Chapter 4 #2
He trudges along the gravel road, a cold mountain breeze pushing at his back. Nights in Wyoming are different than anywhere
else. The sky is bigger, the air is cleaner, and the dark swallows you whole. It’s muscle memory that pulls Jamie forward.
As a kid he walked this route dozens of times. He liked the remoteness, liked turning up his secondhand iPod full blast while
listening to Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. He knew what the other kids in Nightjar thought of him, of Juneau, of his mother.
They were just another loser family, down on their luck, looking for whatever work could be thrown their way. Most of his
classmates were from families who were landowners or land developers or business owners. Sure, there were some kids whose
parents catered to the wealthy ranchers, but they weren’t interested in Jamie. Why would they invest any time getting to know
someone who probably wouldn’t last the winter?
Night sounds in the mountains are different too.
The wind, the animals, the echoes all have an unearthly quality.
Jamie peers intently into the dark, glancing left and right into the ditches that line the road.
After walking for about twenty minutes he begins to think he may have made a mistake.
He should be coming upon a bow in the road, a sharp turn that will take him toward Nightjar and the motel they once called home.
It’s also the spot where his sister disappeared.
No, he tells himself. He’s not mistaken.
As wild as it sounds, the ground beneath his feet feels familiar.
He continues forward, the road curves again, gently at first and then sharply. Jamie stops and pulls his phone from his pocket,
turns on the Flashlight function, and sweeps the light in a wide arc in front of him. Small animals, with blinking, glowing
eyes, scurry into the brush. Off to the left is a forest of ponderosa pine hidden in the shadows, but he can smell the woodsy
resin. This is the spot. He’s sure of it. This is where the glare of the car’s headlights blinded him. At first, Jamie thought
Juneau had come back to pick him up. The night was cold, much colder than tonight, and even in her anger she wouldn’t leave
him outside in late-September temperatures that tended to tumble quickly.
Juneau hadn’t driven toward him. She simply sat in the car, engine idling, high beams like lasers blinding him. Okay, Jamie
thought at the time, she’s still going to make him pay, make him come to her and beg to be let back into the car. What he
had said to his sister had been mean, cruel, but he hated how Juneau was trying so hard to fit in here after they promised
each other they wouldn’t bother.
But something had shifted after only eight weeks in Nightjar.
School started, and the snide comments they volleyed back and forth about their classmates, the disdain and the disgust, became one-sided.
Juneau started coming home later and later in the evening, smelling of beer and weed.
She seemed more secretive. Juneau was seeing someone—Jamie was sure of it.
When he asked her about it, Juneau laughed and told him not to be stupid—she was doing school stuff, and it wouldn’t hurt him one bit to try to get involved too.
Maybe join the cross-country team or Future Farmers of America.
At that, Jamie had told her to fuck off.
Juneau would once again learn it did no good to try to make friends and fit in, because in a matter of months their mother would up and move them somewhere new anyway.
Blinded by the headlights, Jamie walked toward the car. He’d apologize. Juneau would let him in the car, they would go back
home, make microwave popcorn, and drink sodas from the machine they’d figured out how to jimmy. Everything would be okay.
When he was about thirty yards away from the car, he heard the engine rev and then watched as it backed up a few yards before
coming to a stop. He took a few more steps and raised his arm against the glare of the headlights as the car reversed again.
So, Juneau was going to play this game with him. “Come on, I’m sorry,” he called out. The car’s engine gunned again, and Jamie shook his head. Fine, he thought.
He would walk home. He was cold and tired and hungry. Let Juneau be mad. She’d get over it eventually.
He continued on, but this time, instead of the car moving in reverse, it gunned forward, tires spinning on the gravel. “Very
funny,” Jamie called out, but his words were drowned out by the scream of the engine. The car barreled toward him, and Jamie
stood there frozen in disbelief. What was Juneau doing? The roar of the engine grew louder, and Jamie turned and started to
run. His tennis shoes slipped on the slick gravel, and he nearly fell before righting himself. This wasn’t funny anymore.
He veered to the side of the road and, if he had to, would jump into the ditch, which he knew was filled with cheatgrass and
thistle and probably poison oak, but all that was better than getting crushed.
Jamie dared a look over his shoulder. The car was getting closer, and that was when he noticed the figure sitting behind the wheel.
Juneau was small. She looked like a little old lady hunched over the steering wheel when she drove.
This person was tall, big, and broad-shouldered.
The person driving could not be his sister.
Jamie closed his eyes and began his leap when the car’s bumper struck his right hip. A flash of pain exploded through his
body, and he could feel himself taking flight. It felt as if he was airborne for minutes, though it could have only been a
second or two. It was like riding the Super Shot at the fair when you are flung into the atmosphere, and you leave your stomach
behind for a moment, and you feel sick and excited and terrified all at the same time.
He landed hard in the ditch and was swallowed up the weeds. The pain in his hip was unbearable, making it impossible to exhale
or inhale, his breath lodged in his chest hard and heavy. Somehow, he was drowning in a dry ditch. Was this what it was like
to die? Jamie wondered. If I close my eyes, he thought, I won’t wake up. Panic spasmed through his body as he tried to sit
up, but his body wasn’t working.
Finally, his throat opened, allowing a thin thread of air into his lungs. He breathed it in greedily in long raspy breaths.
Someone had tried to run him over. Someone had tried to kill him. Where was Juneau? She would never have handed over the keys
to someone else, at least not willingly.
He tried to hold still, tried to quiet the jagged wheezing of his breath, hoping that the dark and long grass kept him well hidden.
Seconds passed, then minutes. The air was still, the crickets and kissing bugs had grown quiet.
Even the nightjars had stopped churring.
The driver couldn’t have been his sister, but maybe she was with a friend, a boyfriend.
Maybe they were playing a stupid game of chicken, thinking they were being funny, and had accidently hit him.
But Juneau wouldn’t leave him all alone in the dark, hurt, would she?
As annoying as he was, she never stayed angry at him for long.
The pain in Jamie’s hip had dulled to a throbbing ache. If he could just sit up, maybe he could scoot his way out of the ditch,
then use a fence post to pull himself to a standing position and wait for help. He knew this was wishful thinking. The gravel
road was only used by locals, and that was typically during the day. He could be here all night, but surely his mother would
get worried and come looking for him. Jamie took a deep breath and eased himself onto his elbows, wincing in pain with each
shift in position. From his vantage, he still couldn’t see the road, only the lattice of the dried grasses in front of him.
The sound of rustling grass came from somewhere behind him. An animal, maybe, curious about what had landed in its backyard.
But then the sound took on a rhythmic quality. A soft crunch, crunch, then silence. Crunch, crunch, pause. Footsteps. Someone was wading their way through the ditch toward him.
“Juneau?” Jamie called out hopefully, his voice trembling. No response. “Juneau!” he said more loudly. Whoever was coming
his way was not his sister. She would have answered him, and the steps were too heavy. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, pause.
Fear sent a surge of adrenaline through him, and Jamie was able to flip over onto his stomach. The pain a white-hot poker
stab to his hip, it didn’t stop him from army-crawling away from the noise. He inched forward, his right leg dragging heavily
behind. Though the night was cool, sweat slid down his face, stinging his eyes. Or were those tears? Jamie didn’t know. His
arms trembled with exertion, his skin tearing where it snagged on rough stems and brambles. He was getting nowhere and didn’t
have the strength to keep trying anyway. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, pause. Then nothing. Only his heavy breathing, intermingled with someone else’s.
Jamie didn’t want to look up. He didn’t want to see who had done this to him, to see what was going to happen next, but he couldn’t help himself.
The shadow that loomed over him was preternaturally large with broad shoulders that rose and fell with each breath.
A wet, musty odor rolled off the dark figure.
Jamie wanted to say something, tell him he didn’t have to hurt him, that Jamie wouldn’t tell anyone, that he could keep a secret.
He didn’t get the chance. The shape raised one tree trunk of a leg and swung it back as if preparing to kick a soccer ball or a football.
At the last second, Jamie ducked his head in hopes that his attacker would miss, would lose his footing, giving him a chance
to get away. The impact was dead-on, though, striking Jamie in the cheek. Jamie used his arms to cover his head, but the blows