Young Adult Fiction
The bear lowers its head. When a dog looks like this, it means you could get bitten. When a bear looks like this, it means you could be lunch. The bear's eyes harden, as if he has lost patience with us. We're on his trail and he wants us off. The bear opens his jaws. Big jaws. Really big teeth. His jaws make a smacking sound.
I whisper, "He's going to eat us."
She began dreaming about him in the dark dream, the one with the endless tunnels, stone walls that slid by cold under her fingertips, invisible because it was too dark to see. Hand outstretched, she would move forward, never knowing if she was progressing toward an exit or if at some point she had turned around and begun moving back toward the place she had come from, a place she could not remember.
"You cut yourself off from those you kill," his father said. "They're just targets. But if you push too hard on that, then you cut yourself off from everyone."
"Everyone?" Stephen asked.
"Yes, from love. Do you understand?"
We had the top down on our old Le Baron and the sun was beating from a sky that was nothing but blue. It was my mom's turn to drive, so I was stretched out in the passenger seat, watching Saskatchewan slide by, thinking there must be a couple dozen different ways for a guy to kill himself.
