Regan Wolfrom - Coyote

“What should I do?” Fiona asked.

“Just sit here with her,” Lisa said. “You’re her oldest friend right now.”

I followed Graham back to the front door. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“You don’t know Lisa as well as you think,” Graham said.

“What does that mean?”

“She was a nurse up in Moose Factory.”

“She’s never mentioned that. And from the quality of the work she’s done on me…”

“I know. And you shouldn’t bring it up with her.”

I nodded. “So we head back to Arpin?”

“I guess so. Rasheed did say they might have what we were looking for.”

“They’d better. Or else we waded into a big pile of shit for nothing.”

“Not for nothing, Baptiste. We may have saved that girl’s life.”

He was right.

I’d had to kill a young man to do it. But for whatever reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it should.

The trip back was worth it.

We found exactly what we wanted at Arpin. They’d been trying to do what we hope to do, growing wheat and oilseed, and doing every bit of it with renewables.

We towed the tractor we’d found back to our place to charge it with the battery bank. Once that’s done it’ll take at least another day to tow the rest of the equipment back with us, and then we’ll want to take a look at all of the other supplies they have.

Rasheed may have bought us another few months of food by losing his mind and killing his friends.

I’m no Sara, but by cuddling up with her inventory doc I can tell that even after adding the Marchands and that starving young girl, we should be able to last long enough to harvest our first crop.

At least something’s going right around here.

Today is Thursday, January 3rd.

Fiona has been with the red-haired girl since we got back. Last night they moved the girl up to Fiona’s bedroom, and Fiona slept on the floor on an air mattress we’d had from happier times, when Marc Tremblay would show up drunk, or when Ant would kick Matt out of their room for his “Ant-on-Ant” time.

The girl hasn’t spoken. We don’t know her name.

She has smiled at Fiona a few times, as if to thank her, and each time I’ve seen it happen Fiona’s face brightens and she looks like she just won the lottery.

And I think it makes her a little less angry with me for killing Rasheed.

I tried to talk to Sara again today, about us, or about anything, really, and she shut me down right away.

I just needed her to be my best friend again. Just for a few minutes.

That wasn’t going to happen.

So I checked my pockets to see how many tablets I had left. I’d hide in my room after dinner and I’d find a way to cope.

But I didn’t have the little plastic baggie.

I realized that I hadn’t had it since before Christmas. Since Kayla had caught me.

I found her outside checking the water in the chicken coop.

“I need you to not lie to me, Kayla,” I said.

“Okay… you’re old and bald.”

“Did you take my pills?”

“Your heart pills?”

“Come one… you know which pills.”

She gave me a little shove on my shoulders. “Took you awhile. You obviously weren’t using them very often.”

“Why would you take them from me? You could have asked for one.”

“You have quite a few, don’t you…”

“Why did you take them, Kayla?”

“You never did anything like that when you were in school, Baptiste? Taken the pretty girl’s scarf so you’d have a reason for her to come and find you?”

“I’m not that pretty.”

She chuckled. “I know you’re not. Old and bald, remember?” She grabbed my left hand. “But I like you, Baptiste. You know that.”

“This isn’t a joke?”

“No joke.”

“Well… okay then… but I’m still pissed at you for stealing my drugs.”

“I’ll give them back,” she said. She stuck her right hand in her pocket.

“You don’t need to do that. I have another bag.”

“That’s good. ‘Cause I think I may have lost them.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Still… no joke…”

“Fuck, Kayla… we can’t just have that stuff lying around.”

“Yeah… sorry… anything I can do to make it up to you?”

“Help me find the goddamn pills.”

She pouted a little, as though she’d thought that would be the end of it. Then she gathered up a few eggs from the nesting boxes and we went inside to search her room.

It felt a little weird, since it’s Fiona’s room, too. The best way to admire teenage girls is to do it from afar. If you spend too much time in their bedroom you’ll realize just how ridiculous they are.

I searched Kayla’s side, while she checked under Fiona’s bed, behind Fiona’s desk.

“Should I search her drawers?” she asked.

“I don’t see why,” I said. “She’d tell someone if she found some pills.”

“You don’t know teenagers.”

“I had a teenager.”

“Oh, right…”

“They’re not here. So you dropped them somewhere else in the house, or somewhere outside…”

“They could be anywhere.”

“Shit.”

I heard a knock on the door.

The door was already open, and I saw Matt peering inside with his stupid Matt smirk. “What are you guys doing?” he asked.

“Something private,” I said.

“Sounds hot…”

“Shut up, Matt,” Kayla said.

“Kinda looks like you’re looking for something,” he said.

“Don’t you have work to do?” I asked.

“I’m done my work… I’m ready and willing to help you find those little pills with the maple leafs on them.”

I had to groan. “Great… just great.”

“They’re your pills, Baptiste? You’re a tabber?”

“What the fuck is a tabber?”

“Oh… sorry… I’ll translate that into old man… a ‘drug addict’.”

“I’m going to kick your ass, Matt.”

“No,” Kayla said, “I’m going to handle this one.” She walked over to the door. “Give me the pills, Matt.”

“What’ll you give me for them?”

She shoved him against the wall. “Give me the pills.”

“Easy, Kayla… calm down already.”

“Just give me the pills.”

“I don’t have them.”

“You swallowed ’em without even knowing what they are?”

“As if I don’t know… you think I’ve never seen Bronson and Zach’s maple leaf soda before?”

“Well that was all I had,” I said. “And you just used them. You piece of shit.”

Matt laughed. “Nice try, Baptiste. I know you’ve got more of those hidden somewhere. You found their lab and some huge stash.”

“You really are an idiot.”

“Sometimes… but not this time. I know what I’m talking about. The Walker boys used to make unregulated E with maple leafs on them… they had a lab somewhere outside town… Bronson Walker heads off to Montreal for some kind of business and never makes it home… and meanwhile, no one seems to have found the lab…”

“But Zach Walker was still here,” Kayla said. “What kept him from coming and cleaning out this giant stash?”