A jolt of fear shocks through me, shorting out the pain, shorting out all other thoughts besides one: I should have brought a gun.
The bear takes another step forward, swinging its massive head back and forth, evaluating us. I can see its breath steaming in the cold air, its peaked shoulder blades high and sharp.
“All right,” Alex says, in that same low voice. He’s standing behind me, and I can feel the tension in his body—ramrod straight, petrified. “Let’s take it easy. Real slow. We’re going to back away, all right? Nice and slowly.”
He takes a single step backward and just that, that little movement, makes the bear tense up in a crouch, baring its teeth, which glisten bone white in the moonlight. Alex freezes again. The bear begins to growl. It is so close that I can feel the heat from its massive body, smell the sourness of its starving breath.
I should have brought a gun. No way to turn and run; that makes us prey, and the bear is looking for prey. Stupid. That is the rule of the Wilds: You must be bigger and stronger and tougher. You must hurt or be hurt.
The bear swings forward another step, still growling. Every muscle in my body is an alarm, screaming at me to run, but I stay rooted in place, forcing myself not to move, not to twitch.
The bear hesitates. I won’t run. So maybe not prey, then.
It pulls back an inch—an advantage, a tiny concession.
I take it.
“Hey!” I bark, as loud as I can, and bring my arms above my head, trying to make myself look as large as possible. “Hey! Get out of here! Go on. Go.”
The bear withdraws another inch, confused, startled.
“I said go.” I reach out and strike against the nearest tree with my foot, sending a spray of bark in the bear’s direction. As the bear still hesitates, uncertain—but not growling now, on the defensive, confused—I drop down into a crouch and scoop up the first rock I can get my fist around, and then I’m up and chucking it, hard. It connects just below the bear’s left shoulder with a heavy thud. The bear shuffles backward, whimpering. Then it turns and bounds off into the woods, a fast black blur.
“Holy shit,” Alex bursts out behind me. He exhales, long and loud, bends over, straightens up again. “Holy shit.”
The adrenaline, the release of tension, has made him forget; for a second, the new mask is dropped, and a glimpse of the old Alex is revealed.
I feel a brief surge of nausea. I keep thinking of the bear’s wounded, desperate eyes, and the heavy thud of the rock against its shoulder. But I had no choice.
It is the rule of the Wilds.
“That was crazy. You’re crazy.” Alex shakes his head. “The old Lena would have bolted.”
You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher.
A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn’t love me.
He never loved me.
It was all a lie.
“The old Lena is dead,” I say, and then push past him, back down through the gully toward the camp. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.
You must hurt, or be hurt.
Alex doesn’t follow me, and I don’t expect him to. I don’t care where he goes, whether he stays in the woods all night, whether he never returns to camp.
As he said, all of that—the caring—is done now.
It’s not until I’ve almost reached the tents that I begin crying again. The tears come all at once, and I have to stop walking and double up into a crouch. I want to bleed all the feelings out of me. For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons.
You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.
“Lena?”
I look up. Julian has emerged from his tent. I must have woken him. His hair is sticking up at crazy angles, like the broken spokes of a wheel, and his feet are bare.
I straighten up, swiping my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I’m okay,” I say, still hiccuping back tears. “I’m fine.”
For a minute he stands there, looking at me, and I can tell that he knows why I’m crying, and he understands, and it’s going to be all right. He opens his arms to me.
“Come here,” he says quietly.
I can’t move to him fast enough. I practically fall into him. He catches me and pulls me in tightly to his chest, and I let myself go again, let sobs run through me. He stands there with me and murmurs into my hair and kisses the top of my head and lets me cry over losing another boy, a boy I loved better.
“I’m sorry,” I say over and over into his chest. “I’m sorry.” His shirt smells like smoke from the fire, like mulch and spring growth.
“It’s okay,” he whispers back.