Ezra Moss's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ezra Moss pointed at the empty snow outside the general store and said, "It's right there." Three men on the longhouse porch laughed. One of them, the postmaster, mimed lifting binoculars. Ezra kept his arm up. The bear stood forty paces off, white with a wet shimmer of color running along its flank, close enough that he could count the black pads on its feet. No one else saw it. They never did. He was eleven years old, swallowed by his father's parka, and he had spent the whole winter trying to make one adult believe him. He needed a picture. A picture would end the laughing. His mother's camera had gone to the pawnshop in October with her wedding ring, and the school's tablet stayed locked in the principal's desk. Ezra had asked. The principal had said no and written his mother a letter. The bear turned its head. Ezra ran. He cut behind the timber longhouse where the snow was packed hard, then across the flat toward the little sod cottage at the edge of the ice. A girl was crouched by its door, prying at the frozen latch with a screwdriver. She wore a dented bike helmet and thick glasses fogged at the edges. Her bike lay on its side in the snow. He had seen her at school. Ellie Nash. She was in the grade above him and had punched a ninth grader in October. "Move," she said, not looking up. "Door's stuck." "There's a bear behind me." She looked up then. Not at him. Past him. Her mouth opened a little. She pushed the glasses up her nose and kept staring at the tundra where the bear stood watching them both. "The white one," she said. "With the colors in it." Ezra's throat closed. "You see it." "I see a lot of things." She tapped the frame of her glasses once. "Since I got these." She stood up. The screwdriver hung in her fist. "How long has it been following you?" "Since November." "Anyone believe you?" "No." "Figured." She watched the bear a moment longer. It lowered its head and walked a slow arc around them, leaving no prints. "It doesn't sink into the snow," she said. "You noticed that?" He nodded. He had noticed on the first day and told no one, because that part sounded worse than the rest. "A picture won't work," Ellie said. "I've tried. Things like that don't show up on film." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "You need a person. A grown one, with something to lose if they lie." The bear stopped. It looked straight at Ezra, then at Ellie, then walked into the wind and was gone. Ezra stood in the snow with his arm finally down. For the first time all winter, someone had seen what he saw. And the plan he had carried since October, the picture that would fix everything, was dead in his mouth.