Page 38

I find Tayla more or less where she said she would be. She certainly did find a vantage point. I just didn’t expect it to be up a tree.

“See anything?” What I really mean is Do you see Kiara , but I can tell from the unhappy tilt of her mouth that she doesn’t.

“No luck,” Tayla admits. She moves with sinewy, feline grace to reach the ground again, and her palms are dirty and scraped, but she doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Couldn’t get high enough. Haven’t climbed a tree since I was ten, but I read something in Radhika’s book about changing perspective when you run into a seemingly insurmountable problem, so I thought—”

“What did you just say?”

“I said I thought the height would—”

“No, not that.” I flap my hand at her. “The part about the book. Changing perspective.”

“Why are you being weird?”

The laugh startles out of me. How do I even begin to explain?

Hearing one of my dad’s catchphrases coming out of her mouth, of all people, is horribly incongruous and unreal.

All along, every step of the way, I thought I was carrying so many of my dad’s lessons that they would protect me.

Protect all of us. And now it doesn’t seem like enough.

Doesn’t seem like mine anymore. A sense of loss pierces through my possessiveness, and just like that, the illusion of protection between me and the forest irreparably fractures.

“I’m not being weird,” I say automatically. Unsteady as I feel, I manage to get out, “What you just said about changing perspective is something my dad used to say. How is it in Radhika’s book?”

Tayla looks taken aback. “I…I don’t know. I did think it was odd at the time. It was one of the notes in the margin, but it wasn’t in her handwriting. It was like, why is she using an old used copy?”

When the answer lands, it’s with a wallop. “Do you remember the color of the pen?”

She doesn’t ask me how I know the notes were in ink, not pencil. “Pink gel,” she says. “She uses it for everything. But the other writing was in red.”

Shock prevents me from speaking. It’s my dad’s book. It has to be. It’s his red ink. Why does Radhika have my dad’s book with his notes in red ink? How does she have it?

“Hey, Nova. You okay? You’ve gone the color of skim milk.”

I barely register the question. The chopper sound is back, but this time it’s buzzing in my ears, loud as the drone of a lawnmower. My thoughts jumble, and my brain auto-plays a highlight reel of every moment I’ve had with Radhika. The ones I thought were nice that meant we were friends.

I was wrong.

“Shit!” Tayla yelps. “Nova, move !”

I see her mouth move, but I don’t understand what she wants me to do. Move?

“For fuck’s sake!” She yanks my hand and pulls me after her. “Run!”

It takes a second for my legs to move, so I ungainly stumble after her. My neck still hurts, but I turn over my shoulder to see what’s got her so spooked.

It’s a whole-ass murder of crows. Their shaggy black wings flap furiously, their caws piercing shrieks that punch through the fog in my mind. There are hundreds of them, screeching and soaring right for us.

“Not a chopper!” I yell.

It feels like she’s about to pull my arm out of my socket as we scrabble over fallen branches, rocks sticking out of the earth, and tangles of vines and weeds. “Read the forest, Nova! Gloat about me being wrong when we’re not about to be pecked to death!”

To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about that likelihood until she said it.

The razor-edged cawing is fierce and nonstop, nothing like the inquisitive and probing caw-caw communication calls that are common around Prior’s End.

Are the crows fleeing from a predator or do they think we’re the threat?

They’re flying fast, gaining on us. Tayla’s legs are longer, and I’m panting as I try to match her pace, but she has us going in a straight line. At this rate, they’ll overtake us. We need to get off the path, now .

The moment I see a place for us to hide, I yank Tayla’s hand. “This way!”

Thankfully, she doesn’t dig her heels in when I veer to the right, squeezing her fingers so hard she has no choice but to go with it.

I push her under a heavy broken branch of a tree so big that it must have just been a sapling during Henry Prior’s time.

This tree appears damaged by a storm from a long time ago, creating a stub that sticks out horizontally from the trunk.

Now, it provides the perfect hiding place.

My breath comes out hard and fast as we huddle together, waiting out the danger. Tayla’s face is bright pink, glowing with a sheen of sweat. She squeezes my thigh. “Do. Not. Make. A. Peep.”

“Thanks for stating the obvious,” I mutter, though it’s quiet enough she doesn’t hear me.

The birds whoosh past, their screams boring into my brain. Either we were just in their way, or they still think they’re pursuing us. Regardless, we stay frozen for what feels like an eternity.

I scooch out first, back aching as I straighten.

The smell of decay is strong here, and it only takes a glimpse of the tree to see why.

Enormous clusters of white mushrooms have popped up in the gaping wound left behind by the stub, along with a few other creepy crawlies.

If the damage is so forgotten and out of sight here, I shudder to imagine the state of the other trees nearby.

Why haven’t the rangers closed this trail and started to take care of the forest in this area? That being said, it explains the dead smell that greeted us this morning…

Was it just this morning? It feels like it’s been so much longer than just a couple of hours.

Head still spinning that we came out of this unscathed, I offer Tayla a hand up, and she takes it.

“Signs of nightmarish bad omens, indeed,” Tayla says with a slightly hysterical laugh.

“First chance we get, we find a different path,” I say. “The trail degradation here is too dangerous, and I don’t think we’ll find Kiara if we keep going in this direction.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, crows are scavengers.”

I can tell it doesn’t compute from the blank look on her face. “You know, they’re not picky? Insects, berries, eggs. They’ll eat anything, including carrion.”

“You’ll have to spell this one out for me,” she says, pursing her lips as if annoyed.

“Carrion. Dead animals, Tayla. That many crows to-gether? They’ve probably found dinner.” I hesitate. “Or is it lunchtime? Anyway, we should probably go in the opposite direction.”

Her eyes widen.

“It’s not Kiara,” I say, seeing where her thoughts went.

“Crows will strip a carcass down to the bone, they’ll gouge out the soft parts first, like the eyes, but—” Seeing her wan face, I hastily say, “Okay, sorry, forget I said all that. What I meant to say is it hasn’t been more than, like, a couple of hours?

A body needs way, way, way longer than that to decompose.

So trust me, there’s no way it’s Kiara.”

“I hope you’re aware that nothing that just came out of your mouth was comforting,” says Tayla.

“And yet it put your mind at ease?” I ask hopefully.

“If imagining other dead campers’ decomposing bodies is soothing, sure.”

“You’re impossible. You know that, don’t you?”

“Just get my map out,” she grouses, turning around so I can open one of her backpack pockets. “We’ll figure out another trail that takes us to a lower elevation. Do it fast before the next creature that wants to kill us comes along and I have to save you again.”

“Again? What do you mean, again ?” I pull out the map and rezip her. “I just saved you.”

She snatches the map from my hand so fast I get a papercut on my middle finger. “I don’t recall it happening that way. We’re currently two–nil. If we’re keeping score.” Then she unfolds the map, straightens it out, and whips it up in front of her face. “Which I am.”

While she hems and haws without any input from me, my racing heart tries to make sense of my new knowledge. Was Radhika trying to tell me about having my dad’s book before Tayla unceremoniously hustled me away? Another reason to be pissed at her. The list is growing exponentially, it seems.

As we head to a new trail—one that’s intended to lead us to the lowest terrain in the forest short of the underground caves that have long collapsed—I have plenty of time to mentally review all the times someone asked Radhika for her book and the ways she found to avoid handing it over. It just doesn’t make sense.

Mom hasn’t given away any of his clothes or books.

I suspect that will be the next phase of moving forward , but for now, his belongings are still stored in large plastic latch boxes in Mom’s closet.

No, I can’t imagine where on earth Radhika would have found it.

Short of breaking in, of course, but that’s a reach.

If she found the book, why wouldn’t she return it to me?

Ahead, Tayla’s feet start to drag. We’re moving slower.

She must be as tired as I am if she’s given up on that brisk march.

I take a swig of my water then clip it back to my backpack.

Is the quiet as unsettling to her as it is to me?

Never thought I’d say this, but I almost miss hearing weirdness creeping around in the underbrush.

This calm makes me feel like something bad is about to happen.

It’s a feeling I can’t shake, and after everything else we’ve had the misfortune of coming across, I’m trusting my instincts.

Neither of us wants to say it, but finally, I broach, “Do you think we should head back?”

Her finely arched red brows shoot up as if she’s surprised by the question.

“It’s barely been—” She stops, and from the intense concentration furrowing her forehead, I can guess she’s attempting to do the math.

But it’s impossible to get right. “Well, I don’t know how long exactly , but it’s too soon to give up. ”

“Who said anything about giving up? We regroup, put our heads together, come up with a new plan.”