded like the tide, pulling on the facts like sand, grabbing the information for a second, only to have it wash out of my grasp with the next wave. I pictured Joseph waking and realizing I was gone. Orry would already be awake and searching for the comfort of warm milk in his belly. Odval would be wondering why I was taking so long. I ran my fingers along the cool, plastic table, swirling circles and imagining the weight of my child in my arms.
“We will walk at night and hide by day. There’s no snow, at least, but it means there may be Woodland police patrolling the borders. Is there anything useful you can tell us about Pau Brasil?”
My ears pricked and my senses returned as I remembered how much I hated Pietre. “Not really, they’re all the same,” I mumbled without looking at him.
“Figures,” he said snidely.
My head snapped up, regarding his snarling expression with distaste. Did he ever really smile? My anger reached out like a straggly hand looking for something to hold onto. It found Pietre’s hateful face and dug in with pointed fingernails.
“Don’t speak to me,” I said, my face brimming with hot-blood anger. “I haven’t forgotten what you did. You’re an intolerable man. Well, not even a man—a boy. And I wish you would drop off the end of the earth!”
Joseph would be storming around the house, banging into things and clumsily getting dressed. He would be so sad; I will have made him so sad. He will hope I’ve changed my mind. I could see his face looking to the door, hoping I was coming back. My heart heaved at the pressure I put there. What was I doing?
As I expected, Pietre enjoyed my outburst and a sickening smile crossed his lips. He put his arm around Careen, who looked up at him confused, and pulled her closer. I directed my voice at Careen’s blinking face. “I know the plan and I would like to get some rest before we charge off into the wilderness again, all right?”
She nodded. Poor girl, she had no idea what was going on between Pietre and me.
I returned to staring out the window. I tried to force my face to relax but I felt like I was trying to unroll a tightly wound map. Every time I took the band off and tried to flatten it out, it would curl back up again. I sighed deeply. We would travel for a week like this, close to each other, invading each other’s space. Already it felt like the sides of the spinner were pressing down on me. I didn’t know how I would stand it. Pau Brasil was the last stop on the line.
Along the way, we would stop and drop off the others close to their assigned towns. Each group had a designated time they had to return by if they were to catch the train back. This was entirely dependent on our little group. We would have to bring the spinners back from the end of the line and pick everyone up. “Timing is extremely important,” Pietre drummed into to me, pressing his finger into the table until it turned white and beating me about the head with the information. I rolled my eyes and nodded, arguing with him was pointless and a waste of my moping energy.
The landscape was peeled back. It whirred past us and held no interest to me anymore. Bleak and brown. Greenery mottled the background like camouflage clothing but I was blind to the beauty. The leaves rustled like the trees were shaky fingers scared to touch us. They reflected my anxiety. I still couldn’t decide if I’d done the right thing. I hoped maybe when my feet hit the grass and I was trekking towards my mother, I would feel differently. But my purpose escaped me. It was like trying to find my key; I knew it was on me somewhere.
The spinners stopped every six hours for toilet breaks and leg stretches. It was unnerving going from the cool, pristine environment of the spinners, to the dank, mossy richness of the woods. Usually, I would have loved the difference. It would have motivated me. The others were certainly energized. They could see change around the corner. Normally, the atmosphere would have been infectious. I could see the anticipation rolling around them like a velvety blanket, comforting and reassuring them they would be ok. But I could only catch the corner of it and it seemed frayed and easily torn. All I could see was naivety. I worried they didn’t realize how dangerous this would be. They seemed too confident that nothing could go wrong.
I spent the first break, and every one after that, quickly peeing and squatting on a rock. I sullenly dug in the dirt with a stick to see how big a piece of dirt I could excavate without it breaking into smaller pieces. The others practiced their moves and went over their plans. Gwen approached me on the first day. She put her hand on my shoulder, an unfamiliar move for her, and it felt more like a slap. Her face scrunched, showing those odd dimples on her cheeks. “Is it Cal?” Her voice wavered. Did she grieve him or was she just nervous?
I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure. It could be. My brain refused to deal with his death the same way it had refused to back down from coming out here in the first place. It threw ineffectual but heavy covers over the things that might stop me. I sucked on my lip and let my eyes brush over to her for a second. I couldn’t speak, if I did, I would cry.
She patted me again. “Look, if it is, you shouldn’t blame yourself, no one does. He was sick long before you arrived. You should put it behind you.”
I nodded and watched her feet as they shuffled away from me, kicking a rock in frustration. I think that was the problem or at least part of it. I had put it behind me, but not dealt with it, so it just sat there. An angry ball of anger and sadness that kept a steady distance behind me, but always followed. And I always knew it was there.
I dragged at myself, my own company as irritating as being with people. I knew this wasn’t helping but I did nothing other than feel sorry for myself. I wished I’d done things differently but it was too late. I could feel Joseph moving through the town, his heavy footsteps heavier still with the weight of my desertion on his mind.
I saw Matthew through the shifting trees, his face as dark as the bar-like shadows cast across his face. He was as miserable as I was. We never spoke. I wondered if we would ever speak again or if he was done with me. It would be fair enough if he was.
By the time we got to the last stop before Pau Brasil, everyone stopped bothering to talk to me and left me to my self-pitying behavior.
Doing my usual scratching in the dirt, I etched a pattern of concentric circles when my arm was wrenched up violently. “I’ve had it with you,” Pietre snapped. “I thought you wanted to be here. If we’re going to get through this mission, you need to get yourself together.” He was shaking me like a ragdoll and I let him.
“I’m s-sorry,” I said between shakes. But he was sewn-up furious and couldn’t be undone with an apology. The world was wobbling in my vision, trees were wriggling like snakes, the world was heaving. “Stop, please! I-I said I’m s-sorry, Pietre.” My voice quavered with the world as his fingers pressed hard into my arm. I felt a pang of pain as the joint in my shoulder started to strain from him twisting it.
In my reverberating vision, I saw red hair alight in front of brown, scratchy trees.
Without a word, she punched him hard in the jaw. I heard the crunch of knuckles connecting with bone. I saw his eyes roll delightfully into the back of his head as he stumbled backwards and hit the ground, letting out a small, “Ugh”. He sat in a daze for a second and then he scraped himself off the ground, storming lopsidedly away from us, clutching his face. I stared at Careen, mouth agape.