Page 48 of So Far Gone

“I think so. Surgeon’s about to take the bullet out. Lucy’s with him.”

“How about you? Areyouokay?”

Kinnick nodded. “I don’t like hospitals.” He rarely thought about his mother anymore, who went in for emergency gallbladder surgery in Seattle and simply never came out. Kinnick was in college then, and only heard about it afterward; the suddenness still struck him, a feeling like someone had been left behind. His mother was alive one day and then, simply... not. And poor Celia. How terrified she must’ve been. He remembered when they got flu shots, how she needed to stare into his eyes and squeeze his hand; he couldn’t imagine her going through chemotherapy alone. Or radiation. Was Cort with her? Was Bethany at Celia’s side? Did she die alone? It made him feel nauseated that he didn’t know how his ex-wife had passed.

He looked over. Brian was staring at the hospital, too, a familiar, pained look on his face. He knew that Brian had lost both parents, a sister, and a nephew to cancer. Two of them rare sarcomas. It was the reason he and Joanie had begun their protest of the Dawn uranium tailings pond in the first place.

Kinnick turned his body. “Thanks, Brian. You’re a good friend.”

Brian nodded. “X?est sx?l?x?al?t.”

Good day. It was a Salish phrase Kinnick had heard Brian use before, his own personal all-purpose, bone-dry, conversation-ending punchline, shorthand for everything fromSee you latertoIt’s a good day to die.Brian set the rifle case in the back of the Bronco.

Kinnick looked back once more at the hospital, where Chuck was about to go into surgery. As nuts as that guy was, Kinnick couldn’t help wishing he still had Chuck’s help. What was it he’d said this morning in the coffee shop?

“What do you say, partner?” Kinnick turned to Brian. “Should we go find my daughter?”

Four

What Happened to Bethany

She got too high.

This was in the spring of 2002. High school. Sophomore year. Monica’s weed. Or, rather, Monica’sboyfriend’sweed, well, actually, Monica’s boyfriend’sstepbrother’sweed—hot pocket Connor Brand, brooding senior who claimed to know the B.C. growers personally, from his junior hockey days, before he tore his ACL and had to give up sports for simply lookinghot(and dealing weed), and who cruised the halls of their high school as if still on skates, and who had never evenlookedat Bethany before today, but who now stood dreamily in her kitchen, watching her try to make a sandwich with hands that suddenly felt like walrus flippers.

“This lettuce feels weird.” Bethany held it out for Monica and Connor to see. “Look. It won’t do what I want it to do.”

“I warned you,” Monica said.

“I’m serious. It won’t go on the sandwich.”

“I don’t like lettuce on tuna fish anyway,” Connor said, and he grabbed the slices of bread, pressed them together, and took a bite. “Thanks.”

Bethany was left holding the unruly lettuce.

“You got too high,” Monica said with some level of told-you-so irritation.

This appeared to be true. Also, as Monica had warned her, this appeared to be better pot than the ditch-grown compost they usually smoked. It felt to Bethany like a life preserver of happiness had been gently placed over her shoulders and chest. And a helmet of interestingness. No, that wasn’t right. That was stupid. It didn’t feel anything like that. It felt like her skin was alive, pores open, nerves firing, like she was too perceptive and too sleepy all at once, too anxious and too peaceful, too chill and too rushed and too buzzed, like... like she wasn’t sure if this was the greatest high she’d ever had... or the worst.

“Paranoia,” Connor said.

“We should get back,” Monica said.

“My mouth keeps falling open,” Bethany said.

Connor took another bite of his sandwich, looking from one girl to the other as they talked.

“Look at my mouth,” Bethany said.

“You’re not saying words,” Monica said.

“Iamsaying words. I’m saying that my mouth keeps falling open.”

“Are you taking second-year French?”

“I’m not speaking French!”

“I didn’t say you were!”

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