Squirm

Billy arrives in Bozeman, where he is met by a young man who has been paid to drive him to the town where his father lives. Billy is eager to see a grizzly bear, but his escort says that many locals have never seen one. In a small house in Livingston, Billy is greeted by a 14-year-old Indigenous girl named Summer Chasing-Hawks. She belongs to the Crow tribe and explains that her mother married Dennis Dickens years earlier. She explains that Dennis is currently traveling for work and is part of a government security force that uses drones. Billy finds the information suspicious but doesn’t voice his concerns. Summer’s mother is a professional trout guide for sportsmen who catch and release their fish. At the moment, she is out floating a party of fishermen on the Yellowstone River.

The two teens wait for her to return home before starting supper. As they chat, Billy learns that Summer is the person responsible for sending the monthly support check to his family. Dennis has put her in charge of this job because she is very reliable, and he is so often absent that he cannot handle the paperwork himself. Billy also finds this arrangement odd. He asks Summer about the wildlife in Montana, specifically about bald eagles, since his mother is obsessed with them. Summer claims that Montana has bald eagles and golden eagles, too. Billy hopes to send a picture home to Chrissie.

Later that evening, Summer’s mother arrives. Her name is Little Thunder-Sky, but everyone calls her Lil. She makes dinner and explains that she and Dennis met when his drone crashed into the roof of the family trailer while she and Summer were still living on the reservation. When Dennis came to retrieve his aircraft, he struck up an acquaintance with Lil and eventually proposed to her. The entire family moved into his house in town, and Dennis has since put the property in Lil’s name.

The next day, Lil takes the two kids out on the river for a day of fishing. Billy is impressed by the beautiful scenery and the Montana wildlife. When the group returns home, they find a state trooper waiting. Apparently, the truck that Dennis drives was found abandoned near Tom Miner Basin, a remote area bordering Yellowstone National Park. The truck has been sitting there for a week with its tires slashed. Lil promises to bring spare tires to the vehicle the following morning. The trooper advises contacting the sheriff if Dennis doesn’t get in touch soon.

Billy reflects on everything he knows about his father. His mother says that Dennis is from South Florida, and they met when Dennis was working at a shoe store called Foot Locker. He is the one who showed Chrissie her first eagle nest and inspired her lifelong interest in bird-watching. After she and Dennis got married, Dennis followed a peculiar habit of quitting a string of different jobs, always on a Thursday, claiming that he felt stifled and couldn’t breathe. After seven years of marriage, Chrissie told her husband to settle down. He then quit the marriage, also on a Thursday. After the divorce, Chrissie was baffled when monthly checks began arriving in the mail. Now, Billy thinks, “The older I got, the more I wondered about my father—where he’d gone and why he’d left. Was he running from us, or searching for something?” (41).

The next morning, Lil, Summer, and Billy pick up some spare tires and travel to Tom Miner Basin. There, they find the truck, but not Dennis. Instead, a rattlesnake is sunning itself nearby. Showing no fear, Billy approaches the snake and gets it to move away. While Lil and Summer replace the slashed tires, he follows a path into the woods, hoping to find a clue to his father’s whereabouts. Summer advises Billy to make noise so as not to startle any grizzly bears that might be nearby. Billy moves further into the woods, expecting the other two to follow him, but they don’t.

Billy continues his trek until he comes to an open meadow, where he stops to rest. Suddenly, he hears the sound of a drone approaching. Realizing that it must belong to his father, he begins to signal wildly. The drone drops a note wrapped around a rock. The note reads, “Billy, please get away from here as fast as you can. I’ll explain everything later, when I see you. Love, Dad P.S. I apologize for all the lost years. Be sure to tell your sister, too” (53). Furious at the remote response, Billy stalks away in the opposite direction and loses his way. He accidentally stumbles across the path of a mother grizzly and her two cubs. As he registers the shock of the encounter, the bears slip away into the woods.

When Billy makes it back to the road, the truck and Lil’s car are both gone. He starts walking back toward Livingston, and a park ranger slows briefly to tell him that shots have been reported in the area. A few minutes later, Lil and Summer arrive. They claim to have been searching for Billy all this time, but they were unable to find him because he came out of the woods at a different exit point. He tells them about the disappointing note from his father. Lil says that Dennis called her from his satellite phone to say that he can’t leave his post yet but will explain everything when he gets home. Billy isn’t mollified by his father’s apology and suspects that his story about undercover surveillance is a lie.