Wild (13 page)

Twenty-one

E
nticed by the books, Cade pressed himself close to the shelves to examine them.

First, by touch. He ran his fingers over the spines. Some of them wore paper sheaths. Others were cloth and leather—he recognized the scent. Brushing his nose against a matching set, he inhaled. Dictionaries smelled wonderful.

Slipping a slim volume from the shelf, he flicked it open. Poetry, Walt Whitman. Pristine pages crackled as he turned them. The paper was so smooth that the black letters left an impression. Cade skimmed his hand over them, smiling a little. He'd never seen a book so new.

He tucked it under his arm, then dug into the shelves again. He wondered if Dara would let him keep one if he had to leave. He didn't like the sound of these laws. These strangers who stole children from their homes. A new story would be nice. Something to remember her by.

Footsteps echoed on the stairs, and Cade bounded back to the couch. It quavered under his weight, but he found his balance. It was harder with one foot bandaged, and one arm weak.

But if they tried to take him away, he'd run for home again. It would be harder to get by, but summer was coming. The river would be fat with fish. He'd have apples and honey, soon, plenty of roots to roast. If he stuck to foraging, he'd be fine. He'd be healed by autumn, just in time for hunting season.

“All right, son,” Sheriff Porter said. He stepped into the room, followed by a brown, mousy man with glasses. Gesturing for the man to sit down, Sheriff Porter put his hands on his hips and stared at Cade for a minute. “This is Branson Swayle. He's a social worker, he's here to help you.”

Cade folded the book against his chest. “I don't need help.”

“Just call me Branson. And you know, that's very admirable,” Branson said. “But everybody needs help sometimes. Can we get to know each other?”

Sheriff Porter shifted uncomfortably. He looked at Cade, then the couch cushions. It was obvious he was trying
not
to say something, but the struggle was too much. With a nod, he said, “How about you sit down and give Mr. Swayle ten minutes. I'd say that's fair.”

Wary, Cade slid from the back of the couch. He felt penned in, claustrophobic. If something came from behind, how would he know? Shifting his gaze from Sheriff Porter to Branson, Cade licked his lips and waited. In silence.

Branson didn't seem to mind. He flipped open a thin rectangle, and its surface glowed. When he touched it, it chittered like a chipmunk call, or a particularly nervous squirrel. Leaning slightly, Cade tried to get a look at it. The thing was obviously a machine, maybe like the light-up box that played music in Javier's room.

“Nifty, huh? I just got it last week,” Branson said. He turned the rectangle toward Cade, then nodded at him. “Go ahead, take a look. I'm still not used to it.”

Cool and heavy, the rectangle fit neatly in Cade's hands. There was a picture inside it, two kids with Branson's nose. Cade knew they weren't really in there. Still, he touched their faces. They were so clear, so bright. Not like the faded photos he had back home.

The picture jiggled, and when Cade jerked his fingers back, the image slid away. Rows of boxes replaced it, each with a letter of the alphabet in them.

Curious, Cade turned the device, and the boxes spun. They landed at the bottom again, so he touched one. He didn't feel anything move, but the thing ticked anyway. Then suddenly, grey filled the screen.

Search web,
the screen read. There was a compass beside the words, but nothing happened when he touched it. So he turned the rectangle, and the screen followed.

Branson chuckled. “Your first tablet, too, huh?”

Cade glanced at him. Then he turned his attention to the rectangle—the
tablet
. If it was like the box in Javier's room, Cade could make it sing.

Swiping his fingers back and forth, he made the children's picture appear again. Little pictures obscured their faces when he turned it over. It took him a moment to realize the small pictures had labels.

Carefully, he pressed the one that said MUSIC. But all that did was bring up more pictures.

The tablet taunted him. He turned it, watching the pictures spin. That didn't help, so he patted at them. Hand swabbing the screen, he muttered to himself. Different images flashed. Bits of the screen leapt around.

The music had to be in there somewhere. Cade shook the tablet, and just before he slapped the screen, Branson reached over to still him.

“I feel the same way, sometimes,” he said with a smile. With a gentle hand, he flattened the tablet to lie on Cade's thighs. Pale fingers swirling, he cleared the screen. Then he touched one of the small pictures, and a white page opened.

Moving too fast for Cade to follow, Branson wiggled his fingers and opened a page. It had lines, questions on it. The top read Intake Form. “Why don't you help me with some of this paperwork? Use your finger like a pen, you can write on the screen like this.”

He demonstrated. Drawing on the screen by the line that read Coordinator, he smiled. His strokes glowed, a firefly flitting across the screen. Then, with a chirp, they turned into text, like the inside of a book.

“See? Go ahead, put your name and address in there.”

Cade stilled. Though he didn't look up, he felt Sheriff Porter watching. He knew how to make block letters; he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Dara's warning plucked at him.
Crazy,
Dara said.
Or lying.
It was a needle beneath his skin, piercing and pulling the movable parts in his arm.

Sheriff Porter would never let a crazy liar near his daughter.

His expectant expression fading, Branson considered the screen, then Cade's face. Radiating warmth, he reached for the tablet. He didn't just grab and take. He waited for Cade to relinquish it.

When he did, Branson asked, “Do you know how to read or write, Cade?”

There was no judgment in his tone, but Cade bristled anyway. Of course he could read and write. During his earliest winters, his mother spent hours teaching him the letters. Dad took turns with him, reading one line of a book, then handing it to Cade to read the next.

But if he
couldn't
, they'd make him stay until he could answer them. All Cade needed was time to get better. Time to sit with Dara, just
time
. Forcing down his pride, Cade shook his head.

“That's very brave of you,” Branson said. He scribbled on the tablet's screen. “Can you tell me what your last grade of school was?”

“No.”

“Did you drop out?”

Cade felt Sheriff Porter's eyes boring into him. He refused to be smaller than him, so he looked up. Without wavering, trying to make him look away, Cade said, “I never went.”

Almost to himself, Branson said, “Going to have to get some testing . . . all right, Cade. I'm going to start at the very beginning, so be patient with me.”

Slowly straightening his back, Cade held Sheriff Porter's gaze. He didn't waver. He wasn't afraid. There were bigger things in the forest he'd stared down. Greater beasts, far more dangerous. This was just a man, with weaknesses and doubt. Cade told the social worker, “All right.”

“So tell me your whole name, including the middle name if you have one.”

Filling the corner of the couch, Cade smiled slightly as he answered. “Only Cade.”

“What's your address?”

“Daniel Boone National Forest,” he said. The words felt unfamiliar on his mouth, but their effect on Sheriff Porter was unmistakable. He narrowed his eyes, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. Did he think it was a lie? Because he was sure Sheriff Porter considered him sane.

Branson wrote it down dutifully, the tablet chirping and beeping. “And how long have you lived there?”

“Always,” Cade said.

At that, Sheriff Porter snapped. He looked away, cursing under his breath. When he paced away, his belt jingled. His footsteps echoed, and he turned back abruptly. To Branson, he said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Thank you, I'd appreciate that,” he said.

Sheriff Porter offered Cade nothing. After losing such a basic challenge, he was embarrassed. It showed in the flush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. And he revealed it, when he took another look at Cade before disappearing up the stairs.

Comfortable as the temporary alpha, Cade turned to Branson. Because he wanted to—because he wanted to stay—he waited for the next question.

 

Through the crush in the hallway, Josh made his way to Dara's locker. There were all kinds of rumors going around. He didn't appreciate having to tell his boys he didn't know what was going on with the freak from the woods and his girl.

Dara's blonde hair glimmered, falling to her shoulders unrestrained. What happened to her usual messy ponytail? She never wore her hair like that. Something else new and different to put him on guard. Excusing himself, he pressed himself between Dara and the guy at the next locker.

“Well?”

He didn't want to get too specific. That way, anything she felt like she needed to confess would bubble out of her.

“Hey,” Dara said. She looked trapped. One brow danced up, like it always did when she was trying to figure out the right thing to say. Usually, that happened after they got in a fight. She didn't believe in apologizing unless she was sure she was wrong, but she hated getting the silent treatment.

“What's up?” Josh asked.

Pulling a couple books from her locker, Dara finally shook her head. “You wouldn't even believe me.”

That was bad. Anytime Dara got cagey, it was bad. In spite of his annoyance, Josh took her camera, holding it while she shoved her books into her backpack. “Lia's telling everybody you've got him socked away in your basement.”

“My
dad
kept him there. It was that or jail, because he wouldn't go back to the hospital.”

His own jealousy caught Josh by surprise.

She must have noticed he was too quiet, because she stopped packing her bag and squinted at him. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What, Josh? What?” She slung her bag over her shoulder. Grabbing her camera from him, she looped the strap around her neck, then gestured at it. “I have to be down in the west pod for club pictures in five minutes, so please. Just . . . whatever it is, say it.”

It was scary, how she'd gone from distracted to pissed that fast. Holding up his hands, Josh said, “Nothing. I'm just hearing this stuff . . .”

Dara closed her locker. “Since you couldn't keep him, I took him to Sofia's. Sometime after midnight, he decided to walk home. Which, by the way,
is
Daniel Boone. He
does
live out there, yeah. Only, we're sixty miles away, I don't even think he knows what a mile is. He definitely doesn't get the concept of Nikes, because he was barefoot and got all cut up at Clayton Park.”

“Look, never—”

She ignored him. Her hands waving, she stepped away from her locker. “Rather than dump him in the countryside like a puppy nobody wants, my dad brought him to our house. He's probably talking to the social worker now. Anything else?”

Josh hesitated. “Is he okay?”

Temper dissolving, Dara sighed. “I think so. I'm sorry. I barely got any sleep, and this reporter from the
Courier
keeps showing up. He was outside the school this morning.”

“Slow news month or something,” Josh said. He smoothed a hand over her shoulder, pulling her closer. The big bad reporter, that was something he could help with. He could watch out for anybody with a notepad and a gleam in his eye, and run them off. It felt good to have a purpose. “You mad?”

Shaking her head, Dara said, “No.”

“You sure?” Josh coaxed her, tipping her chin up so he could kiss her. Her soft lips tightened, and she broke away a little too fast. “Dare?”

“Totally sure. I have to run, I'm going to be late.”

Before he could catch her, Dara had slipped his grip and was already bolting for the stairs. He raised a hand, calling after her. “I'll drive you home!”

She answered with a half wave, code for
I heard you, but I'm not saying yes.

It didn't make Josh feel better.

Twenty-two

R
unning off forty pictures in a row, the jittery click of the shutter—that was soothing. Even though Dara was only taking school club snaps, it felt substantial. It felt real. And lately, everything felt like somebody else's dream. She was just running through it.

“Say cheese,” she told the Forensics Team.

Ten rictus smiles filled her viewfinder, and she took that picture. She always did; parents liked those for some reason. Those were the pictures she handed off to the yearbook staff.

But she kept snapping, because that's when people relaxed. When their real selves appeared. Those were the ones she slipped into her digital portfolio. Photography wasn't about capturing people in poses. It was about stopping time. Saving it. Keeping a moment fresh and alive, to savor again later.

Once she'd run off enough shots, she lowered the camera. “You guys are painfully sexy, thank you.”

A couple of the girls laughed, and one of the guys rolled his eyes. But they wore real smiles as they filed out, making room for 4-H and Future Farmers of America. There was so much overlap, Dara insisted on shooting them at the same time.

Dropping a new memory card into the camera, Dara waited for everybody to gather. These pictures would have a second life on the pages of the high school yearbook. People would scribble names, love notes, secrets on them. Mustaches. Devil horns. They were meant to be touched.

Unlike the photos from Dara's camping trip. She had a folder on her computer desktop full of them. No idea if they were any good, Dara hadn't looked at them yet. She'd plugged the camera in, saved them with a nice, neat time stamp, then closed the file.

The pictures should have been special. Their trip away, just the two of them. Except, Dara was pretty sure
they
weren't in any of them.

Fog clutched by the trees, the horseshoe waterfall, yes. Rainbows reflected off the mist in the air, definitely. But not them. Not even the obligatory shot, holding a camera at arm's length and trying to cram into the frame.

It was like she knew. Not out loud; she hadn't been ready to admit it. But maybe she knew.

Josh had a partial scholarship in New Orleans. Dara had student loans lined up to take her to New York City. Except for the
new
, their colleges had nothing in common. They didn't either, and they hadn't since freshman year when they started “going together.”

A bleat dragged Dara's attention back to the present. Izzie Wells hefted a bundle of squirming legs, and smiled.

“Tristan won first place at the fair. Principal Tran signed off on it.”

“Okay,” Dara said. Nobody had prepared her for a pygmy goat, but she could deal. In fact, it was nice to focus on something solvable. Something easy. Like getting the goat to look at the camera when all the people did.

Everything else in her life was suddenly complicated, and completely unfixable at the moment. So Dara crinkled a bag of Sun Chips to get Tristan's attention. Then she lost herself in the rhythm and tick of her camera.

 

When Sheriff Porter appeared with a greasy bag, Cade watched him, wary.

“Here,” Sheriff Porter said, digging into the bag. He pulled out a paper-wrapped package, and tossed it in Cade's direction. “You want fries?”

Turning the package over, Cade sniffed it. Meat of some kind, cooked. Since he didn't know what fries were, he shook his head. What he wanted to do was take the food to his perch on the back of the couch. But instead, he unwrapped it where he sat, on the floor by the bookcases.

“Thank you,” he said, which surprised Sheriff Porter.

He actually stopped unpeeling his package to look over at him. Now distracted, the sheriff kept unwrapping, and kept staring.

Animals smelled fear; Cade wished he could. His nose was only so sensitive. He had to watch instead, trying to read raised eyebrows and sharp hand motions. It made him uncomfortable to have Sheriff Porter so close, and watching him. They weren't family. He didn't know what he might do next.

“You'll be glad to know we found a place for you,” Sheriff Porter said. “Right here in town.”

Though his stomach growled, Cade put the food down and retreated to the couch. “I'm not interested.”

Sheriff Porter seemed distracted by the food on the floor. His attention kept drifting toward it. “That's too bad. Because that's the way things work. Until you start being honest with us . . .”

“I am.”

“. . . I can't do a thing to help you,” Sheriff Porter finished. It was like Cade hadn't said a word at all. “But don't worry. I'll find out who you really are.”

Slowly, Cade unfurled. He pulled his feet into the couch, then crept up to sit on the back of it again. He didn't need a better sense of smell or more experience with people to recognize that. It was a threat. Rather than reply, Cade turned his attention to the window.

“What if I told you I thought you were out there in those woods cooking meth?” Sheriff Porter asked.

Through slim windows at ground level, Cade watched the sidewalk, the people walking by. There were so many of them. A woman dressed all in blue stopped at the front walk.

Opening a bag at her hip, she took something from a black box, then shoved her own bundle in. A delivery of some kind, but Cade would have to get into the box to find out what.

“Or something worse.” Sheriff Porter's cup rattled when he shook it. “Biological weapons?”

The woman in the blue uniform moved down to the next house, and Cade kept his silence. He knew a lot about biological weapons, actually. Anthrax had to be inhaled; it wouldn't spread person to person.

Bacteria were delicate—living creatures, prone to dying themselves—no good on the battlefield. Viruses were tricky. Almost perfect, as long as they bound with the right strand of DNA. A global disaster if they collaborated with the wrong one.

Cade remembered his mother's face. The way it would go hard when she talked about things like this. When she explained vectors and vaccines, diminished herd immunity, useless antibiotics. She'd stroke Cade's brow, murmuring sadly, “The end of the world, contained on the head of a pin.”

Irritated, Sheriff Porter nudged the couch with his boot. “How about you sit the right way when I'm talking to you?”

Lifting his head, Cade replied, “There's a man in your yard.”

Sheriff Porter didn't wait for an explanation. He bounded up the basement stairs two at a time. A door opened, and Cade felt the slightest breeze coming in. It carried the sheriff's voice smoothly. The stranger's, too.

“You mind telling me what you're doing on my property?”

“Good to see you again, Tony. Been a while since I covered your election,” the stranger said. “Jim Albee, ringing any bells?”

Shifting, Cade pushed the curtains out of the way. All he saw was feet and pants legs. They shuffled, shifting weight. Dancing uneasily. Just by the way Sheriff Porter set his heel, it was obvious he wasn't happy. Their conversation spilled out, water over stones. They interrupted and flowed together.

Most of it made no sense, until the stranger said, “Just let me talk to the boy. Five minutes.”

“Jim,” Sheriff Porter said. His feet moved. They overlapped the stranger's gait—he was leading him away from the house. “I've got no comment. He's a minor, you're well aware.”

The stranger stopped. “Is he, though?”

“You have a nice day,” Sheriff Porter said.

It was the second time Sheriff Porter had confused him. First with the food, now protecting him again. Cade couldn't read him. He wasn't easy and open like his own father. Or even layered and complicated like his mom. Most confusing of all, he had Dara's eyes—the shape, the color. But not the softness.

When he was with Dara, it felt like she saw him. Maybe even knew him a little. Sheriff Porter didn't. His gaze cut through him, trying to take him apart by pieces.

And since he was coming back, Cade slid from the back of the couch and reclaimed his food from the floor.