The Wildlands by Abby Geni

Author:Abby Geni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2018-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

23

In the morning, I awoke to something kissing my cheek—a damp, fluttering pressure. I opened my eyes to see a monarch butterfly perched at the corner of my mouth. When I blinked, it took flight. I watched it dart away, its trajectory erratic, finally alighting on a clot of nettles.

The grass beneath me was wet with dew, and my clothes were sodden in the creases, clinging at the seams. My mouth tasted sour. Tucker was still sleeping, splayed on his back with every limb extended. It looked as though he had fallen from a great height, plummeting into slumber. Something was tickling my elbow. I plucked a large millipede off my skin, hurling it into the bracken.

It was just after dawn. We were parked in the shelter of a line of trees planted along the road to block the wind. The branches shifted in the raw light. The tallest leaves flared gold, high enough to catch the new sun’s rays, but the lower boughs were still in shadow. I climbed into the bed of the pickup truck, where there were bottles of water and stale sandwiches. In the distance, a church bell clanged. I counted seven tones. It occurred to me that I did not know what day of the week it was. I was only vaguely aware that we were somewhere in July.

I breakfasted sitting on the plating of the truck bed, my bare feet swinging beside the bumper in the open air. My shins were decorated with mosquito bites. The light moved down the trees as the sun rose, the hot glow glazing each twig in sequence, painting each leaf a vibrant hue. A warm wind caressed my face and throat. I was still not used to the breeze touching my scalp so thoroughly, without my curtain of long hair to muffle the sensation.

Once again, I reminded myself that I was a boy.

I had never thought about gender before. I was a few years shy of puberty, young enough that I played with the boys at recess and thought nothing of it. While the girls sat in the shade, making friendship bracelets or playing clapping games—hands flashing, voices chanting—the boys ran for all they were worth across the field. I preferred their company, the full-body physicality of their games. Boys seemed simpler than girls—not dumber, not exactly, but less intricately calibrated. Unlike my sisters, unlike my girlfriends, the boys I knew seemed to have only one feeling at a time, a single strong emotion vibrating like the note of a tuning fork.

I had not yet reached the age of crushes. In some ways, I was a little behind the curve. I watched as the other girls scribbled Mrs. Scott Westerman in the pages of their notebooks or passed sweaty, folded notes down the row of desks to ask, Do you like me Y/N? I did not understand the adoration that gripped them, lingering in their blood for a few heady days before fading without a trace.

In truth, I often felt out of my depth among them.

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