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The surveyor’s stake punches through the frostbitten earth like an accusation, its red plastic ribbon fluttering in the January wind like a tiny, triumphant flag. It lands dead-center in the rabbit pen—a slapdash rectangle of chicken wire and scrap wood that Gordie and Chris cobbled together last summer behind Gordie’s garage. Rabbit, a twitchy brown doe with ears that droop at the tips, huddles in the far corner, her nose quivering at the intruder.
"Yours?" Chris kicks the stake, his breath clouding between them. The cold sharpens the edges of his voice.
Gordie’s mittens tighten around the survey map, which is flapping in his grip. "Says county land."
"Cripes." Chris spits, the wad of it freezing before it hits the dirt. "Since when?"
That’s the trouble—neither knows. Rabbit’s pen straddles the LaChance property line, a fact that never mattered until now. Chris, twelve years old and already tired of adults drawing lines in his life, jabs a finger at the map. "Your dad’s gotta fix this."
"My dad?" Gordie’s laugh cracks. "He hasn’t looked at me since Denny—" He stops, throat working.
Rabbit thumps a warning against the plywood floor. They argue in circles, voices rising with each pass: about property taxes Chris’s drunk dad never paid, about Gordie’s old man forgetting his own driveway ends. Rabbit’s water dish freezes over. The boys don’t notice. Night falls early in winter. By the time Chris ducks under the sagging wire to retrieve her, the pen’s empty—just claw marks in the snow leading toward the railroad tracks.
Silence. Then, a howl rises from the woods. Not human, not quite. Chris takes off running, Gordie at his heels. Branches whip their faces raw. They find her halfway up a pine, trembling on a branch too thin to hold her. Chris swears, Gordie pleads, but Rabbit only stares past them, wild-eyed at the survey line cutting through her world. The branch snaps. Chris catches her mid-air, their combined weight sending him skidding into Gordie. They land in a heap, Rabbit squirming between them, warm and alive.
Gordie’s voice is small. "We’re idiots."
Chris doesn’t argue. He presses his forehead to Rabbit’s twitching spine and howls—half relief, half promise—into the freezing dark.