You'll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

“Hm.” Karin wasn’t sure how she felt about this. Maybe it would be more interesting to be at home, where they had a comfortable couch, and Nickelodeon. Where her mom could make them popcorn while they were waiting. “Can’t we put out treats for them or something? I have yogurt bars.”

Her father laughed, his eyes flashing with pride. “I guess I’ve raised a city girl,” he said. “But we can still fix that.”

Karin didn’t like the sound of this. She opened her sequin-covered backpack and took out her journal, to start writing in it.

“That’s a good thing to do,” said her dad, “but first I want to teach you how to breathe while we’re waiting.”

“Um, Dad, I already know how to breathe.”

“Of course you do, but I’m going to show you how to breathe a special way, so you don’t scare the deer away,” he said, adding, “so they’ll come faster.”

Karin put down her journal and pen. “If you think it’ll help.”

Breathing for deer meant mostly breathing through your nose, really slow and really deep, it turned out. Like what they had to do in yoga classes with her mom. She found it kind of hard. Her dad kept saying, “Even slower.” Until she felt like she might actually stop breathing if she slowed down any more. After a while, he told her she’d “mastered it!” So they sat as still as possible and breathed for a while like they didn’t exist at all.

They sat there for almost an hour like that. Hidden by the rock, glancing over into a clearing, waiting for the deer and making no sound. But then her legs started to cramp up and she felt like telling her father that she was bored, she wanted to go home. Karin started wiping the dirt off her legs and was getting ready to stand up.

And just as she very nearly revealed herself and ruined everything, she saw it, there in the distance, a single red deer. She crouched back down and tapped her father, who was already snapping away. “That’s a hind,” whispered her father. “A female. She won’t travel alone. There will be more.” He added, “If we keep still.”

He was right: a few minutes later, another hind came out from the wooded area, and then another and another. “Now, wait for the stag,” he said. “He’s got to herd his harem.”

Karin had to stifle a laugh. “Harem?”

“Shhhhh,” her father said gently.

That was also true. There were six or seven hinds grazing around the edge of the clearing when the stag came—a really big deer with a set of giant antlers like a tree on his head. He seemed like a king there. All the hinds glanced up. The antlers were crazy big—like almost bigger than his body—and covered with a soft kind of downy felt that Karin wished she could touch.

“Just wait,” her father told her, ever so quietly. Suddenly another stag appeared. He was larger than the first one, but he had only one antler, on the left side of his head. “Drama,” her dad whispered as he very slowly put down one camera and picked up another. Karin tried to remember how to breathe, but she found herself gasping.

The second stag let out a roar, like a real roar, like a lion. Karin didn’t even know they could do that. Then it kind of jolted up onto its hind legs, to standing, like a man. The first stag jumped up on his back legs too. It was so crazy, like playing chicken. They both used their front legs to whack, to try to knock the other over. They got closer and then locked horns. The first stag, the one all the girls liked, just smashed into the second, the one with the single antler, and knocked him down. He found his footing and got up quickly and started to run off, but his remaining antler just toppled off his head like a fallen crown. Then he disappeared into the woods.

Karin’s heart was beating fast. That was nuts, what she’d just seen. She couldn’t believe it. In spite of herself, and everything she had been taught, she let out a whooping yell, like her team had won a football match. “Whoaah!” she cried. And of course all the deer looked at her, in a split second, and then instantly, like in a puff of smoke, ran off.

“Karin!” her father had said in a tone of serious disappointment. “You had to?”

Karin’s father faded and disappeared in the bushes as she realized that she hadn’t heard Lotte’s voice in a while. “Lotte?” she called out, looking around and seeing that it was suddenly dark, suddenly really nighttime. That was odd. “Lotte? Lotte don’t go too far ahead of me!”

But there was no answer. “Huh?” Karin said out loud, but to herself. Because nobody else was there. “Okay, Lotte, this really isn’t funny. It’s kind of scary out here. I’m not really feeling like playing games.”

Still no answer. The trail ahead was empty, the side-stroking trees around her just as creepy. Behind her, no sign of movement. “Lotte, this is seriously not cool!”

Dead silence.

Why would Lotte run off ahead of her? Or could she have fallen behind? How did Karin lose track of her—just because she drifted off into memories? Where could Lotte have gone? It just didn’t make any sense.

There was a curve in the path, and a hill not far from where she was walking. She decide to climb up the slope so that she could get a better vantage. “Lotte? Are you there?” she called out, stepping up a sandy embankment. No answer at all.

She hadn’t been going that slow. At the top of the hill, she looked out over the landscape, the mounds of earth that looked like sand dunes, the patches of dry grass, the stumpy trees now looking like they were making fists with their fingers. Mean trees. Angry trees