red hill - jamie mcguire

“Zoe seems okay. It’s kind of weird,” Joey said.
“I don’t think she’s like us.”
“What do you mean”
“I think she’s a little different, that’s all.”
Joey nodded. “Nathan is a saint. I’m glad he and Scarlet have each other.”
I smiled. “Me, too.”
He glanced around, in every direction, and then pointed. “Look.”
There was a single tree in the middle of the north field. A group of birds that were perched took
off, all at once, from the branches. Joey looked through his scope and cocked his rifle. “There are
four of them. You see”
I narrowed my eyes; the wheat was now tall and golden, nearly ready for harvest. In the tall crop,
it was easy to see a ted stumble through it. I looked at Joey. I could see three heads, and wheat
moving around a shorter fourth. It was either a very petite person, or a child. “You can see them
They’re teds, right, not humans”
“Definitely teds.”
“You got it”
“I got it,” he said, cocking his rifle.
One. Reload.
Two. Reload.
Three. Reload.
And after a pause, four.
Joey looked up from the scope, took another quick look through it at the area, and then put his rifle
in his lap.
Nathan gathered the girls and yelled to Joey from the ground.
“Clear”
“Clear,” Joey called back.
“You see Scarlet”
“No.”
Nathan seemed frustrated. Cooper’s death had been a reality check for us all. None of us could talk
Scarlet out of clearing because there was no way to argue with her reasoning, but it was still a huge
risk.
Joey wiped his forehead with a dirty rag. We were baking up there, even under the partial shade of
the oak tree. Joey leaned back, supporting himself with his hands. His index finger brushed my pinky,
and then he intertwined all of his fingers in mine. We didn’t acknowledge it or talk; we just sat there,
soaked with sweat and content that for a moment we didn’t have to pretend.
Scarlet