After the Woods (3 page)

My shoulders fall. I bury my head in the notebook, ignoring passing shins and murmurs.

In the the first circle, I write JULIA. In the second circle, I write LIV.

The seed shape in the middle stares back at me, no longer a seed, but the pupil of a cat's eye. I draw a third circle above the first two, overlapping. It bisects the cat's eye. Inside the third circle, I write BODY. The three of us share a space, the bisected cat's eye, and it is small, but there's still room to write.

I wriggle my hand into my pocket for my phone and click on Paula Papademetriou's live feed. I'm too impatient to listen to her, though her perfect aubergine lipstick transfixes me for a second. Besides, I'm a faster reader than listener. In the transcripted story below, I scan for the word
pit
, but it's not there. In Ionian Greek, the word
zagre
means a “pit for the capture of live animals.” The important word here is
live
. You can debate back and forth whether it's better to be killed or kept, but either way, a body popping up in the Sheepfold means old Zagreus was tweaking the mythology.

Liv is alive. I am alive. The body is irrelevant, Liv would say.

At the bottom of the page, I write PROBABILITY.

The probability of Liv and me stumbling across a deranged maniac in the woods was low: 1 out of 347,000. And stranger abductions are the most improbable, at 24% of all abductions, versus 49% by family members and 27% by acquaintances. So Liv's right when she insists what happened in the woods was a fluke, just a forgettable, little thing.

But if Paula Papademetriou is right, and Donald Jessup killed before? That makes us part of a big thing.

After PROBABILITY, I add a question mark.

 

TWO

354 Days After the Woods

I am disappointing naked.

Since the woods, kids stare at my naked body parts, hoping to spot scars that will reveal the things Donald Jessup did to me. In gym, they stare at my arms and legs. I imagine it's a letdown that the marks aren't visible. But the real reason I prefer to dress in Sherpa layers is what I call cold-avoidance. For me, cold—the kind that slips down your collar and swirls down your spine like a frosty helix—is unstoppable. It sends me right back to the woods, and that can be inconvenient during, well, everything. In my first ten weeks back at school, I've concocted some excellent excuses to avoid changing into my standard-issue gym shorts and tee. Today, Ms. Dean isn't having it, possibly because today's excuse, Kuru disease, is found only among cannibals in remote New Guinea.

Liv warned me that my crazy clothes only fuel the gossip. Gossip, I will add, that doesn't seem to plague Liv. You'd think she'd get her share of stares, though I guess because she never took a break from school, and maybe because she wasn't
actually abducted
, she never generated my brand of buzz.

Lucky for me, something else has everyone's attention.

A bustle near the bleachers. Kellan MacDougall is getting shoved by his hockey pals into a pretty freshman. He shoves them back. The girl giggles, knuckles pressed against her upper lip. Kellan barely makes eye contact with her, twisting the toe of his sneaker like he's grinding something into the parquet. She puffs her chest and tips her chin, spilling flat-ironed hair down her back. Her cheek is the color of a pink apple. Kellan's a player; he even hooked up with Liv at a party the weekend before the woods, then never spoke to her again. It had to be awkward for him when his detective dad was assigned our case.

Kellan spies me as I end my walk to the door marked GIRLS. I hold his stare, making my eyes vacant. Apple Face follows his gaze, her eyes lashy Os. He's probably thinking we have some connection because his dad captured my abductor. Those days were smeary. I didn't deny myself hits off the morphine pump meant for my ankle. By the time my head cleared, I was settled in my ivory tower on Mount Greylock, and Detective MacDougall had made his career by locking up Donald Jessup. I wonder how he felt when Donald Jessup killed himself by swallowing a pen spring in jail.

I lean my shoulder against the door with the GIRLS sign. GIRLS are flouncing creatures with satin bows in their hair who circle maypoles and use their eyelashes to charm—a luxury for people who assume other people won't hurt them. I have let my charm shrivel. GIRLS are weightless, without black things in their bellies that coil and spring. Apple Face is a GIRL. Somehow, Liv is still a GIRL.

The door moves beneath my shoulder. I fall into Liv, pulling the door open from inside.

“I've been looking for you!” she says, stepping back and tugging her shirt down over her flat belly.

“Just giving the fans something to stare at,” I say, righting myself.

“You skipped lunch.”

“Not exactly. I had a strategically timed guidance office appointment–cum–wellness check-in.”

Liv smiles. “I'm familiar. But you're going to have to face lunch someday. Like, tomorrow.” She parts a pack of wispy, wan girls—friends of my next-door neighbor, Alice Mincus—and stakes out a corner. They change clothes and tie their sneakers fast. I try to decide if it's Liv they're intimidated by or my weird factor, but Liv seems not to notice either way. When the last few scatter, she circles the locker room, yanking back shower curtains and checking under stalls. I watch, mystified. Liv usually pooh-poohs my paranoia, but here she is, feeding it. It's like a minivindication. Satisfied there are no spies, she turns to me.

“They found a dead girl in the woods,” she says.

“I know. My mother told me last night.” After Moleman did. But no sense mentioning that.

“You knew? Why didn't you call me?”

“I figured your mom talked to you about it.” As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I realize how ridiculous that sounds. If Liv glosses over what happened, Deborah Lapin shellacs it. Being preyed upon by a man who played dress-up in the woods is not in line with the image she has cast for Liv. “I mean, I was trying to be better. More like you. Not get hung up on the past,” I add. That last line is a direct quote from one of our weekly e-mails while I was in the Berkshires, the ones that kept me sane and tethered to reality. While Patty Petty said let it all hang out, Liv gave me permission—really, more of a directive—to let it go.

Liv brushes her hair back roughly behind one ear. It's Liv's hair, cornsilk-fine and aggressively highlighted, that guys always notice first. That and her boobs, full-blown by sixth grade. “I think that's great,” she says, her eyes skipping around the room. “Moving forward and all.”

“Right? Ricker wants me to do hypnosis. She says unlocking my repressed memories is the way to heal. But then she avoids answering questions that might actually help me heal. To me that's a contradiction. It's like she wants me on one path: hers.”

Liv slides her jaw from side to side.

“I'm pretty sure Ricker got a call about the body right in the middle of our session yesterday. She tried to pretend it was her daughter, but I knew something was up,” I say. “So do you think Donald Jessup killed that other girl?”

Liv's face goes dark. After the woods, my mother spun into action, jetting me out of town and hooking me up with Patty Petty, then Ricker. Deborah's sole effort at supporting Liv was dragging her to speak with a local priest exactly once before signing herself into Valium rehab. I can be bitter about my forced removal, but at least what my mother did was in the realm of appropriate reactions for a mother.

Of course Deborah isn't a mother, but a hedgewitch.

“How are things with your mo—”

“Eighteen is hardly a girl,” Liv says suddenly. “She was old enough to vote.”

“Everyone out!” Ms. Dean booms as she rounds the corner, sporting an unfortunate choppy new haircut. She stops short and knits her brows, making a lumbering mental calculation. I imagine she's recalling what she learned during meetings of the school's Incident Management Team.

“Are you ladies okay? Do you need, um, support?” she says.

“We are so okay!” Liv says, already out the door when Ms. Dean plants her ham-hand on my shoulder.

“You're not dressed.” In her other hand is a balled-up pair of jersey-style Shiverton shorts and a T-shirt, my punishment for wearing jeans to gym. I accept them as Ms. Dean says that while she respects my need for time to readjust, there are no exceptions to the sweats rule. She's a softie for anyone with issues, always letting the cutters wear long sleeves to hide their razor scars. Still, I give her a nice piece of cold back, waiting until she leaves to drop my sweatercoat with a thump. Next, I shimmy out of my hoodie, unzip my fly, and yank off my jeans. A Henley button-down is the last layer standing before bra and bare skin. The locker room might be warm, but the gym is a drafty space with exposed beams that stretch to the ceiling like ribs. I tear the Henley over my head and wriggle into my shorts and extra-large tee. My white legs and arms make me look spectral. The Shiverton High girls' locker room is exactly the same as when it was built in the 1960s, with its faint smell of mildew and decades of bad energy that lingers. Echoes of teasing banging around lockers, inadequacies stuck inside mirrors. Special pains inflicted by GIRLS onto GIRLS. But I'm not a GIRL anymore. I shake my hair out, press my lips together, and stride out, hand on belly, willing my serpentine friend—the black thing in my gut that Liv doesn't have and doesn't need, but I do—to rise and get me through this, the real, indoor, after-the-woods world.

Ms. Dean nods as I join the far end of the line for stretches. Liv has been absorbed among the slouchy-loud girls. I will not be absorbed. She smiles at me, hard and tight. I smile back anemically, hugging my elbows and rocking slightly, just enough to feel better and not look catatonic.

So. Cold.

My hands float up and bat at my ears, burning, as though I am outside, in the woods, but I'm not, I'm in the gym, with its faint smell of mold from last year's flood, and still the snowy flash spreads until the gym is white. The smell of night air and woodsmoke blooms around me. Now the rush, the sensation of plunging down a hole. I'm going and I can't stop.

What Ricker doesn't know is that I don't need hypnosis. Not when there's a trigger.

*   *   *

The joint shakes in his hand as he winds it. His tongue flashes to lick the paper. It falls in his lap.

“Shhhit!” His hands flutter.

“Are you okay?” I say. Begging, reasoning, and crying haven't worked. Empathy is the only thing I haven't tried.

“Been off-line too—too long—long,” he stammers, patting his lap. “In the six hours I sleep sleepy-time raiders plunder my camps, destroy my weapons, and take my prey. I set traps, everything, but nothing does any good. I hardly have any girls left. What's gonna happen when I'm gone for days? Can't play 24/7, I just can't. How'm I gonna get ahead after this? Phew, there it is.” He lights the fat white pupa at his lips, a flame dancing at his trembling fingers, his inhalation like a long sip of water.

I take tiny breaths. Being a pot virgin, I have no idea if just being near the smoke will make me high, and the thought of losing my wits terrifies me. I wiggle away from the downwind. The movement triggers pain in my ankle, and I cry out. He looks at me quizzically.

He holds out the joint. “Want a hit?”

I shake my head wildly.

He shrugs. “Might help.”

He takes softer drags, puffing and sucking, intimate sounds that make my privates clench. I'm hit with a wave of revulsion. I stare hard at the outlines of trees and hills, trying to get back into my head, match their silhouettes with the woods I know in daylight. The fire between us burns a low flame, but it's enough for me to imagine my rescuers will see it and come. How long ago did Liv run away? Seven, eight, nine hours? Why hasn't anyone come?

“This was a mistake,” he says.

I shift in my spot. If I am a mistake, I am less valuable to him. That feels dangerous.

“If you free me, you could go back to your game,” I say, my voice small.

He giggles, teeth flashing in the dark like little pearls.

I force myself to mirror his laugh, but I sound like a hyena.

“What are you laughing at?” he says.

I stop laughing. “I'm not.”

“Oh, what, was that an owl?” He laughs again, uncontrollably this time. “Was that an owl laughing in the woods?”

I become very still, trying to make myself shapeless so he'll forget I am a GIRL, because that feels the most dangerous of all.

If only there were stars to count. Math, then.

1,133 divided by 2 equals 566.5.

8,349,179 divided by 7 equals 1,192,739.8 … 6.

“Funny, isn't it?” he sputters, taking a last drag and flicking the orange stub into the darkness.

“Yeah!” I say, unconvincing.

“Here we are, you and me. Not what I expected. But something.”

*   *   *

“What happened to you?” Liv cries, her hand out, warding off others.

In nine months of e-mails, she never did ask me what happened in the woods.

Ms. Dean mouths my name in slow motion. A ring of pale faces crowd in over my crumpled body, their voices drifting, but I make out “swallow tongue” and “orange juice” and “so sad.” Liv plants herself to avoid being shoved. Now she's arguing with the guy next to her. Ms. Dean's mouth moves again, but I can't hear her over my own breaths, loud as shotgun blasts.

I sit up. “I think I have a fever.”

Ms. Dean dings my forehead with the nugget on her college ring. “You're burning up. Off to the nurse.” She yanks me up light as paper and tosses me toward the exit.