Flutter (12 page)

“Call me if you don’t feel well!” Jeannette hollered to me from the porch.

“Sorry, girl!” Cody called.

“Thank you,” I told Ash, holding the dish towel to my nose again. It was still bleeding, and, boy, was it starting to throb.

“Thank you,” I said again.

“You’re welcome,” he said, but didn’t look at me.

We entered the pathway, and it was nearly pitch black. Night had completely fallen, and I almost asked Ash if we should go back for a flashlight. But I didn’t.

He walked like he was doing a chore, getting something over with. It didn’t seem so scary to be in the woods, in the dark, as long as Ash was with me.

As we walked, side by side, I tried to think of something to say to him that might lighten what was wound tightly between us. But I couldn’t.

He wasn’t talking to me. And he wasn’t looking at me. The other day, after his drawing of me, I had asked him to leave me alone.
Told
him to leave me alone. He was doing just that.

In the few minutes that passed since we’d left the Wingings’ house, the wind had picked up, and the snow began to fall. The snowflakes came down in fluffy clusters at first, nonthreatening little cottony flakes, but then the wind came charging out of the east, bearing down on both of us. I had
to push my legs against it with each step in order to keep myself from being bowled over. I bent my head down and forced my whole body forward, into the gale.

As we trudged against the wind toward the lake, toward the cabin, Ash did turn my way, but the wind made conversation impossible. When a sudden and ridiculously strong gust of wind caught me off guard, Ash reached his gloved hand back toward me, and I grabbed it. He pulled me behind him down the path.

The wind roared into our faces as we rounded off to the right toward the clearing. The force of the wind blew me back unexpectedly. I lost my footing in the snow, and even with Ash’s hand gripping my mittened hand, I fell back onto my butt with a thud, letting out a surprised shout.

Visibility was now at about zero, with the snow seeming to push every which way. The wind was swirling, and I quickly felt disoriented. I immediately understood the dangers in not giving the weather the respect it deserved, especially somewhere like here in the UP. This blizzard was like nothing I had ever experienced. The term
whiteout
now truly made sense to me.

Ash stepped from the swirling white nothingness into my vision while I struggled to get up from the snowbank, and I saw the tight-lipped expression on his face.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

Ash helped me up with one gloved hand and curled his
arm around me, and we hurried against the wind toward the cabin. I fiddled with the keys in the door, felt the click, and the door ripped open against its hinges, with the wind blowing us both into the tiny cabin.

“Just till this dies down,” Ash muttered, stomping his boots on the welcome mat.

I took my coat and boots off and rubbed my hands together. Ash kept his boots and coat on, staring out the west window, the white swirling snow obscuring any kind of view. “It just came up so quick.” His face was tight, annoyed.

“Yeah,” I answered. I walked toward the hearth. I stacked a few pieces of kindling first, then put a Duraflame log on top, feeling a bit city-slickerish in Ash’s presence.

“I can help you—”

“I don’t need help,” I said, sounding more defensive than I’d meant to.

When I looked up, ready to apologize, he had turned toward the window again, his shoulders squared exactly away from me. “I know you can do it on your own,” he said. “You can do everything on your own, I’m sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said indignantly.

“Not a thing.”

“I’m not a damsel in distress, you know.”

“I never said you were.”

“Well, you certainly act like it.” I tried my third match, which would still not light, and bit my lip, trying to calm
myself down, telling myself not to get mad at him, not to waste my breath.

“Hold the match nearer toward the head.”

Trying to position myself so he wouldn’t see me take his advice, I tried the match once again, holding it closer to the head. Nothing.

“If you—”

“You do it,” I cut him off, throwing the matches at him. “You constantly need to save me—the bat, this fire, camping out there. You know, maybe I might want to figure things out on my own. I might want to do it all myself. I would be just fine if it weren’t for you here, you know.”

“Clearly,” Ash said, picking the matches up off the floor. He very calmly and slowly walked toward the fire then. He rearranged the logs in the fireplace with his jaw set hard. He replaced the Duraflame log with a few logs and kindling from the hearth, crumpled some newspaper, and put it under the grate. Then he selected a match and lit it on the first try, threw it onto the newspaper, a little smirk on his face. The fire immediately began to burn, great big orange flames licking up the sides of the kindling.

Of course.

He turned toward me and crossed his arms on his chest. “You’re stubborn.”

“W-well, you …,” I stammered, “you are
smug
.” I squinted and folded my arms right back at him.

The wind ripped under the door then, howling and taking us both by surprise. “And don’t just leave now in a big manly huff either,” I said. “It’s too damn windy.”

“Fine,” he said, and he threw his coat over the back of the chair and sat down cross-legged on the hearth, ignoring me.

I walked into the bathroom then and checked out my nose. It was swollen a bit over the bridge, but not as bad as I expected. My face was red and my eyes wide from fighting with Ash, and my hair made me look like a crazy woman.

I walked quietly back into the kitchen after washing my face, shook two ibuprofen from the bottle for my nose, and gulped them down with a glass of water. Ash was lying on his back on the hearth, his cowboy hat over his face, probably pretending to be asleep.

I grabbed my lantern and tiptoed over to the bed, resisting the urge to give Ash a little kick in the ribs as I walked by. I sat cross-legged on the bedspread and stared at him, sprawled out on the floor. There was no way I could relax with him in here with me, the two of us cramped in this tiny space. The sheer size of him was enough reason for me to be uneasy.

I should be scared of him
, I thought. I was annoyed, yes. But not scared.

I looked through the few books on the cabin’s tiny bookshelf and selected one,
Pride and Prejudice
, although I had read it many times.

I settled back onto the bed. The cabin had an orange
glow to it now, with a toasty warmth radiating from the ever-so-perfect fire. Had I been caught in this cabin with Mr. Darcy, I would have found it extremely romantic. I let out a laugh at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” Ash asked from beneath his cowboy hat.

“Nothing,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Thank you for helping me out with Jeannette tonight. I really didn’t want to go to the doctor.”

“I could tell.”

There was an unanswered question between us, an expectation that I would explain why. But I didn’t. Couldn’t.

We sat for a long while in silence, him with his cowboy hat over his face and me reading and rereading the same three sentences, my eyes flitting toward him every few seconds, his large folded hands on his chest, the dirt under his fingernails, the calm rise and fall of his chest.

“I don’t do anything in a
manly huff
,” he said out of nowhere.

This caught me off guard. I laughed. “Right.”

He turned onto his side, took the hat off his face, and propped himself on his elbow. I watched him, his face in a slight smirk. I expected him to fill the empty space between us with conversation, with something, but he didn’t.

And I didn’t either. We sat together in silence, him watching the fire, me now actually reading, and the snow falling silently outside all around us.

After a long while, he got up, walked to the window. I couldn’t hear the wind anymore. “It’s dying down,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, relieved that he would be leaving the cabin, but surprised that in some small way, I wished he wouldn’t. His company seemed … comfortable.

I watched as the firelight hit his jawline then. His eyes flicked toward me apologetically for just a moment. I saw something there, something familiar again.

Then we both spoke at the same time:

“I’ll leave—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, getting up from the bed and walking toward him.

He took a few steps toward me, closing the space between us, and suddenly I couldn’t find my words, couldn’t remember what it was I had wanted to say. It felt like there was a tether between us now, pulling me closer. He bent down over me and scanned my face. I held my breath. He peered at my nose closely. “It looks okay,” he said.

And in that moment, breathing in his soap-and-hay-and-skin smell, it was hard to remember, to recall all those many dangerous and realistic reasons that I had listed to myself, that I had used to convince myself to stay away from him.

“Come to the cabin for dinner tomorrow, Ash. I have to make this up to you,” I said, before I even knew what I was saying.

He looked away then. “No,” he answered. “I shouldn’t.”

“Please?” I asked. Because I knew in a few seconds he
would walk out of this cabin, and the spell between us would be broken, and at this moment, all I wanted, all I needed, was to make sure, make absolutely certain, that this would not be the last time I felt this. The last time I saw him look at me.

I saw him considering, weighing it. “I’m sorry,” he said. Before I could argue, he opened the door of the cabin. “Good night.”

Once I was alone, I stood in the little cabin for a long moment, completely still. What had just happened?

I walked to the sink, gulped down a glass of water, waited for my head to clear.

With this distance between us, when I wasn’t next to him, breathing in his smell, wondering at his character, desperately trying to avoid staring, well, this distance gave me the opportunity to think logically. I could think like the normal Emery, the sane Emery, the cautious Emery.

Why had I just invited him to dinner? Why did I want to further complicate my existence with this boy? What was I doing?

This was not the normal Emery, the thoughtful, suspicious Emery, who took precautions, played it close, trusted nearly no one.

Now, as I stoked the fire, looking for that perfect blue center—I did remember that much from Girl Scout books—I touched my throbbing nose. I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw a smudge of bruising beginning to appear under each eye.

I thought about what my boy in the loop might think of my black eyes if I saw him soon. My boy, my last loop. The stream, the drawing on the surface of the water, the slithery sensation of fear up my spine.

I should be scared of Ash.

I told myself that it was good that he had declined to come to dinner. I made myself a grilled cheese, changed into my pajamas, and tried to rid my mind of Asher Clarke.

But after I ate, I looked out the window and saw that he had returned, with a tent, no less. He sat on the rock near the fire pit tearing up newspaper to start a fire. He was going to sleep out there again. “Ass,” I mumbled under my breath.

I wanted to hate him. I pretended I did. I promised myself over and over that I was done with Ash, this little dance between us. I didn’t have time for this. I needed to find out how he fit into my mystery, what information he might have. But that was it.

I’m here because I’m dying
. I made myself repeat that sentence in my mind a few times. I even said it out loud.

But inside, deep inside, I was comforted as I brushed my teeth, then climbed under my red-and-white-checked quilt, knowing Ash was out there, knowing that he was lying in his tent less than a hundred feet away. Ash.

And although there was a part of me that wanted to tsk-tsk myself and tell me I was stupid, I knew. Deep down, where I felt that feeling … that flutter.

I knew this was just the beginning.

At the library the next morning, I approached Nerdy Rob at the desk, clearing my throat, rehearsing my cover story in my mind. I knew it would draw attention to me, but I had to get some help. I couldn’t just search the Internet forever. I’d come here with a purpose.

“I’m doing a research paper for a college class,” I said, hoping Rob wouldn’t see right through my lie. “I was wondering if you might be able to help me find a church.” I explained the stained-glass windows to him, and he listened carefully, asking questions, taking notes. He searched with me for over an hour, some online, but mostly in the stacks. We looked through the library’s reference and history sections, locating as many area church photos as he could find, from several volumes on local architecture, from filed building plans, and
from local newspapers. Rob’s pants were an inch too short and he was constantly pushing his glasses up his nose, but he was friendly and helpful, and didn’t seem too suspicious. He did ask about my semi-black eyes, though.

“Clumsy,” I offered. “A friend opened a door right into my face.” It felt good not to have to lie about that at least.

After a disappointing few hours, Rob suggested the Esperanza Historical Society. “Let me give them a call,” he said. And I nodded, happy to have something, anything, that might be considered a lead. Rob explained the windows to the person on the other end of the phone and began nodding. “Much appreciated.” He hung up quickly. “Tomorrow morning. Ten a.m.”

“Thank you, Rob,” I told him.

“Happy to help,” he said, blushing, pushing up his glasses. “They have a lot of local history and documentation. Older information that we don’t have.”

I gathered my stuff for the cabin, a tiny kernel of hope sprouting deep within.
This could get me somewhere
. Maybe I was on the cusp of something.

And that evening I felt restless, cooped up. I danced around the cabin, listening to my iPod, dusting all the Dala horses, trying desperately to keep myself from looking out into the clearing. At sunset, I still hadn’t checked, but by full dark, I looked out the west window. And, yes, he was there. He tipped his hat to me, and I turned away, feeling spurned,
rejected over dinner. But feeling that rush of something—that flutter deep in my chest.