Klickitat

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rock, Peter.
Klickitat / by Peter Rock.
pages cm
Summary: “After Vivian's older sister Audra runs away from home, writing inexplicably appears in a blank notebook. When Audra finally returns in the company of a strange man, the three of them run away together and practice wilderness survival, and Vivian wonders who this mysterious man is.” —Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4197-1894-6 (hardcover) —
eISBN 978-1-61312-897-8 (ebook)
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Secrets—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories. I. Title.
PZ7.1.R6395 Kl 2016
2015023958

Text copyright © 2016 Peter Rock
Jacket photography copyright © 2016 Stefan Wigand
Book design and illustrations by Maria T. Middleton

Published in 2016 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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This book is for
Miki Frances & Ida Akiko,
two sisters.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

THEY WERE NOT WALKING HAND IN HAND,
BUT THEY FELT AS IF THEY WERE.

—Laura Ingalls Wilder,
The Long Winter

ONE

It all started when I noticed the way my sister
was walking. It was late in the afternoon and I was upstairs in my bedroom, watching her out the window. I'd wedged myself between my bookcase and the wall so they both pressed against me, holding me tight. Below, outside, at the edge of our backyard, I saw Audra.

Her hands were on her knees and she slowly lifted one bare foot, still crouching, then set it down, a small step, and lifted the other. Her body was doubled over so she had to bend her neck back to face ahead, to see where she was going. She was moving very slowly, out from under the trees.

This was not so long ago—a few months ago, when she was seventeen. I was fifteen then and I am sixteen now. Some months can go by and nothing changes, and then everything suddenly becomes different, and all the days get fast and tangled. That's what began when I watched Audra from my window.

She moved slowly around the side of the house, where I couldn't see her. A little later, I heard her voice in the kitchen, downstairs, fighting with our mother. I pushed the bookcase out and went out of my room, down the hall, toward the stairs.

“I'm tired of talking about Thursday,” Audra was saying. “That was almost a week ago.”

“And you still haven't explained it.” Mom was turned away, standing at the sink, peeling potatoes. Five smooth orange carrots were lined up on the counter next to her. “I just don't know when you're telling the truth,” she said, “and when you're making things up.”

“Why don't you just try believing me,” Audra said, “instead of telling me what to do? Also, the way you're shouting is making Vivian upset.”

“Are you okay, honey?” Mom said, turning toward me.

“I'm not upset,” I said, standing by the kitchen table. “I don't feel agitated.”

Audra turned back toward Mom. “And why should I listen to you?”

“Because I'm your mother.”

“Right,” Audra said. “Of course.”

“You don't answer your cell phone. You don't even have it with you, when we paid for you to have it.”

“Like I want a machine attached to me all the time,” Audra said.

“Is that a tattoo on your arm?”

“No. Someone drew on me with a marker.”

“What does it say?” Mom said.

“I can't tell, and I can't remember. A tattoo? Get serious.”

Just as Audra held up her arm, showing the blurry blue lines, something from outside struck the window. A terrible, flat sound. The window vibrated and settled and everything became still.

“What was that?” Audra said. “A bird?”

I stepped closer to the window. I could see something moving, through the bushes, on the ground.

“Is it dead?” she said. “Did it break its neck?”

“I don't think so,” I said. Now I could see the bird, small and gray, hopping in a kind of circle. It tipped over and flapped its wings against the ground until it could get itself standing up again.

When I turned around, Mom was peeling potatoes, hard, into the sink. She was shorter than Audra, who stood in the middle of the kitchen with her eyes closed and her hands held out in front of her, like she was holding some invisible thing. Audra's hair was dyed black without any shine. Normally it would be the same dirty blond as mine.

Dad's voice called from the basement, then—“What's happening up there?”—but no one answered him.

I noticed how Audra's fingers were trembling a little, as she stood there with her eyes still closed. And then I looked down, out the window again, and I couldn't see where the bird had gone.

“I saw you out there,” Mom said. “Whatever you were doing, walking crazy like that. And barefoot, in March.”

“You didn't have to watch,” Audra said, opening her eyes. “And I can walk however I want—if we always walk
the exact same way, we don't see what's around us, we're like robots.”

“Robots—I'm tired of hearing that word from you.” Mom turned with the peeler in hand, which was not a knife but seemed like a knife. “Are your pants too tight or something, they make you walk like that?”

“What? Jesus, no.” Audra's voice rose higher as she unsnapped her camouflage pants, jerked them down. She pulled one leg out and they caught on her other ankle. She almost fell down and then kicked until the pants flew off and hit a kitchen chair. The chair slid into the table, but didn't tip over.

“Audra Hanselman,” Mom said.

Audra's legs were pale white and her underwear was yellow. She didn't say anything else, and she didn't pick up her pants. She turned and went up the stairs. I could see the black soles of her feet, going, climbing, and then she was gone. Upstairs, her bedroom door slammed.

“Vivian,” Mom said, close to me now. “I was asking if you're all right.”

“Fine,” I said. “I just need to go outside, to check on something.”

“Dinner's in half an hour.”

Outside, it was cold, but it wasn't raining. I walked around underneath the window. The bird wasn't there. I looked under the bushes, zigzagged out a little, then started walking around the side of the house, sweeping my eyes back and forth across the ground.

In the front yard there was a rope swing. The black tire hung from a tree branch and the rope was long, so long that Audra could get it going so she swung out over the street and then back again, all the way to the house. High up on the walls of the house, up above the picture window, there were dirty footprints, the marks of where Audra had pushed and kicked off.

The bird was not in the front yard. I looked up, but there were no birds in the sky that I could see. Only the bare branches and then the tall, metal antennas on top of our house. Some kids call it the “Helicopter House” because it looks like the antennas could start to spin and the whole house would lift up. If it did, the basement would still be in the ground, opened up, and looking down into it you'd see my dad's radio outfit, all the wires
and lighted dials where red needles lift and jerk back and forth, where voices talk in the thick round padded ears of his headset. You'd see my dad, sitting there, talking to people who live far away.

At first I didn't see Audra, because her hair and her black sweatshirt blended into the shingles. She was sitting there on the rooftop, outside her bedroom window. When she saw me looking up, she didn't say anything. She just slowly lifted her hand and waved. I waved back, then looked away, down again.

I went in the front door, through the living room. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, talking at the table, and when I picked up Audra's pants from the floor, my parents looked over at me.

“Tell your sister she can stay upstairs until she's ready to apologize,” Dad said.

“And bring down your pills, Vivian,” Mom said. “So you can take them with your dinner.”

Upstairs, Audra's door wasn't locked. I opened it, stepped over the books on the floor, stood next to the open window with the cold air blowing in. Audra
turned her head to see who I was. I stared at the left side of her face, with the seven little silver hoops on the edge of her ear.

“I brought your pants,” I said, holding them up, but already I could see she'd put on some black jeans.

“It's all right.” She didn't turn around. It was quiet for a minute, and then she said, “I didn't expect you to say anything.”

“What?” I said.