Page 86 of The Gallagher Place
“Wait up!” Nora shouted.
“Keep up,” Nate snapped over his shoulder. “And keep quiet, we’ll never find it if your shouting scares it off.”
Marlowe glanced at Nora’s face, twisted with annoyance, as they jogged after the boys. For a moment, Marlowe considered stopping and telling the boys to go off to one of their dumb old forts—she and Nora would devise their own fun. But then Henry slowed, glancing back at them, his eyes apologetic.
“College made him a jerk.” Marlowe rolled her eyes, inviting Nora to tease Nate behind his back instead of glowering.
“He’s always been one,” Nora muttered.
When Henry and Nate paused on the edge of a grove of pine trees, Nora and Marlowe caught up. Marlowe worried over Nora’s mood until Nora put her hands on her hips and asked, as she had a hundred times before, “What’s the plan?”
“Walk lightly, on the balls of your feet,” Nate said. “And keep your eyes peeled.”
They slowly paced the land, peering into the shadowy foliage for signs of the bear, their ears tuned to any rustling that might give its location away.
In the end, the bear didn’t rustle. The bear made no secret of its movement at all. It lumbered on heavy feet right out in front of them, giving their hearts a jolt for a second time that morning.
They froze in place. Whatever Nate had planned to do when he found the bear had obviously flown out of his head the moment he was confronted by its mass of black fur topped with a long snout and dark eyes.
Until that very moment, the bear hadn’t been real. It was just a rumor. Marlowe never expected they would actually find it, or shenever would have agreed to go searching. She thought the true wilderness was somewhere other than where they roamed on foot from the house. They made up stories all the time about witches and hermits, like Mr. Babel, hiding in the woods. But nothing that would ever hurt them.
The bear’s size was alarming up close, no more than a few strides away. It stepped toward them, and that was when they saw its back foot dragging on the ground. Its back leg was twisted and warped. A bullet was lodged in the muscle. It would never walk right, but it was still massive, with sharp claws and teeth.
Marlowe felt a keening moan of despair rising in her throat. She had the strangest urge to wail and tear at her hair, like a grieving widow.
It was a strange feeling, to both fear and pity a creature.
Nate moved first. He grabbed Henry’s T-shirt and yanked him backward. With his other hand, he reached out and pushed Marlowe in the stomach so she stepped back onto Nora’s toes.
He spread his arms out wide so that he was between them and the bear, blocking its path.
“Run,” Nate whispered. “Run and I’ll distract it.”
Nate was a hero, plain and simple. It was something Marlowe knew too well to ever resent. He not only looked the part, with his tall, athletic build and dark curly hair, but lived the way a hero would. He simply did the right thing. He led the group with only occasional tyrannical bouts. He took responsibility for their victories and their losses.
Nate had gotten them into this; it was on him to get them out. Even if it meant sacrificing himself. If it had come down to a fight between her brother and a bear, she might have bet on Nate. “Run,” he said again.
But Marlowe couldn’t turn. None of them could.
Instead, Nora, Henry, and she linked arms and started to back up, like crabs with their claws hooked together.
Nate rocked slightly on his feet, as if about to lunge forward, when Nora let out a shriek that ripped through the air. Nora had a scream that could shake mountains, and she could never control it. Whenever Henry jumped out to scare her or she saw a garter snake in the garden, she shrieked. It was high and piercing and raw.
She hadn’t been thinking of the common hiker’s rule about making yourself big and loud to scare away a bear on the trail. The scream had simply been building up inside her since the moment she’d laid eyes on the animal, until it was yanked out of her chest by some unknown force.
The shrill sound pierced Marlowe’s eardrum and seemed to send shock waves through the woods.
The bear flinched as if it had been physically hit. With a bark, the bear fumbled backward on its injured foot, its eyes brimming with pain and confusion.
As soon as Nora’s scream tapered off, Marlowe opened her mouth to fill the silence, shouting at the bear to get away. Henry joined in, his boyish shouts ringing loud and clear.
The bear turned and ran with its heavy gait, crashing through the underbrush and out of sight.
As if one single unit, they spun around and bolted on trembling legs back toward the Gray House. This time, the boys didn’t outpace them; whether they slowed down or fear gave Marlowe and Nora a newfound speed, Marlowe couldn’t say.
They didn’t tell Enzo or their parents about the bear. Instead, they spread out a blanket near the garden and played cards, read books, and made up jokes at each other’s expense, giggling over their primal fear within safe proximity of the house until Enzo called them in for the next meal.
That evening, when they were back in the city, Frank got word from a neighbor: The bear had been found near the road, dead. There was no longer a risk lurking in the woods. But Marlowe’s thinking had been permanently altered. She wouldn’t be able to wander into the woods alone anytime soon. She no longer knew what might find her out there.
