Steal the North: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

held me closer, which I hoped meant yes. When I still couldn’t quit sobbing, he reached into his bedside table, where he kept his flavored and textured condoms and his collection of souvenir scrunchies and headbands (only two of which were mine).
    “Here, take this.” It was one of his mom’s Vicodin pills. “It’ll help you chill.”
    I stopped crying and sat up. “I don’t take drugs.” His mom probably did to put up with his unfaithful dad. Connor had told me stories. I got out of his bed. “I hate you.”
    I expected him to remark, “How original.” Instead he said, “That’s too bad, Emmy. I could never hate you.” He rolled onto his stomach and buried his head under his numerous pillows.
    Probably not, but that didn’t mean he loved me any more than he’d wait for me.
    “Will you wait for me?” I had to ask one more time.
    He didn’t reply, but at school the final week he held my hand every lunch recess in front of his friends, who smirked. We exchanged gifts in his bedroom our last afternoon. I gave him an amulet key chain with a Tibetan symbol—the umbrella, for protection from desire. I told him it was to protect him from suffering. He gave me two gifts. The first was a bottle of Vicodin. He said I’d need the pills up north living with Jesus freaks.
    The second gift was a necklace with a diamond heart-shaped pendant (pretty suburban) that I put on immediately. I already knew what I would say to Mom when she asked who had given it to me. I would hesitate for effect and then stutter while telling her that Hedda, my only other lunchtime friend, bought it for me. I wanted Mom to wonder if a boy at school had really given the necklace to me and what I’d done with the boy (
everything, Mom
) to deserve diamonds. I promised Connor I’d wear the necklace the entire summer—not that he asked me to—but instead I wound up hocking it at the same dusty pawnshop surrounded by sagebrush where my mom had hocked her mother’s ring years ago. And so I entered their story.

2
    Bethany
    I used to park my car at the Greyhound station and wait for the buses. More people got on, I finally realized, than off. My sister wasn’t coming back, despite my prayers. Before Kate left, she’d let a truck driver at the highway café where she was working cut off her long hair, which I used to braid. She said he’d offered her “extra” for the souvenir. I understood what she meant, but after all these years I still can’t bear to think of it. In the direct sun, Kate’s brown hair glowed red underneath. My blond hair also catches the sun, Matt says. But he must see it doesn’t hold the rays as Kate’s did. Matt claims I’ve never gotten over the loss of my sister. He says it might’ve been easier on me if Kate had died like our mother because then I wouldn’t feel more betrayed every year that passes without her making contact. But Kate didn’t betray me. There’s more to her leaving than Matt knows. My husband always has an excuse for my behavior: to his parents, coworkers, the other deacons at church whose wives, especially recently, have complained that I take up too much of the new preacher’s time. Probably even in supplication does my husband offer up excuses for me.
    I imagine Kate’s hair is what first attracted Jamie Kagen to her that summer at camp. There’s not a lot of sunshine west of the Cascades, but there’s a certain light, the kind right before a storm or right after, that also set Kate’s hair ablaze. Matt thinks Kate lost her faith after camp when Jamie shunned her, but faith was never easy for my sister. It kept her awake at night when we were kids. During the day she dragged it around, as she did the awful memories surrounding our mother’s death. Without my faith I couldn’t get out of bed after each miscarriage. I quit teaching Sunday school years ago. Not out of bitterness—I refuse to drink from that cup—but because of the deep longing the small hands of the children