Chapter 8: Catwalk

Abel took the photo out of my hand before I could hide it.

He looked at it, then turned it over.

"Huh," he said.

"Huh? That's all?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to leave."

He handed it back.

"No."

"Abel. The only other black picture I ever took was of Gran. Three days later we were picking out her casket."

"I know. I carried it."

"Then you know what this means."

"I know what you think it means."

"Monday. That's Monday night."

My voice was climbing and I couldn't stop it.

"Whatever happens tomorrow, you don't live through it. So you go. Tonight."

"Take your truck and go to Idaho like you were going to eight years ago."

"And leave you up here with a torch coming."

"I'll have Sophie. I'll have the crew."

"You'll have me."

"I don't want you!"

It rang off the glass.

He didn't flinch.

He just looked at me, very steady, until I had to look away.

"Liar," he said quietly. "You're terrible at it. Sophie said."

I put both hands over my face.

He waited.

When I took them down, he'd sat on the bench under the window and was looking out at the dark valley.

"You want to know why they threw me out," he said.

I sat down beside him.

"Eight years ago August, there was a party on the north slope. The old Alpha's son and his friends. Big fire, lots of beer."

"Damien."

"Damien. I wasn't invited. I went anyway, because I was twenty-three and stupid and there was a girl."

"Was she worth it?"

"She left with somebody else by ten."

I almost smiled.

"I walked home. Next morning the elders' hall was gone, and forty acres of the north slope with it."

He turned his cap over in his hands.

"Somebody had to have done it. The Alpha stood up in front of the whole pack and said a witness had seen me light it."

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