The Bewildered Read online

  “He’s probably running with the dog pack.”

  “On all fours?” she said. “He looks like he could. Let’s go.”

  The path was gravel, and for a few minutes there was only the sound of their four feet, all in Chuck Taylor high-tops, scuffing along, climbing. As they climbed, it was as if the foliage closed around them. The thorned stalks of blackberry bushes snaked across the path, dark green, and above them the thick ivy, the pine trees up higher. Ferns grew on the steepest hills; on rainy days, the water passed from one plant to the next, swaying, making it look like a green waterfall. Chris had seen it. Now, though, there was no rain; the air was hot, thick, and the only breeze was high in the trees, unreachable.

  “We should have brought something to drink,” he said.

  Kayla swung her pack around front, still looped over her shoulder, not slowing her pace. She unzipped it and reached in, but what she brought out was not a bottle of water, as he’d hoped. Instead, it was a piece of paper, creased and old and folded, the edges torn. She handed it over without a word.

  It was a page from a magazine; Chris unfolded it. He glanced at the picture, then looked away, wondering if Kayla was somehow testing him. The image stayed in his mind: a naked woman, standing in a washtub, outside somewhere. Her round, heavy breasts hanging down and jutting out, one leg bent up, the other in the water, the hair between them. She stood next to a tree, maybe a tent. She squeezed a washcloth so clean water ran down her naked body; from her expression, the water was either very cold or very hot; her head was tilted back, her mouth half open. Across her tanned stomach, numbers had been written in pencil. Chris turned the paper over, to see if it was something else he was supposed to see, and there were two pictures of the same woman, naked except for black and yellow striped knee-socks; she was stretched out on a black and red wool blanket on her back and on her stomach, her face looking up. Her fingernails were long and curved, wicked. Dark red.

  “You can look at it as long as you want,” Kayla said. “But you can’t keep it.”

  “What would I want with it?” Chris said.

  “Don’t act like you don’t like it—you can barely walk and look at it at the same time, your mouth hanging open. You’ll bite off your tongue.”

  “You’re the one carrying it around,” he said.

  He handed it back to her, and she folded it carefully, put it away. They followed the winding path, silent again.

  “Whoa,” Kayla said, her arm across his chest, her finger pointing into a small canyon below. Through the trees, slanted sections of blue were visible. Chris bent down and could see a rounded edge, shimmering in the sun.

  “It’s a pool!” she said. “A pond.”

  “I’ve never seen it before,” he said.

  “We’ll swim, after.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not like anyone’s around,” she said. “You can keep your underwear on, if you want—just think how good it will feel.”

  “It’s probably fenced off.”

  “As if that would stop us. Come on.” Kayla looked around, finding a landmark, so she would not forget, and they resumed their climb, she rebraiding one side of her hair, tightening the rubber band around and around the tip. She almost stepped on a six-inch banana slug, but stepped sideways at the last minute.

  “I’m thinking of shaving my head,” she said. “That way I’ll be like you and Leon.”

  “Like Natalie, too,” he said. “Are you serious?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What were those numbers?” he said.

  “Numbers?”

  “On that picture you showed me.”

  “Aha,” she said. “You did like it.”

  “There were penciled numbers on it.”

  “Natalie’s phone number.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “She gave it to me, the first time I met her. That picture.”

  “But you never told us that!”

  “So what?” she said. “Does it matter?”

  Chris didn’t answer; he walked half a step behind her, confused. He tried to check her expression without turning his head, but she didn’t give anything away, only kept walking, her white T-shirt lined by the pack’s straps. He could see the lines of her bra under her shirt. She’d been wearing one for more than two years now.

  They passed the first X, carved into a tree trunk, then the second—these were false markers before the third, which was better hidden. Here, they checked to see that no one was watching, then lifted the blackberry bushes at the edge of the path, exposing a kind of tunnel through the thorns. Chris ducked down and went in first, on his hands and knees, collecting all the spiderwebs across his face, trying not to let the shoots and branches snap back to slash at Kayla. The ground angled sharply upward, but the tunnel was not long; it opened up, and they emerged into the mouth of a low, limestone cave. The opening was jagged, six feet across, three feet high, hidden by bushes.

  Chris moved over, making room for Kayla. The cave was large enough for all three of them, barely. Behind them, the wall dropped down so the opening was only twelve inches high and stretched back farther than they could see. The three had decided that bats lived there.

  Kayla scraped at the ground, the dirt and loose leaves, until she uncovered a flat, white rock. She lifted this, then took out the bank—a small wooden barrel, with brass rings around it, wrapped in two plastic bags. She unwrapped it and began pushing the money inside.

  “How much do we have, all together, do you think?” Chris said.

  “Over a thousand, easy.”

  “How much do we need?”

  “A lot more.”

  “Just the three of us, living together, however we want.” Chris leaned forward; through the leaves and branches of the bushes he could see a sliver of the sunlit path, thirty feet below. “That’s still what we’re doing, right?”

  “Of course,” Kayla said. “What else would we do?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I haven’t heard Leon say anything about it for a long time.”

  “Well, that’s Leon. He just has some issues, like I said. It has to be a temporary thing, you know? I just hope he’s not messing up at school.”

  “Definitely temporary.” Chris watched her replacing the bank, the stone, covering it up as if nothing were there. “At least it’s almost summer vacation, and most of the grades are already in. Teachers are so lazy—they just want to feed us candy, show us movies for the next two weeks.”

  “Right,” Kayla said. “By the way, did the Honor Society tell you they might kick us out if we don’t go to meetings?”

  “So what?” he said. “They can’t change our grades, or know what we know. They just like to have us there where they can see what we’re doing.”

  “They want us to care what they think,” Kayla said, smiling. From her unzipped pack, she took out her notebook. She opened it for a moment and pointed to a line, a date and time.

  “Two days until that guy visits Natalie,” she said. “Her old friend. It’ll be great to see. Leon better not miss that.”

  Getting down from the cave was easier; they only had to be careful that no one was around to see them emerge, and then they stood, on the path again, brushing thorns and dirt from their clothes. Watching Kayla, Chris remembered about the swimming. The thought made him anxious; maybe she had forgotten. They walked. Down below, through the trees, he glimpsed the river—a few small boats, and the bridges forking, angled across the water like spokes on a wheel.

  They turned a corner and could see an old woman on a mountain bike approaching, climbing, her frizzy hair escaping all around her helmet. She was barely moving; they could hear her panting, twenty feet away.

  “Howdy,” she said, lurching toward them.

  “Howdy,” they both said, rolling their eyes as soon as she was past.

  Down below, closer, the railyard stretched, and the ships at the docks, the huge metal cranes bent over the river.

&nbs
p; “Here,” Kayla said. “I bet this little trail goes down to that pond.”

  Chris followed her, watching the zigzag part in her hair, her pack swinging from side to side across her sharp shoulders. He did not know if he wanted to swim, if he wanted to take off his clothes with Kayla, even down to his underwear. He had a feeling that something was going to happen, and he wished he knew what it was. Below, he could see the round pond, the water flat and cool and no doubt refreshing, and then it was hidden again by the trees.

  “Are you sweating?” Kayla said. “I am.”

  “Howdy,” he said, and they both laughed.

  Chris bent his neck to look up through the thick branches, squinting at the now-blue sky, and in that moment Kayla stopped, and he slammed into her; they both almost fell over.

  “Look,” she said.

  In the middle of the dirt path was a perfect little rabbit, dead. It was brown, without a mark on it, as if asleep. Kayla touched its ear with a twig, then picked up the little rabbit in her bare hands and set it down under a bush, off the trail.

  “It weighs like nothing,” she said. “Come on—we’re close, now.”

  Chris hurried after her. The notebook and whatever else was in her pack jostled, keys and coins ringing. But when they’d almost reached the bottom, the level of the pond, something strange had happened. Through the trees, the blue water seemed solid, a vertical wall, as if the pond had been frozen in a cylinder, or encased in glass.

  Kayla and Chris stepped into a small clearing, through tall, dry grass. The pond was not a pond at all; it was a water tank, painted pale blue, thirty feet tall, at least, with a ladder ten feet up. Round, with a flat top—that’s what they’d seen from above. The ladder’s bottom end was out of reach, yet a frayed rope dangled from the lowest rung. A sign on the side read, MAYFAIR RESERVOIR #1. Chris knocked his fist against the tank; he expected a hollow ringing, but there was no echo. It was like knocking on a brick wall.

  Kayla smiled, batting at the hanging rope so the heavy knot swung back and forth. Before they even said a word, she took hold of it and was climbing, the soles of her shoes against the tank’s metal side. Once she got to the ladder, Chris reached up and took the rope, following.

  She was walking around the edge by the time he reached the top. Here, there were the remains of a campfire, a piece of foam camping mattress, a broken metal folding chair. The metal burned the palms of his hands as he pushed himself up and felt hot through the soles of his shoes; the surface was mostly clean, but marked with darker circles, where puddles had evaporated away. Graffiti read, JUANITA + RAY and FEAR, along with a few scattered warnings, promises.

  Kayla laughed. She straightened her arms behind her and her pack dropped off, next to her feet. She danced away, pretending to swim with her arms, as if they were underwater. Chris joined her—they bumped into each other, splashed at the air, laughing, balancing close to the edge, the heat coming from above and below. One braid came loose, and Kayla’s hair exploded wild on that side; still swimming, she crossed her arms in front of her, gripped the hem of her T-shirt, and pulled it over her head, threw it off so it disappeared far below. Chris swum to the edge, saw it white in the tall grass, and then turned back to the whiteness of her bra, and Kayla closer, windmilling her arms through the air. When she reached him, her arms slowed, and her hands were at the side of her head, gripping tightly, her face close to his. He smelled her sweet shampoo, her sweat.

  “You’re keeping all your clothes on?” she said, pulling at his T-shirt. “They’ll get wet.”

  Chris took off his shirt, following her. His body, he knew, looked pretty much like hers. Now she was bending down to untie her shoes. She kicked them off, unsnapped her pants. Unzipping them, she looked up at him, staring until he began to untie his shoes.

  He tried to catch up and stumbled, his pants tangled around his ankles—and then he was loose, dancing, swimming with Kayla, trying not to look at her, trying to look at her. He hadn’t seen her take off her bra, but she had and now her small breasts were there, amazing, moving side to side, up and down, as she leapt.

  “My feet!” she said.

  The metal was too hot, burning the soles of their feet—they couldn’t stay airborne long enough. Hopping, they pulled on their shoes, and kept swimming, wearing only underwear and high-tops, laces whipping loose. Chris watched Kayla, the blue sky behind her, the green trees, her panties the same color as the sky. He reached out, his hand sliding across her back, low, and her arm slapped hot across his shoulder.

  “Tighty-whities!” she said, laughing, pointing where the front of his briefs stuck out. Next, she picked up his shirt, spread it across the piece of foam rubber.

  “Sit down,” she said. “Lay back.”

  He smelled the dirt, the old rain caught in the foam. Kayla’s small breasts looked pale and smooth, as if they’d be cool to the touch. Her nipples were dark; one stuck out and one was inverted, pushed in. He touched her spine, his finger sliding down the vertebrae. Her shoulder brushed his face as she lay back, her sour skin against his mouth for a moment. They did not talk; they did not know what to say, what they would do. Stretched out in the sun, their skin was hottest where it pressed together—the side of his knee against her thigh, her smooth calf resting over his, her nipple barely touching his arm. Leaning toward him, she held her hand over his briefs; his dick was hard, and she touched it, through the fabric. She pushed it down, let go, and it bounced back up.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.

  “We’re not doing anything,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “We almost are.”

  “But we still aren’t. That’s the difference. We won’t, will we?” Chris said. His elbow was off the foam, and the metal burned his skin. He stared past Kayla, into the sky, and listened to the wind in the trees. Closing his eyes, he still listened, and the sun shone bright, a rosy glow through his eyelids. He held out his hand and could see it without opening his eyes, the dark shadows of his fingers.

  “I thought we all decided,” Kayla said. “With Leon, we all agreed.”

  “It’s more like an experiment,” he said. “A test.”

  “But we still shouldn’t tell him; we shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “That would be a secret,” Chris said. “Keeping a secret from him.”

  “Maybe only for a little while,” she said, “until he’s more like himself again. And we’re not doing anything, anyway.”

  Chris opened his eyes. Kayla was sitting up, her bra on backward, loose around her waist; she did the clasp, spun it around, pulled it up. Her breasts were gone. She bent her elbows, straightened her arms. He reached out and touched her back again, but she leaned away from him. She laced her shoes, then stood and pulled on her pants over them; retrieving her pack, she walked toward the ladder. A few steps down, she paused, facing him.

  “So you won’t say anything, right?”

  “All right,” he said.

  Her head disappeared, sinking away. There was only the empty space where the ladder surfaced, the green of the distant trees, the bushes below. And then her head reappeared, the hair still loose on one side, pulled into its braid on the other. She smiled.

  “Hurry up,” she said. “Do I have to tie your shoelaces for you, or what?”

  8.

  WAS HE LATE? The car’s clock was broken, and Steven had forgotten his watch, his wrist bare. He drove slowly, squinting to read the numbers on the houses he passed, then pulled over and turned on the overhead light and checked the address again. The numbers were counting down, and he was going in the right direction, but it seemed unlikely that anyone lived farther down this road. He switched the light back off, shifted his Corolla into drive, and kept on into the darkness.

  A broken-down Victorian loomed, its windows all boarded up, and then around the other side a trailer appeared, all its windows ablaze. The number on the trailer matched the one Natalie had given him, but it seemed impossible—a tree branch had fallen on
the roof, and the whole thing seemed to tilt, propped on cinderblocks; the rusted pickup out front was not the Lexus he’d expected, that Natalie used to drive. Still, he parked.

  He stepped close to the fence without opening the gate. A dog chain stretched empty, like a snake across the tangled yard; scraps of paper, torn magazines, were everywhere. And then there was movement, a shadow across the ground, and a woman moving unhurriedly inside the trailer. She walked with her head cocked, as if she’d heard his car, her hands out as if feeling her way along. It wasn’t Natalie—yes, it was. He opened the broken gate in the chain-link fence, not taking his eyes off her. Her hair was long and straight, strawberry blond, different than the dark bob she used to wear, and also different than the black-haired woman he’d seen in Fred Meyer.

  Halfway to the front door, he kicked a piece of paper into the air, then bent to pick it up. Natalie’s face appeared in the window next to the door, leaning close, failing to see him.

  “Who is it?” she called.

  “Steven.”

  “Who?”

  “You asked me to come by tonight. I might be a little late.”

  “Oh, Steven!” she said. “Right! That sounds familiar.”

  She opened the door and stood in the gap with her hand on the knob, not stepping aside or inviting him in. Barefoot, she wore a chambray work shirt and dark pants that had been roughly cut off at the ankle, rather than properly hemmed.

  “Nice neighborhood,” he said.

  “Not really,” she said, “but I like it. It’s quiet.”

  “Didn’t Gary Gilmore used to live around here?”

  “Who?”

  “The murderer.”

  “Probably.” She smiled, and looked around, as if wondering what he wanted. She clearly had not been expecting him.

  “Do I look different?” he said. “Maybe I had more hair.” He felt his head, self-conscious. “Your hair’s different, too,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Probably.”

  “Of course,” he said, “it hasn’t even been a year since we’ve seen each other.”