Exalted Read online

  As I walked, arms stuck in the pockets of my dad’s giant hunting coat, I thought back over the night. I was a cataloguer of events, but like too many other times lately, I felt like I didn’t have enough to file. I seemed to be moving at a different pace from all my friends. Halah—Halah with her unabashed love of Martin Lawrence movies and her closet full of oversized softball t-shirts—had shot off, three light years ahead of me. She had a senior boyfriend on the wrestling team, and she didn’t have a curfew.

  Bree was just…Bree. I didn’t even have a scale for how she and I compared. While I thought about everything ad nauseum, Bree never seemed to think about anything that wasn’t practical. The week before, she’d spent half of lunch on her phone trying to find the area’s best dry-cleaner.

  And then there was S.K. Sara Kate, my best friend. My other half. My favorite person on the planet—other than my Dad, who wasn’t on the planet anymore. S.K. who’d gone with (guess who?) Ami to ComicCon the weekend of my birthday. Who’d recently decided she needed more time to herself. “I’m getting too stressed out by all this stuff.” Stuff being me. The quad. Our fun.

  Lately, the thing I liked best about this deer gig was how somewhere else it made me feel. With the sky over my head and the grass crunching under my boots, I could be anywhere. Add a book to the equation, and I wasn’t Milo Mitchell, girl pianist, airheaded over-thinker, tenth-grade chemistry straggler, secret wallflower, lover of anime. I was Catherine. Well… maybe someone slightly less insane. Daisy Buchanan? Okay, someone moderately less shallow. Haruhi Suzumiya.

  Made-up (and insane!) though they were, those people knew what they were about. Knew what they wanted. Whereas me… I got my kicks sedating mule deer.

  I pointed myself left, toward the mountains, and picked up my pace for the last half-mile to the pine grove. There was a bluff oak right at the front of the grove, beside a big pancake-looking boulder; next to the skinny evergreens, it resembled a pom-pom in mid-cheer.

  When I was growing up, this had been my dad’s favorite spot. He and mom had come to Colorado to build the turbines—Mitchell Wind Turbines, his own patented design—but his real passion was outdoors stuff. As a little girl, I’d gone tromping through the fields and scaling cliffs with him. He’d taken me to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Death Valley and Yosemite, but he’d really loved to take me to the bluff oak.

  “It’s an anomaly,” I could hear him say. “Supposed to be down South. Not out here with all the firs.”

  And yet, it was.

  I walked under its limbs and stared down at the etched stone marker:

  Faulkner Dursey Mitchell

  1964-2010

  And then, under that, in tiny, sharp-edged caps:

  IN WILDERNESS, THE PRESERVATION

  OF THE WORLD

  I didn’t like the marker, though I knew my dad had chosen it. In his absence, I’d grown irritated with the message. Preservation. What a stupid concept. My father wasn’t preserved under the headstone. He was gone, and he was becoming more and more gone all the time.

  Still, that didn’t stop me from my pilgrimage. Since that awful day almost two years ago, I’d visited the marker and the bluff oak often. Actually, I’d treated this place like Mecca until two months ago.

  It had been the first Saturday after school had started. S.K. spent the night but left early the next morning for her first date with Ami. Halah was at a cheer retreat, and Bree was…somewhere. I don’t remember.

  I’d left at the same time as S.K., and by the time I got to the pancake boulder I was falling asleep on my feet. I took a nap—the boulder was that flat—but maybe an hour later, I was jerked awake.

  I felt like someone was over me—I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. I rolled off the rock and jumped to my feet, ready to bolt. But no one was there. I ducked a second later, because I felt it again, and then I yelped. A needle pricked where my head met my neck, and the pain was inside my brain.

  The terrifying thing was, it felt invasive. Like someone was reading my diary—while I stood naked in front of my class.

  I left immediately, and spent the walk home freaking out. But I found my way back the next day. And felt the same thing. It wasn’t as sudden, or as potent, but the feeling, like I was being measured, was still there.

  And it was there Wednesday, when I went back after half a week: that stripped-down-to-the-cells, stuck-under-a-microscope, known-inside-and-out, freaky deaky looked-through feeling. Was I hallucinating? The last thing I needed was another mental health issue to deal with. Obviously, I needed to find another way to feel close to Dad.

  After a lot of working myself up to it, I called the Department of Conservation and Wildlife, posed as my mother, and got permission to continue Dad’s mule deer tracking project.

  I had all his old folders, stuffed with diagrams and data, so it hadn’t been hard to figure out who was who among the herd. After that, it was just a matter of coming out on Saturdays and tagging them.

  It was easy to shoot the sedative gun, bring the deer down, and snap a bracelet over their hard, dark hooves. I spent my weeknights, after studying, watching the gob of blinking lights move across my laptop screen. I knew where they slept and where they roamed. I knew where they went mid-afternoon: the creek.

  I made my way over to it now, crunching over fallen leaves from the seasonal trees that blazed orange, yellow, and red between the firs.

  I heard the creek before I saw it, a gentle tinkling like a bowl of glass marbles pouring out. The smell of dirt and pine filled my nose and throat. The cold air whipped my cheeks. The sunlight swirled in spirals over the leaf-strewn bank. I thought about Gatsby and felt a dorky burst of excitement. I was right at the start of Chapter 9—the last chapter. I’d gone through the book too fast.

  Reading the end made me feel either bursting full or empty. I walked faster, hoping this would be a day that I could enjoy the story without letting it gnaw at me. Otherwise it was going to be a long afternoon.

  The tree house hung above a bend in the creek. Dad and I selected the strongest tree for its base: a horse-chestnut on the opposite bank. To get to it—if I didn’t want to wade through chilly, waist-deep water—I had to climb a spiral staircase around a buckeye tree and sway across the rope-and-board bridge we made the summer after second grade.

  The wooden stair rails were cold, even through my gloves. I slid my palms over the ropes and crossed the sanded cedar planks. Waiting for me on the other side, the tree house was a thatch-roofed dome attached to the chestnut’s trunk by beams that angled peaceably through its branches.

  I pushed through the small door, surprised, as always, by how pretty it was here. The walls were warm cedar, and my Dad had built a bench that wrapped around the circular room. We used to get new cushions every year, but the green and red plaid we’d put out two Christmases ago would probably stay until the years ate through them. I had no plans to replace them.

  I found my binoculars in the box where I’d left them, along with a blanket, a tin tub of almonds, and a little pile of air-activated hand-warmers.

  I sat my pack down, grabbed the binoculars, and shed my gloves. Much as I wanted to stay warm, I couldn’t fire the darts with padded fingers.

  I gave myself a few minutes inside the house, designed with small gaps in the floor for circulation, but no windows (to hold heat in). Then I stepped back onto the bridge and sat with my back against the door. My gaze roved the forest, stopping at stray branches, odd-shaped stumps—anything that remotely resembled deer. Too early. I’d spotted them this morning near Mr. Suxley’s woods, where they sometimes bedded down. It would take a little while for them to reach the creek.

  I read. Nick Carraway, meeting up with Tom downtown. Leaving the West Egg. I sipped warm water from a metal thermos and tried not to think about my hunger, which couldn’t be satiated in nose-range of the deer. The sun climbed higher, raining a kaleidoscope of golden light over Dad’s bulky suede jacket and my camo pants. As I read, my hair sparkle
d in my periphery, a blanket of glossy brown, with red highlights glinting in the sun. I blew into my balled-up hands. Applied a scentless beeswax chapstick.

  I couldn’t warm up. I cursed, Klingon swear words S.K. and I had looked up in sixth grade. Tracking deer was a terrible idea. I could be playing paintball.

  I flipped to my favorite scene.

  “Gatsby believed in that green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the—”

  I heard a loud crunch, and my eyes leapt from the page. Blitzen! The herd’s largest male had a star-shaped scar across his shoulder and a weathered coat. He stood by a holly bush ten or fifteen yards away, sniffing the air, his nostrils snorting out puffs of steam. Right behind him was Madonna, the alpha female, and then Brutus, a younger male who sometimes challenged Blitzen. Soon they were all there, including little Ashlyn, one of the youngest fawns, and my target.

  Crap!

  I should’ve been crouching, but I hadn’t expected them until closer to four. Since there was no way I could sight Ashlyn—or any of them—from my spot flat on my butt, I stood slowly and ducked through the bridge’s two rail-ropes, rising into a sort of squirrel-eating-nut position, with my arms up near my face and my feet balancing on the edge of the cedar planks. A lesser woodswoman might have fallen, or scared the deer, but I’d been doing this for years.

  My fingers folded, steady, around the handle of the gun. I leaned my head down, peering through the sight. A breeze rocked the bridge; the rope above my head brushed against the top of my hair. My body felt pinched. Stiff. And then, finally, I had her. Ashlyn side-stepped, her small flank bumping into teenage Aiden’s long, strong throat. Aiden strode forward, and there!

  In the moment that the dart shot out, I felt a rush of pure elation. As it sailed toward little Ashlyn, I watched the frozen herd, processing the milliseconds till the dart would hit, Ashlyn would fall, the rest would bolt.

  But that’s not how it happened.

  As my breath puffed out, creating a pale cloud that lent the scene a gauzy haze, I felt a bite of what could only be described as shock. My limbs and torso locked; my lungs went still. There was a flash of golden light, like a solar flare, except for one protracted second it was all there was. All there ever would be.

  Then it receded, twisting the trees’ shadows, mangling the forest floor. The creek spilled forth on fast forward. My blood boomed like a gunshot in my ears. I searched for Ashlyn’s body but she wasn’t there. A boy was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He lay just beside the water, curled over on his side with his arms around himself and his knees drawn to his chest. From my perch up on the bridge, I could see he had hair the color of burnt rust and looked about my age.

  When I thought about it a little later, I figured I must have been seriously freaking out, because as I stared down at him, the world seemed to stretch and rip—a kaleidoscope twisting in furious fingers. The air crackled like a huge branch snapping, and the pressure squeezed my eardrums, announcing the End of both our lives and the Beginning of something unimaginably new.

  The really awful thing is: all I could think about was Twilight.

  I’d become book critic enough to know the story’s flaws, but when I’d gotten the series for Christmas in the seventh grade, I’d liked the vampire-werewolf fantasy better than I had ever admitted to my friends (even S.K., who was herself a fanatic). Which meant animals that occasionally turned human seemed real enough to me.

  Staring down at the felled boy, my mind spun like a Ferris wheel. Had I accidentally hit Aiden instead of Ashlyn? Were my mule deer really mule guys and mule girls?

  A violent breeze swept through the woods, shaking the bridge, and reality returned in a burst of sickening fright.

  “Holy freaking baktag! Holy shit!”

  I’d shot a person!

  My legs jolted into motion before I was ready; I bumped into the bridge’s rope handrails and shrieked, then shot off toward the stairs, practically fell down them.

  “Hey!” I sprinted to him, dropping to the damp sand. “HEY! Are you okay?!”

  I shook his shoulder. His head lolled back, bright copper curls pressed into the sand. His eyes were shut, his chiseled lips parted.

  “Oh, God. Can you hear me? Please talk to me!”

  I rocked back, cradling my head. Could a dart calibrated for a small fawn kill a guy my age? I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about the dart gun. I wasn’t even supposed to be using it!

  My breath came in frantic tugs, like I was breathing for him and me. I looked down at him again and felt the ground below me tilt.

  The boy’s curls looked afire against the dull wool of his tux. I followed the crisp lines of fabric down to his abs, where—oh, God—the dart’s tail stuck out of a swatch of inky fabric.

  My hand hovered over it.

  “Oh, God. Oh God.”

  What if he never woke up? Should I be calling 9-1-1? I fumbled in my pants pocket for my phone— But wait! I didn’t have service here!

  Jerky like a wind-up doll, I leaned over his body and splayed my palm across his cheek. It was creamy—not pale or flushed—and to me it looked unnaturally perfect. He didn’t have a single blemish. Not even a freckle. I wiggled my fingers, tap-tapping on his cheek below his eye. “Hey… c’mon. Talk to me!”

  My hands were shaking too much to check his pulse at the wrist, but I was able to press my fingers against his jugular, digging in to find the heartbeat at his throat.

  Slow but steady.

  “Okay.” I huffed. “Okay.” I sucked air through my nose, let it out slowly through my mouth. A shrink had taught me this. Dr. Sam, the guy my mom sent me to after Dad died and I had my— well, my issues. “Okay.”

  I needed to practice what Dr. Sam had called positive projection.

  This guy will wake up soon. This guy will wake up soon. And when he does he will be fine. When he does he will be fine.

  His neck was warm and firm, with a muscular quality that reminded me a little of an animal. The dart was only supposed to put a mule deer out for a few minutes, so it couldn’t take much longer for a human. Could it?

  No, Milo. Of course it can’t.

  The mental tricks did their job. I was able to calm down enough to think, and the first thing I thought was that I needed to examine him more closely. I stared down at him, noticing minute things, like the poet-or-surfer curliness of his brilliant, bronzy hair. How thick and soft it looked, like a thousand loosely curving ocean waves. His shoulders seemed unusually wide, but maybe that was the tux.

  Wait—

  Why the heck was he wearing a tuxedo? I glanced around, half expecting Bond-like reinforcements, but all I saw were leaves and branches. Our land was isolated. Fenced. So where on Earth had he come from?

  I looked back at his face: his parted lips, the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle plane of his nose, the way his lashes fanned against his cheek.

  A pristine white hanky poked out of his breast pocket, folded so harshly it looked fake. My gaze swept down his long legs before I realized I was—oh, no—gawking, and forced my attention back up to his face.

  Coloring: good. Eyelids: unmoving. Mouth: not frothing or bleeding or bruised. In the last three years, I’d become an expert on vital signs, and my throat flattened a sob as I realized how familiar this routine felt.

  I grabbed his hand and squeezed my eyes shut. He’s not dead, Milo. I’d felt his pulse. Now I simply had to wake him up.

  Pressing his warm hand between both of mine, I leaned down and spoke loudly near his ear. “Okay, now. It’s time to GET UP.”

  I held my breath, gritted my teeth, and willed his eyes to open.

  And they did. No fluttering lashes or painful squints or groans. He simply opened his eyes and blinked, just like an owl.

  His e
yes were deep brown. Wide and slightly glazed, they held mine like a magnet. Then he rolled onto his back, kicked out one long leg, and grimaced as he pulled the dart from his chest. He held it up into the sunlight.

  Words gushed out of my mouth. “I’m sorry! Are you okay? I’m sooo sorry. I was trying to shoot a deer and you just—” what? He’d just appeared.

  Except—okay—that clearly wasn’t what actually happened.

  The boy’s rust-smudge brows clenched.

  “I shot you!” I blurted. “That’s a dart!”

  He turned the tiny pink dart over in his hand. His mouth tightened, and I felt sure he was going to say something along the lines of, My father the Congressman will be sure you’re prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  Instead, the corners of his mouth curved slowly. He sat up fully, leaning back on one arm, and in a rich, black-coffee kind of voice, he said, “You shot me?”

  He was grinning and, a second later, laughing. His shoulders shook, his head lolled back. The sound of it was uproarious. Wonderful. As was his dark gaze, affixed to mine. “You shot me?” The words puffed out on hoots of laughter. “And you were aiming for a deer?”

  He laughed so long I felt my cheeks color.

  “You might consider wearing orange in the woods,” I advised, wiping my hair back. “Anything with some color. Your hair’s not that red, and black and white don’t really say ‘I’m human.’”

  “What do they say?” His grinning face was lit up like a Christmas tree.