Lunatic Fringe (19 page)

“
What?”

“
I would. I swear I’d twirl
around like one of those housewives from commercials in the
fifties. High heels, polka dot dress and everything. I would be
thrilled to have a washing machine.”

“
Fascinating.”

“
That I hate doing
laundry?”

“
No. The image of you
twirling in a kitchen, wearing high heels.”

“
Fair enough,” Archer
laughed, throwing the rabbit carcass on the countertop and filling
a pot with water.

“
I’m a little embarrassed,”
Archer admitted. “I usually try not to greet pretty girls with a
dead animal in my hand.” She moved gracefully through the kitchen
and pulled out a knife and cutting board.

“
I was the one crashed out
in the middle of the woods,” Lexie shrugged. With her admission,
she prayed that Archer wouldn’t ask why.

“
You can be embarrassed for
both of us then,” Archer teased.

Lexie studied the birch ladder
ascending near the front door to a loft above their heads. “Is that
where you sleep?” Lexie asked, gesturing above.

“
Sometimes,” Archer
answered, deftly carving crimson bracelets onto the forelegs of the
rabbit with the tip of a knife. She wiped her mouth with her
forearm.

Lexie poked around the room,
sidestepping the guilt and giddiness. She removed her sweatshirt
and knife, placing them both near the hearth. Lexie ran her fingers
over her indented flesh where the hilt had dug in during the
night.

“
What happened to your
sheepskin?” Lexie asked, noting its absence.

Archer ignored the question.

“
Wow,” Lexie said after
another silence, as Archer slid the rabbit flesh off the muscle.
“That smells delicious.”

Archer chuckled. “I haven’t even
started cooking it yet.”

Lexie stared out the window to the
backyard, watching the trees bend with the afternoon breeze. “Do
you own these woods back here?”

“
In a way,” Archer
answered.

“
Can we go on a hike after
we eat?”

“
I was going to suggest the
very same thing,” Archer replied, lighting the stove with a
match.

The space between them was alive and
invigorating, like the air after a violent storm. They entered the
woods beyond Archer’s back yard, just where the river narrowed and
bent south toward Wolf Creek. The sky was yellow and her belly was
full. The rabbit meat wrestled happily in her guts and made her
want to bound and leap and do rabbit-like things. She bounced from
rock to rock like a child as they ducked through the underbrush of
the young part of the forest and headed into the old wood,
remembering her youth and how much time she’d spent using the woods
as her playground.

The sun’s oblong rays streaked the
forest in swaths of color. The two women walked in silence, save
for the damp pine needles squishing like bedsprings beneath their
steps.

Lexie had never been in these woods
before, but she knew ones like it just down the river. She had
grown up in them; her neighbors earned their livings from these
trees. There was something strange, then, in the unfamiliarity of
this forest. It had a richer smell--damp, like soil, dead leaves,
and rainwater. The river rushed loudly, emboldened by the month’s
many rains. She smelled the musk of the creatures that made their
homes in the trees and dens within the forest’s perimeter: deer,
lynx, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, and innumerable birds. Growing up,
she would wander in the woods for hours, but she could never taste
the air then like she did now, nor could she guess where the timid
animals hid. Now, the smallest rustle of a creature made her ears
tickle.

“
Is it the equinox?” Lexie
asked over her shoulder as she leapt from a felled tree trunk.
Deciding to try flirting again halfway into her landing, she chose
not to turn back to look at Archer, attempting a coy
maneuver.

“
Yes,” Archer said,
grinning at Lexie’s playfulness. “How did you know?”

“
The moon isn’t up yet, and
the sun’s already setting,” Lexie said. “Are we going to be okay,
getting back in the dark?”

Archer took a leap off a low granite
wall, landing next to Lexie and taking her hand. “I know these
woods really well.”

Sizzles of joy ran up the fibers of
muscle in Lexie’s arm, as though all her feelings for Archer were
now wrapped up along these muscles, tingling and
tensing.

“
I know,” Lexie said. “Just
making sure. The wolves . . .” Another flash of broken flesh on
stone, and Lexie shook her head to fight the memory
back.

Archer stopped her, squeezing her hand
tightly, fingers interlaced.

“
Understand me,” she said,
looking into Lexie’s eyes. “I would never take a risk like that
with you.”

Lexie shrank even as warmth flooded her
chest. “Okay,” she replied.

“
These are my woods. We’re
safe.” There was pride in Archer’s voice, and power. Lexie knew it
was true.

They slowed. The web of Lexie’s fingers
delighted in the attention they received from Archer’s, their hands
interwoven. Occasional leaves fell from the trees like a sparse
snowfall. Yellow and curled, they drifted in feathery arcs to the
ground. A soft rustle accompanied each landing, and the trees
seemed to sigh with the release of their shriveled burdens, each
loss strengthening them. Archer’s and Lexie’s feet crunched over
these leavings. Lexie’s ears tickled with each step.

Archer swung her head to indicate the
direction they were headed. “C’mon. We’re close.”

“
Close to what?”

“
We’d better
hurry.”

Their pace quickened as Archer led
Lexie onto a rough deer path, over scrub brush, dead branches, and
exposed roots. Archer’s increased pace set Lexie off her footing at
first, but she recovered, learning what balance felt like coming
through the bottoms of her feet. Through the rubber soles of her
sneakers, she could feel the subtle adjustments the bones of her
feet made as she stepped, for balance and momentum. Each small
contour of the ground pressed into her foot. She had never felt so
balanced on two legs before. Lexie thought back to the Full Moon
Tribe, how awkward she felt dancing with Archer while surrounded by
graceful and coordinated dancers. Lexie had felt gangly in
comparison, all flailing limbs and jerky hips.

Lexie, her eyes on her feet, stopped
walking. She wondered if this grace was a new development or just a
new realization, like noticing she was speaking loudly in a freshly
silent room.

Archer turned. “You cold?”

“
No. I’m fine,” Lexie said,
puzzled by that as well. She wasn’t cold, though she left her
sweatshirt, along with the knife, back in the cabin and now hiked
in her plain white tee. She exhaled and watched her breath swell
about her face in a cloud. She should be cold--she was always
cold--but now she wasn’t.

Archer stepped towards her. “We’re
almost there. I have a surprise for you.”

“
More surprising than a
dead rabbit?” Lexie joked.

“
And a delicious stew. Yes,
I believe so,” Archer replied, laughing.

She placed a hand on Lexie’s shoulder
and led her through a small hole in the brush. They emerged into a
natural cathedral. Soaring spruces with trunks like steeples
shredded the waning sunlight into narrow shafts, running at severe
angles between the earth and sky. A cliff thirty feet tall walled
in the clearing, and more sun-licked firs stood atop it. A blanket
of leaves, soft orange and crusty brown, layered the ground.
Beneath them, a padding of pine needles inches deep silenced the
deadfall of Archer and Lexie’s footsteps. Archer led Lexie to the
river, quieter here, meandering like a crone brook, lazy and wide.
Archer put her hand into the water, pulling a cup-full to her
mouth.

Lexie leaned over the water with a wary
look in her eyes, forgetting her own eagerness for the river water
this afternoon. She grimaced as she tried to sort the constant
battle of lust and logic grappling in her head.

“
I’ll be okay. Hearty
constitution,” Archer said, slapping her chest with a thud, like a
gorilla.

“
Archer,” Lexie said,
finally feeling the need and the words for the apology. “I feel
strange, like I might be going a little crazy.” She lowered herself
to her knees, pressing her palms into the mud of the
bank.

“
Go on,” Archer nudged,
like coaxing a fawn to take her first steps. Lexie hadn’t thought
this part out and had no prepared words to explain herself.
Archer’s silence prodded her. Here was a friend, eager to be of
service as a sympathetic ear, or trusted advisor, or anything else
Lexie might need of her. Lexie wasn’t sure what she needed and was
even less prepared to ask for it. She wanted to speak, but what
would she say? That she witnessed the horrific beating of a man by
women who, just hours earlier, Lexie had considered her friends? Or
even earlier and somehow more damning, that she had masturbated
five times a day since their night together? What about the
twilight visions that followed her each night into her dreams? Or
that she was falling in love with a woman for the first time in her
life, while being drawn to another woman at the same
time?

Lexie’s eyes mirrored the shadowed
water as she shared a separate, deeper truth.

“
I’ve never felt this
strong before. It came from nowhere. I’m feeling more. Not like
emotions. Sensations. I know what each one of my toes feels like
right now. My throat, my muscles, each part of me feels alive in
its own right. And the map in my head; I was always so bad at
directions. But now, I know exactly where my dorm is from here, and
my father’s house, and the ocean. I know we’ll be able to see the
moon in forty-five minutes. I know that Cassiopeia will appear over
those trees soon, too. And it will set there.” She traced a path
with her finger from horizon to horizon.

Archer said nothing, squatting next to
Lexie as she continued.

“
I know it’s cold but I
don’t feel it.” Lexie exhaled a cloud of misty breath. “It feels
like there is more oxygen in my lungs, more blood in my veins, more
electricity in my brain. I feel like me, version two-point-oh.” She
paused, looking out over the rushing water and sighed. “It’s
amazing.” Lexie turned to look at Archer.

“
Did you know that?” Lexie
asked. “Could you tell?”

“
Yes,” Archer
replied.

“
Oh,” Lexie said. She let
another silence fall across them, before asking “What do you think
this all is?”

Archer rocked back to sit cross-legged
at Lexie’s side. “Growing up, maybe? College. Girls. Possibility.
Such things can be dizzying.”

“
I bet you were way more
stable when you were my age,” Lexie grumbled.

“
Ha! No.” Archer shook her
head, as if enjoying the memories as they skittered through her
brain. “Not one bit.”

“
I feel so confused, yet so
much stronger. It doesn’t make sense.”

“
Sounds about
right.”

“
There’s another thing.”
Lexie bit her lip, afraid of giving voice to the awful memories
that had been troubling her all day, as if that would make them
real again. “Last night there was something . . . Something
happened.”

Archer waited as Lexie stammered
through her confession.

“
It was these girls . . .
My friends, I guess. They kidnapped this guy. They beat him up.
They insisted . . .” Lexie bit her tongue. “God, this sounds so
crazy.”

“
Go ahead,” Archer
said.

“
They said he was a
werewolf.” Lexie laughed without humor at the recollection. “It’s
insane. They’re insane. They tortured this guy, beat the shit out
of him. I thought . . .” Lexie stretched her neck against the
tension that grasped at it. “I thought they were nice, normal
people. I thought they could be my friends.” She sat back and
curled her arms around herself. “I don’t know who to trust
anymore.”

“
I recommend starting with
yourself,” Archer replied.

Lexie laughed aloud, startling them
both. “See, that doesn’t work either.” She stood and paced along
the edge of the riverbank, where solid ground dissolved into thick
mud. “I’m sorry I bolted last month. It was--I saw something.” She
squeezed her eyes against the tears that clutched at her eyes. “My
Nana, they said she was schizophrenic. She was always talking about
the random-ass stuff she saw: ghosts and demons and animals that
talked. Sometimes she would just be really mean. I know it’s
genetic, and I think it’s really why my mom bailed on
us.”

Lexie inhaled deeply, as if the fresh
air would flush out the fear. She didn’t want to continue, didn’t
want to divulge the details of her warped vision in the
cabin.

Archer stood, wiping dirt from her
jeans, then slid an arm around Lexie’s waist. She didn’t press.
They stood together in the shared silence that was becoming a
comfortable solace in their friendship.

After a long while, Archer broke the
silence. “You know that saying, ‘Not all who wander are
lost’?”