After the End(26)

She turns to me. “If you want to help, you can get a fire going before it’s too dark to see.”

“A fire? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in the middle of a national park. And why do we need a fire?” I ask. “It’s not even cold out.”

“For dinner,” she says, and out of her pack she takes two carved and painted dowel-looking things, clicks them into grooves to fit together, and grabs a bundle of little pointed arrow-stick thingies, and I’ll be damned if she’s not walking off into the forest holding a mini-crossbow.

I don’t even try to make a fire. I go back to the car and for a half hour I fiddle with my iPhone, trying to turn it back on, but it’s completely shot. I’m wondering what she could have done to break it when I look up and see Juneau stride into the clearing, holding a dead rabbit by the hind legs.

Not even looking my way, she sits down and takes a huge bowie knife out of her pack and starts peeling the fur off. I can’t watch. I feel sick.

By the time I turn back around, she’s made a fire and has set up a kind of makeshift spit by driving two branches into the ground on either side of the flames. Then, ever so casually, as if she were tying her shoes or something, she shoves a third stick through the raw, red-skinned rabbit’s mouth and out its other end, and I have to walk off into the woods by myself because I think I’m going to puke.

By the time I get back, the thing on the spit actually looks like meat and smells appetizing enough to make my mouth water. I stand there and watch her as she roasts some mushrooms and leaves in a little pan over the flames, using the juice dripping from the meat to cook them.

“I get it that foraging is the hip new thing for you back-to-nature types, but you do realize there is a McDonald’s about a half hour down the road?”

For a moment it looks like she doesn’t recognize me. Then she nonchalantly cuts a sliver of cooked leg off something that was cute and fluffy and hopping around about an hour ago. She holds it grimly up on the end of the knife, like a dare. I shudder, but pick the meat off the knifepoint and pop it in my mouth. Oh my God, it’s really good.

She sees my expression and smiles. “Saw the McDonald’s sign on the way. But I tried it in Seattle, and frankly, that stuff’s nasty.”



UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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21


JUNEAU




HE IS QUITE LIKELY THE STUPIDEST BOY I HAVE ever met.

No, strike that. Not stupid. He actually seems smart enough. He has a good vocabulary when he makes an effort to use it. And I can tell he listens to every word I say and stores it away for later. Why?

Like Frankie said, he’s got an ulterior motive. Miles needs me as much as I need him. He’s got secrets. But so do I. Even though my oracle told me to be honest with him, that doesn’t mean I have to tell him my whole life story—not unless he asks. So I won’t expect him to do the same.

I change my assessment from stupid to naive. It’s clear he’s lived a sheltered life. And not just sheltered in the fact that he hasn’t been brought up in the wilderness like I have. He has lived what Dennis would call “a fortunate life, unfortunately for the rest of the world.” The blissfully ignorant spawn of the rich.

After wandering the streets of Seattle for a week, the difference between rich and poor is obvious to me. Compared to those I met who were living rough, Miles’s studiedly casual clothes, educated speech, and flippantly confident way he carries himself all point to money that he hasn’t had to earn himself.

I glance back at the flames and wonder if he didn’t know how to build a fire or if he was just too lazy to be bothered. I don’t understand why Frankie said he was necessary. He seems like the last person on earth I would actually need right now. If Miles couldn’t drive, he would be complete deadweight.

He actually insisted on sleeping in the car until I informed him that the scented skull and crossbones hanging from the rearview mirror and bags of chips and cookies stashed in the backseat were likely to attract bears, and that a bear could easily peel a car door off with its claws.

It’s the first time I’ve seen him move fast. He ripped the little fragrant skull off the mirror, scooped the bags out of the backseat, and set off at top speed into the woods with them, returning ten minutes later empty-handed. And although he left the windows down to air the car out, he didn’t hesitate to bunk down in the tent when I told him it was safer.

I wait impatiently for him to fall asleep. Finally, when I haven’t seen him move for a while, I fish the bag of firepowder out of my pack. Carefully measuring out a small silvery handful, I throw the powdered mica mixture onto the flames. “Dad,” I say, and visualizing my father’s face, stare just up and to the right of the licking flames.