The Woods Are Always Watching

by Stephanie Perkins

  The girls moved along, shaken, but the repulsive stench lingered. Exhaustion plummeted their tanks back to empty. They straggled onward until, at last, Neena crested another slope. “The spring,” she said. “I see it! This has to be it.”

  Water was trickling out of a white PVC pipe that jutted from the earth. Josie had no idea how the system worked, and the spring was minimal and low-flowing, but the water was clear. And it existed. She wanted to weep.

  The girls gave feeble hurrahs and exchanged a weak high five.

  “Do we refill now?” Neena asked.

  Josie’s thoughts unclouded enough to form a plan. “Let’s find the campsite first, so we can shed our packs.”

  “Good call. Yes.” Neena mumbled it like a zombie. “Shed first. Then filter.”

  The ground leveled out after the next switchback, and the path forked. The girls released another wilted whoop. Ninety minutes of light remained. Setting up camp would be a hustle—and they were in no condition to hustle—but they were here. They could do it.

  Following the Wade Harte to the right, the girls expected to find the Deep Fork clearing after the turn. Instead, they stared into an abyss of more tunnel.

  “I guess the clearing isn’t immediately after the fork?” Neena said.

  Josie bit her lip and glanced back behind them. Unsure.

  “It’s probably just up here.” Neena plodded forward with a drained sigh. “I’ll keep going, if you want to stay.”

  But Josie followed. “We’re not separating.”

  Secretly, Neena was relieved. As daylight sank into twilight, she didn’t want to be alone, either. The darkness itself didn’t frighten her; it was what the darkness concealed. Her brain liked to play tricks. Create specters. She didn’t believe in the supernatural, but she did believe in hidden men. Murderers peering in through windows, rapists waiting underneath beds, kidnappers crouched behind closet doors.

  When she was young, her brother had turned off the lights while she was fetching a hula hoop from the basement. He’d locked the door and ignored her cries for help, finding her terror to be hilarious. Ma had discovered her an hour later, catatonic on the top step. Darshan wasn’t a monster anymore—he was kind and thoughtful, as far from monstrous as possible—but his joke had done permanent damage.

  The girls hiked in silence on flat but uneven ground. As the distance from the fork grew, so did Neena’s apprehension. “Should we turn around? Try the other path?”

  “Win definitely said it was the right fork,” Josie said. But she pulled out the printed instructions from Neena’s top pouch to confirm. “Yeah. It says right.”

  “Maybe he remembered wrong. We should have seen the clearing by now.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Josie snapped.

  The girls stewed in frustrated nervousness. From the forested depths, an owl hooted at the encroaching night.

  “Well?” Neena said. “What do you want to do?”

  Retracing their steps, they tried the left fork but encountered another compact tunnel. The path was steep and craggy, and, after a few minutes of arduous upward trekking, there was still no clearing. No space anywhere for a tent. The pitch rose in Josie’s voice. “Where are we supposed to sleep? We only have an hour of light left.”

  “I guess we could stretch out our sleeping bags on the trail?”

  “On the trail? Without a tent?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t want to do that, either.” Neena gestured, harassed, in the direction they’d come from, signaling for Josie to turn around.

  “You don’t think we should look any further up here?” Josie asked.

  “I don’t know.” Neena repeated it, because it was the only true thing. She would have screamed it, if she had the energy. “Do you?”

  Josie stared up the trail. Her gaze darkened with unseeing. “Shit,” she whispered and then stomped back down.

  Neena followed close behind, bumping and dragging her body. She nearly crashed into Josie when Josie stopped abruptly at the fork.

  “Now what?” Josie asked.

  “Now what what?”

  “Should we try the other way again? Maybe we didn’t walk far enough.”

  “I still think we should set up camp here at the fork, where there’s the most room.” Neena imagined them trapped, unprepared, on the trail—pointy black treetops silhouetting themselves against an obsidian sky. “We’re running out of time.”

  “I know we’re running out of time.” Josie shed her pack and scurried up the right path without a goodbye, no longer concerned about being alone. The excruciating rub of inflexible shoes against inflamed flesh fueled her indignation. Neena didn’t understand how serious this was. She never took anything seriously.

  “Josie,” Neena shouted. “Josie!”

  “What?”

  “Josie!”

  As Josie skittered down the mountain, her glasses slid down her nose. She shoved them back up. “What?” The question shook with a fury that dissolved the instant she saw.

  Neena was holding aside a willowy vine as if it were a theater curtain. The new growth had concealed a third path.

  NARROW AND FOOTWORN, the path opened up to a clearing, which was secluded from the main trail inside a dense grove of pine trees. Empty campsites dotted the forest floor. Josie had imagined that Deep Fork would unfurl to reveal a panorama of wide sky and azure mountains. But the clearing remained enclosed. The gap was pretty, at least. Cozy. She stumbled across a blanket of spongy pine needles, her swollen feet already shutting down in anticipation of rest.

  “So, the right turn should have been immediately at the fork,” Neena was saying. “Instead of taking the right fork and then seeing the clearing.”

  Both girls felt less dumb. Anyone could have made the mistake. The sky hovered on the rim of darkness. Across the gentle slope, seven or eight possibilities spread out before them—flat pockets of uninhabited space, each containing a telltale circle of charred rocks. At the top of the embankment, like a beacon or warning for ships, perched a bright yellow-gold tent. The girls stared at it. The campsite was silent and motionless.

  “They’re probably still out day hiking,” Josie said.

  “Or already asleep.”

  Josie fake-sobbed. “Sleep.”

  “You know”—Neena glanced again at the yellow-gold disturbance—“if we stay here, we can stop walking.”

  Josie intuited the rest: And we can keep our distance from the strangers. Her pack hit the ground with the weight of a corpse. “Sold.”

  Neena’s pack followed. “Thank God, I don’t have to carry that beast again until tomorrow.”

  Neither girl made an effort to move. Their arms hung flaccid at their sides.

  “Refill our water now,” Neena asked, “or wait until morning? I’m thinking . . . wait.”

  Josie’s expression hardened into a discouraged scowl. “We should do it now, but it’s already so dark. And there’s so much left to do.”

  “Try taking off your sunglasses,” Neena said.

  The sky eased from an ominous dusk into a manageable twilight. Normally, Josie would have laughed, but she was cranky and didn’t want to give Neena the satisfaction of being right. “I still think we should wait,” she said, wincing onto her knees to rifle through her pack. Travel-size toiletries hurtled to the ground like missiles. “We have less than an hour, and we still have to pitch the tent, start the fire, cook dinner—”

  “I wanted to wait, too. I’m not arguing with you.” Neena dodged a flattened roll of toilet paper. “Careful.”

  Locating the case, Josie made the exchange for her regular glasses. The case snapped its impatient jaws shut. As the world sharpened into focus, her anxieties continued in a pile-on. “Hey, did we ever figure out if we’re even allowed to have a fire here?” she asked. A campfire would be forbidden the following night i
n the Misty Rock Wilderness, but Josie hadn’t been able to find any rules about Frazier Mountain.

  Neena pointed at the nearby circle of rocks. “All the sites have one of these.”

  “Yeah, but they aren’t using theirs.” Josie gestured to the tent uphill. “Just because campers have done it before, doesn’t make it legal.”

  “Come on, I’ve never made a fire. It’ll complete the experience.”

  Josie hesitated. Weakened. Caved. “Fine. But if they yell at us, you’re the one who has to apologize.”

  “They’re not going to yell at us.”

  Unlike her best friend, Josie was always worried about making other people mad or upset or disappointed. She suppressed it now for the semblance of peace. “Well, if we’re building a fire, then there’s definitely not enough time for the water—”

  “Do you have enough for dinner? For both of us, I mean. I’m pretty low.”

  Josie still had a full liter of water left. Examining Neena’s bottles, she was dismayed to discover that Neena only had a quarter of a liter. She couldn’t hold back a sigh. “That’s why I told you to go easy earlier.”

  “Yeah, but we were supposed to have three hours to hang out tonight.”

  “Well.” Josie sighed again. “As long as you’re careful, I probably have enough for the both of us.”

  A moment of testy silence swept over the woods. Then Neena stalked away.

  “Where are you going?”

  Neena called out without turning around. “To collect sticks for the fire.”

  “We need to set up the tent first!”

  Neena stamped back, grumbling under her breath.

  “We’ve only done it once before.” Josie was exasperated. “It would be really hard to put together in the dark.”

  “Fine. Where is it?”

  “It’s in my pack, remember?” Josie unzipped her main compartment and yanked out more supplies—first-aid kit, clothing, cook kit, camp chair. The tent was near the bottom, on top of her sleeping bag. Fifteen disgruntled minutes later, they had interlocked the poles and raised the tent, but the process went faster than expected. The girls stared at their red dome, awash with achievement. And then Neena started to wander away.

  “We’re not done,” Josie called after her.

  “What?”

  “The rainfly.” At Neena’s blank response, she added, “The part that goes on top of the tent.”

  Neena appraised the clouds through the pines. “It’s not going to rain.”

  “The weather can change rapidly. All of our shit would get wet.”

  Neena stomped back, which nettled Josie. It implied that Josie was being a nag, and she was sick of being treated like one. Rained-out gear would ruin their entire trip. And who gave Neena exclusive rights to being miserable? All Josie wanted was to take off her shoes and surrender to the night, but there was work to be done.

  The girls pieced together the extra poles and joints and fabric and attached the rainfly over the main dome. Before Neena could think about disappearing again, Josie reminded her that they needed to put together the chairs, too.

  “Can’t we do that later?” Neena asked.

  “No. Let’s get it over with.”

  Josie dumped her chair parts from their pouch as Neena rooted through her pack for her own. Win’s girlfriend, Meegan, had purchased the matching pair for his last birthday, but Win had discouraged the girls from bringing both because of the added weight. “One of you can sit on the bear canister,” he’d argued. The plastic barrel was approximately the same height as a chair.

  Neither girl viewed this as acceptable.

  The canister flew out of Neena’s pack, along with socks and shirts, a compact stove and fuel, and another sleeping bag. The second pouch was discovered, and then more poles and fabric were flung onto the ground. She jabbed them at each other with livid abandon. Quick to frustration, she threw down the mess. “Fuck you!”

  This time, Josie didn’t take it personally. It was outrageous how heavy ultralight was when you were exhausted. They hadn’t practiced putting the chairs together because it had seemed like it would be obvious. Through trial and error, Josie figured out hers while Neena watched and stewed. Then, together, they assembled Neena’s.

  Josie blinked at their modest creations. “That felt like a microcosm of this whole trip.”

  “At least we got it right the second time?” Neena framed it as a question. We got it wrong the first time. We figured it out.

  Josie prickled but let it slide, because this three-day trip was about them, plural, together. “Sticks,” she instructed. “As many as we can gather.”

  Neena brightened—somewhat—and hastened into the surrounding woods.

  Josie moved with a grimace. Pain bedeviled every step, each one a howling confirmation of the blisters on her heels. On the balls of her feet. On the bony knobs that protruded beside her big toes. They’d been worried about Neena with her borrowed boots, but at least those had already been broken in. Josie shambled around near the campsite, depositing twigs into a pile beside their rock circle. She stole a moment to rest and tidied the rocks, tightening the circle, while Neena dropped off a substantial load of large branches. Fearing a scolding retaliation, Josie limped away for more.

  “Did you twist an ankle?” Neena asked. She sounded concerned.

  “Blisters.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  Josie dismissed it, despite wanting the sympathy. “I’ll be fine.” Continuing to hobble and gather, she scanned the ground for tracks and scat. She didn’t even like bears when they were jailed behind bars in a zoo. The thought of one roving past their tent . . . She tried to recall the scrawled handwriting on the plywood notice board. Had any of those hikers spotted a bear at Deep Fork? She couldn’t remember, but surely it would have jumped out at her at the time.

  Neena dropped another armful onto the pile. It landed with a satisfying clatter. It seemed like enough to start the fire, so they tossed the heftiest branches into the pit.

  Josie packed some of the smaller sticks in between. “Kindling, I think?”

  Neena shrugged. “That sounds right.”

  Searching and collecting had eased the tension between them. Josie found the matches, and they took turns trying to light the kindling. A few twigs singed, but none would burn. Their frustration rose again. Now that they’d stopped moving, the chill from the lofty elevation crawled under Josie’s skin. It settled into her bones.

  She shivered. “I’m gonna get my hoodie. Would you like yours?”

  Glowering at the matches, Neena shook her head. She still looked warm and flush. Her body temperature was always higher than Josie’s. Josie located her own hoodie on the ground beside her pack and brushed off a stray pine needle, faintly tacky with sap. Zipping up, she spotted a new hole in the stitching where the left sleeve met the left shoulder. Holes tattered the elbows, too, in a way that seemed cool and purposeful. Like she didn’t give a damn. Josie did give a damn, and she would have preferred a new hoodie, but it never felt okay to buy one when there were other things she needed more.

  Something else on the ground caught her eye. She carried it over.

  Neena was confused. “You want to burn your journal?”

  “Only a few sheets,” Josie said. “The paper will catch fire, and maybe that’ll be enough to get the rest going.”

  Win had said it was a bad idea to bring their journals—again, the unnecessary weight—Write on the backs of the printouts, if you’re that desperate—but the girls couldn’t imagine not having the option. Finally, they felt vindicated to have ignored his advice. Josie tore out two sheets, crumpled them up, and tucked them into the kindling. The paper lit. The burn was quick, but the paper slid the fire onto a skinny twig.

  Josie sucked in her breath. “Come on,” she begged the other sticks.

  T
he fire went out.

  “Try it again,” Neena said, growing excited. They tore and tucked another sheet. “Do you think we’re supposed to blow on it?” she asked. “To give it more oxygen?”

  “We breathe in oxygen. We breathe out carbon dioxide.”

  “But doesn’t fire need air or whatever? Isn’t that a thing?”

  “Yeah, but it’s too small. We’d blow it out.”

  Neena leaned into the circle and started puffing anyway.

  “You’re going to blow it out!” Josie said.

  Another puff. “No, it’s like a bellows.”

  “A what?”

  “Those old-timey, squeezey accordion things. Like in Victorian times— Aha!”

  Orange flames spread across a second stick and then licked onto a third. Above the kindling, a stout branch sputtered, thinking of catching fire. As more sticks were thrust at the blaze, the girls learned that dry sticks worked better than damp, and, at last, the campfire roared into life. They were as proud as cavewomen.

  They were also paranoid about it dying again. “You watch the fire and start dinner,” Neena said. “I’ll collect more wood, so you don’t have to walk.”

  It felt generous. As if Josie had expected Neena to have either forgotten about her feet or to not care, even though Neena wasn’t that type of person. Neena had never been either absentminded or malicious. Guilt rumbled inside Josie.

  The sun had set, and the light was dying. They strapped on their headlamps before separating. If their emotions hadn’t been stretched so thin, they might have laughed at the sight—the white spot in the center of their foreheads like a blinding third eye. Josie used hers to spelunk inside the bear canister. The barrel had a tight screw-on lid and notches around the sides, a design that prevented bears from unscrewing it and getting the goodies inside. It held all their food. And, hopefully, it also held all of the enticing, food-related smells.

  Tonight’s dinner was lamb curry with rice, courtesy of Dr. Chandrasekhar. All Josie had to do was reheat it. She was surprised to locate it inside a bulky glass mason jar. Unlike Win, Neena’s mom had forgotten they’d be carrying everything on their backs. Josie dumped the contents into a tiny pot before realizing the stove wasn’t ready. As she threaded the collapsible stove onto its fuel canister, the campfire dimmed. Inside her vault of fading memories, the shadow of her father poked expertly at a fire with a stick. Beside the woodpile was a long, sturdy branch they’d rejected for being too damp. Josie picked it up and poked. A gratifying shower of sparks exploded into the night sky.