Critias gave me a map that marks the spot where I’m supposed to meet them. It’s twenty miles from where he dropped me off. Why am I rushing toward them? I wonder. I’ve always told myself I want to escape.
“The idiots in this town,” Albion has said at the dinner table. “They tell each other, ‘Wish upon a star, be an idiot, chase your dreams.’ ”
How would I even begin to chase my dreams? I have no more idea of where I could go now than I did when I was eight.
In the darkness I remember the fire starter Chora gave me. I toss the artificial log on the wet wood and light the yellow wrapper. The paper lights, but the wood doesn’t catch. I rub my hands together, angry at the cold, until I remember once seeing Albion whisper a breath into a reluctant fire. “Wind is the Seedbearer’s to wield,” he said.
Softly, I blow into the flame.
The orange tendril dances from one wet log to another. I have made an impossible fire. I laugh, which inspires a great burst of flames. Shiloh leaps around the conflagration, delighted that something has made me happy, that something is making him warm.
I’ve never felt at liberty to test this kind of power—either normal people are nearby or there’s an elder at my side who is more expert than I think I will ever be. For the first time, I allow myself to feel alone, inhaling, exhaling, manipulating the fire with my breath as if it were a burner on a stove.
I leave the fire roaring and open a can of beans. I set it on a stone near the flames. Shiloh cozies up to me, curling his body around my leg. He sighs and rests his chin on my lap. I scratch his head and remember that I’ll never spend another night with him.
I draw my leg from under him. He nuzzles into me again. Something dark is rising in me. I want him gone. I want to forget I ever loved him. The urge is so strong I begin to shake. I give Shiloh the beans to make myself disgusted by the way he eats. He devours them sloppily, licks the can for a while, then turns to me.
“Okay.” I swallow the familiar “buddy” before it has a chance to fully form in my throat. “Time to go.”
Shiloh rises to his haunches and sits at my feet. His spine is erect, his eyes alert. His ears are cocked because the tone of my voice suggests a command.
It’s time for me to do this, but I don’t know what this is.
“Go on.” I point into the black woods.
Shiloh stares at me with wide brown eyes. After a moment, he lies down. His paw finds its way onto my knee.
I push it off and stand up.
“Get out of here.” I wave my hands, scaring him. “You’re not my dog now. I’m not your owner. You’re on your own.” I pause. “You’re free.”
He whimpers, gets up and strides in a small circle, then sits down again.
“I said go.” I lift my foot as if to kick him. He doesn’t flinch. He waits for a moment, then begins to lick my trembling fingers. The darkness that was rising dissipates. I wonder if my family knew how hard it would be to leave him. I wonder if they mean for me to kill him to stop him from following me.
“Fine,” I tell him. “One more night.”
We assume our earlier positions, my legs extended toward the fire, Shiloh sprawled across my knees. I reach for my backpack and unzip it.
I look inside at the worn blue blanket I slept with when I was young, the baseball I taught myself to catch on endless afternoons alone in our backyard. There’s a heavy photo album one of my aunts must have made. I haven’t seen it before, though I’m the only one in the pictures.
Pictures of me as a baby, a toddler, a little boy—always alone. No one ever taught me to smile, so I’m not smiling in any of the photos. They end abruptly, dwarfed by blank pages where more life should be.
I pull out the primers with which I learned to read and write. A deck of cards with naked women on them; a BB gun I used to shoot at doves, robins, squirrels. I find the only CD I’ve ever owned—a burned copy of Bunk Johnson from the free bin at a garage sale. I listened to it once in Critias’s car when my aunts and uncles were asleep.
I’m supposed to care about these things.
I toss my childhood into the fire, I watch the sparks kick up. I inhale the smell of burning plastic and feel nothing.
What worries me are the items I’ve hidden in the bottom of the bag. I’d be beaten, or worse, if the others found them, especially after the Passage. I have to let them go, tonight.
I pull out Eureka’s racing bib from a 10K she won last summer. When she unpinned it from her jersey at the finish line, it caught the wind and glided toward me. I tucked it into my pocket before anyone could see. It was warm from her body and it was mine. The safety pins are still on it. Number 102.