“—and they strangle their prey,” I’m saying as we step out of the forest and into the small gravel parking area at the Raccoon Hollow trailhead, where I suppress the urge to hug my car. “That’s fucked up, Silas. Any self-respecting animal would just bite their prey to death, but no. Snakes had to get weird about it.”
Silas is resting both his hands on top of his head, taking long, deep breaths.
“Not most snakes,” he says. “Most snakes just swallow their prey whole.”
“Which is also horrible,” I point out.
“Did you see that news article about a snake that swallowed—”
“No,” I say, holding out both hands and waving them. “No no no, no, no. I do not want to hear about this, and you know that.”
Silas gives me his best what, innocent old me? grin, which means that he knows he’s getting to me and he’s pleased with himself about it.
“I forgot how much you hated snakes,” he says, semi-apologetically as we walk to our cars. “I didn’t realize that seeing a few inches of one as it departed would bother you so much.”
“I almost stepped on it,” I say, leaning against my bumper. “And plenty of people hate snakes. You know who else hates snakes? Indiana Jones, and he punched a whole bunch of Nazis, so I’m in perfectly good company here.”
Silas opens his car, ignoring my snake rant, and pulls two big water bottles out, tossing me one. I catch it. It’s still ice-cold.
We chug water, both leaning against our cars, facing each other in silence, a nice breeze sifting through the trees, the sun on its way down, this side of the mountain in shadow.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes for a moment, and feel the cool air against my sweaty, sweaty skin.
It’s actually pretty nice. See? I love nature.
“I think it’s gonna storm,” Silas says, and I open my eyes again.
Just barely peeking over the leafy green ridge of the mountains behind us is a line of dark gray storm clouds, looking ominous.
“Looks like it,” I agree.
It’s late summer in the South, and that means thunderstorms. This week it’s been pretty much every day; it’ll be sunny until late afternoon, then storm like hell, then clear up right before nightfall. I kind of like it, to be honest, though I’m also glad that I’ll be safely in my car before the downpour starts.
“You heading back to town?” he asks.
“Eventually,” I say, pulling my phone out the running armband I had it in and turning it on. It’s close to six p.m., and I have no service.
I sigh.
“Does the ranger station down there still have Wi-Fi you can access from the parking lot?” I ask, opening my phone and hoping that while we were running, we ran through a patch of reception long enough to get email.
We didn’t.
“The ranger station has Wi-Fi?” Silas asks.
“Useless,” I tease him.
“I saved you from a snake. You’re welcome.”
“You’re the reason I nearly got killed by one in the first place,” I counter, shutting my phone off and drinking more water.
“I don’t think a king snake has ever killed a person before,” he says, grinning his I’m-bugging-my-little-sister-and-I-know-it grin. “They’re totally harmless.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” I point out.
“You need Wi-Fi for a gig?” he asks, pulling his keys out of his pocket and tossing them in the air
“Yeah, I just want to make sure my editor doesn’t need anything before she leaves for the day, and it’s forty-five minutes back home,” I say, and Silas just nods.
I don’t mention that “my editor” is actually just Madison, a twenty-two-year-old who’s in charge of the OMG section of hypefeed.com, and my gig is actually a list titled Ten Celebrity Dogs So Cute You’ll Hurl.
It paid. It was something to do, and frankly, at this point in my unemployment I’ll take just about any journalism-adjacent freelance work I can find, hurling or no.
“Cool,” he says, and opens his car door again, tossing the now-empty water bottle onto his passenger seat. “Same time again tomorrow?”
I don’t respond immediately.
“Call it aversion therapy,” he says.
“I’m not averse to nature,” I protest, still leaning against my car. “I’m just not used to it.”
“We’ll have you going on week-long backpacking trips in no time,” he says. “You’re gonna poop in the woods like a champ. Face down a black bear with nothing but a pocketknife and your wits.”
“Well, now I’m averse to it,” I say, and Silas just laughs.
Then he rubs his hand on my head, pulling my baseball cap askew.
“Dammit,” I mutter.
“See you tomorrow, Bug,” he says, and gets into his car. I pull my car key out of the tiny pocket I stashed it in and follow suit, dropping into my driver’s seat like a ton of bricks.
“I should’ve gotten really into wine or something,” I say out loud to myself, leaning my head back against the driver’s seat. “Next reinvention, wine. And cheese.”