Original Short Fiction, My Wild Friend

My Wild Friend

by Robbie Knight

My eyes were trapped in a screen, answering sales emails at 6:45 on Sunday night-but that's business. I kept glancing from monitor to phone.  I was waiting for a text.  My friend Camille was due from backpacking and gathering samples of mole poop or something in Wyoming, and I always looked forward to stories of her adventures.

In high school I had been the one who never figured out which guy got me pregnant at which party. I was the dropout. Camille was the yearbook supermodel with straight A's-an exchange of stereotypes back then. Over twenty years later I had a closet full of suits and a daughter about to graduate with a degree in engineering; she was the one with a list of life choices that would make the 700 Club cancel a broadcast in anticipation of end-time earthquakes. Camille was pretty mainstream now (for Colorado at least) but I was still the beige one.  And here we were, tight as ever, best friends. And she still called me “wild girl” or “my wild friend”.

When her text said, “Hey.” I put on my new reading glasses to stare at my phone. This was not how she announced her return from the back country. There should be azure and emerald photos of mountain vistas, herds of Dall sheep, pictures of her field samples and a long paragraph of profound hypotheses. “Hey”-with a period after it-I had never seen before.

I thought for a moment.

“Hey!” I texted, “Are you back?”

“I need your help,” she returned. The organs in my belly sank. Had she been attacked by some rednecks, assaulted?  Had Flight For Life brought her home with a busted femur?

“Want me to come over now?”

“Now. And I need you to take my cats.” 

Someone was pacing-or prowling-in front of Camille's house when I parked.  I slid my car keys between my fingers before opening the car door.  But when the prowler straightened up, it was Camille.

“What are you doing?” I said.

Her chest was heaving as if she'd been running.  She looked at her watch and then past me and above my head, at the sky.

“Hey,” she finally said, hugging me.  Her hands brushed my bare arms as she released me and she hissed with alarm.

“Oh, God! Did I scratch you?”

This was an old joke.  Camille loved her Goth manicures.  In high school she had loved leopard and zebra press-ons.  She had scratched me once and I had whined about it, so she  teased me for years whenever we had a disagreement or a tense moment.  “What, did I scratch you?” she'd say, and I would laugh.  But this time she was weirdly serious. 

Then I looked at her hands.  It was one of those Goth manicures, but I'd never seen this kind before.  Her nails were thick and curved under, glistening sharp in the streetlight. I decided not to tell her how hideous I thought it was.

“You didn't scratch me,” I said. She relaxed. “Camille-” I stopped, listening.  Yowling and hissing sounds were coming from her bedroom window.  “Are Bodi and Sattva fighting?”

“No,” she said, “Listen, can you take them right now but first do me a favor?”

“OK-But-”

“Lock me in my shed.”

“Now, look,” I said, “You need to explain some things to me-”

“No,” she said.  “This is not one of those times.  This is no questions.  This is the most important thing I've ever asked you to do.” 

I usually love the drive between our houses on the suburban plains east of Castlerock.  There are no streetlamps and when the moon is huge like this the whole world is rolling in soft silver, but tonight I hardly noticed.  I checked my phone for the time; it was 7:40, and I would have to start back at 3:00 AM to get here in time to let her out of her shed at the appointed time of 4:22. The rest of the drive I spent worrying about whether to call mental health services or her fiance, and about emergency cat boxes.  Although the territorial killing machines were now calm and quiet in their carriers, I cooed and talked soothingly to them.  Or was it to myself?

Lauren's voice on speaker was ragged.  “Jordan,” she said. “What?”

“Um.....I think something is going on with Camille and I should tell you-” I was wrestling with the bag of cat litter.

“So. Talk.”

“I think something's going on. Something really wrong,” I finally got the bag open.

Silence.

“Lauren, are you OK?”

“Not really,” she said with an odd brightness, “Camille broke up with me...” she trailed off, then, “...a few hours ago.”

“What?”  They had been engaged for three years.  They had been looking at properties.

“She broke up with me. In a fucking text,” Lauren said. “So, am I OK? No. Not really. And it's not really any of your business," she'd been speaking long enough that I could detect a slight languor, a slight slur. "So, I don't really care what's wrong with her right now. I'm going to finish this nice bottle of Merlot and maybe drink another one and then I'm going to bed. So, goodbye."

“OK.”

“Hey, Jordan!”

I waited.

"It's not you, is it?"

"Me?"

"Are you-have you guys-"

I laughed. "No." I said, "Still straight."

"Huh. Yeah. OK." then, cheerily, "Fuck off anyway, would you?" She hung up.

It was completely dark when I stumbled across Camille's backyard, viciously bruising my shin on one of her concrete Buddhas, to find her shed.  I sat in the grass with my back against the door of the shed and listened.  I respected the appointed time she had given me to let her out, even if I didn't understand it, but that didn't mean I was going to leave her alone. I couldn't sleep anyway, after locking my best friend in her shed (was she crazy, or was I?) so I wrapped my fleece jacket tight around me and tried to sleep. 

Memories scuttled over the surface of my mind in half-sleep. Shortly after the baby started to show, the mean girls at school had cornered me in the back of the room after class and poked me with pencils, taunting me with some joke about getting poked. Camille had stepped into the circle and with a slow, low voice talked about lead poisoning and law suits and how many of them were perfect anyway? When I graduated a year later (and a year late) Camille had sat proudly beside me at commencement, leveling her gaze at anyone who shot me so much as a disapproving sneer.  She had backed me up many times at the risk of her own standing, but standing up to people was like breathing to her. Camille's natural moral authority was irresistible and made her all the more likeable.  She was smart and calm.  Even with teachers.

I woke up to what sounded like a labored snoring through the wall, and I knew from decades of sleepovers that Camille didn't snore.  And it had started to rain.  I turned on my phone; the light from the screen pierced the darkness and blinded me.  3:55.  I couldn't deal anymore.

I banged on the shed door.  “Camille?”

“Hey, Jordan.” she sounded awake, more awake than I was.

“I'm letting you out.”

“Thanks, honey.” she threw her arms around my neck and then stood back, smiling up at the rain.  “God, you're an amazing friend.  You must think I'm insane.  You didn't call anyone, right?”

“I did call Lauren.”

“Oh,” it almost sounded like “Ow,” with a trailing drawl on the word. “Did she bite your head off?” She steadied me and started leading me across the yard.  She seemed very alert; I was stiff and cold from the ground, and tired.

“Just a little." 

“I owe you,”  A car went by on the street, headlights sweeping the yard and across Camille's face, briefly lighting up her eyes, which reflected the light like a raccoon's. 

I stumbled.  Did I see that?  Had I imagined it?  I must have imagined it-my eyes were still throbbing from turning on my phone in the dark.  She pulled me up. 

“You don't owe me anything,”  I said.

“I have two brains now.  Two minds.  I don't know," Camille said, two weeks later.  She played absently with a feather on a string on the couch between us-one of Bodi's toys.  She hadn't even asked about her cats.  “It's like everything I know, the whole world, looks completely different to me half the time.”

"What looks different?" I said.

"Humanity. That idea of humanity and why we don't have any. Why we prey on each other, turn on each other. Why people break up. Why friendships break up. Why can't we all be like war buddies and always keep our alliances, always stick by each other? What is wrong with primates?"

“Primates?”

“Humans! Us! The hatred we have for our own kind. The way we betray each other. We're a failure of nature,” Camille stopped, dragging air through her nose and mouth like a lioness. "You want a burger?" she blurted, jumping off the couch and heading for her kitchen.

“You?” I said. “At 10:00 AM?” I followed her.

“Why is it that people have all these rules about eating? That's another stupid thing.”

Camille pulled a knife from the rack and spun it in her hand; I noticed now that the horrible Goth manicure was gone. I opened the fridge, which always looked like it rightfully belonged to a biologist-Mason jars stuffed full of of herbs with their stems in water, more jars full of various sprouts, bottles of her home-made probiotic brews with particles of mysterious primordial living things swishing in the bottoms, and vegetables with the leaves and roots left on from the farmer's market, scattering soil. All the jars were gone, all the greenery was gone, replaced by stacks of neat, paper-wrapped packages with writing on them.

“Safe to say you're not a vegetarian anymore?”

Camille laughed. She tapped a spoonful from a jar of lard into the hot pan. "Toss me a pound of the bison!"

I did. She tore it open with her teeth, made two patties and threw them in the pan. She was left with a small handful of ground meat which she began chewing. Blood ran down her wrist and over the tasseled bracelet of wooden prayer beads.

My heart wasn't hammering, just thudding. A heavy thud.

Camille made a happy guttural sound as she turned one burger and flung the other onto a plate, raw side up. She looked up at me, stopping to stare at my expression, and her smile fell.

She set the plate on the counter. She looked at her hand. She bent and began to sob, gripping the counter edge behind her as blood dripped down the cabinets. I turned off the burner and put my arms around her.

"What's happening to me?"

"I don't know," I said. “Camille-what happened up there, in Laramie?

"I'm losing myself!" she broke loose and circled the kitchen. "I ended my engagement! I haven't been to work in a week!  I'm losing it all. I'm losing my life, me!” With her clean hand she was gripping a handful of her mane of fine hair, that hair guys would reach for in line at Starbucks. She had always been nice to them about it, choosing to see it as a compliment and then quietly instructing them about manners and respect in her soft, liquid voice, in a way that made them blush and try to buy her coffee as an apology. I wondered what would happen to one of those guys this morning. “Who even am I?" she said.

"We're in our forties," I said, "Change of life stuff? It can get weird."

She stopped pacing and stared at me with her head lowered. "Maybe," she said, relaxing. "Yeah. Maybe it's something like that,"  But another expression ghosted across her features, mocking and feral.  As if, inside, something was laughing.

“I need to ask a big favor,” said her text. I sighed, sitting back on my couch.  Camille seemed to have forgotten about her cats, who still lived here.  It was an inconvenient situation and I had been waiting for her to bring it up. 

“What's that?” I texted back.

“Go camping with me.”

I hate camping.  She knows I hate camping.  Things might be crazy for her right now, but I had gone through my divorce only a few months ago and I wanted to see every chick flick I'd missed for twenty years and catch up on the latest culinary trends in chocolate, not flick bugs out of my coffee while freezing my butt on a log. 

“No crazy back country stuff.  Just car camping. Please.”

Please?  That was a very strong word between us. 

“When?  For how long?”

“Can we leave Friday afternoon and come back Saturday? Then you won't even have to find a cat sitter and I promise I'll find homes for them when we get back.”

Headlines scrolled through my mind: “Biologist Kills Friend and Then Eats Her in Wilderness” and “Innocent Camping Trip Turns Deadly.” I giggled madly. I had been watching TV shows like Deadly Females.  Was I going crazy too?  Maybe we both were. 

I stared at my phone for a while.  Then I replied. “OK.”

We drove north to Medicine Bow on a clear, shimmering September afternoon; we were speeding to get to the camp site before dark fell.  The moon began sliding up, big and red as a blood orange in your hand.

We pulled onto the dirt road and found the camp site marker just as shadows from the trees were creeping over us, swallowing us.  I was about to bolt from the car to grab the tent.  Camille put her hand on my wrist; she had gone back to the Goth manicure.  Her nails were thick, curved, realistic-looking claws. The moonlight glinted milkily on them, in stark contrast to her increasingly velvety  skin. Goosebumps sprang up under her hand as she held onto my arm, but it wasn't just the manicure. 

“My wild friend,” she said, “We've been friends for almost thirty years.  Did you know that?” she was staring through the windshield at the inky forest.

I swallowed.  “Yes.”

“You are the most loyal person I know.  You are the only person I know who has ever just accepted me as I am.  You always have and you always do.”

“You have always done that for me, too,” my voice and my skin were faintly quivering.

“I haven't been able to sustain another friendship like this.  That really means everything, you know, loyalty.  Not judging.  Sticking by someone.”

“Yeah,”  my fear began to soften. I cleared my dry throat. “I know. Camille,” I said, “It's going to be OK.  We all go through stuff.  We'll get through this, too.”

“See?” she said, “That's why we will always be friends. Even in a ridiculous world of roads and bridges and malls and shopping and crap none of us really need.  Even with all our gadgets and ideas and man-gods. Reality is not that. Life was never supposed to be that.  None of that's real.”

I was pretty sure I knew what she meant.

“So,” she began to sniff. Tears were making their way down her cheeks.  Her voice deepened.  “I'm asking you to forgive me.”

“There's nothing to-”

Her hand was heavier on my wrist.  Were the nails longer, more curved?

“I'm sorry,” Camille said.

She scratched me.