After the Woods (14 page)

If Ricker won't deconstruct my memories, I will.

More Things I Know About Donald Jessup:

- Had two sleeping bags

- Said I was not her

- Gave me a head start

A shadow falls across my lap. I slap my notebook shut.

“Whoa. I didn't peek, I swear.” Kellan is bundled in a scarf and a hockey sweatshirt over oxford shirttails. He hooks his thumbs (always the thumbs) into his jeans pockets, kicking the air, looking out from under a fringe of ginger lashes. “Finger okay?”

“Fine. How did you know I was here?” I say. Smooth.

Kellan twists his sneaker (always the sneaker). “I may have stopped by your house.”

“Did I forget something again?” I can't act flattered, because I will humiliate myself. He's made it clear that I'm just a noteworthy oddity, with my misplaced freckles, ghostly complexion, and freakishly big feet. After transferring from private St. John's Prep to public Shiverton freshman year (an easy social transition, since he knew half the boys already from regional hockey teams), he could have scored any GIRL. He scored Liv. His latest dalliance, the GIRL with the Apple Face, looks like she should be milking a cow and wearing a skirt embroidered with bric-a-brac trim. What business does he have with an un-GIRL who slips in and out of the present on a daily basis and rocks a black thing in her belly?

Yet he does keep showing up.

“You didn't forget a thing. I just thought we'd add another episode to the show of your life,” Kellan says, his lip curled into a crooked smile.

“Is it going to get surreal?” I say.

“That depends. Do you consider a picnic dinner outdoors in November surreal?”

“Surreally? Where are we having it?” I ask, slipping off the bench.

“Over”—Kellan grabs my shoulders and faces me toward the gym—“there. But first you need to take this.” A bustle behind me, and then darkness as he yanks his thick hockey sweatshirt over my head. I yelp, flopping the sleeves that spill over my hands, and he pulls me along by the cuff, and I laugh, letting him lead as we wend between parked cars and Dumpsters until we enter a brand-new skate park.

Stretching his arms, he affects a formal, booming voice. “This is the set.”

He leads me to the center of the largest cement bowl. Someone has already defiled a wall with “Candy hearts Larry” in fresh white spray paint. He drops his backpack with a shifty thud and sits, pulling me down with him. Cold leaches through my jeans. I tug sweatshirt slack under my butt.

“An empty skate park,” I say, nodding, my lips tucked. “Charmingly weird.”

“I chose it because I wanted you to feel safe. Look around.”

We are surrounded by cement stairs, curbs, and half-pipes; lips, bowls, and banks.

“No trees,” I say softly.

“As man-made as it can get. Don't you see, Julia? I. Get. You.”

Silence settles between us. For once, I have absolutely no idea what to say. But I try: “What's in the backpack?”

He unzips his backpack and removes a block of cheese, a bag of grapes, a jar of fancy shriveled pickles, and a can of beer.

“Where did you get the beer?”

“The fridge. You don't have to drink it.”

“We can't sit in the middle of a public skate park and drink.”

“I know. It's for celebratory effect. Oh man, I forgot the knife. You won't mind gnawing the top off that cheese, will you?”

I hold the murky jar to the sky. “I don't mean to be rude, but what are ‘bitter gourdpickles'?”

“I'm not sure. I was rushed. I spent most of the morning scouting treeless locations. They call them leafy suburbs for a reason. Who knew the best one was right next door to your doc? Oh. I got you this, too.” He removes a dented brown cardboard box tied with twine and sets it on the ground proudly.

I stare at it.

“Are you going to open it?” he says, crossing his arms and patting them. “You know, not all of us have a nice thick Chieftains hockey sweatshirt.”

I untie the string and the box falls apart. Inside is a smooshed purple cupcake, the kind sold in an expensive bakery, with layers of frosting flowers now smeared on the box flaps.

“Aww, dang. It got banged up in the Jeep,” he says.

I stick a finger inside and scoop some frosting. “That is so good. Do you want some?”

“It's all for you.” Kellan cracks the beer and takes a sip, then tips the can to me. “You?”

“Nah.”

“Do you mind if I drink?” he asks.

“There are worse things.”

He grins and takes a long draft. “Steadies the nerves.”

“I count stars. Statistical probabilities. Whatever's convenient in the moment.”

He looks at me quizzically, then his eyes pop. “Oh hey, you're still cold! Come closer.”

The soft cave under his shoulder looks like a place I'd like to spend a while. I scoot closer.

“So. You said the beer was for celebratory effect. And a cupcake is, technically, cake. What are we celebrating?” I ask.

“I hadn't thought that one through. Again, working out the treeless angle just
consumed
me.” He takes another sip of beer. “When's your birthday?”

“May.”

“I'm February. That doesn't work. Wait. Aren't we coming up on the anniversary of the abduction?”

“November twenty-second.”

“Happy almost-abduction anniversary!” he says.

I stiffen, pretending to be furious. “That is so wrong. How dare you?”

I feel him hold his breath. Then I lose it and burst out laughing. Soon he's laughing too.

“I love that you want to celebrate the anniversary of my abduction,” I say. “Sorry: ‘the public's abduction' would be more accurate. And if we're getting all semantic, it's worth noting that ‘happy' is relative.”

“I'll rephrase: bittersweet anniversary!”

“Now that works. Bitter and sweet, like pickles and cupcakes. Because on the one hand, I got abducted. On the other hand: this.”

“I like this,” he murmurs.

Kellan's face is closer to mine than it's ever been. His nose might have been broken once. His ears stick out and his smile screws sideways into a dimple. Separately, his parts are oddball; together, they are devastating. Do I want to be devastated?

“But there's the question of cause and effect,” I say, pulling away. “Would ‘this' be happening if ‘that' hadn't?”

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“I just mean, your usual … interests … diverge from…”

“I'm not seeing anyone, Julia.”

“… me. Like Liv. She's someone I'd expect you'd be with.”

“You're still hung up on that one night with Liv? That was the littlest, nothing hook-up. I barely knew her.”

His face is open and honest. Relief sweeps over me like sweet air.

I sigh and relax. “I feel like I barely know Liv lately, either.”

“Because she's seeing that dirtbag Shane Cuthbert?” he asks.

“There's that.”

“Dr. Phil doesn't have me on speed dial, but did you ever think maybe Liv feels guilt over what happened in the woods? I mean, you sacrificed your life to save hers.”

I pull back, because his face distracts me from his words. “Say that again?”

“Maybe degrading herself by hanging around with a bottom-feeder like Cuthbert is the way Liv punishes herself for letting you take her place,” he says simply, taking a long sip.

A fullness. The feeling of backsweeping, a tide rolling out to reveal gifts.

He knocks back the last of the beer and rises to his knees, his arm arched gracefully toward a trash barrel five feet away, and pitches it into the can. It clatters inside, a perfect basket. “Hey, two points!”

I reach for his waist and pull him down fast. His eyes widen. I cup his cheeks and he makes a small groan as I pull him in to kiss.

“Cold lips,” he murmurs, his own lips curling to the right, aiming for that dimple.

“Suddenly I'm okay with cold. You're a really smart guy,” I add.

“You're a really beautiful girl,” he says.

“Lowercase letters.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“The blood in your cheeks makes you look so, I don't know. So alive,” he says.

“Staying alive is kind of my thing.” I rise on my knees and he rises too, and we kiss again, and instead of thinking about Liv or Shane or Apple Face, I taste the hops on his tongue, and think how I hate beer but I like this, and how good it is to taste again.

I weave my arm through his and fall against his shoulder. He strokes my hair lightly with the end of his fingertips, surreptitiously, like he thinks I don't notice.

Not only am I okay with the cold, I've become downright warm.

He sighs into my hair, and it's a vulnerable noise, and it sets me on fire. “Can I ask you one question that's been bothering me?”

I kiss him again, because none of this is real, it will shred and dissipate as soon as the black thing comes back, as soon as the memories return and the questions start.

“Just one question,” I murmur.

“Who's Alice?”

 

SEVEN

359 Days After the Woods

Deborah's eyes flash as I stop the door with my boot.

“I need to talk with Liv. It's really important. Do you know where she is?”

“I do not. But if you hear from her, you can tell her that her electronics privileges are rescinded for a month. She never considers what her disappearances with that orphan delinquent do to me. I've been distracted for the last hour and gotten nothing done.” Deborah charges back into the kitchen, shoulders scissoring as she stabs her phone, dialing. In seconds she's spelling “O-L-I-V-I-A” for some beleaguered church secretary type. As I turn to leave, she pokes her head back into the hall.

“Don't you go anywhere! I want to ask you some questions about that dope-smoking train wreck that Olivia…” she calls to me. “What?” she yells into the phone. “No, I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to Julia Spunk, you know who that is, I'm sure. There isn't a person in America who doesn't know Julia Spunk. Oh, now you can hear me!”

“I'll wait in Liv's room,” I say, slipping through the door, past the round entrance table, and mincing up the stairs. The dimpled glass knob on Liv's door squeals, announcing me as I step inside the airless bedroom. Filthy hoodies and yoga pants lie in heaps. The only movement is swirling dust motes in sunbeams filtering through the quarter-moon window. I look for a spot on the bed to sit, but the sheets are yanked clear back and sitting feels like a violation, so I stand. The closet door swings wide. Maybe I know where Liv is after all.

I stick my head in among the clothes. “Liv? It's Julia,” I whisper so harshly it burns my throat. “Are you in there?”

I tug the beaded lightbulb chain. Wool coats brush my cheeks as I feel for the panel to the secret eaves. I hold my breath and press, in and to the right. The panel slides open to darkness. I drop to my knees and crawl in, which feels safer. My fingers graze the metal Coleman camping lamp. I grope for the switch, hoping the lamp's batteries haven't leaked and corroded. The halogen tubes buzz and glow.

The eaves have always been the only place where we could go to escape Deborah's spying and listening. We'd crank the TV and slip into our soundproof hideaway, a deceptively large space inside the roof's overhang. Some days it was spy headquarters. One whole winter was spent playing squirrels. As the years passed, the eaves were where we snuck sips from a dusty bottle of Kahlua, practiced kissing the backs of our hands, and almost suffocated smoking our first butt. We'd drag in piles of Deborah's
Cosmopolitan
s and read aloud “How to Please Your Man” and sketch tattoos we'd get when we were eighteen. Absorbed by the antique Victorian, and with enough coats blocking our portal, we were invisible. Now a rough Mexican blanket and a pillow take the place of the glossy magazines. A laptop sits in the middle. The Coleman lamp, warmed now, purrs, and soft light reflects off fiberglass insulation padding the slanted walls, making the room warm and pink.

Pairs and pairs of eyes stare down at me.

Tacked to the exposed beams are a series of pictures, hand-drawn in charcoal with rips at the tops. There must be at least a dozen. I hold up the lamp: it's the same girl's face in every drawing. Her eyes are set back far, her lids are heavy. One eye is bigger than the other. The brows are mannish and unshaped. The nose is flat, the shape of the face an exaggerated heart, with a broad forehead and a weak chin. She smiles without showing her teeth.

Not a pretty face, but drawn lovingly. Instead of looking away, I'm drawn in.

In the first sketch, her hair is pulled back but for loose wisps. In a middle picture, her hair hangs around her face, drawn indecisively, as though the artist didn't have enough information. I raise the Coleman lamp slowly in front of the drawings. There is an order to things, an evolution of certainty about the subject. In the first, the girl is barely there, the eyes, nose, and mouth drawn as markers. In the second, the strokes are more confident, the lines of the jaw and the forehead more defined. By the third, the artist has begun shading under the eyes and around the cheeks. The next four focus on the mouth, capturing her slip of a smile, closed lips forcing lines into the cheeks and lifting the chin. By the eighth, the artist tries to get the hair right, but by the ninth, he or she has given up, drawing just a few suggestive strokes. The tenth is sure, the outline firm, the shading bold. The girl looks right through me, in this tenth sketch, with her Mona Lisa smile: the smile of a girl who knows someone loves her.

I lift the lamp close to the last sketch, a busy scene set in a forest, where trees lush with fruit hold birds with feathery tails. The girl is dressed like an ancient Greek goddess, with lace-up sandals winding around muscled calves and a short toga. Her waist is encircled in a belt that ends in a snake's head. She wears a crown of leaves, and has an impossible pin-up bod. She runs, looking over her shoulder with a smile of pleasure at a warrior-type guy, an arsenal on his back. His muscled arms pull back a bow, and his thighs bulge. Animals look on from above and below, way too interested.