Page 76 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Today, of all days, the black flies are a plague and we eat in the RV despite having made other plans. Lou has Grey on her lap and is eating her noodles in silence, but I notice her wolfing them down. For the first time, she seems to really enjoy it. It pleases me more than I thought and I keep watching her out of the corner of my eye. Something else I notice: her hands haven’t trembled once.

When our eyes meet across the table, she smiles at me. Hardly noticeable, but it’s a smile. A smile from Lou. I smile back, feeling like the most normal young man in the world right now.

Later, as I rearrange the logs for the campfire, Lou kneels beside me and reaches between us into the cloth bag holding the tinder.

“Should I?” she asks hesitantly, looking at me.

“Sure.” I point to the small sticks and twigs I’ve arranged around the thick logs. “Add the birch bark and the fire will burn twice as fast.”

Lou pulls a few pieces of bark out of the bag and awkwardly spreads them around the dry twigs.

“Instead of birch bark, you can also use dry grass, dandelion seeds, or silver thistle seeds,” I explain to her. “You can start a fire without tinder, but you definitely need dry branches and twigs. It’s difficult using only logs.” I nod to her. “I think that’ll do.”

Without saying anything, she withdraws her hand and watches me set fire to the tinder under a layer of dead aspen branches. Acrid smoke immediately billows and the first bright red flames lick upwards. “The light color comes from the birch bark. It contains essential oils and burns almost like a rag dipped in kerosene.”

Lou nods.

We watch the flames rise for a while, then I go in and grab two beers from the fridge. They’re the last ones, so next time I want to drink alcohol, I’ll have to switch to Canadian rye whiskey.

As if it were no big deal, I put one beer in Lou’s hand and kick back in the camping chair. As I open the can and take my first sip, Lou shifts in her chair a few times until she finds a suitable position with Grey on her lap. She opens the beer can and slips her free hand under the covers to Grey. For the first time, she is sitting relaxed with me by my fire.

“He’s good for you,” I say. “Grey. You smile more often now.”

Instead of answering, she takes a sip of beer. It strikes me that she never mentioned in a post if she drinks alcohol. Probably not since she’s only sixteen. Ethan must have kept an eagle eye on her because it’s forbidden at her age and her eldest brother is certainly not one to turn a blind eye.

She sets the can down and gnaws her bottom lip. “I don’t feel so alone anymore,” she finally says, and it sounds like a confession.

It’s strange to hear her say that. As if I were her friend. “I see.” I nod. “I used to have a dog. His name was Blacky.” And with him, even hell was a better place.

Lou looks me over in a way she’s never done before. “I assume he was black,” she says, and I detect a hint of mockery.

I shake my head. She’s trying to tease me, that alone is a miracle. “No, he was a retriever mix,” I reply. “He was every color except black.” The monster called him Skyler, but he was always Blacky to me.

“So you’ve always been different.” A statement, not a question.

“What do you mean?” I find myself stiffening, like I always do when it comes to myself and my past.

She takes another sip of beer and stares into the fire. “Well, anyone else would have called him Goldie or Brownie. Anyone else would have just asked me out at the visitor center instead of kidnapping me. I guess you know I wouldn’t have said no then, right?”

“But I wanted more than a date,” I say in a hoarse voice. I wanted you forever.

Lou takes a deep breath. “Why are you so afraid of being abandoned? Why do you get flashbacks at just the thought of losing someone?”

Pressure builds inside me, like a capped soda bottle being shaken. I don’t want to talk about my past even though Lou deserves to know something about me. I involuntarily clench my fingers tightly around the beer can and stare intently at the top with the narrow opening. “I can’t talk about it.” The words stumble out of me. Softly but decisively.

“You can’t or won’t?” I hear Lou ask. She sounds so open, so genuinely interested. Toward me of all people.

I can’t, I should say, but I can’t get the words out. The latch is locked. A silence ensues between us, in which the crackling of the fire seems twice as loud. A log bursts open and sparks fly into the night air and again the little owl, which I heard earlier, calls.

“Sometimes it’s good to talk things out,” Lou says after what seems like forever. “That’s what has helped me many times.”

I look inside myself, into the darkness, and catch a glimpse of the boy in his dirty pants. He sits huddled in the blackness of the closet, rocking back and forth. Back and forth. He’s cold, he’s hungry, his heart is blind and deaf. The smell of mold and wood oil fills my nose. Everything in me contracts.

“I can’t.” It’s a whisper that comes out of me. As if I hadn’t said that, but he, straight from the depths. My hand grips the can so tightly that it dents with a crack. “I’ve tried so many times.”

Lou breathes slowly in and out through her nose as if forcing herself to have this conversation. Again, I wonder what happened the night of my flashback.

“Maybe you should say it to yourself first,” she says softly. “Without anyone listening to you.”

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