Chapter Eight
Eight
SNOWBOARD. HELMET. GOGGLES. SKI MASK. Gloves. Boots. Check. GoPro camera. Extra batteries. Flashlight. Pocketknife. Firestarter. Phone charger. Check.
Imani Washington mentally cataloged her supplies as she packed her duffel bag with military precision.
Mom and Dad had warned them that the lodge was in the middle of nowhere, so she didn’t want to forget anything before their morning flight out of LAX.
In her mind’s eye, she memorized every compartment and space in her bag, seeing her new black jacket with electric-pink arm stripes folded beneath her gear.
She’d wrapped her snowboard in bubble wrap and packed clothes around her gear for extra padding.
Imani couldn’t believe they were finally going to the woods for real—not playing at going to the woods like in Big Bear, where those rental cabins were just in neighborhoods with a lot of trees.
But this! Her great-grandmother’s lodge was in the actual wilderness, the kind she had dreamed of exploring since she first saw an episode of Naked and Afraid two years ago, in fifth grade.
Which animals would she see? Were there any berries she could identify from her shelf of Audubon Society books?
Did she have the skills to build a simple shelter near the lodge?
She’d been practicing with her flint firestarter in the backyard with piles of twigs like a survivalist, and she was pretty good at getting wisps of smoke that eventually sparked into flames.
She’d seen seasoned pros spend hours trying to light a fire in the wild.
Don’t let your ego write a check your skills aren’t ready to cash, Mom liked to say when Imani tried ambitious snowboarding tricks.
This time, she would get a chance to really practice.
Snowboarding. Fire building. Could she convince Dad to take her hunting?
Dad had told her how his uncle Ricky had taken him hunting at the lodge when he was Imani’s age, so why not her?
The gun might still be there. She used to hate hunters, but Naked and Afraid had made her realize that humans once had needed to hunt for food or they would starve—all meat eaters did—so hunting was better than buying a piece of meat wrapped in plastic from the store.
At least hunting was fairer, since the animals had actual lives and weren’t locked up in the stinking slaughterhouses her family passed when they drove up Interstate 5.
Sharise only ate chicken and fish, but Imani still liked burgers, steaks, and chops.
She vowed she would never hunt “for fun,” or waste any creature’s life—but what would it feel like to feed Mom and Dad with food she had hunted herself?
Would she have the nerve, or would she chicken out?
Imani decided that if she had a chance and couldn’t do it, she would stop eating red meat like her sister.
She was a total hypocrite if she couldn’t deal with blood.
Blood was always the price of a meal, if there was meat.
Holy shit—they were really going on a surprise trip to the mountains!
And she would miss Monday’s algebra quiz too!
(Mom and Dad didn’t need to know that part, but the timing was divine.
Algebra was the devil’s work, and it might be the first class she would barely pass.) Her TikTok would blow up after she posted videos of herself snowboarding with a headline like “Black Girls Board.” She would get an assload of likes and shares.
Mount Shasta was ten times more exotic than Big Bear.
She could get Sharise to shoot her doing a real backside air, bending back to grab her board beneath her feet mid-flight before she landed.
She’d never been able to test herself properly with so many other boarders crowding the slopes.
But no one else would be at Bear Creek Lodge. The resort was private. This slope belonged to her and her family. Once she posted her videos, the fake-ass posers at her school could choke on their jealousy.
Two quick knocks on her door from her sister. Mom or Dad ignored her closed door like it wasn’t there. So annoying. “Yes?” Imani said. She didn’t want to split her attention.
Sharise opened the door, slipped inside, and closed the door behind her.
Imani instantly forgot her sister was in the room with her, imagining herself flying high on her snowboard.
When she finally looked up, she found Sharise reclined on her bed, texting on her phone beneath Imani’s Kendrick Lamar poster for To Pimp a Butterfly.
Sharise’s fingers played in the long curls of her copper-colored weave.
Imani never understood why anyone would want long hair—especially hair from someone else’s head.
Her own hair was natural, cut short like Mom’s.
“What?” Imani said. “I’m listening. Promise.”
Her family had vowed to be patient with her after she decided to stop taking her ADHD medication, which she’d been taking since she was six.
Her best friend at her old school, Milana, said she wanted to be medicated forever, but Imani had hated the way the meds made her feel like she was walking around with a blanket over her whole body, especially her head.
And she lost weight on her meds because she was never hungry, which Milana thought was a plus.
No thanks. But on the downside, Imani’s focus suffered without the chemicals, so she had changed schools and everyone in her family was supposed to give her three chances to start listening, especially if she was preoccupied. Like now.
“You’re gonna get bugs if you keep stuffing your food bags down here,” Sharise said. She was leaning back against the wall, staring at the graveyard of trash food bags from the past two weeks, maybe three, stashed between the mattress and the wall. “Pretty gross, Imani.”
“I clean it out when I can smell it,” Imani said, still rearranging her gear in her bag.
“Glad there’s a plan before the maggots show up…”
“Shut up,” Imani said. “Why are you here on my bed?”
Sharise’s phone dinged with a text, and she let out a dramatic gasp. “Oh my God—Hunter said he’ll miss me. So cute.”
“Please tell me you’re not doing it with a dude named Hunter.”
Sharise shot her an evil eye. “Jump out of my business, please.”
“Wait—are you?” For the first time, Imani moved closer to Sharise to sit next to her on the bed in a cozier pose, like they were two girlfriends hanging out. “Go on.”
“Nice try,” Sharise said. “I’m not discussing this with a child. But no, for the record. I barely know him.”
“Would you tell me if you were?”
“Hell no.”
Imani gave up, jumping back down to the floor to triple-check her bag for the spare batteries for her video camera. Sharise could be lying. “Why are you here?” she says again.
Sharise sighed, such an adult heaving sound that it made Imani stare. Sharise’s face looked like it had aged ten years with her mouth turned down into such a severe frown.
“The trip’s canceled?” Imani asked. Tears were waiting: It had felt too good to be true.
“No,” Sharise said. “But I have to tell you something. I don’t want to upset you, but I think it’s better if you’re prepared.”
“I already know about Dad’s movie,” Imani said. “Mom told me. Stop being dramatic.”
“It’s not that—it’s the real reason for this trip.”
Imani was annoyed, but Sharise’s aged face had cast a spell on her, so she waited to hear.
Sharise drew in a long breath. Exhaled. “I think… Mom and Dad are getting a divorce.” She whispered the words.
“What?” Imani said. “That’s incredibly dumb.”
“Shhhh,” Sharise said, moving down to sit next to her on the floor—something she didn’t ordinarily do. Imani’s mind rejected what Sharise had said, but her heart sped like it was gospel. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me, but listen to me—”
“I’m not listening to you. You sound crazy right now.”
“Mom looks a mess every morning. You know it’s true.
Like she’s not getting any sleep. And her eyes are all bloodshot, like she’s been crying.
And what was up with Dad tonight? He was like a robot.
And he keeps getting all these ‘headaches,’ so he has to go lie down.
Something’s not right with them, Imani. And now all of a sudden we’re going up to that lodge out of nowhere?
I asked Mom what’s going on and she looked all weird about it.
She said, ‘We’ll tell you when we get there. ’ ”
“Are you done?” Imani said.
Sharise looked at Imani with disbelief that she wasn’t as worried as she was. “Maybe you’ve been too lost in video game world, but I’m not making this up. You need to pay attention to the world around you.”
“Right,” Imani said. “That’s so funny coming from Miss ‘Oh Wait, I Got My One Hundredth Text Message Today.’ ” With perfect timing, Sharise’s phone dinged again from the bed, where she had left it.
Sharise didn’t rush to check her phone, her too-grown frown unchanged. She stood up, brushing off her jeans as if Imani’s floor was teeming with cooties. “This is what I get for thinking I can have a mature conversation with you,” she said.
“This was not a mature conversation. This was you being way too dramatic—as usual. Why can’t you ever relax and have fun? Why do you have to find a downside to everything?”
“That’s not true,” Sharise said, her voice soft because it was true. Sharise always expected the worst. Imani had overheard her tell a friend that her boyfriend broke up with her because he was tired of her expecting him to be a jerk. On-brand for Sharise.
“Mom and Dad are the only married people I know who actually like each other,” Imani said.
“They laugh all the time. They watch TV together every night. They hold hands. They’re so embarrassing to be around in public.
What are you even talking about?” Imani doubted that she would ever want to get married.
Boys didn’t make her heart race. Girls didn’t either.
But if she ever did marry anyone, boy or girl, she would want to be best friends like Mom and Dad.
“You’re right,” Sharise said. “But not lately. Something has changed, Imani.”
Sharise’s voice trembled so much that Imani felt sorry for her. She tried to make a joke. “If I were you,” Imani said, turning back to her duffel bag, “I’d be more worried about not falling on my ass out in the snow.”
“I hope you’re right,” Sharise said. “I really do.”
“I’m right.”
Imani didn’t want her older sister’s panic attack to ruin her anticipation of the trip, so she was glad when Sharise didn’t try to change the subject back to doom and gloom.
Sharise lingered long enough for Imani to forget she was there again.
At some point, Imani realized her sister had left the room, closing the door behind her.
But Sharise’s worries felt like an evil genie released from a bottle, left behind to punish Imani.
Now she couldn’t stop thinking about everything that could go wrong too.
A lodge in the woods with no Wi-Fi or cell service was a plot in a horror movie.
The lodge would be old and dusty. She would be bored out of her mind at night. She hated to sleep in strange beds. She could break her skull open on the slope. They could have a car accident while they were driving on an icy road in the woods.
And there had been a weird vibe between her parents at dinner. It was weird that they wanted to drop everything and go to her great-grandmother’s lodge out of nowhere, so she and Sharise would miss a day of school instead of waiting for Christmas break in a couple weeks.
Maybe—just maybe—Sharise was the one who was right.
Maybe their family was about to change forever.