After the Woods (15 page)

Why is Liv wallpapering our secret spot with soft-core porn for Dungeons and Dragons freaks?

I set the lamp down and kneel on the Mexican blanket. A pile in a spot just outside the circle of light catches my eye. I crawl closer. A stack of manila envelopes, tops torn open, the first covered in a fine dust. The envelopes are about the size of the sketches, and they are wrinkled and finger-stained in the manner of things that go through the mail. I lift one, blowing off the dust, which is thick and stubborn. The address is handwritten in careful lettering. “My Olivia,” it says above a post office box number in Shiverton. There are eleven envelopes.

The ceiling presses down on me, making it hard to breathe. I set the envelopes down on top of one another and wriggle, itchy all over. The film on the envelopes is fiberglass insulation dust, maybe. Or not. A familiar chunky numbness settles behind my tongue. I feel for a beam and hang on as my eyes fill with white.

*   *   *

A fallen tree, like the husk of a giant dead insect. I press my body inside. Rot snags my hair and scrapes my back. I tell myself I itch not from beetles or millipedes or pill bugs or any other insect that lives in this log, and there are worse things. Hours pass as I listen for a twig snap or the suction sound of boots in the mud. Black turns to purple. It is time to run.

*   *   *

Deborah's sharp consonants carry up the stairs, faint, but loud enough to break the seal. I cover my face with splayed fingers.

“No,” I gasp, hard, the command you give a disobedient dog. I spread my fingers and the white peels back, and I am here, back in the eaves, where I used to play.

Go. Now.

I switch off the lamp and pass through the panel door, batting coats aside for air. On the landing, I hear Deborah thank a harried school official.

“Julia?” she calls.

I thunder down the stairs, yelling, “Just tell Liv I stopped by, please!” She's screaming for me to come back as I tumble into the car, pressing the start button and miming through the window that I can't hear her, sorry, gotta run. I peel out in front of a minivan, leaving tire shred as the driver lays on her horn.

*   *   *

“You're home! How wonderful!” Mom yells, as though I've returned home from the war, or abroad, or college, all of which seem like better alternatives right now than dinner with the Mincae, for which it appears I am late. A dome of salmonella-white poultry sits in the lit oven. Mom looks at it with fear, then pulls herself away.

“I've been trying to reach you for hours,” she play-scolds, setting out a tray of sliced cheese. “Alice and Eleanor were able to come next door for dinner on short notice. Wonderful, yes-yes?”

Alice beams at me, dumbstruck in the back doorway. Mrs. Mincus casts a sly smile, like she knows about the sketches in Liv's eaves. Like she knows I was peeping at something vaguely dirty.

“Yes. Yes!” I say. “But I have to show you something funky my car is doing. Two seconds?”

“Just two,” Mom sings, following me out to the garage. The door shuts behind her, and I launch in.

“What would ever make you think it was a good idea—rephrase, appropriate idea—to invite Alice over? This is beyond weird, Mom.”

“Not just Alice. Her mother, too. It's been a long time. You were best friends. I really think you could use a friend in your corner right now, someone not connected with the incident. Dr. Ricker agrees. A new addition to your circle of trust, so to speak.”

“Yet another reason why I've recently ousted Dr. Ricker from my circle of trust. But apparently I don't need Ricker, because Alice is here to heal me with the balm of friendships past.”

“Sarcasm is not useful—”

“To my healing. Right,” I interrupt. “Well, you may have created this uncomfortable debacle, but we do not have to sit under your creepy microscope so you can supervise our playdate. I'm taking Alice out.”

Mom's pretty eyes pop.

“Leaving. Not killing. I'm
leaving
with Alice.”

Mom sighs, a ragged noise. “Fine. I'll catch up with Eleanor. You come back in an hour.” She turns to open the door to the kitchen and pauses. “Maybe more. I didn't time the chicken so well.”

“Did you remove the giblets?” I ask.

She presses her knuckle to her top lip.

“Just order takeout,” I say, sliding past her into the kitchen and tucking myself into my still-warm jacket. “Alice, c'mon. We're out of here.”

Alice pushes back her headband and leaps up. “Where are we going?”

“Running,” I say.

Mrs. Mincus buries her chin sideways into her chest, as if to say
You've got to be kidding
. I can't blame her, since running hasn't always turned out so well for me, but her expression is unflattering, and she should stop.

“Exercise. We'll run around the track.” Before Mrs. Mincus can excavate her neck and object, I slip back into the garage and jam the door opener with my fist, Alice chasing after me.

“But Julia, it's dark!” Alice cries.

“It's dusk. Dusk and dark are different. Know your gradations of black.” I slip into the driver's seat of my car. “Besides, the track is lit.”

“We're not dressed to run.”

“It's an excuse to get away from our mothers, Alice.”

“Right. Of course. So we can gossip.”

“Something like that.”

She slides into the passenger seat and takes a deep breath through her nose. “Mmm, new car smell.”

We drive across Shiverton proper in the waning late-autumn light, past mums lining walkways, past Saint Theresa's church, and past Shane's house, the neatest of them all, with mint-green vinyl siding and a Thanksgiving pumpkin on every step, his muscle car nowhere in sight. Alice blathers the whole way, excited to be in my car, my
coolest-ever
car, with its electronics that
do stuff
. And how great is it that Mom invited them over? They almost couldn't come, big goings-on at the church tonight, but Mrs. Mincus made an exception because she knew how much Alice would want to, and the boys could feed themselves.

I look over at Alice, feeling like an adult taking her kid on a Sunday drive. Alice with her Mary Jane sneakers, her Hello Kitty sweater with yarn appliqué. Alice with her headband.

“I know it's been a while since we've hung out. But I want you to know that my parents and I prayed for you every hour you were gone,” Alice says.

Alice with no filter.

“I guess it worked. Thanks?” I say.

“You're welcome,” she chirps, overly bright. “There's something I've been wondering. Did your mother get closer to God after last year? Considering the miracle of your return, it's hard to imagine that she's still an atheist.”

“My mother isn't an atheist. She's agnostic.”

She shrugs. “Six of one.”

“Tomato tomahto.”

“Exactly,” Alice agrees, looking around. The new track is dead and dark with waves where it buckles, as though the town was in a rush and tarred it too soon. We walk for a while until Alice complains, and we plant ourselves on the bleachers, swinging our legs to keep warm. It brings back not unpleasant memories of playing outside with Alice when we were little until the streetlights came on. “I want to show you something.” She shoves her coat sleeve above her elbow. The lights cast a lurid glare on her pale arm. Below the crease in purple Sharpie is scrawled
WWJD?

“Nice tat. New boyfriend?”

“You could say that.” She regards her arm for a moment. “I don't take it that far.”

“Alice! JD—that's a big deal. Are you dating a lawyer?”

She kicks my shin. “It's an acronym, dummy.”

“Fine, I'll bite. What does WWJD stand for?”

“It stands for
What Would Jesus Do?
Whenever I have a really big decision to make, I ask myself that question.”

“So Jesus told you to wear that Hello Kitty sweater with yarn whiskers?”

“Easy for you to joke.” Alice drags her sleeve down. “You don't need to be reminded of what JC would do. You do it automatically.”

“I'm not following.”

“When you sacrificed your own life to save Liv's.”

“I see,” I mutter, wary.

“In a lot of ways, you're closer to Jesus than I'll ever be.”

“I had no idea. I'm … sorry?”

“I'm all right with it. I understand that I'm a work in progress. Most of us are. We have a lot of business to do on this earth to be our best selves. Even my mother says she isn't as close to God as some of the women she knows. Take Mrs. Lapin, for example.”

“No thanks.”

“My mother says she gives to her parish and her community selflessly, so she's Father Carl's favorite. She was nominated Catholic Woman of the Year by the lay board of Saint Theresa's. That's a big deal.”

Alice knows she may as well be talking about Wiccan white magic when she talks to me about parishes and priests. The Spunk girls don't spend a lot of downtime in churches. Mom is a self-proclaimed skeptic, which is an agnostic on steroids. The word gets under my skin—
ag-gnaw-stick
—the way Mom overarticulates it, as if to burn it into my memory in case she's accused of witchcraft and I'm called to her defense. “Why are you telling me this?”

“No reason.” She checks her arm. “Well, okay. There's a reason. Since we're coming up on the anniversary of the Shiverton Abduction, we're having a special prayer mass tonight. To thank God for bringing you home.”

“Alice,” I repeat, my voice tinged with warning.

“I thought you might come with me.”

“Alice.”

“It doesn't matter if you believe in God.”

“Does it matter if I've never set foot in a church?”

“That's okay! Jesus is welcoming. And Liv will be there. She got made youth ministry leader again this year. Not that it's fair to get it two years in a row. I mean, what can she add? It's not like she'll have a fresh perspective.”

“Good point.”

“A sympathy vote after the Shiverton Abduction, if I might be so bold. At school, she might be queen bee to my drone. But in youth ministry, I could stage a coup at any time and be named leader. No one in youth ministry likes her. They think she's bossy. And that maybe she doesn't have the right intentions in her heart. But
never
repeat that!”

“I can guarantee I will not,” I promise.

“She wouldn't have won reelection if it wasn't for the Shiverton Abduction.”

“You can stop saying the Shiverton Abduction now.”

“Right. Sorry. So, like I said, come. Everyone would be praying for you. It's nice. Not creepy at all.”

Alice is wrong: I never thought of prayer as creepy. More like a built-in advantage religious people have, a higher probability of their wishes being granted over nonreligious people.

“I'll think about it,” I say.

“Cool. Speaking of Liv, what's up with her dating Shane Cuthbert? He smells like a skunk's butt.”

“That would be weed, Alice.”

She giggles. “Not that I think it's so out of character. You don't play Prey without a little bit of a dark side.”

“That was ages ago. And everybody plays Prey, Alice.”

“I don't.”

I jump up. “We should run before it gets too cold.”

“I have bad shoes.”

“Okay, then. Jumping jacks!” I windmill my arms and legs in place, and Alice laughs, covering her mouth. “C'mon, Minke Whale! One, two, three—” I shout.

Alice's mouth falls open.

“What?” I whirl around.

“Is that Paula Papademetriou?” she says.

Paula approaches, swathed in a cape-style coat the color of caramel, glamorous against the stark pines. She walks with a funny hitch, navigating the half-frozen earth's bumps and buckles, her heels getting caught. Still, she's polished and gorgeous.

“Who looks like that?” Alice murmurs.

Misguided pride spreads warm across the tops of my cheeks.

“I'm glad I found you,” Paula says to me, and presents a sleek, gloved hand to Alice. “Hi, Julia's friend.”

“This is Alice,” I say. “She's my next-door neighbor.” I want to pinch myself for saying that. Could I not just say
friend?

Alice dives to shake her hand. “I'm Alice.”

“Alice—right. Got it. It's nice to meet you, Alice. I live here in Shiverton too.”

“I know you do, on Central Street,” Alice says, being way creepy.

Paula smiles at her obliquely for a moment, then turns to me. “Julia, I am so sorry to pull you away. Is there any chance I could have a word with you privately?”

I look to Alice, whose grin drops, then lifts fast. “I need to do a lap,” she says, recovering and nodding vigorously. “It's great exercise. You go, I'll be right over there.”

“Two minutes,” I say to Alice, but she's already gone, shuffling backward in her Mary Jane sneakers, nearly running into a randomly placed football tackle dummy.

“Can we go to my car?” Paula says, gazing at the parking lot half a mile away.

“I don't know. That feels kind of cruel. I haven't been a good friend to Alice in a long time. I probably shouldn't disappear. You know how it is with friends,” I add in a leading way. Part of me hopes that Paula will talk about the best friend she mentioned at the trailhead.

“Then I'll make it quick,” she says, ignoring my beggy vibe. “I got some information on deep background that has not yet been corroborated, but I thought you should know.”

I look at Alice and give her a small wave. She waves back with gusto. “Oh?”

“Apparently there's a whole subset of Prey extremists who take the hunting-humans-instead-of-animals thing to a whole new level, like it's some grand, virtual payback. Sometimes not so virtual.”