Bear Heart's Captive

Chapter 3: Hotel Time

We had to stay a night in Denver because my cheap-o father didn't want to buy one-way tickets to North Dakota. You'd think we were going somewhere exotic. I wish.

Mom had arranged for a moving company to drive the trucks full of our stuff, and my parents' cars, to our new home, while we stayed in a hotel near Sitting Bull College and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. (The college was technically in North Dakota, even though the reservation was a small territory that spread across North and South Dakota.) That way we could return the peace pipe right away, which wasn't a horrible deal. We would only need to drive a rental back to our new house when it was all said and done.

Once in North Dakota, the shuttle took us to our hotel, and I collapsed on a bed by the window. At least Adam and I had our own room and a queen bed for each of us. There was a heavy-duty door that connected our room to our parents' suite. I made sure to deadbolt it right away. I was not in the mood to have Mom barging in on our peaceful TV time.

I flipped through the channels, trying to find something decent to watch, and Adam sat on the windowsill and unrolled a plastic baggy. He opened the window before patting down his pockets in search of what I could only assume was a lighter.

"You didn't," I scolded with a subtle smile. I never smoked, never felt compelled to inhale the putrid smell of skunk, but I was amused, to say the least. "Mom's gonna flip if she smells that, Adam. You know she hates it."

He put a joint to his lips and laughed through the open corner of his mouth. "Nah, she asked me to smuggle some extra for her. She's really getting into this Native American stuff, you know."

"Shut up, you idiot. They smoked tobacco." I knew my parents were sleeping, but my mother was like some kind of possessed bloodhound when it came to Adam's hobby, which was probably the only point of tension between the two.

Adam blew a smoke ring and giggled with delight. "Finally! I've been working on that. Charli, you just witnessed my first smoke ring!"

I stared at my brother, bored. "Shall I notify the press?"

"Please do."

"And are you kidding me? I thought smoke rings were, like, mandatory skills of all stoners."

Adam straightened his back with eyebrows raised. "Stoner? I am not a stoner! I enjoy a little medicinal marijuana from time to time, but to place labels is just downright indecent of you."

His indignation was a half-hearted attempt, and I laughed until the shuffle of feet in the next hotel room made us catch our breaths. He smothered the jolly green with haste and fanned the excess smoke out the window. I did what any supportive sister would do: I laughed even harder.

"You're so busted! The smell of it calls to her..."

"You want to help me?!" Adam was actually frantic, and I felt a little bad. "Divert the beast... Please, Charli!"

"Oh, all right." I huffed as I spilled from the squeaky bed. "Should I open with a puppet theatre or were you going for something less provocative?"

"Tell her you want to play scrabble or something—anything!"

I sighed and went into the hall to knock on my parents' door, knowing Adam didn't want them to open the adjoining one. I tapped my knuckles on the cheaply painted wood and hoped they weren't awake until mom answered, blinking her swollen eyes at the light flooding over her from the hall.

"Hey," she said, her lips pealing apart as she spoke. "What is it, Sweetie?"

I'd forgotten to think of something to say. I pretended to yawn.

"I can't find my toothpaste. Can I borrow yours?"

Her purple nightgown with the dancing chickens disappeared into the darkness and I followed behind, mindful as I closed the door. The television flickered light across my father's sleeping face, illuminating his open mouth as he rumbled in his sleep like a temperamental volcano. When Mom came back with the toothpaste, she sniffed the air with disgust.

"Ugh, do you smell that? Oh, no. Tell me it's not Adam..."

"No, it's not. But I smelled it in the hall when I knocked on your door. It probably seeped in here from somewhere else."

"Oh. Oh, ok."

She bought it, and I shifted with discomfort. I hated having her trust when it wasn't entirely appropriate, but I justified it with the whole not-wanting-to-go-to-North-Dakota-in-the-first-place thing.

I snuck a peek of my mom. An awkward silence loomed between us. Even if we did fight a lot, it was rare for it to last this long. Honestly, it was getting old.

"Well, thanks." I turned to leave. But, hell, I was also stubborn.

"Charli, wait! I wanted to show you something..." She reached into her bag for the blanket roll and pulled out the peace pipe. She took a deep whiff from the hole at the end of the pipe, before sticking it under my nostril. "Smell. It still smells like tobacco after all these years! Isn't that amazing?"

I took a cautious sniff and found the pungent aroma infiltrating my senses. A subtle dizzying, yet wonderful, feeling trickled throughout my body. My hand wandered up to touch the smooth object, but Mom was oblivious to the attempt and she stowed it away in her bag.

I thought I fell to sleep thinking about Caleb that night, but my vivid dreams left no room for him there...

I limped through an endless sea of yellow grass, a wound in my leg gushing blood. Spurred by its scent, a hunter lurked in the waving stalks, moving ever closer for the kill. Even though I stood in the center of a prairie, I could see the ocean and my whales breaching in the distance. I reached for them, begging for them to hear me and save me from the hunter. They were just too far. My leg gave out from the loss of blood and pain and I crawled through the grass on my elbows, the sound of ragged breathing getting louder behind me. In a dark moment, I succumbed to the notion that I was no match for the terrible being and fell onto my tear-ridden face to accept my fate. I thought it was going to kill me until I wrapped my fingers around something firm in the dirt and the hunter disappeared.

The room was stuffy when I sat up in bed, panting with heat and fear. Adam was asleep with the TV on and a bag of chips cuddled beside him, his thick fingers wrapped around the plastic. I considered waking him to hear a human voice, to erase the eerie sounds from my dream; I couldn't. It took a long time for me to fall back asleep, knowing I might return to that place.