In the Wild Light Read online

  ALSO BY JEFF ZENTNER

  The Serpent King

  Goodbye Days

  Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2021 by Jeff Zentner

  Cover art copyright © 2021 by Connie Gabbert

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Zentner, Jeff, author.

  Title: In the wild light / Jeff Zentner.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Crown, 2021. | Audience: Ages 14 & up. | Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: Attending an elite prep school in Connecticut on scholarship with his best friend (and secret love) science genius Delaney Doyle, sixteen-year-old Cash Pruitt, from a small town in East Tennessee, deals with emotional pain and loss by writing poetry.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020038100 (print) | LCCN 2020038101 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-2024-7 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-2025-4 (library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-2026-1 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction. | Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.Z46 In 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.Z46 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524720261

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  Penguin Random House LLC supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to publish books for every reader.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Jeff Zentner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Fall

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Winter

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Spring

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Summer

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my mom and dad

  For Nellie Zentner (1921–2019), who showed me that someone could love me so much she would cry every time I would leave

  The human eye can discern more shades of green than of any other color. My friend Delaney told me that. She said it’s an adaptation from when ancient humans lived in forests. Our eyes evolved that way as a survival mechanism to spot predators hiding in the vegetation.

  There are as many tinges of understanding as there are hues of green in a forest.

  Some things are easy to understand. There’s a natural logic, a clear cause and effect. Like how an engine works. When I was eleven, my papaw pulled the engine out of his Chevy pickup and took it apart, letting me help him rebuild it. He laid the pieces out—reeking of dark oil and scorched steel—on a torn and greasy sheet, like the bones of an unearthed dinosaur. As we worked, he explained the function of each piece and what it contributed to make the engine run. It made sense, how he said it.

  He wasn’t sick then. Later, when he was, I understood that when he used to say Don’t nobody live forever when accepting another piece of his sister Betsy’s chess pie, that wasn’t just a phrase he used. That was when he still had an appetite.

  Now his appetite has moved to his lungs, which are always starved for air. His breathing has the keening note of the wind blowing over something sharp. It’s always there, which means he has something sharp inside him. People can’t live long with sharp things in them. I understand this.

  Some things I understand without understanding them. Like how the Pigeon River moves and pulses like a living creature, never the same twice when I’m on it, which is as often as I can be. Or how sometimes you can stand in a quiet parking lot on a hot afternoon and perfectly envision what it would have looked like there before humankind existed. I do this often. It bring
s me comfort but I don’t understand why.

  Other things I don’t understand at all.

  How Delaney Doyle’s mind works, for example. Trying to comprehend it is like trying to form a coherent thought in a dream. Every time you think you’re there, it blurs.

  You’ll be talking with her and she’ll abruptly disappear into herself. She’ll go to that place where the world makes sense to her. Where she sees fractals in the growth of honeysuckle bushes and elegant patterns in the seemingly aimless drift of clouds and the meandering fall of snowflakes. Substance in the dark part of flames. Equations in the dust from moths’ wings. The logic of winds. Signs and symbols. An invisible order to the world. Complex things make sense to her and simple things don’t.

  She’s tried to explain how her mind functions, without success. How do you tell someone what salt tastes like? Sometimes you just know the things you know. It’s not her fault we don’t get it. People still treat her like she’s to blame.

  Some aren’t okay with not understanding everything. But I’m not afraid of a world filled with mystery. It’s why I can be best friends with Delaney Doyle.

  A carload of girls from my high school is trying to exit out the entrance of the Dairy Queen. I pause to let them. Then I pull in, my lawn mower rattling in the back of my pickup—the same truck whose engine my papaw and I rebuilt.

  The early evening July sun blazes like bonfirelight on the hills behind the Dairy Queen. They’re a soft green, as if painted in watercolor. Gleaming soapsud clouds tower behind them. Delaney told me once that the mountains of East Tennessee are among the oldest in the world, but time has beaten them down. Sounds about right.

  Delaney stands outside, her shadow long and spindly against the side of the building. She’s wearing her work uniform—a blue baseball cap, blue polo shirt, and black pants—and holds a cup with a spoon sticking out of it. With her other hand, she twists her auburn ponytail and presses her thumb on the end, tufted like the tip of a paintbrush. It’s one of her many nervous tics.

  The expression on her face is one she often has—her eyes appear ancient and able to see all things at once, unbound through time and space. It’s what I imagine God’s face looked like before summoning the world out of the ether.

  If God were wearing a Dairy Queen baseball cap, I guess.

  I’m in no hurry, so I wait, out of curiosity. It takes longer than you’d think for her to notice I’m there.

  “It’s fine. I had no plans for my Saturday night but waiting in the DQ parking lot,” I say out my open window as she finally approaches. I try to play it straight-faced, but I never manage with her.

  She gets in, giving me the cup to hold while she buckles up. “You’re late.”

  “By like two minutes.” I go to hand her back the cup.

  She refuses it. “That’s for you. Started melting because you were late. Your punishment.”

  “Based on how close you were watching for me, you were obviously deeply concerned. Oreo Blizzard?”

  “Your favorite.”

  “Nice.” I take a bite and study her face for a moment. “How was work?”

  “You smell like gasoline and cut grass. Did you know the scent of mown grass is a distress signal?”

  “For real?”

  “It’s from green leaf volatiles. They help the plant form new cells to heal faster and stop infection. Scientists think it’s a type of chemical language between plants. So you’re covered in the liquid screams of grass you’ve massacred.”

  “I could’ve showered off all this grass blood before picking you up, but then I’d’ve been even more late.”

  “Didn’t say I minded,” she murmurs, not making eye contact. “Plant screams smell nice.”

  “You reek like french fries,” I say, leaning toward her and taking an exaggerated whiff. “The smell of french fries? Potatoes shrieking for their babies.”

  “I’ll slaughter some potatoes. I don’t care.”

  “You just gonna pretend I didn’t ask how work was?” I put my truck in gear and back out.

  She twists the end of her ponytail. “The Phantom Shitter struck again.”

  “The Phantom Shitter?”

  “Some dude who comes in once a week or so and absolutely wrecks the men’s room. No one ever sees him come or go. We’ve even checked security tapes. It’s a pooping ghost.”

  “Imagine dying and haunting the Earth and making it your mission to befoul the Sawyer Dairy Queen.”

  “Befoul. Where’d you get that word?”

  “Dunno. Besides the Phantom Shitter, how was work?”

  “Got in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Did an interview with NPR on my break and it went long.”

  “Damn, Red, getting even more famous.”

  “You too,” Delaney says with an impish smile.

  “What?” I ask around a spoonful of Blizzard.

  “I mentioned you.”

  “Hell you did.” I look at her, aghast.

  She smiles again.

  I shake my head. “ ‘I couldn’t have made this discovery without Cash Pruitt.’ That what you said? ‘No one else on planet Earth could have paddled me out to a secret cave along the Pigeon River so I could find some bacteria—’ ”

  “Mold.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Big difference biologically.”

  “Fine. ‘Mold that kills the nastiest bacteria.’ ”

  “Don’t forget driving me to Nashville to show my results to Dr. Srinavasan. Said that.”

  “Oh, right. No one else could’ve done that.”

  “No one else did do that. Anyway, yeah, that’s about what I said.”

  I wipe my hand down my face. “Lord above.”

  “Stop being dramatic.”

  I raise my index finger. “What’s the one thing you know about me?”

  “I know you asked me once if peanuts are a type of wood. No, they aren’t.”

  “That I like to earn what I get.”

  “Right. Cash Pruitt: famously a lover of earning.”

  “So you’re out there telling people I did something without me earning it.”

  “If it makes you happy, I still took credit for running the experiments and figuring out the mold’s antibiotic properties.”

  I lower the visor against the sinking sun. A ray catches a crack in the windshield and illuminates it, a tiny comet. I’ve always loved when the light finds the broken spots in the world and makes them beautiful.

  I glance over at Delaney. She’s turned inward, squinting her honey-colored eyes against the orange glare splashed across her pale skin, on the freckles that dot her nose and cheekbones like an atlas of stars. She brushes a stray piece of hair from her face.

  “Seems like you could get a better job than DQ now that you’re in the news and doing interviews on the radio,” I say.

  “It requires no mental energy, so I can think about other stuff and get paid for it.”

  “Your life. Wanna ride around some, then go watch Longmire with Pep?”

  “Can’t. Babysitting Braxton and Noah later,” Delaney says.

  “He’ll be bummed.”

  “Tell him I’m sorry and next time I come I’ll tell him about gympie gympie.”

  “The hell is that?”

  She always looks happiest right before she’s about to deliver some horrifying factoid about the natural world. She radiates pure joy now. “Australian shrub. Read about it last night. The leaves are covered in these little silica-tipped bristles—silica’s the stuff they make glass out of—and then these bristles deliver a neurotoxin that causes horrible pain for days, months, and even years. So if you brush up against it, the whiskers dig into your skin and the pain’ll be so intense it’ll make you puke.”

  “Good Lo
rd. That sounds like it came from outer space.”

  “As long as the hairs stay in your skin, the pain continues. It feels like being burned alive. They’re hard to remove, too. Your whole lymphatic system swells up. Armpits. Throat. Groin. It’s a nightmare.”

  “Why are you telling me about this?”

  “You’re constantly waging war against the plant world. Thought you might like to know they have a revenge weapon.”

  I point back over my shoulder at the lawn mower in my truck bed. “I mow lawns and trim shrubs. They grow the hell back. That’s like saying barbers are waging war on heads.”

  “There’s an apocryphal story about someone wiping their ass with gympie gympie leaves and…it didn’t end well. Get it? End.”

  “Please tell me apocryphal means ‘completely and entirely false.’ ”

  She cackles. “The gympie gympie’s gonna find you,” she says in a singsong voice.

  “Won’t.”

  “It’s gonna crawl up your ass. Give you gympie butt.”