Klickitat Read online

  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.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.abramsbooks.com

  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.

  “Before,” she said. “Downstairs. You did the right thing, just watching. I can’t help it, and then it’s just the same thing, over and over.”

  “I’m on your side,” I said.

  “If I can just change the way I do things,” she said. “The way I walk and listen and talk and touch—but if I keep trying to change then even that trying starts to be the same, like a rut, a robot trying not to be a robot, and I spend all my time watching myself, you know?”

  Now Audra did look around at me, and smiled like I should step through the window and sit on the roof with her. I reached out and felt the grit of the shingles. It felt slippery, like I would slip. I stayed standing where I was.

  “I met someone,” she said. “Someone who knows all kinds of things, better than the way we’re living, here. Closer to how we’re supposed to be.”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Soon you’ll know,” she said. “Everything’s going to change.”

  Two houses down, at the Haydens’, a white van that said BEE EXTERMINATOR on it was parked. Across the street, Jimmy Newman was kicking a ball up the hill in his front yard. It was a red ball, and he’d kick it up, and it would roll down, and he’d kick it up again.

  I tried to slow down my breathing, but as Audra slid back, closer to me, I felt a trembling start inside me. Strong and too quick for me to get between something and something else, before I could get to my life jacket in my closet in my room across the hall. My arms rose up and my hands were shaking. They reached out and took hold of Audra’s arm, of her shoulder where it turned into her neck.

  “Vivian,” she said, “it’s all right. It’s fine. I’m here.”

  And then I could hardly hear her because the blood was roaring around in my body and racing in my ears and all I wanted to do was hold on.

  I pulled Audra through the window, onto her bedroom floor, half on top of me next to the bed. She was saying something, over and over again, stroking my hair with her hand that wasn’t twisted back under her.

  “Klick-i-tat. Klick-i-tat.”

  That was a game we used to play, when we were younger, that I’d almost forgotten. If we were in trouble, or Mom and Dad were arguing, we’d say that name. “Klickitat,” back and forth to each other, to help us feel better, to know that we were always sisters, always together. We got it from Beezus and Ramona, the name of their street—a block away from our street, Siskiyou, here in Portland—and we said it because they are sisters and we are sisters, and because we liked the sound.

  “Klickitat,” Audra said, whispering, her voice close to my ear. “Klickitat.”

  It was the word for how we felt together, understanding each other. My fingers began to loosen. A “vise-like grip” is what I’ve heard it called, where a doctor wrote it in my file, and they’ve always pried me off people—it’s only Audra who let me hold on until it passed, even if the doctors or Mom and Dad tried to pull us apart.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Audra.

  “It’s okay.” It was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Are you getting worse, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “We’ll figure out ways to make it better for both of us, for everyone.”

  Audra sat up, stretched her arms above her head, turned her head from side to side like she was checking to make sure her neck still worked. She smiled at me, and just then Mom started calling that dinner was ready.

  Audra did not come down to dinner. Instead, she went back through her window and stayed out all night, later than anyone could stay awake waiting.

  TWO

  The next morning, Audra still had not come home. I sat at the kitchen table, eating a toaster waffle. A glass of milk, one of orange juice, and my three pill bottles were lined above my plate, all waiting for me. Dad was upstairs, and Mom hurried in and out of the kitchen with a piece of toast in one hand, getting ready to go to work.

  “You’re buying lunch at school?” she said. “You’ll eat something?”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything about Audra. She kept talking about work, about being late. My mom works for Nordstrom, where she’s a personal shopper. That means she chooses clothes for people who can’t choose their own clothes—either they don’t have time or they don’t care or they’re color-blind or whatever. It also means that she brought home new clothes for us all the time. I used to think this was great until Audra explained that we only got clothes no one else wanted. That no one bought and that were a year old or more. Audra stopped wearing them. She refused. That’s one of the things she and Mom fought about, how Audra wore clothes from Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

  “Did you take your pills?” Mom said.

  “I will,” I said.

  “I’ll count them later.”

  “Mom,” I said.

  “Have a great day, honey.” She leaned close to kiss the top of my head, and then she went out the door and in a minute I heard her car start and back down the driveway, gone.

  Outside, rain was misting down. I squinted up through the window, at the gray sky, and then I stood up, leaned close. On the glass, on the other side of the window, was a faint round mark, and tiny, tiny feathers, stuck there. Right at the spot where the bird had flown into the window. I held up my hand, but my side of the glass was smooth.

  Out in the gray morning I could see the trees across the backyard, the small black shapes of birds in the bare branches.

  Audra came in only
a minute or two later, like she had been watching the house, waiting for Mom to leave. She was wet, and smiling.

  “Hey.” She picked up the crust of Mom’s toast from the plate on the counter and jammed it into her mouth. I could see the wet footprints of her bare feet shining on the linoleum.

  “Did you sleep?” I said.

  “Of course I slept.” Audra poured herself a cup of coffee and walked over close to me. She reached out to touch my arm.

  “You smell like a campfire,” I said.

  “A bonfire,” she said, and snorted. “Some idiots were trying to jump their bikes over it. One of them broke his leg, I think.”

  “Did he get a cast?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I left, to go do some other things, to try to find someone.”

  “Did you?”

  Audra didn’t answer; she took off her wet coat and hung it up, over the heat vent. She shivered, hugged herself, her wet hair tight and dark around her head. She looked even skinnier than usual, and there was a silver stud in the side of her nose. I knew she wanted me to say something, to notice it.

  “Remember that bird that flew into the window?” I said.

  “What?”

  “Yesterday,” I said. “There’s still feathers there.”

  Audra didn’t sit down. She just stood there in the middle of the kitchen.

  “There’s something I want you to do with me,” she said.

  She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and took out a wrinkled piece of newspaper. I held out my hand, but she didn’t give it to me.

  “You took your pills, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, and she gave me a look.

  “What?” I said. “I mean, not yet, I haven’t.”

  “They’re poisoning you,” she said. “So you’ll be like them, a robot like everyone else. This house!” Pacing across the kitchen, Audra jerked open the refrigerator, looked into it for a moment.

  “I could go with you,” I said. “One of these nights.”

  “You could.” Audra looked across the kitchen like she was measuring me. “And you could get hurt. People do.”