Authors: Elizabeth Laban
“Hey,” I said. “Is there something wrong?”
“What? Why?” she asked, still moving toward the woods.
“Because you aren’t very colorful,” I said, smiling.
“No, I’m okay,” she said, not smiling.
“Good, I’m glad,” I said, waiting for her to look at me.
So I’d been right all along, she didn’t want to be seen with me, and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She clearly had no makeup on, but her cheeks were red and her face was bright.
“Where do you run around here?” I asked.
“There’s a path through the woods, up that hill over to the other side. Then you get to a road and can come back around, through the lower soccer field and up by the main entrance to the school. It’s about five miles.”
Five miles, I could do that.
“Are you ready?” she asked, like she was doing me a favor.
“Sure,” I said.
At the entrance to the path, she took off. After a few steps I realized I hadn’t taken the time to stretch. Maybe she had stretched before she met me, I didn’t know. I hadn’t taken a run in weeks, and I had been sitting around so much.
“Hey, Vanessa,” I called.
She turned with a look on her face that said I was bothering her.
“You asked me to come,” I said. “Why are you acting like you didn’t?”
Something shifted in her face.
“Do you mind if I stretch?” I asked. “I didn’t realize we were in such a rush.”
“Sorry,” she said. “There’s a spot at the beginning of the path. Follow me.”
I walked behind her into the woods until we reached a clearing with a bunch of trees and logs at different levels that looked perfect for stretching. I went through my usual routine, but my eyes were already stinging. I shielded them for a minute, hoping it would be less bright as we got deeper into the woods.
“I stretched already,” she offered, her voice much softer now.
“Okay, I’m ready,” I said.
She looked behind me, down toward the campus, and then back at me.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I followed her. The path was too narrow for us to run side by side, so I ran behind her. I didn’t mind that; I could hear her steady breath and could smell her soap or shampoo—something lemony and fresh. But as we got deeper into the woods, the path opened up and I came up next to her, relieved that I hadn’t gotten totally out of shape in the last few weeks. I was pretty sure I could keep up, and so far my breathing was steady too.
“So that boyfriend of yours is really nice,” I said.
“Yeah, he told me he met you,” she said, her eyes focused on the path ahead. Luckily the tree cover was very heavy and the clouds had gotten a bit thicker, so my eyes were okay. I remember thinking that I had definitely made the right decision about my glasses.
“A real charmer,” I said.
“Well, what do you expect?” she said. “He’s a little possessive.”
“A little?” I asked.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and then back to the path but didn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t you ask him to run with you?” I asked.
“Patrick is a bit competitive,” she said. “He likes to see who can run faster. It’s no fun.”
“How do you know I’m not competitive?” I asked.
“Just a hunch,” she said, turning her head and smiling at me.
“Well, what about your friends? Why didn’t you ask them?”
“Usually I run with Celia, a girl on my floor, but she didn’t feel well this morning,” Vanessa said. “But I had to get out, and, like I told you, there’s a policy that we can’t run alone in the woods.”
“Why?”
“Years ago,” she said, “a girl broke her ankle and couldn’t get back. She spent the night in the woods, and nobody even knew where she was. They did a big search but must have missed her. Finally, at, like, dinnertime the next night, she crawled out of the woods. She was so traumatized, she left school and never came back. Rumor is that her family sued the school for a pretty penny. Anyway, maybe that’s a made-up story, but coach tells it every year. Legend has it that she put a curse on the school that every year a senior would leave for some unforeseen reason—drugs, failing, sickness, whatever. I looked it up recently in the archives of the school paper, and it seemed to be true for as far back as I could find. That’s weird, don’t you think?”
“Very,” I said. To be perfectly honest, it gave me the creeps.
We were quiet for a minute, and I started to wonder how far we had gone. I hadn’t realized how much wilderness was behind the school.
“That’s the sledding hill,” she said finally. “On really
snowy days, we come here. See how there are no trees right there? It’s like a chute. Really fast. We haven’t done it yet this year, but last year we did it twice.”
“Is that allowed?” I asked.
“Not really, but that’s part of the fun,” she said, smiling.
We ran into a small field and the sun came out. I felt like I had been hit in the face with hot lava. Without thinking, I covered my eyes with my hands and bent forward, but I lost my balance and fell to the ground. Once I got up and turned away from the sun, I slowly opened my eyes. It took a few tries, but I was finally able to do it.
“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked, putting her warm hand on my shoulder. For a brief moment her hand was all I felt, but the pain in my eyes slowly crept back in.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
“Oh, I, um, I get migraines, and I suddenly feel one coming on,” I said quickly. I didn’t want to tell her about my eyes. “It happens sometimes. I think I’m going to have to go back the way I came.”
“Actually, the road is just up there. It might be closer to continue on,” she said, feeling around in her pockets. “I don’t have my cell phone with me. Shoot, I left it charging on my desk. Do you have yours?”
“No,” I said. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring it.
“Sorry about this,” I said. “I might not have the strongest constitution, but at least I’m charming.”
She smiled and came closer to where I was standing. I looked behind us into the woods. It was brighter than it had been before, but I wanted to get back there; it was certainly dimmer than the open field and the road ahead. I saw a big rock and dragged myself over and sat with my face in my hands. She followed.
“Are you going to be able to make it back?” she asked. She seemed nervous.
“Yeah, sure, just give me a minute,” I said. I felt like such an idiot. Why couldn’t I just be normal?
Vanessa sat down on the rock next to me and started to rub my back. The pain was slowly subsiding, but I didn’t dare uncover my eyes.
“So I lied to you,” she said.
Without thinking, I looked right at her and the sun and then groaned, putting my hands back over my face.
“What do you mean?” I asked. My voice sounded muffled, but I was afraid to move again. I was starting to wonder how I was ever going to get out of there. Maybe I would be that girl—the example of why not to go into the woods alone—dragging myself back to campus for twenty hours, being traumatized, my life as I knew it over. Maybe
I
was going to be the victim of the curse that year.
“Well, it’s true that we aren’t supposed to run alone in the woods, but we aren’t supposed to run in the woods with a boy either,” she said. “The track team runs this path
together, and sometimes a teacher will organize a morning hike, but this—what we’re doing now—this is forbidden.”
“Huh,” I said, feeling a little flutter in my stomach. I should have been mad—I mean, she had lied to me and in theory I could be facing a lot of trouble, but the truth was, I liked it.… I really liked it.
“And I’m sorry about back there, when we first met,” she said. “I was nervous about getting caught.”
I wanted to thank her for lying, and tell her that I was nervous too, not so much about getting caught, just about being with her. But something made me hold back.
“Thanks for sending the note,” I said. “But why didn’t you wait until you saw me in the dining hall, or the library?”
“Patrick” was all she said. Though of course it wasn’t really just Patrick, it was everyone—all her friends. She didn’t want them to see her talking to me. Suddenly I knew Kyle must not figure too prominently in the social order or she never would have asked him to deliver the note. He probably wasn’t the first boy she saw. He was probably the first boy she saw who didn’t matter.
“I thought once I got back to school that I wouldn’t think about you,” she said. “But I
have
been thinking about you. I worried about you the whole way back.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said quickly.
“No, I don’t mean that something might happen to you; I mean that I kept wondering why you didn’t tell me you
were coming here,” she said. “And then I thought once I saw Patrick, everything would go back to normal, but …” Her voice trailed off. “So far it hasn’t.”
I felt another sharp pain and covered my eyes, pushing the palms of my hands into my closed eye sockets to counter the discomfort. At that moment, I was glad I couldn’t look at her.
“So,” she said. “What should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Try to forget about the airport. I mean, the elevator.”
She laughed, and somehow the sound shot relief through my head.
“No, I don’t mean what should we do about that! I mean, what should we do about getting back?” she said.
I hadn’t yet dared try to look up again, but I would have bet money that she was still smiling when she said that. I could hear it.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I’m starting to feel better,” I said.
“How long have you had this?”
I was confused for a minute, but then I remembered what I had told her. Migraines.
“A few years,” I said.
“That must be hard,” she said. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that.”
“Thanks.”
“So, should I help you up?” she asked.
“I think I just need another minute,” I said. I was much better but knew I would be hit again once I opened my eyes.
I deserved this
, I kept thinking.
I did this to myself
.
“I’m sorry Patrick was so mean to you this morning. He can be such a jerk,” Vanessa said, taking me by surprise. “I told him about meeting you in the airport because I figured that was the best thing to do. Plus, I thought it might make me feel better. But he’s being so aggressive lately, I can barely stand it. He told me he had a little fun with you.”
“Huh,” I said, not wanting to make her lose her train of thought.
“Last year was great. I mean, he was sweet and romantic, and I felt so lucky that he wanted to be my boyfriend,” she said. “We spent every second we could together. Then his mother died. It was awful. I went home with him and then came back. He took a few weeks off from school, and then he came back too. At first, it seemed like he was going to be sad but nothing else. But he’s been different. Angry. He started talking about going to college together. The thing is, his grades aren’t as good as mine are, so that means either I will have to try for a less competitive school, which I don’t really want to do, or we will have to find a big university that might have programs for both of us, like an honors program for me but a regular one for him.”
“Did you find any?” I asked. I wanted her to keep talking.
“Some, but I still feel like I’m limiting myself. You know, I’d had a crush on him since ninth grade, and he never seemed too interested—in me, that is,” she said. “He was plenty interested in the girls who were willing to do whatever he wanted. So when he wanted to be with me, I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I was so happy. Did I tell you he’s from Vermont? His dad still lives there. So all the colleges we’ve applied to are within an eight-hour drive of Vermont. I let him think I wanted this. I
did
want this when we started working on the applications, but now it seems like … Well, it seems so stifling. I’m rambling. I’ll stop now, and you probably don’t want to hear about this anyway. Sorry,” she said.
As she had been talking, I slowly removed my hands from my face and opened my eyes. It was okay, I could stand it, though I couldn’t wait to get back and make my room as dark as I could. I planned to sleep for the rest of the day.
“No, I’m interested,” I said. She turned, and when she saw that my eyes were open again, she gave me a dazzling smile. I smiled back.
“Oh no, I’m just babbling. I’ll tell you more later,” she said. “What about you? Are you happy to be here?”
That was such a hard question. Now everything about the place was Vanessa—and when I say her name here, I am saying it in capital letters, the way she typed it into my phone. Attracting Vanessa and avoiding Patrick. Somehow I didn’t expect to be so personally involved in anything this fast, or ever.
“Yeah, I’m happy to be here,” I said. “Anything would be better than my last school.”
“Why did you come anyway?” she asked. “I mean, why now? Why Irving?”
I wanted her to know everything. I did. But there was so much to say, and, really, I didn’t want to have to actually state the obvious: that I couldn’t fit in.
“My new stepfather went to Irving. He says it was the best time he ever had—until he met my mom, that is. And he’s really good friends with Mr. Bowersox,” I said. “He thought a little time at Irving would be better than no time here. Plus, he and my mom were moving, so it seemed like a good idea.”
We were quiet for a minute. I am pretty sure she was waiting for me to talk more. When I didn’t, she asked if we should head back.
“Can we walk?” I asked, calculating that that would take longer than running so it would give us more time together. At least I could make something work in my favor. The image of Vanessa in the hotel lobby popped into my mind after she recited the quote from
Macbeth
—something bad and something good.
“No problem,” she said, getting up and brushing off her pants. She reached her hand out for me and I stood up slowly. We walked most of the way back in silence.
When we got close to the science building, Vanessa stiffened.
“You go ahead,” she said, her voice back to how it was
when she first met me. “I can cut through there and come out by the back of the dining hall. Will you be okay?”