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I was 13 when it happened and my brother Toby was 10.

I'm 16 now, so I know that probably makes me sound like I'm still a kid, and maybe I am.

But I'm old enough to understand when something from my childhood should have faded by now, and hasn't.

I remember a lot of normal stuff from when I was 13, like what shoes I wore to school,

what games I was into, and how I thought my hair looked good when it absolutely didn't.

Most of that stuff feels blurry and stupid now, but I remember that day in the National

Forest so clearly that sometimes it feels more real than what I did yesterday.

I remember the air before the rain. I remember the way Toby kept stepping on dry sticks and acting

like he wasn't. I remember the sunlight in that clearing, bright enough that there shouldn't have

been anything scary about it. And I remember the deer standing there with its jaw hanging

open, staring at us with tiny blue eyes that did not belong in the head of an animal. We lived

in a small town back then, the kind of place where everybody knew each other's trucks, and

half the kids had the same last names as streets, hills, or creeks. I'm not naming it because my parents would

lose their minds if they knew I was writing this, and also because I don't want people going

there because they think it's a cool, scary place to check out. It wasn't cool. It was just

...