Carrie Mac - Wildfire

10 Things I Can See from Here

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2020 by Carrie Mac

Cover art copyright 2020 by Sar DuVall

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Visit us on the Web! GetUnderlined.com

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mac, Carrie, author.

Title: Wildfire / Carrie Mac.

Description: First edition. | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. | Summary: Teenaged best friends Annie and Pete go on a backpacking trip in the Pacific Northwest, with dangerous consequences.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018058307 (print) | LCCN 2018060469 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-399-55631-9 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-399-55629-6 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-399-55630-2 (lib. bdg.)

Subjects: | CYAC: Best friendsFiction. | FriendshipFiction. | WildfiresFiction. | FiresFiction. | SurvivalFiction. | Wilderness areasFiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.M111845 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.M111845 Wi 2020 (print) |

DDC [Fic]dc23

Ebook ISBN9780399556319

Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v5.4

ep

For Hawk

Ace fire starter, fellow stargazer, my sun

I am cradling Petes head in my lap, sitting by the tent flap,looking out. Wildfires are closing in from the west and the south, with smoke so thick its like a bank of fog across the whole sky, turning the sun, which is just about to slip behind the mountain, into a blood-orange ball. In this strange twilight, everything looks like its been washed in thin blue shadows. Even Pete. He looked so red in the daylight, because of the fever, but also because of the orange nylon of the tent he has not been out of since yesterday. The air in here smells like sour milk and the rankest body odor you can imagine. Not Petes regular body odor, which I once described to him as skunk cabbage and cinnamon stew, with a dollop of sour cream past its best-by date on top. Call me weird, but I never minded it. But this is different. Not quite like how Gigi smelled with the lung cancer chewing her up from the inside out, but similar. Dangerously sour. Uniquely foul. Scary, if a smell can actually make you afraid.

I close my eyes and will something beautiful to take over, something to make this moment simple and quiet and dim and safe. Gigi, her hair in rollers, sitting on the back porch in her sateen dressing gown with the peacocks on it, painting her nails while I shuck a bowl of Dads peas, sweet and plump. The sun just about setting, and Gigi telling me why she thinks Robert Redford is the man she shouldve married. My mom playing the piano inside. Pete climbing that slant of rock a few days ago, and me, with my bare feet on the hot dirt, looking up at him and the blue sky beyond. That was the last time we saw blue sky. He let go with his right hand and reached up. I wish Id taken a picture of that one moment, when he looked like he was about to scoop up a handful of sky and drink it. I dont need more pictures of the two of us, like the ones we did take. I need pictures of him. Just Pete.

Its almost dark enough to use my headlamp, but Im not going to waste the battery. Outside the flap, I watch the moon rising so slowly.

It looks like a werewolf movie just before the transformation, I say. Whats that one Gigi loved? I know what it is, but I hope hell say it. Or say anything. He hasnt said a word for too many hours to think about. I give him what feels like the longest time to think of it and say it, but he doesnt. American Werewolf in London, I say. Thats the one.

He nods, a tiny smile on his lips.

She was definitely not a movie snob, I say with a little laugh. Remember when she took us to see Children of the Corn that Halloween? How old were we? Way too young. That scene right at the beginning in Hanzers Coffee Shop, when the kids poison the coffee and then murder all the adults? They stick that one guys hand in the meat slicer? We were only eleven.

He shakes his head and barely lifts both hands, fingers splayed.

Ten? Right. Just a few months after his mom died. Way too soon, right?

He nods.

She knew it, I say. Or else she wouldnt have told us not to tell the dads.

I wish we were actually having a conversation about Gigis obsession with Hollywood, and not here wondering if the fires are going to close in on us. Like this tent, which is closing in on us.

We bought this tent after almost a year of walking dogs, when we were fourteen. It weighs only as much as three blocks of butter, but we can sit up in it and play cards and drink cheap powdered hot chocolate we buy in bulk at Thrifty Mart. Its a very, very tight fit, especially considering that Pete grew three inches after we bought it. Gigi said that he grew three inches the day after we bought it, but the truth is that we bought it on Black Friday, and then we didnt use it until spring break, so I guess no one shouldve been surprised, considering Pete was as tall as his dad by the time we were thirteen. Thats when Gigi put a mark above all the others on the doorway where my dad has been tracking our heights. She used permanent marker and wrote the date of his sixteenth birthday. Her prediction, she said. She was absolutely right.

Right now this tent feels like a coffin.

We have to get out.

American Werewolf in London was a bad one to bring up, I say. Sorry. Best friends backpacking, attacked by a pack of wolves. One is mauled to death, one becomes a werewolf.

You be the werewolf, Pete murmurs.

Pete! I hold his cheeks in my hands. Hi!

He opens his eye just for a few seconds, and I really get to see him, because otherwise he doesnt look like himself. His forehead is slick with sweat, and his puffy cheeks are red and shiny with oil. I cant look at his nose, or lips, or ears, which are black at the tips and getting worse. Look at his necklace instead, Annie. An instant of panic sends my fingers to find the matching one around my neck. Its still there, thankfully. If I lose mine, or he loses his, things will only get worse. This is very hard to imagine. We need all the serendipity, magic, and luck we can muster. God too, if its a believing sort of day. I touch his necklace with one hand and mine with the other.