LITERARY SHORT STORY FICTION
JUST BE YOURSELF, HUNGRY GIRL
A Short Story
Uncle Arnie was a man, and an uncle, not unlike any other man and uncle. He laughed, sighed, hiked, biked, hunted, and raised Black Angus cattle. He refurbished then resold Ford Thunderbirds. He lived his days with all the vigor of a man in love with life and cholesterol. Arnold Walker was a man who would spoon Country Crock straight out of the container.
Until death came—death that was blue, and bloated, with crazy eyes bulging out.
When he had shaken the girls awake to tell them a surprise blizzard had blustered in and dropped a foot of snow, the warning out of his lips, “We gotta skedaddle, girls, and pronto!” they could see it: the reddened face, the bulging neck vein, the many telltale signs of the coming fall.
And fall he did.
First to one knee then to the other. He lay there, clutching his left arm, his tomato face constricting in its death throes and looking as if it was about to burst. Taking his final, sputtering breath, the girls could almost hear their mother with her quivery jowls and jingly bracelets curse, “Damn, that redneck brother of mine. Taking his nieces on a fishing trip into the mountains on the first of November without snow tires? The weather could turn at the drop of a hat!”
Or at the drop of an uncle.
An uncle who, prostrate before them, lay as dead as a door-nail on the floorboards of this newly-constructed, unlit, bare-bones log cabin at eight-thousand feet in a playground of peaks and precipices in west-central Colorado. He appeared to the girls every bit zombie-like with his petrified gaze at the wood joists and trusses above them, as they stared zombie-like down at the body.
“Great,” Daphne said, her guileless brown eyes narrowing behind their horn-rimmed glasses. She lifted his leg with the toe of her boot then dropped it. “Now what are we supposed to do? It’s not like we can call 911.” She looked down at her sister’s hands. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”
“Of course I’m shaking,” Daphne exclaimed. “A person just died! A family member, even, sort of.”
Daphne snorted. “Well, don’t you go have a heart attack on me now.” She stole a glance at the cabin door; then, whizzed out of it and was back inside before Chloe could even finish her “Where are you going?” sentence. “To help you get hydrated, that’s where,” Daphne said. “Here—I would offer you a glass of cold water to help you get your color back but all I’ve got is this handful of cold snow. No way I’m walking all the way to the lake.”
“My color?” Daphne said, stuffing the snow into her mouth.
Daphne shook her head. “You’re pale. You don’t look so hot. Of course, you were never very hot looking; although, right now Plain Jane’s got bigger things to worry about.”
Chloe twisted a smile. “I’m not Plain Jane.”
“All right, you’re Plain Janet.” Lowering her gaze, Daphne flicked a nod at the body. “Why don’t you put your coat back on. It was a nice sentiment, but I don’t think he’ll be needing it any more.”
Gritting her teeth, and twitching her eyelids, Chloe fought back the tears as she buttoned her purple puffer coat. She had seen death before. Only, her father’s face with its closed eyes had looked altogether peaceful as he lay in his coffin; Uncle Arnie’s reddened face with its bulging eyes was the very picture of torment. A part of herself died at that moment: it got up and laid down beside her uncle. She wondered if the Benson family might be under some kind of curse; and which family member might fall next.
Chloe gulped. So much for the three hots and a cot Uncle had promised Mom as a condition to her granting permission, she thought. So much for Uncle Arnie’s plan for roughing it by supplying only the barest essentials so he could make redneck queens out of his seventeen-and-fifteen-year-old nieces. “That means no cell phones,” he had told them. “No signal in the high country, anyway”. So much for the promised ‘adventure’ of a fishing trip into the mountains. So much for poor, red-faced—and now blue-faced—Uncle Arnie. Chloe sighed.
Tucking her blonde pony-tail down the sweatshirt she wore underneath her coat, Chloe squatted to comb the much sparser and shorter blond hairs of her uncle’s head. She flattened any protruding hairs in his beard. She closed his eyelids, then stood. “Maybe we should say a prayer for him, like we did for Dad.”
Daphne grimaced. “To whom? For what? He’s dead. C’mon, let’s haul him into the truck so we can bring him home.”
Wiping the wetness in the corner of her eye, Chloe looked down at her younger sister, and shrugged.
With the girls each pulling an arm as they dragged their uncle out to the truck, Daphne studied the body. “No marks anywhere. So, it’s not like they’re gonna think we killed him.”
Chloe’s heart pattered underneath her sweatshirt. “Oh, would they think that?”
“No. That’s what I’m saying.”
Daphne gunned the engine then tapped—then floored—the accelerator, yet the truck just spun its four balding tires further into the embankment. The truck rocked, rolled—about an inch, sputtered fumes, and flung snow.
“Oh, my God, Daph. We’re stuck!” Chloe slammed the car door then kicked one of the tires, thinking maybe that might move it but it only sent icicles flying. She took a deep breath. “No amp, either. Isn’t that what Uncle Arnie had called it?”
Daphne straightened her beanie. “He called it a short-wave radio. The amplifier was what was busted, remember? That was why we couldn’t bring it.” Daphne turned her face to a sky that was a torrent of glistening white doom. Rolling back her coat-sleeve then wiping the snowy residue off of her glasses with the sleeve of her shirt, she said, softly, “It’s the perfect storm.”
Even with her glasses on, Daphne could never have seen that this “perfect storm” would mark the beginning of her journey to stardom. It would happen over the course of nine stormy nights.
DAY ONE
Later that same evening, Chloe found her wandering eyes cross paths with the body. Against her objections, Daphne had made the fateful decision to drag the body back inside.
“It’s smoking,” Chloe said, observing the mists emanating from the torso and head. “Is that normal? Maybe we should put him back in the truck.”
Daphne poked her head out of the sleeping bag to get a better look. “He’s losing the last of his body heat, it’s perfectly normal. No, I think we should keep him here, just in case. He may still be able to help us.”
Chloe batted her eyes. “Help us? Daph...” Clearing her throat, Chloe called for an Emergency Sleeping Bag Meeting; and was thrilled when Daphne agreed they need not, and so should not, resort to such extreme measures so soon.
“I wasn’t thinking that.” Daphne grinned. “I just thought we might wanna keep him here for, like, sentimental reasons or whatever.”
“Sentimental reasons?” Chloe said. Her shoulder’s slumped. “OK, I’m new to this survivalist stuff. What is that supposed to mean, exactly?”
Daphne explained, “It means we keep him here in plain sight to remind us what dead means, of what not making it means. Know what I mean? Not a pretty sight, is it?”
Chloe swallowed. “No.”
An hour later, Chloe eyed the window of their deep-forest, mountain sanctuary. Huddled beside Daphne in a pretzel embrace inside of their sleeping bag rated for ten degrees Fahrenheit not the two degrees that displayed on the thermometer on the cabin’s exterior, she listened as the winds howled. She watched these winds laden with snowflakes whip against a backdrop of evergreen and aspen and an unrelenting grayness. Through the window she could see, out in the distance, the murky outlines of the plateau-like Black Mesa, and the jagged slopes of Red Mountain.
The names meant nothing to them now: the hundred-and-one identifiers of geologic feature their uncle had cited for them on the drive from Grand Junction to this ruggedly beautiful, but altogether secluded, weekend-getaway spot.
The girls spent the remainder of the evening snacking on the flimsy pair of PB&Js their uncle had made for them back in Junction and brainstorming their next move.
“I think we should try the truck again,” Chloe said, swallowing not just the peanut butter stuck in her throat but the ball of nerves stuck there. She took the last bite of her sandwich, crust and all.
Daphne narrowed her eyes at the window. “We’re gonna try it a thousand times if we have to. Where’s the nearest town, do you think?”
Chloe wiped her mouth. “Montrose, remember? It was a fifteen-minute drive from there to here in the truck, if I recall. I don’t know how long that would be walking.” Chloe started to say something else when Daphne raised a finger. This meant Daphne was calculating.
Chloe watched as Daphne’s wonder brain did its thing. “Well?” Chloe said, finally.
Daphne’s shoulders slumped. She lolled her head.
Chloe gulped. “That far, huh?”
Standing, Daphne dusted the crumbs off of her jacket. “If it was a million miles we would still have to try. Tomorrow, if the snow clears, we’ll take our long walk.”
Chloe’s eyes bulged. “All the way to town?”
Daphne walked to the window and traced slowly its sill with her gloved finger. “If I get tired I’ll let you give me a piggyback ride the rest of the way, ‘kay?”
DAY TWO
The snow did not clear the next morning. However, with their hunger pains beginning to set in and only a packet of beef jerky and three granola bars available as food rations, they decided to make a break for it. They hiked a mile through foot-high snowbanks until the blustery winds and their cold feet convinced them to retrace their steps back to the cabin.
“My toes are so numb they feel like they’re gonna fall off,” Daphne said, as they ascended the steps. Pondering, she stopped. “I wonder if Uncle would let us have his socks...” she leaned against the door “...and that warm-looking shirt of his; and his—”
“If your socks are wet, I’ll let you take his. But nothing besides. It’s called respect for the dead, Daph.”
Daphne pushed the door open. “That’s funny. How you think you can tell me what I can and cannot take.”
Chloe stood watching as Daphne stripped her uncle’s feet and ankles of their cover. “I wish we had a nice suit we could dress him up in. You know, like the one they put Dad in. Make him look real nice.”
Daphne unbuttoned her uncle’s plaid wool shirt. “Look nice for who, the worms?” She claimed his wallet, stuffing into her coat pocket. “At least Dad bought us birthday presents, even though it usually wasn’t what we had ask for. At least he did things like give you rides to basketball practice, and me to band practice. At least we saw him. Did we ever see Uncle Arnie? Not hardly.”
“I wish I could cry for him some more but I can’t,” Chloe said. “Maybe it’s because my tear ducts are frozen.”
Daphne rose. “That’s right, we’ve got our own problems.” She walked to the door. “C’mon...”
The girls tried to get the truck rolling again, but all it did was spin its tires and belch exhaust again.
“Cheer up, Chloe. Today’s storms are tomorrow’s rainbows,” Daphne said, laying a hand on her sister’s shoulder on their way up the steps. “Tomorrow, we’ll go fishing. Let’s think of this as an adventure!”
Later that evening, lying in the sleeping bag and staring into the inky blackness, Daphne intoned, suddenly, “It came upon a midnight clear, after all we held so close and dear, went up in smoke with the late-night draft; it came and went, and left us Daph.”
Chloe guffawed. “Left us...Daph? You mean, you?”
Daphne nodded. “It’s a poem about survival. I composed it in my head just now, to help us get motivated to survive or whatever.”
“Daph the Destroyer,” Chloe said, smiling. She giggled. “That’s the name that immediately came to mind when you were saying that just now. It’s a good poem, Daph.”
Daphne shrugged. “Actually, it’s not. I’m sure I can come up with something better.”
“Like what?”
After Daphne shared a half-dozen other poems she composed on the spot, a few of them rousing Chloe to rounds of applause, the girls decided to try something different to break up the monotony of just lying around.
A game of charades.
“Who am I?” Daphne asked, peering through an invisible pair of binoculars then walking in a high-step manner then pulling at an invisible backpack on her shoulder. Chloe tried, but failed to guess correctly.
“I’m Dora the Explorer,” Daphne clarified.
Chloe laid pondering. Whatever hint of smile had been on her face while she conjured up mental images of Daphne as Dora the Explorer, slowly faded to a frown as her mind began to conjure up images of the past. Finally, she said, “Whatever you say, Daph the Destroyer,” then yanked the sleeping bag flap over her head.
DAY THREE
The third day of their snow-in was all about fishing. On their way to the pond, Chloe boasted that she could “cast a line” as well as any “almost eighteen-year-old” from what she had learned in her one year of Girl Scouts. However, it was Daphne who ended up catching the fish.
With her perch dangling from her wire, Daphne said, “Uncle was right. Fishing’s kinda fun.”
“Not!” the girls exclaimed in unison.
Chloe reeled in her line. Sighing, she eyed the spiky back-fin on Daphne’s perch. “Nice one, Daph.”
Daphne nodded. “Kid Sister knows how to get things done. Stick with her, and you’ll be alright.” She stole a glance at her fish’s big, bulging eyes. “Maybe,” she mumbled.
Gutting the fish was even less fun.
“This stuff looks as gross AF, but may still be edible.” Daphne squatted to probe with her finger the slop of entrails that lay smoking in the snow.
Chloe felt like barfing a lung just looking at it. “I think I’d rather starve.”
Daphne shrugged. “It’s your funeral.” She pinched a piece of intestine off the slop. She put it in her mouth. Chewing, she said, “Tastes like chicken.”
With wide eyes, Chloe looked at Daphne then down at the guts. “Really?”
Daphne swallowed, hard. “No, not really. It tastes even grosser than it looks.” She kicked snow over the entrails then headed back to the cabin; Chloe trailed behind her with the fishing poles.
It wasn’t the Van de Kamp’s fish sticks Mom used to make them as late-night snacks, but it was still fish. The girls greatly enjoyed roasting the fillets over an open flame, even though that flame was just a succession of lit matches snatched from a matchbox in the truck’s glove compartment.
Nibbling on the last of the bones, Daphne suggested they play charades.
Chloe went first. She pantomimed bouncing a basketball, gathering a rebound, shooting a jump shot. Attempting a make-believe slam-dunk, she tripped over Daphne’s foot; and with her legs and ankles wobbling, she collapsed to the floor.
Daphne laughed. “If you stay down like that forever I’d guess you’re Kobe Bryant. Otherwise, Michael Jordan, or some other basketball player.”
Chloe struggled to get up. “It was supposed to be Lebron James. And I’m fine, by the way.”
Daphne stood. “My turn.” She pursed her lips, poked her nose into the air then walked around the cabin with slow, graceful steps; still Chloe failed to guess who she was. It was only when Daphne said she was “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” that Chloe guessed, “Mary Poppins.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “I know. Classy, sassy, smart. Grandpa’s pet name for you; he used to call you that all the time.” Chloe laid her head back. “By the way, there are no verbal clues allowed in charades. It’s cheating.”
“I couldn’t help it; you’re slow! You should have known that one.” Daphne walked to the door; she tossed the bones out then washed her hands in the snow. Closing the door, she said, “Besides, cheating only matters if you get caught.”
Chloe snickered. “Um, didn’t I just catch you?”
Daphne settled in beside Chloe. “Ah, but you’re the victim. The victim needs a witness. You have none.”
Warily, Chloe eyed her sister. “Victim?” She pulled the sleeping bag over her head. “The things you say sometimes, Daph. It makes me wonder about you.”
Gazing into the darkness, Daphne said, suddenly, “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” She turned to Chloe. “Some old-timey poet whose name I forgot once wrote that.” She closed her eyes. “Wouldn’t cheese and crackers be good right about now, to wash down this bad fish taste?”
You’re giving me a bad taste, too, right about now, Chloe thought.
Sleep did not come easy for the girls that night, but at least their stomachs did not growl.
DAY FOUR
On the morning of the fourth day the snow stopped. Daphne suggested this might be their only chance. Tying up their boots, pulling on their gloves, and lowering their beanies, the girls ventured out with high hopes. The snow which rose to their knees was reason enough for the girls to turn back; however, Daphne insisted they push forward. It was only when they heard the telltale, high-pitched sounds coming from a short distance ahead that they stopped in their tracks. Coyotes. A whole pack of them, it sounded like. They were yipping and yapping. Daphne said she saw one, and ran for her life.
Chloe chased after her. “Wait, you’re going in the wrong direction!”
The girls succeeded in avoiding a run-in with the coyotes, but in the process got lost. Chloe approached, then slowed, then stood alongside her sister. Panting, they darted their eyes frantically from rock, to tree, to shrub, to mountain, trying to recognize something familiar. Nothing was.
The terrain was flat, very unlike the rocky incline that Chloe had just chased Daphne down for what might have been fifteen whole minutes. All around them were aspen trees interspersed with the occasional evergreen; and just beyond these were mountains that towered over them on all sides. The single road that crossed this high-country patch of no-man’s-land was nowhere to be seen.
“We’re in a valley.” Daphne said. “How did we get here?”
“It was like you were possessed. You kept running, and running, and laughing, and running...”
Daphne stood, blinking. She veered her head to the left, the right, up, then, over at the nearest fir tree. She stepped to it. “Yeah, I was, uh...” she studied the tree “...just wantin’ to see if the sap on these branches might be edible.” She plucked a dried gob of sap off the trunk then tasted it. Wrinkling her face, she spat it out. “Nope, not edible.”
Chloe looked up at the mountains. “What does that mean, valley? We’re at the bottom? We’re in Montrose?”
Daphne unzippered her coat: stream rose from her torso into the cold air. “Does this look like Montrose? No, we’re not at the bottom.” She wiped the sweat off of her brow. “I think what we need to do is get to higher ground so we can look for the cabin.” Daphne explained to Chloe that Colorado mountain ranges were not lone mountain peaks surrounded by flat land but a series of mounds and peaks of varying heights intersected by winding valleys. “At the very bottom of all of those mounds and peaks is the for-realz valley,” Daphne said. “Remember all those cows we saw on the drive over?”
Chloe exclaimed, “Oh, yeah. Those cute cows!”
“No cows here, though. See?”
The girls elected to climb the mountain ridge with the least imposing slope and the most sunlight on it. With Daphne in the lead, they trekked just far enough up it to be able to see above the line of trees in the valley where they had just stood. “There it is,” Daphne said, pointing at the log cabin high up on the other side of the valley.
She grabbed Chloe’s arm. “C’mon, you can look at the eagles and pretty trees later.”
Trekking for over an hour through snow that rose to the tops of their boots, and scouring for berry bushes or edible plant-life along the way—but finding nothing but pine-cones, they finally approached the pond, and then, the cabin. They burst through the door and collapsed.
Lying on the wood floorboards adjacent to the body, Daphne laughed hysterically until she could laugh no more; then she began to cry.
With a startled look on her face, and tears threatening her own eyes, Chloe sat crossed-legged in the sleeping bag, munching on the last of the granola bars. She was unable to come up with a single word of consolation to offer to her younger sister. Finally, she was able to say, “Why don’t we play charades?”
Daphne stopped crying, just like that. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Ok.” She stood. “I’ll go first.”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “You always wanna go first. Go ahead.”
Raising her reddened nose into the air, in a thin, reedy voice, Daphne recited, as one of her clues,
“Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.
The carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality.”
Chloe shrugged. “No idea.”
Daphne said, with the greatest of solemnity, “Emily Dickinson.” Through chapped lips, she explained, “Emily Dickinson was one of the greatest poets ever.” She said she knew this because all of the poetry books, anthologies, commentaries, and the internet, said so; and because she had investigated; and because she really liked poetry.
Chloe’s eyes lit up. “I can tell.” She wormed around the insides of her sleeping bag. “Whoever wrote that was obviously a whole lot older than we are, though, Daph.”
Daphne cocked her head. “Writing poetry isn’t just for old people, you know. It’s for everyone. Every song lyric you’ve ever heard is a kind of poem.”
Chloe sat up. “I was thinking...I saw a notebook and pen in the glove compartment in the truck. I can go get them then you can write down all of those awesome poems you got stuck in your head. It’ll give you something to do, anyway.”
Daphne returned to the sleeping bag. “Nah,” she said, zippering them in. “Poetry doesn’t compute: it rouses sensationalism and incites ill-fated forays into the machinery of life.” She sniffled. “A magazine article written by some distinguished math professor guy I had read once said that.”
Chloe wanted to say that Daphne’s math guy sounded like a poet himself, but was interrupted by her yawn. The girls fell asleep within seconds.
DAY FIVE
With the last of the beef jerky dispatched by the girls in the early hours of the following morning, they were out of food.
“But not out of luck,” Daphne said, the sunshine in her eyes belying the tears that had poured from them the night before. “We still have fishing poles. Let’s go catch some breakfast.”
Fishing poles in hand, and with a bounce in their step, the girls headed out to the pond. They halted at the pond’s edge, staring blankly at the ground beneath their feet which they realized was not the edge of the pond, but the pond itself. It had frozen over. While Chloe cursed, Daphne proposed they try to break through the ice with some of the tools she had seen lying in the trunk of the truck. Then, they could ice fish.
“I’ll go get the tools!” Daphne exclaimed, scurrying off, though a bit too hurriedly. She slipped, and with feet flying and arms flailing, fell backward. Her head hit the ice.
Chloe heard the loud thwacking sound and saw the ice splinter and, fearing the worst, rushed to help Daphne up off the ice. The process took five whole minutes. Daphne had a difficult time standing.
“You’re bleeding,” Chloe said, separating the tufts of hair with her fingers as she studied the red smudge on Daphne’s head. “It’s not bad, though.”
Wincing, Daphne said, “Do you think I need stitches?” Shaking her head, she sighed. “Forget I asked. I mean, like you would even know.” She swiped the snow off of her pant leg. “Great. No doctor around. Not even an anesthesiologist.” Putting her beanie back on, Daphne cocked her head. “Isn’t that what you said you wanted to be when you grow up—an anesthesiologist?”
Chloe held Daphne’s arm, steadying her. “I never said that. I don’t even remember thinking that. I don’t know what I want to be yet. Right now, I’m just focused on getting through high school...and snow-ins.”
Daphne snarled.
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean, that weird look on your face just now?”
Daphne gritted her teeth. “Honestly, Chloe, I hate when you say things like that: ‘I don’t know what I want to be just yet.’ You sound so damned...casual. Like you couldn’t give a shit.”
Chloe bit her lip. “Why would you think that I wanted to be an anestemologist, or whatever it was you called it?”
Daphne blinked, repeatedly, then touched the sore spot on her head. She winced. “My head is spinning, maybe that’s why I thought you had said that. It hurts almost as much as my stomach does. I feel dizzy.”
Chloe escorted a dazed Daphne back to the cabin.
As Chloe lay Daphne down in the sleeping bag, Daphne said, “I just had an idea. That toolbox in the truck. Go get it for me; also, the car radio. It should pop right out of the dashboard.”
Chloe tapped her foot, impatiently. “The radio? We can’t listen to it in here without—”
“Just do it,” Daphne said, sharply. She breathed. “I’m gonna re-wire that radio to make it work like a short-wave transmitter. Then, we can use it to send a distress signal.”
Chloe said nothing.
Daphne folded her arms. “Look, even though my head is spinning right now, I can still think straight, OK?”
Chloe shrugged then went to get the toolbox and car stereo.
Daphne wasted no time getting to work on her “mad scientist project,” as Chloe would come to refer to it privately. “I don’t think it’s gonna work,” Chloe said, eyeing the wires, transistors, circuit board, and tools Daphne had scattered across the floor.
Daphne stacked the screwdriver, hammer, and some other weird looking tool on Uncle’s chest. “Space-saving measure,” she explained.
Watching her sister twirl the screwdriver and study the various electrical components, Chloe said, finally, “Look, so, sure, you won that seventh grade spelling bee, and got straight A’s, but that doesn’t make you Edward Edison.”
Daphne twisted a copper wire. “Don’t worry. I got this,” she said, continuing to tinker. She looked up. “Oh, and I think you mean Thomas Edison, the inventor guy.”
As shadows fell over the room, Daphne kept working. When darkness enveloped the room, Daphne kept working. Chloe encouraged Daphne to give it a break and for the sake of her health to lie down; but to no avail.
“All right.” Chloe rubbed her hands together. “Time for charades.”
Daphne snapped her head up. She dropped her pliers then stood—but only for a second. She tottered, then fell over. Padding on her hands and knees to the door, she flung it open, and threw up.
“Oh, my God!” Chloe exclaimed.
Swiping her mouth with the back of her hand, Daphne said she was ready to play charades.
Chloe said, “No way, you need to lie down;” but then changed her mind when Daphne agreed to offer her clues while lying down.
After two dozen clues and Chloe still guessing, Daphne revealed she was “Helen of Troy.”
Chloe frowned. “Who the heck’s that?”
Staring at the ceiling, Daphne said, meditatively, “The most tragic female figure in all of western literature.” She came to. “No, wait,” she said, hopping out of bed and returning to sit cross-legged in the darkness by her pliers, wires, and circuit board. “I’m Thomas Edison, famous inventor.” Lowering her pliers, Daphne mused, “Was it Thomas Edison who invented the fudge brownie?”
DAY SIX
The sisters clenched their numbed fingers and chattered their teeth in an attempt to stymie the twin pains that afflicted them, of which the bitter cold was the lesser affliction by far.
The hunger. It bit. It gnawed. It roiled, rumbled, and gurgled.
On the sixth morning, Daphne was back at work on her mad scientist project. With the sun up, and light filtering in through the frost on the window, Chloe had a better view of the wreckage. It really did look like a mad scientist project with parts scattered everywhere; and Daphne really did look like a mad scientist. It was clear she had no idea what she was doing. She mixed and matched screws and wires then set them into little piles based, seemingly, on size and color; for an hour she rotated what looked to be the volume dial, back and forth, back and forth, her dull eyes staring, seemingly, at the dial, but when Chloe took a closer look she noticed they were staring at nothing. Daphne’s eye sockets were red-rimmed and sunken. Her face was pale. All afternoon she sang and whistled the same lyric to the same song over and over again, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas...”
“It’s beginning to look a lot like someone’s going bonkers,” Chloe mumbled.
As Daphne snuggled into the sleeping bag beside her sister, she noted how much warmer it was with Chloe there alongside her. Chummily, she nudged Chloe. “See, you’re good for something, after all.”
Chloe slapped Daphne’s beanie clear off of her head. “Shut up, you.”
They played charades again.
Chloe rolled herself up into a fetal position on the floor.
Daphne offered guesses in rapid-fire succession, “You’re a coiled armadillo, a porcupine, a millipede, a hibernating snake, um...”
Tucked into a ball, Chloe attempted to roll her body, but had difficulty doing so until finally she just said, “Imagine me rolling, and bouncing.”
Daphne groaned. “You’re a basketball?”
Chloe nodded.
Daphne pointed her finger, exclaiming, “That’s against the rules; it’s not allowed. You have to be a person, not a thing! No verbal cues, too, remember? They’ll catch you. They’ll arrest you. They’ll hook you up to an electric chair!” Daphne walked over to the corner of the room. “Alright, my turn.”
She laid herself down on the floor, motionless.
Chloe sat up. “Um, you’re a sick person?” she said, scratching her head. “You’re someone who got electrocuted because she was fiddling with wires too long? You’re a floorboard!”
“No, silly,” Daphne said, getting up then lying next to the body, mimicking its pose, bulging eyes and all.
Chloe gulped. “You’re a dead body?”
“Uncle Arnie’s dead body,” Daphne said, just as her stomach made a loud gurgling noise. “Yup.”
DAY SEVEN
The next morning Daphne complained of a fever, but kept working.
“Daphne...” Chloe said, walking over “...you need to stop this and lie down.”
Daphne intertwined some red wire with another red wire then wrapped those wires around some blue wire then tried to plunge the copper tip of the blue wire into a square metal piece on the circuit board, all of which even a non-electrician like Chloe knew made no sense whatsoever.
“I can do this,” Daphne said, straightening her glasses. “For realz, I can.”
Someone please give this girl a clue! Chloe thought, as Daphne kept trying to insert the wire tip into the square metal piece. Chloe said, “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Daphne dropped the wire. “No.” She looked up. “I’m the smartest girl in school, though. Smartest girls in school are supposed to know how to figure things out. If I can figure this out, it might prove I’m not only smart, but clever. Considering our circumstance, they might even put me on TV.”
Chloe took her younger sister by the hand. “You don’t have to prove anything to me or to anybody.” She walked Daphne to the sleeping bag then laid down beside her.
Daphne pulled off her beanie and combed her short brown hair. “If only we were adults then we would have this whole thing figured out in, like, two seconds.” Daphne put her hat back on. “Figuring stuff out is usually a piece of cake; I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She looked at the thermos beside the sleeping bag. “Maybe it’s this melted snow we’re drinking.” She raised up on her elbows. “Know what else is tough figuring out? Whether I wanna be Mary Poppins, Thomas Edison, or Emily Dickinson.” She leaned back. “You have it so easy, Chloe. You’re happy just being everyday, average Chloe.” She smiled. “Sometimes I hate you for that. I mean, I really hate you.”
Chloe flinched. Her expression darkened. “Hate me? Oh, so maybe that’s why you just out-of-the-blue decided to do what you did...” Chloe stilled herself “...that one time.”
Daphne bit her lip. “Chloe...” she said, touching her sister’s arm, “please know that I would never, ever in my right mind do anything to harm you.”
Chloe jerked her arm away. “You know,” she said, clearing her throat then reaching for the thermos, “I could try hiking down the mountain all by myself.” She wondered, though, if this was possible even in full health and ski pants. “I’m not leaving you, though, I’ve decided. I refuse to abandon you.” Looking into her sister’s yellowed eyes with optimism glistening in her own, she said, “I know you would do the same for me.”
Daphne lowered her head.
“What?” Chloe said.
Daphne coughed. “Sure, Chloe, whatever you say.”
As the first of the shadows stretched their long, dark tentacles into the cabin, Chloe looked back to see Daphne smiling at her. Thinking Daphne was asleep, Chloe had been indulging a long, fascinated glance at the body; and Daphne had caught her.
Daphne rose on her pinkened elbows. “You notice it too, don’t you? How almost poetic it is: the sublimity of his expression, how very peaceful he looks; and how he wouldn’t mind in the slightest if we were to—”
“Let’s play charades again,” Chloe said, hopping up. “I’ll go first this time.”
Chloe pantomimed a bear, which Daphne guessed correctly after only the second clue.
Daphne pantomimed “a member of the Donner Party.”
Chloe blinked.
Daphne slapped her thigh. “Flipping heck, you don’t know who the Donner Party is? They were a group of pioneers who got stranded and ended up eating one another. Didn’t you notice the stabbing and eating motions I was making?” Daphne craned her neck. “By the way, think you could you pass me one of those granola bars over there?”
Chloe handed her an empty wrapper. “Here. Enjoy. That’s what’s left.”