The Little Woods (7 page)

“Okay.” Brody shifted around in his seat. “There’s this place back east. The, um, the Bridgewater Triangle. And then in Arizona there’s the Sedona Triangle.”

“Don’t forget about the Fresno Quadrahedron,” Chelsea said, laughing.

“Stop being a jerk,” he said, and beyond the alcohol flush of his cheeks, I could see real color rising. He was genuinely upset. “I’m serious. You can look it up. There’s documented proof. These places, I’m telling you, it’s like the land is bad.”

“And St. Bede’s is one of those places?” Noel asked, her voice almost a whisper.

“No, but the little woods are.”

“What are the little woods?” I asked.

“Duh.
Those
are the little woods,” Pigeon said, pointing out the window. “What we’ve been talking about, like, all night.”

“So the part you guys just walked through, then. The place where you were hearing noises.”

“Yeah,” Brody said. “These woods are at the top of a triangle that stretches way out into the wilderness behind us. I’m telling you, there are things out there—weird things, bad things.”

“Like what?” Helen asked. “We haven’t seen anything.”

“It’s not like people see stuff all the time, but there have been problems with these woods since the first settlers—before that, even. My sister said the Miwok name for the area was the Woods Where Spirits Walk, and apparently they avoided it like the plague.”

“How helpful of us to take it from them, then,” Chelsea said, examining her black-polished nails.

“Seriously, though, over the years there have been all kinds of bad stuff,” he said, a slight tremor to his voice. “I don’t remember the figure, but the number of unexplained disappearances and murders in these woods is like ten times what it should be.”

“What do
you
think is going on, Brody?” Helen asked, her voice perfectly even.

“Hell if I know. Some people think the land is cursed.”

“I don’t believe in curses,” Helen said, but everyone else was focused on Brody, and I noticed that I could barely breathe.

“Well, I do,” he said. “And I’m telling you, whatever happened to those girls, whatever happened to Iris, I think there’s more to it than we can know. Whatever’s out there, it’s powerful. It’s dark.”

“Okay, dude,” Alex said, placing his hand over Brody’s glass. “I think I’m cutting you off. You’ve had enough.”

Brody slumped back in his chair, and after a moment of awkward silence, Freddy shifted the conversation to the upcoming spring play auditions. I tried to seem interested, but I was so shaken I decided I’d better excuse myself early.

Up in my guest room, I changed into pajamas and stared out into the woods. The trees moved against the darkness like an unquiet sea.
This way
, I could almost hear Clare whisper.
Catch me if you can
.

I read somewhere once about a little boy who’d disappeared, and it turned out nothing really horrible had happened to him. A lonely woman had taken him because she wanted a child. Long ago, I’d decided that was what had happened to Clare. She’d never died in that fire. Like Pigeon had said, she’d disappeared. Someone had taken her because they’d wanted a daughter, and they’d loved her and raised her, and now she was a normal girl. Part of me believed that she was still out there somewhere in those woods, and that all I had to do was look and I would find her.

I climbed into bed, turned out the light, and pulled the covers over my head to muffle the distant wail of the wind through the pines.

I awoke to crisp blue sky and sunshine. I zipped up my jeans and let my hair hang loose. I slipped on my shoes and started downstairs, trying to convince myself that the faint scent of strawberry on the landing didn’t remind me of Clare. It had been ten years, and I had been young, but the olfactory system was remarkably pitiless.

Breakfast was catered. Catered. Despite my being disgusted by the very idea of it, the food was kind of amazing. The boys were gone, presumably having
creeched
back to campus during
the night, and we were all to head off too after we’d had our fill of quiche and gravlax and crêpes.

Freddy chatted amiably about politics with Richard—everything about her poise and calculation.

“Where do you stand on immigration?” she asked, sipping her coffee with a mildly concerned brow.

Helen and Noel tittered while they picked abstractly at one croissant. They seemed nice enough, especially Noel, but their lives were so different from mine. Their breakfasts were catered, for Christ’s sake. Noel noticed me staring and, giving me a big grin, waved me over. Helen looked up and smiled too.

“So, Cally,” Noel said, “you went to bed so early last night. You missed everything.”

“What did I miss?”

“Just stuff. So”—she smiled—“do you have a boyfriend back home or anything?”

“Me? God, no.”

“Do you like anyone here?”

“What? No. I mean, I just got here.”

“I saw you hanging out with Jack Deeker.”

“Him? Yeah, he’s really nice.”

“Well, can I give you some advice?” she whispered, leaning in.

“Sure,” I said, still trying to decide whether gravlax was delicious or disgusting.

“Jack’s totally cute, but he’s a train wreck. Helen went out with him for a while freshman year. Now he says he’s asexual, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Yeah,” Helen said. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you. He’s hot and all, but he’s a total loser.”

“Seriously.” Noel nodded. “And sometimes it’s better to go for the nice guy who doesn’t have any baggage, you know? Like Brody or someone. You know, Brody doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“Noel,” Helen sighed. “Stop playing Yenta.”

“Whatever,” Noel said, then took a swig of her coffee. “Gross. Helen, did you put sugar in my coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my God, this is so yummy,” Pigeon crooned from her perch on the loggia steps. “It reminds me of the Coeur de Lyon. Have you guys ever been there? My mom’s coming in the spring and we’re all going to have brunch there.”

Freddy rolled her eyes at me and I smiled back. Chelsea slunk in just as breakfast was winding down, and managed to grab a little bit of everything before it was taken away.

“Detective Inspector Wood,” she said, laughing and sliding a fistful of gravlax into her mouth. “How goes it today? Did you catch any criminals in your sleep?”

“Yep. I nabbed Jack the Ripper.”

“Great,” she said, clapping. “I knew you were a talent.” Then she headed toward Freddy, but Freddy stopped her.

“Did you have a good time last night, Chelsea?”

Chelsea glanced over her shoulder, then frowned at Freddy.

“Yeah,” she drawled. “It was fairly monumental.”

I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what she was talking about.

I RETURNED TO CAMPUS EXHAUSTED
and wary. Despite the school’s beauty, it was difficult to feel at ease within its corridors, and I found myself longing for company in a way I never had back home.

I tried to suppress my growing disquiet by focusing on the Cally Wood Social Integration Project, but after the weekend I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get to the Slaters and their friends. They seemed nice enough, but they also seemed a bit like hipster debutantes, and that wasn’t really my scene.

I quickly realized, though, that my concerns about my newfound social acceptance had been premature. Come Monday, I found that a fine glass wall had been erected between us, and that while Noel and I shared an afternoon sport, and Helen and I might have some laughs together, when they and the rest of the girls took off to do whatever it was they did, I wasn’t
usually invited. It was as if I’d failed some test I hadn’t known I was taking. If I was being purposely excluded, I would have preferred it be overt, but they were all so terribly friendly that I was never sure where I stood.

“They’re creepy, right?” Sophie said. “Everyone thinks they’re a coven.”

“Really?” I said, a spoonful of Cheerios in my mouth.

Sophie and I had taken to eating breakfast together on the balcony that overlooked the ravine. I hadn’t had a lot of female friends growing up, and was quickly finding that girls, especially St. Bede’s girls, were much more difficult to impress than the boys back home, who thought it was hilarious when I shoved an entire orange into my mouth or wore my pants on my head. I liked Sophie, and she seemed to tolerate me as one might a perpetually unkempt neighbor’s pet.

“No, they’re not a coven,” she said after taking a tidy sip of her herbal tea. “But it would be great if they were, right? It would make things so much more interesting if they skulked around doing witchcraft instead of talking about pedicures or whatever it is that interests them.”

“Actually, they all seem pretty smart. I don’t think they talk about pedicures.”

“I bet they do. They probably quote Foucault while they do it, but they do.”

I set my bowl down and pushed it away. “You don’t really think Helen killed that girl Iris, do you?”

Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have any hard evidence or anything like that, but she’s hiding something.”

“How did Iris go missing?” I asked as I choked down my cereal.

“No one knows really. The first night of fall break, Iris stayed on campus because we had a math competition the next day. She signed in to dinner that night, and she didn’t sign in to breakfast the next morning. Somewhere in between she just disappeared.”

“Was Helen on campus too, for this academic thing?”

“No. She had one of her big parties. They always have them the first night of break. Out at that lake house. I hear they’re basically bacchanals.”

“But if Helen was hosting a party during the time Iris disappeared, doesn’t that give her an alibi?”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Here, eat my toast. I think I’m developing celiac.”

Thursday night was our first advisee dinner. I was vaguely aware of my advisee group because we sat in the same row during our weekly assembly, but I hadn’t really spoken to any of them. I usually spent assembly doodling and staring a few rows ahead to where Helen and Alex sat side by side, giggling like schoolgirls. Aside from me, my advisee group consisted of five freshman boys and the Cthulhu boy from the dining hall, who was a sophomore. His name was Carlos, and he seemed always to be doing sudoku puzzles and glaring at me.

Asta lived in a small cottage with a thatched roof and dormer windows at the edge of campus. My heart contracted when
the house first came into view, and I couldn’t help thinking about Clare. There was a slight mist covering the yard, with its rosebushes and fruit trees, from which were tied strange ribbons and little cloth bags. I stood there a moment, listening to the wind move through the trees, and I had a strange feeling that I was being watched. I turned around and peered into the trees. Twilight was just nestling into the woods, and I thought I could hear the night creatures beginning to creep out of their hollows. It must have been their strigine eyes I felt on my body.

I walked in to find a fire crackling and the boys deep in a game of Risk. The freshmen looked up and smiled shyly. I waved. Carlos refused to make eye contact. Savory aromas drifted from the kitchen—butter and cheese and happiness.

I stood for a moment, unsure where to put myself. For someone so small, I was disproportionately destructive and had found that it was usually best to keep my hands in my pockets.

One of the freshmen whispered something in Carlos’s ear. He groaned and looked up at me.

“You want to play?” he asked, clearly pained.

“No,” I said, taking a seat on the sofa. “I’m cool.”

He sighed, seeming relieved. “So, Calista.”

“Yeah?”

“We haven’t been formally introduced,” he said, standing.

“Yes we have. In assembly.”

“Well, I’m Carlos,” he said, and somehow it felt like an admonishment.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

He shook my hand. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but we have to get a few things straight.”

“We do?” He was only an inch or so taller than I was, but he possessed so much gravitas he seemed much larger.

“Yeah. Listen, I know you’re supposed to be hot shit, but I pretty much rule this advisee group, okay?”

I nodded, bewildered.

“What I’m trying to say here is don’t fuck this up for me. You got that?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“What?” I laughed, but he wasn’t joking.

“I’ll take you down,” he said. “I’m dead serious.”

I couldn’t say why exactly, but I suddenly liked Carlos very much.

“Yeah,” I said. “We don’t have to, like, rumble or whatever.”

He nodded, all business, and went back to Risk.

Dinner was delicious, pasta with strange gourmet cheeses, basil, garlic, and succulent diced tomatoes. We ate slowly and lounged a bit too long, and the boys continued their Risk game while Asta and I chatted. She filled me in on some St. Bede’s history and told me where the teachers had gone to college or grad school. She said that my dorm head, Ms. Harlow, was only twenty-one and had graduated early from Harvard and come directly to St. Bede’s.

“Go easy on her, will you, Cally?”