chapter one
Come spring they slept with the windows open, and every morning she woke to a tickle in her nose courtesy of the magnolia tree that blossomed outside their bedroom. Still, she restrained the impulse to fidget: she didn't want to wake him. She savored these moments, when his normally restive body was quiet and warm. Her cheek to his chest, she matched her breath to his. She was him, she felt, as much as she was herself. Whenever he was sick or angry or miserable she bore it, too, as a prickling on her flesh, a chill in her bones.
She never contemplated Alone if she could help it. Occasionally, though, an aberrant sound in the distance or an unsettling shadow on the wall of the barn, on the brick exterior of the house, awakened the haunting knowledge she tried perpetually to repress: that Alone lurked beneath their routine, beneath his murmurs of reassurance, beneath his wide, steady hands on her back. When this awareness overcame her she trembled, her gaze darting and hunting unsuccessfully for the place where it wouldn't be true. Where Alone would be a lie. Where their bond would not be fragile. In time, her spells of panic grew less frequent. She relaxed into the idea that Alone, while real, was probably not her destiny-that her relationship was a lasting one. And then the dreams began.
She couldn't fathom why these particular dreams would visit someone like her. She was content with her life! She was old! Her kneecaps cracked like splitting firewood when she overextended, jumped from too great a height. Dreams like these were meant for the young. But we don't choose our dreams: they choose us.
The dream always began in the same place, by the far edge of the property. Sometimes it was cold dawn and the wooden posts of the fence were wet with dew. Sometimes it was late and lightning bugs winked against smoky, baleful sky. The pasture grass that usually came to the level of her belly was, in the dream, well above her head, grown wild. Concealed among the stalks, she crept right up to the fence. Between the squares of sturdy wire she could see the forest, where it sloped down and met the creek. Beyond that lay a valley dotted with several other ranches and beyond that-hills, dense with hickory and oak. It was a massive swath of land, and she'd never explored any of it. And this was just one place. This was just what she could see. She had never questioned the life she'd been given; in fact all her most difficult moments could be boiled down to a fear of losing what had been allotted to her. She had never thought to mourn missed opportunities, untrod paths, unknown faces. She had a home in Ohio, yes, but surely there were other homes. She had love, but was there more love, different love, elsewhere? Was there another place, another situation in which she would be different? Whatever pain her leaving might create, she had a right to know.
She began to dig. Invigorated, her paws spit and churned soil so fast that, in mere minutes, she had burrowed a hole under the fence big enough to slip through. As she crawled into the dirt and scrabbled out the other side, her mind raced. I'm doing this. I'm really doing this. All her life she had stayed within bounds: never, ever, could she have imagined crossing the line to be so easy. The thrill of her own capacity for rebellion, for destruction, filled her with a kind of electric purpose-a transporting heat swept through her body-
And then she woke up. Every time, the dream cut off in this same place. When she opened her eyes and surveyed her real life-the thinning bedspread, the scuffed hardwood, the antique clock with the broken chime, even him, sleeping innocently-none of it stimulated her. Gone was the Midas touch that had been her gratitude.
But abandoning home, in reality, was unthinkable. Out of the question, she told herself, as she trailed him, day after day, through the house and the fields, as she rode in the truck with him to the feed store, the package store, the country mart. But even as she banished the idea of leaving, she caught herself regarding him with pity, as if she'd already left. And then she felt guilty for pitying him, which made her feel even more sorry. She wished she could just explain-it wasn't that she wanted to fantasize about running away, it was the dreams, infecting her mind! After several weeks of self-loathing, ruing her terrible ambivalence, she began to feel . . . something else. She noticed herself jerking away when he bent to touch her. Fussing with the collar he'd given her that bore her name. Not waiting for him while they made the morning trek to the barn but going ahead on her own. Sleeping farther and farther away from him (his stubble and his snoring grated her now, as they never had before). She had become angry. Maybe it wasn't fair, maybe she was holding him to too high a standard, but, really, after years of unwavering devotion she becomes moody and withdrawn and he notices nothing? If he paid one ounce as much attention to her as she did him, he would have known something was amiss. He would have made overtures-her favorite dinner, to cheer her up. A special outing to bring them closer. He took her for granted though. His cheerleader. His shadow. But I bet he would notice, she brooded, if I were gone.
She didn't acknowledge to herself that she had made a decision. It was early May, and every year at this time his brother came to stay for several weeks. The brother was a careless, distracted man, prone to leaving the door ajar when he came in from smoking on the front lawn. One evening after dinner, while relaxing on the couch, she saw the brother making his way back to the house. She rose. She could hear him, her companion of so many years, cleaning in the kitchen. The rushing of water, the clanking of pans. She moved to the front door. When the brother lumbered over the threshold he did not even notice her by his feet. She watched the brother shuffle to the kitchen, heard him mumble something and heard, in reply, her love's gravelly laugh. Her chest constricted; for a moment she felt she would suffocate from sorrow.
And then she slipped outside. A lean wind rippled through her fur. She picked up the scent of something rotting and thought of carcasses by the side of the road. She could end up like that. And there were greater threats than speeding cars-there were coyotes. Snakes. Sadists with cold eyes. She would do her best to avoid all the terrible things she knew about . . . but what about all the things she couldn't conceive of? The most dangerous things probably didn't look dangerous at all. She'd spent her whole life in captivity-she wasn't a predator-how could she possibly keep herself safe?
She worried over this for a long, suspended moment, drawing shallow breaths of chill night air. And then a possibility occurred to her, and she set off resolutely down the driveway, down the road and onto the turnpike. Maybe you didn't know whether you were a predator until the hour arrived, until the world opened its jaws and you were staring down the black throat of terror. Whoever tries to harm me, she reasoned, might discover, at their own peril, that I have teeth.
chapter two
The city is a dull parade of chill and half-hearted light-then, all at once, it's boiling hot. Things were different when El was young. Back then, winter slush gave way gradually to clement weeks of rain and pollen, and only after people started packing away their serious coats and ordering their coffees iced did true summer emerge with its choking humidity and overfull trash cans, vile and baking on every corner. There used to be time to adjust: not anymore.
El dabbed sweat from her hairline as she hustled up the steps of the West 4th Street station, glancing at her phone. 12:04. She texted Darcy, her manager: Sorry sorry! 3 min.
From the mouth of the subway she rushed to the corner of Sixth Avenue. Taxis and boxy SUVs raced past, uptown. Little sedans scrambled to skirt wide buses. El eyed her phone anxiously. 12:06. The light changed and El power walked, as one with the throng around her: the elderly, the uber-fit, the unhappy teenagers of tourists. As a pack they stalked across the avenue, the sun flaming their backs, ridiculing them all for their misfortune to be on foot in such inhospitable heat. El pushed to the front and broke into a jog, which she maintained until she reached the aqua banner of the small high-end bakery where she was a "team member," a.k.a. the lowest person on the totem pole. She worked the register, cleaned the floor, sorted out the cold room. She opened, mostly, but worked the second shift when Darcy asked her to, like today. Occasionally she helped frost cupcakes, the uncomplicated ones.
Gently she pushed the door open and squeezed into the packed shop. There were eight or so couples in line, a few families. Darcy stood at the register, harassed bun atop her head. Whoever had been on shift before El, probably Pia-they must've had to leave at noon on the dot. Not a great day to be late.
"Really sorry," El murmured as she charged past Darcy down the stairs. She shoved her bag in her cubby, pulled her apron on and took the stairs two at a time on the way back up. When she made it to the register she was sweating more than ever, and Darcy moved aside with an exasperated raising of eyebrows.
A woman in head-to-toe athleisure stood waiting to be helped. Her young, serious daughter hugged her leg. "A shortcake cookie and the green olive ciabatta," the woman said. No hi, no good morning, no thank you.
El pulled on a glove and bent to grab the shortcake cookie from the case to her right. Through the glass the daughter's hazel eyes kept watch, and El, on a whim, puffed out her cheeks and swung her head from side to side, like someone exploring underwater. The daughter didn't smile.
El bagged the cookie and ciabatta carefully. She made sure to keep her expression pleasant as she broke the woman's twenty and returned her change. El saw the woman glance to the open Mason jar, affixed with a blue ribbon, marked TIPS. But the next moment, the woman had slipped her money into the pocket of her fitted sweatshirt and steered her daughter to the exit.
Asshole, El thought. Although really it was stupid to be upset-hardly anyone tipped in cash anymore. Paper money had more value now that you had to pay a fee to get it even from your own bank. True it only cost a couple dollars, but still. El certainly coveted her own cash: there were two creased singles that had been in her wallet for months.
The next customers were a pair of teenage girls, their hair in identically high, glossy ponytails. El wondered if this was some new summer trend. Totally possible: being twenty-nine, El found herself less and less in step with current fashion, more and more reverting to the mid-length layered cut, cap-sleeved tees and boot-cut jeans she'd favored for a decade. Despite their youth, both the girls were taller than El. One of them stood at least six feet in her kitten-heeled sandals, and she was the one who moved toward the counter, her eyes meeting El's with arresting confidence. She ordered two hazelnut milk flat whites and one lemon cupcake, cut in half. Her friend continued to hang back-out of respect, it seemed to El, for the taller girl's preeminence. Their dynamic reminded El a bit of Anna and Julia.
While El fixed the coffees, she thought about how this very week fifteen years ago, she, Anna and Julia had been about to graduate eighth grade. El had been extremely naïve: she had assumed that even though Anna and Julia were matriculating to a prep school in the Bronx and she to a public performing arts school in Midtown that they would still hang out all the time. Not so. El eventually realized that she, Anna and Julia had never lived in the same Manhattan. She had accessed theirs fleetingly, during her single year at the private middle school where, despite the mandatory uniforms, there had been constant, hungry comparison among the girls-which sneakers did you own, which earrings, which hair ties-and El's things had always been inferior, secondhand, drugstore-bought. As a suburban transplant, El had found New York City not only intimidating, but alien. She hadn't even recognized the brands worn by her classmates, Betsey Johnson and Longchamp and Lacoste-that tiny crocodile had seemed to sneer at El's own collared shirts, whose cheap unstarched necks wilted like soggy leaves when she tried to pop them.
The other eighth graders had whispered about El: that she was on financial aid, that she and her mother lived with friends, they didn't even have their own apartment-all of it was true and nothing to be ashamed of, but El had internalized the meaning of these observations: having less made her less. Then, on the Friday before Halloween, Anna and Julia had approached El in the computer lab, and Anna had asked-no, had commanded, that El come hang out with them.
"Why?" El had asked, her tone unintentionally rude. Anna had simply caught her off guard. She was about to apologize when-
"Oh my god. You're so funny." Anna's doll-like face shone with incredulous delight.
"You're hilarious," Julia had agreed.
After her public adoption by the grade's most popular girls, no one had trash-talked El anymore. Instead they'd jockeyed to hang out with her on weekends or on the sidelines in gym. The boys had made a "hot list" and El had come in second, right behind Anna. El had felt sorry for Julia, whose allure had been obscured by braces with elastic bands between the upper and lower teeth. Julia had seemed to know she was in an unfortunate phase, though, and had borne her mid-tier ranking without complaint. Some of the other girls had decried the hot list as sexist, however, and though El had agreed on principle, privately she'd taken comfort in having an allotted place. Actually, if El really thought about it, eighth grade had probably been the happiest year of her life.
Copyright © 2024 by Alana B. Lytle. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
