Chapter 31

“Hey, do you want to go for a walk?”

Sinder was pouring two more shots of tequila.  He switched the glasses so Gavin didn’t have to drink out of the donutty one.

“A walk.”

He and Sinder had been roommates for almost three years, now, and they had done a lot of things. Some of those things had been pretty weird, some of them had been depressingly normal, some of them were too messed up in his mind to remember correctly.  But a walk seemed kind of unprecedented.

“Yeah.”  Sinder poured the shot down his throat, looked side to side to side like he was checking the living room for spies but he wanted to be subtle about it.  “I can’t talk about all this in the apartment. Too much baggage in here.”

“Okay, sure.”  It was a good idea, actually. A clear, sunny morning outside, and some fresh air would probably be good for both of them.

“Drink your tequila,” Sinder said.

“I have office hours.”

“What, at like five? It’s only.”  He picked up his phone, squinted at the screen, turned it around once, twice.  “Eight thirty. You’ll be sober by then.” 

Fine.  Gavin drained the glass.  Coughed a little, ate one of the cinnamon donuts, put on a quick pot of coffee.  Went to his room, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and running shoes.

When he came out again, Sinder was packing the tequila and donut boxes into a big empty backpack.

“How long is this walk gonna be?”

“I don’t know.”  Sinder jostled the bag a little to make sure everything was in there okay.  “Depends where we end up.”

“Maybe water?” Gavin said. His throat was all clogged from the tequila and donut grease.  He filled his aluminum bottle and another random one he found in the cupboard.  Then he poured coffee into two plastic travel mugs, Sinder topped them off with some old Jack Daniels from the freezer, and they were out the door.

Sinder started walking in a weird direction, south, which wasn’t towards anything. 

“So, you wanted to talk about stuff,” Gavin said.

“Not yet.”

Sinder was just walking, focused, kind of determined, next to Gavin or sometimes a few steps ahead of him.  Past student apartment buildings like the one they lived in, run-down houses on small lots. Then just houses, real ones with yards and swing sets that you could see because there were no fences. Silent walking, just the sounds of feet hitting cement, woosh woosh woosh woosh.  Gavin sipped his coffee, wished there wasn’t whisky floating at the top of it.  Decided he didn’t care.  The whiskey was okay. Fewer houses, farther apart, more trees.  No houses. 

The road became narrow and bumpy and mostly forest now. All forest, shady and chilly.  Gavin finished the last sip of coffee.  He wanted more. Also, he was kind of drunk. The trees had gotten too thick to see through.  No one was driving past.  Was this even part of New Buffalo? He wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, took out his phone.  It was nine-thirty.  Only forty-five minutes, right?  Seemed like hours, like they might never get back.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Shh,” Sinder said.  “It’s around here somewhere.”

Gavin was starting to feel turned-around, like he was facing backwards or the ground was really the sky or something.  There were a lot of chipmunks, with the little stripes on their tails, chasing each other around trees, making weird faces at him. Drink some water.  But Sinder had the backpack, and Gavin didn’t feel like asking. 

Sinder stopped, pointed at a dirt trail off the road. It wasn’t marked or obvious, an opening between trees, a bit of packed dirt. Gavin never would have even noticed it.

“I think this is it.”

He pushed a small branch out of the way, started down the trail.  He’s going to kill me, Gavin thought, which was silly.  Sinder only weighed like a hundred and forty pounds, to Gavin’s two-ten. Okay, two-twenty. But the tequila bottle.  Stop being crazy. Gavin followed behind him, between the trees, through muddy patches and thick spider webs.  Should I grab the backpack off him now?

Sinder stopped, turned around. Gavin raised his arm to strike.

“Wrong path,” Sinder said.  “We need to go back to the road.”

Oh, okay.  But now Sinder was behind him.  Gavin could feel the tequila bottle hovering over his head, ready to crash down on him.

“Hey.”  He stopped, had an idea. “Could I get some of that water?”

“Oh yeah, sure.”  Sinder handed him the backpack.  Gavin drank—ah, water, that’s what he needed—put the lid back on.  Opened it again, drank some more.  Better, much better.  Right away some of the darkness lifted out of his brain.  He put the backpack on his own shoulders and stepped backwards on the path, so Sinder could walk ahead of him again.

Now he was watching Sinder’s dark hair in front of him, his skinny shoulders, t-shirt soaked with sweat where the backpack had been.  Sinder, his best friend.  He had a strong, sudden desire to hug those shoulders, you know, just in a friend kind of way.  Okay, maybe not really hug him; it was just a weird passing thought.  But for real, why did you think he was trying to kill you?  What a dumb thing to think.

They got back to the road.  Gavin dragged his shoes on the grass at the side of the road, trying to get the mud off.  Walked for who knows, fifty trees more, a quarter mile, a half mile.  Another path.

“This one,” Sinder said.  “This is it, for sure.”

This path was a little less overgrown, but muddier, windier.  There were snakes on it.  At least two black and yellow snakes, and a couple fast little lizards. Sinder paused where the path split, looked right and left, stood some more.  Then he went left, which was into a giant puddle, so they had to walk on their tiptoes on branches around the sides.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Up there.”  Sinder pointed up ahead, like there was something to see up there, but it was just a bunch of trees.  Gavin wondered what kind they were.  They looked kind of generic, just regular tree-trees. Not redwood or eucalyptus or anything they had a lot of in California.  Not even oak.  Maybe elm? Maple? 

Rona would know.

He imagined her here in this forest, freaking out with internal tree-excitement but not showing it outwardly. Just walking calm and majestic, tall, listening to tree conversations normal people couldn’t hear.

There was some light up ahead, a clearing.  The path opened up into a bigger, muddier puddle, and then a lake. No, smaller, a pond, about the size of a city block. It was murky with algae and grassy stuff growing up through the water. There were mosquitoes buzzing over it, all kinds of little bugs flying in circles.  If you went in it you’d probably get leaches or ringworm or something. It was really pretty, though, green on green on green, green light shimmering down through the treetops, up from the water.

“Are we here?” Gavin asked.

But Sinder was halfway up a tall, straight tree on the side of the pond.  His arms were stretched over his head, grabbing a high branch, his feet scrambling against the knotty trunk. Gavin looked up.  Hidden behind a mess of leaves and branches and spider webs, there was a wall.  A window.  A door. A platform in front of the door, Sinder squatting on it, panting a little.

He reached his arm down, made a hook with his hand.  “The bag.” Gavin lifted the backpack, stood on his toes, until Sinder looped his wrist under one of the straps and pulled it up.

“Come up,” Sinder said.

Fuck.  Gavin's legs were sore, his feet swollen. He was so, so thirsty.  Now he had to climb a tree?   With all those scratchy branches, scraping up his dry, tired skin?  It hurt just thinking about it.

“Hurry up,” Sinder’s voice called from inside the tree house.

Gavin reached up, as high as he could, grabbed the lowest branch.  How did Sinder even do this?  He pulled, walked his feet up the trunk, dropped back down.  Ouch.  Okay, there was no way this was gonna work. 

He thought about yelling up to Sinder, asking him how to get up.  Or telling him to come back down. They could talk down on the ground just fine.  But actually, no. Admitting that he was too big a wuss to lift his own giant ass off the ground—humiliating.   A hundred times worse than just figuring out a way to do it. 

He reached up with his right arm, jumped, looped his left arm around the branch, hanging off like a monkey.  Good.  Kick off the tree trunk, swing your right leg over the branch.  There!  He was up.  He sat on the platform, wiped some leafy-spiderwebby stuff out of his hair.  Rolled up his left sleeve, checked out the deep, red lines the tree bark had scratched into his arm, right through the sweatshirt.

“What are you doing?” Sinder said through the door.  Gavin turned, crawled through the kid-sized opening. More scratches.

It was small inside, dusty, not high enough to stand.  But there were giant windows on two sides, letting in air that smelled healthy, like sap and dirt. Sinder was slouched against a wall in a streak of green-tinted light, drinking tequila out of the bottle. 

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