‘Does that hurt from the rifle?’ he asks. I nod. He looks down at the bow in his hand. ‘Have you ever shot a bow and arrow?’
‘No,’ I say, perking up. Finally, something to do other than stare awkwardly at each other. ‘Are you offering to teach me?’
‘Yeah.’ He grins.
I stand up. ‘Let’s go,’ I say.
He leads me off the trail and into the undergrowth. We talk more freely now that we’re moving.
‘My dad was a doctor. He got turned off by the hypocrisy of Western medicine and the parasitical pharmaceutical companies and started studying Eastern traditions and philosophy.’
I love how he uses ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘parasitical’ as if they were facts and not a matter of opinion. He’s second-generation self-righteous. It’s not annoying because he isn’t trying to be inflammatory. It’s just all he knows.
‘Is that how he met your mom?’ I ask, remembering that his mom was a philosophy professor.
Bo looks back at me and smiles. ‘Yeah. They met at Berkeley when my dad was getting his second PhD.’
‘Wow. Smart,’ I mumble under my breath. ‘Do you go to school?’
‘Our parents are our teachers,’ he says tightly, speaking for himself and his siblings.
‘Oh. And how is that? Being home-schooled?’ I ask.
He stops and comes back towards me. ‘They’re really good teachers. I can go to any of the best colleges if I want.’
He’s offended. I realize he must think I was making fun of him for being home-schooled.
‘I think it’s amazing your parents cared enough to be your teachers,’ I say. He
still looks wary and defensive. ‘My parents couldn’t even be bothered to teach me how to drive, and I can’t get into any colleges, let alone the best ones.’
He frowns at me, but his eyes are soft. ‘Why can’t you get into college?’
I said too much. I don’t want Bo to know all the horrible things I’ve done yet. I push past him, into the undergrowth. Not that I know where I’m going. Bo eases his body through the tangled vegetation, and in three steps he’s in front of me, blocking my path. He’s so close, he’s practically touching me, but I don’t mind.
‘Why won’t you get into college?’ he repeats. His face is so honest and open. Like mine isn’t.
‘Because I was stupid and selfish and I thought I was smarter than everyone else and I thought I could get away with pretending to be a better person than I was actually willing to be,’ I say in a rush. ‘I ruined my life, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.’
I’m two seconds away from crying. I cross my arms and take a few breaths to calm down. Bo backs up, giving me space. He doesn’t try to tell me that I’m not a bad person or that I couldn’t possibly have ruined my life or any of the other empty platitudes a stranger would usually feel compelled to say. He’s not trying to force me into his idea of me. He’s just letting me be who I am and feel what I feel. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that for me before. Socially, he’s awkward as hell, but he’s probably the most emotionally intelligent person I’ve ever met.
I look up at him, and I don’t have to force a smile. I don’t have to force anything with Bo.
‘So, how far do we have to go to get to this archery lesson you’re supposed to be giving me?’ I ask.
‘We’re here,’ he says.
I look around and realize we are on the edge of a small glen where a giant has fallen. A great, mossy log lies across the centre of the opening in the canopy, and light fills the narrow stretch of forest floor. Saplings are already trying to beat their neighbours to the sun, but I can see that deer have been at them, keeping this space open with their nibbling.
‘I come here to hunt sometimes,’ Bo tells me. ‘Deer like the grazing.’
I think of Bo running after that deer, and I try to imagine what it would be like to chase down something and kill it with my bare hands. There is something so intimate about it – the hunter and the hunted. It’s a relationship. I mean, I eat meat. But I never knew it first.
Though, now that I consider it, I think Bo’s way is more caring than mine. It seems gentler to me to kill something myself than to have a dead animal passed to me through a fast food window. Bo’s way is cleaner, somehow. I want to be clean again.
‘Do you eat what you hunt?’ I ask as nonchalantly as I can, although this is the first time those words have ever crossed my lips.
Bo gives me an odd look. ‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘My family uses every part of the animals we take from the forest.’