by Elise Juska
“Oh my God,” someone said. Others started crying.
Anna looked at Gavin, but he wasn’t looking at her.
“What a fucking asshole,” Tucker said, with surprising vehemence. “I swear, if he wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him myself.”
Anna felt the air leaving her lungs. She glanced again at Gavin, but he had his arm around Mindy. Over by the picnic table, Janie was holding hands with Tara. Kim was rubbing Tucker’s back. Then the music changed abruptly: a goofy dance song from back when they were in eighth grade. People looked around, laughed a little. The moment slowly loosened, the cool night air shot through with relief. Anna watched as the rest of the group decided it was permissible now to talk of other things. Kim leaned into Tucker, talking close to his ear—accelerated by talk of the tragedy, their hooking up tonight was all but inevitable. Gavin handed shots to Leo and Mindy, then the three of them raised their glasses and, with an air of ceremony, held them in the air. The flip-cup game gradually resumed, teams reassembling on either side of the picnic table. Anna wished that she were able to refocus, let herself be distracted. She tried draining her cup and, too late, remembered the bug.
When she set the cup down, trembling, she headed for the back door. She needed to be alone, to pull herself together. Inside, she paused in the sudden brightness of the kitchen; it was a kitchen she knew well. She steadied herself on the counter, blinking, as the room took solid shape around her: the empties piled in the sink, potato chip bag torn open on the kitchen table. It was the same table where, for two years, she had watched Gavin mindlessly, constantly, eat—midnight snacks, boy snacks, pizza bagels and Hot Pockets, Cool Ranch Doritos and Chips Ahoy. Things Anna never would have let herself consume in a million years. Maybe it was the absence of a mother (Gavin’s mom had left his dad when he was little), but his was the most junk-food-filled kitchen Anna had ever seen. Anna would always claim she wasn’t hungry, knowing Gavin wouldn’t push it. He’d stuff his face, and she’d watch enviously, sipping her Diet Coke. “Coke tastes better,” he said once, grabbing a can from the fridge, and she was so amazed by the simplicity of this decision—of choosing something just because it tasted better, for reasons of pure pleasure—she could have wept.
She was hungry right now, she realized. She was starving. She opened up the snack cabinet and scanned for something healthy, then impulsively grabbed six Double Stuf Oreos and ate them all without stopping to breathe. As the taste flooded her jaws, she felt better—steadier. But moments later, she was consumed with regret. Behind her, the door banged open, and Meg and Tara stumbled inside, giggling. Anna walked quickly in the other direction, down the stairs to the bathroom in the basement, not wanting to be seen. Past the old brown couch she and Gavin used to have sex on, the steamer trunk where he stashed his condoms. Mr. Newland’s hunting trophies hung over the mantel. Deer heads, glass-eyed and frozen. At the wall, their necks stopped so cleanly, it was as if their bodies continued on the other side.
In the bathroom, Anna yanked the door closed hard and turned on the drowning hum of the fan. She washed her face and confronted her reflection: She looked huge. It was a thought she’d had, a mirror she’d confronted, countless times. It was the mirror she’d stared into after having sex with Gavin, irrationally worried the condom had broken and she might be pregnant or have caught a disease. The mirror where she’d turned sideways to study herself in profile, the fat on her stomach, her arms—hundreds, thousands of times. Now she gripped the sides of the sink and leaned in so close that the breath from her nose steamed the glass. She thought of Laura, staring at herself in the Gap dressing room, hearing the shots and the screaming and unable to get out. Of Joe the security guard, probably unconscious, hooked to machines. Her pulse was hammering. From the backyard, the drinking game erupted in a burst of cheering. She wished she could sneak out and leave. Wished she hadn’t eaten those six Oreos. Wished she’d taken an Ativan before coming—Theresa had her take them only “as needed,” but certainly a party at Gavin’s on the night of a shooting qualified. She turned sideways and examined her profile and it confirmed what she knew: She had gained twelve pounds. She lifted the hem of her shirt and observed, horrified, the roll of skin that bulged over the side of her jeans. She calculated the width of her upper arm. She reminded herself that she was leaving. That if she wanted to, she could undo it. She could fix it. At college, no one would be watching her. She could exercise more, eat less: It was just discipline, just math.
Stop it, Anna—she squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her fingers against her lids until colors bloomed against the dark. She felt tears rise behind her fingertips. She reminded herself that twelve pounds didn’t matter. That she didn’t want to be a person for whom twelve pounds mattered—she wanted to free her brain to think about more important things.
She opened her eyes and stared into the mirror and spoke out loud. “Stop it, Anna,” she said. “Stop.” It was a strategy Theresa had given her for breaking the surface swirl of thought, and though it was kind of silly, it usually worked. “Stop it,” she said again. The thoughts began receding. She took one more deep breath and smiled at her reflection—another mental trick that was embarrassing but effective—and when she turned and exited the bathroom, Gavin was standing not five feet from the door.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey.”
She laughed in surprise. “Hey.” She was simultaneously relieved to not be alone anymore and worried he’d been listening.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“I didn’t even know you were down here,” Gavin said, which meant that he had. “I came for this,” he added. He held up a bottle from his dad’s liquor cabinet.
She laughed, but Gavin wasn’t laughing. He looked upset, maybe even a little pissed off. Anna recalled his face, his look of surprise, and hurt, when she broke up with him three months ago, as they’d all milled around the football field in their caps and gowns. She’d surprised herself too; she hadn’t planned on doing it. She’d hoped they might go hang out alone for a while after the ceremony, but then heard Gavin inviting people back to his house for an after-party. Anna didn’t care about the after-party. Maybe it was the fervor of graduation, the talk of the future, but she’d felt a sudden clarity: not only that she wasn’t meant to be with Gavin, but that she might find, at college, someone more like her.
“What are you doing down here?” Gavin said. He was pretty drunk, Anna saw, his cheeks red, his cap pulled low over his eyes, the brim landing at a sloppy, crooked angle.
“Nothing,” she said. “Hiding.”
“From?”
“I don’t know, everyone?”
“How come?”
“I guess I’m not having a particularly good time.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Gavin held up the bottle by the neck. “Would this help?”
“What is it?”
“Wild Turkey.”
“Yeah.” She laughed again, pressing her hair behind both ears. She didn’t like this feeling: sober enough to realize she was drunk, too drunk to do anything about it. Every move she made felt too obvious, too much. “I don’t think so.”
“What’s the matter?” Gavin smiled a little this time. “Can’t handle it?”
She’d always been susceptible to things like this—I dare you, someone would assert on the playground, at a sleepover, when she was a kid and afraid of literally everything. Fine, she’d reply. I’ll do it. And she’d hate it, but she would. Dumb things. Prank-call the pizza place, walk up to a random boy in the mall, hold her breath underwater at Meer Cove.
“Fine,” she said now, taking an emphatic step toward Gavin. She reached for the bottle and took a swig and instantly started coughing. “God, what is that?”
“I told you. Bourbon.”
“Bourbon?” Her lungs blazed. “I didn’t know Wild Turkey was bourbon,” she said, and Gavin laughed, which she deserved. She pushed the bottle back towar
d him, swiping at the dribbles on her chin.
He stopped laughing, but a loose smile still hung on his face. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey what?”
“I thought of you today.”
“Oh, wow, I’m honored.”
“I’m being serious. When I heard about the shooting.”
She paused, confused—she thought maybe he was referring to her anxiety, realizing how shaken up she must have been, but Gavin had never been aware of her anxiety, not completely. He knew, of course, that she got nervous about certain things, quirky things—checking that the doors were locked or the hair straightener unplugged—and he’d known about the eating stuff (more or less), which hadn’t seemed to faze him much (eating problems were so commonplace, so embarrassingly predictable—plus what guy didn’t want a skinny girlfriend?). But the real, true depths of it were something different.
“You did?” she said.
“I wanted to know you were okay,” he said, emphasizing each word as if he thought she might be too drunk to understand, and with a sickening feeling, it clicked.
“You mean you wanted to make sure I hadn’t been shot?” Anna said. It came out so bluntly that it sounded like she was joking, but she was terrified.
“I didn’t really think you were,” he said. “But, yeah, it crossed my mind.” He took his cap off and smashed it back on, then looked away. He seemed a little self-conscious. “I worried about it for a minute. I mean, isn’t that a normal thing to worry about?”
It was, and that was the most upsetting part—the fact that, in Gavin’s mind, her being shot in the mall this morning had actually been possible, that a world had briefly existed in which this had been a not-unrealistic thing to think.
“I guess you weren’t worrying about me,” Gavin said.
“No,” she managed. “No, I was.” She hadn’t been, not specifically, but she included him in the general state of nerves she’d been swimming in all day. She reached for the ends of her hair, twisting a lock around her thumb. Her eyes skipped to the wall above him, the deer with their chins raised, antlers sprawled, gazes pointed somewhere over their heads. “Do you remember that time, with the security guard?” she asked him.
He frowned. “What time?”
“When he found us on the fire escape at the mall and—”
“Oh,” he said, face clearing. “Right,” he said. She watched as the memory returned. “He was a really good guy.”
“Is,” Anna corrected.
“Is. That’s what I meant.” Then he set the bottle down on the floor, and he looked at her more seriously, kind of tenderly. “Want to get out of here?” he said.
Anna hesitated. To get away from the party, away from her own restless, relentless head—this might be a good thing. She didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to go back upstairs. She knew she wasn’t going to hook up with Gavin, despite Kim’s permission, but the prospect of being in his company, apart from all the others, was a comfort. With the exception of Kim and Janie, she was still more at ease with him than anyone there.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, maybe.” She paused. “What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We could take a drive.”
“You think you can drive?”
“Fine.” He shrugged. “Walk.”
“Walk.”
“Yeah. You know.” He shuffled a few steps toward her. “One foot and then the other?”
“That’s enlightening, thanks,” she said. “But where—”
“Oh, who cares?” Gavin groaned, staggering backward in mock aggravation. He looked toward the stairs, as if he was considering abandoning the plan completely, then turned back to her and smiled and said, “I know. The Grange.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Why not?”
“Um, it’s a little extreme, don’t you think?” She was trying to be coy, but only to disguise her nervousness. The Grange was an expanse of woods near the campus, dense and dark even by day. She couldn’t imagine being there at night, and drunk.
Gavin placed both hands on her shoulders. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” he said, and looked at her closely, his expression soft and flushed and sweet, kind of needy. Gavin, she thought, had always made her feel pretty. If he’d noticed she had gained twelve pounds, he didn’t care. “Please?”
Later, she would think that it was because she was drunk herself. Or because she was feeling grateful to Gavin for having been a basically nice boyfriend, or guilty about breaking up with him. Or maybe it was the nearness of college or her desire to get away from the party or the terrible strangeness of the day that had come before it, but she went.
The Grange sprawled from the edge of the campus to the Stafford town line. Occasionally, Anna heard stories about CMSU kids getting busted in there for partying, and there was a local legend about a Boy Scout who disappeared while camping. The forest spanned almost thirty acres. One edge bordered a cluster of student apartments; the other was two blocks from Gavin’s house.
As they walked down the middle of the one-lane road, Anna inhaled deeply. The night air was cool, laced with woodsmoke, the sky filled with stars—instantly her head felt clear. This had been the right move, after all. The road was empty, and sleepy, and for a moment nothing else felt real—the party, the shooting, the fact that they were all leaving. Anna knew she didn’t want to be with Gavin, didn’t belong with Gavin, but for a split second she let the moment wrap itself around her, her sandals and his flip-flops slapping against the blacktop, the hum of the cicadas, Gavin’s warm arm bumping hers.
“Did you not want me to come tonight?” she asked. They were walking by his neighbors’ house, the old Abbotts, past the rotting woodpile.
“No,” Gavin said. “I did.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, good. You realize that Mindy Reddy is an idiot, don’t you?”
“Jealousy.” Gavin nodded. “I approve.”
“I’m not jealous,” Anna said, checking him in the shoulder. “It’s just that she’s an airhead. I want to make sure you know who you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, I know who I’m dealing with,” Gavin said, and checked her back.
But as they neared the woods, Anna’s light mood began to dissipate. By day, there were signs posted about hunting regulations and hiking trails, but at night you couldn’t see anything. The trees were a single mass, solid and black, blacker than the sky.
She stopped. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Absolutely,” Gavin replied, footsteps crunching evenly toward the trailhead.
Anna glanced over her shoulder. The lights of the party were no longer visible. She felt the telltale glimmer of nerves. It was a feeling she knew all too well, the way her hands began to tingle. She pictured running water. A spigot in her brain, trickle in her veins.
“Come on, wuss!” Gavin was calling from the mouth of the trail. Then she watched him step into the woods and disappear.
Anna looked around once more, hunting for any other light: the faraway stars, the smudge of moon, the dull squares of gold from the old Abbotts’ windows. Rumor had it that, after their son killed himself, the Abbotts had disconnected their phone and TV; they almost never left the house.
“Gavin!” she shouted, and slowly picked her way toward the trees. She waited for her eyes to adjust, listened to the old rain dripping faintly from the branches. It was insanely dark. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” he said, and his voice was just ahead, still close.
“Wait,” Anna told him, stepping onto the path. “Wait for me.”
Her strides were short and cautious. The ground sank a little beneath her sandals, still muddy from yesterday’s rain. A branch snapped, making her jump. She tried to come up with the worst-case scenario, but it was terrifying: Worst-case scenario, a killer was hiding in the woods.
“Gavin,” she said. “Let’s go back.”
“What’s wrong?”
&nb
sp; “This is dumb,” she said. “These are woods where people hunt.”
He laughed. “No one’s hunting this time of night.”
“But some people are crazy. Some people are completely crazy lunatics.”
“I think you’re a completely crazy lunatic,” Gavin said.
She stumbled over a root. Ten steps in and she was completely blind. She was scared too, and starting to sweat in the cold, but to stop now wasn’t an option because then she’d be alone. “Gavin,” she said. “Gavin, I can’t see anything.”
“That’s the point.”
“No, I mean—anything.” She reached both hands before her like a zombie, swiping at the air, and grabbed onto the back of his T-shirt.
He laughed again. “You’re not wimping out, are you, Anna Daley-Briggs?”
She could hear, in his voice, the teasing curve of his smile. He wasn’t being cruel; he didn’t realize how seriously she wasn’t kidding.
“Would it help if I sing?” he asked, then started belting in a loud, high-pitched voice. “‘Tonight, we are young…’”
Anna’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel her skin twitching. Gavin kept on singing and she wished that he would stop because if there was a murderer in the woods they wouldn’t hear him coming. She willed herself to keep moving forward, the way she used to push herself when swimming: If she didn’t go seventy-five more feet, something terrible would happen. One more lap or.
“Gavin,” she said, but faintly. Her ears were ringing. Their footsteps, his voice, were growing distant. She hadn’t had an attack in over a year, but there was no mistaking the sensation—the way she was simultaneously aware of what was happening to her, cataloging the symptoms—limbs losing feeling, sound dulling, senses leached away one by one—and unable to make them stop. She tried counting in her head but couldn’t focus. She pictured the dead bug decomposing inside her, bits of antennae and wing. Soon, she knew, her senses would start failing. Already the deep black of the woods had faded to a sickly, feathery gray. Nathan Dugan’s face swam up in her mind. His cap. His unsmiling eyes.
