by Kim Savage
“You’re the one who wanted to go there.”
He meets my eyes. “Once my father realized there were lapses, he felt sure you and Liv weren’t Donald Jessup’s only victims.”
“Oh.”
We’re quiet for a moment. Laughter booms from the kitchen. Erik swears he’s telling the truth about something, and Mom is flirtatiously dubious. In a flash, I realize that it’s a relief for my mother when I’m not around. She sounds young and happy and maybe drunk, but still, young and happy. Happy to have the attention of a gorgeous guy; happy to be brilliant and pretty. Light. Free of slithering black things in your belly.
Kellan slides closer. “You don’t have to tell me what happened. Just tell me what it was like.”
“When I was alone? Or with him?”
“Both.”
I drop my head. “Moments were splintered, in the woods. I have no way of knowing how many pieces there are, or if I have them all.”
“I can imagine. I mean, I can’t imagine.”
“You can’t. See, absolute darkness isn’t absolute. You can still make out shapes, ripples of movement. Branches buckled. Things flapped and scuttled. After a while, it started to rain. Your skin feels spongy, like it doesn’t belong to you. Water fills your ears. It slips between your lips, even when you jam them tight. You don’t bother brushing it from your eyes. Soon you stop feeling it. Sometimes, I think Donald Jessup isn’t what changed me. It’s the woods that changed me. It’s where I learned to live inside my head.”
Kellan swallows hard.
“Hunger. Cold. Your lacerated hands. The need to piss and sleep. All those things vanish. You turn off a switch, rid yourself of the burden of bodily pangs. The only thing left working is your rational mind trying to calculate a way out,” I say.
From the kitchen comes a shout and a cackle. Kellan puts his hand over mine, as if to say Mute that boozy interruption. Go on. His hand is warm, but not yuck-warm.
I keep my hand still.
“A lot of people would have curled into a ball and waited to die,” he says.
“It was pure survival instinct. I had no choice.”
“It was a choice,” he says. “You chose not to die.”
“I guess. But here’s the thing: sometimes, I think I got stuck in that mode. I can’t turn the switch back on. I can’t stop calculating and start feeling again.”
“Maybe you’re still trying to survive,” he says. His eyes dance as he moves my hair off my shoulder. It would be natural to slip my hands around his neck, breathe in his boy smell.
“I should check on Mom,” I mumble, staggering away and into the kitchen.
Mom and Erik are three-quarters into a new bottle of cabernet. Erik perches on a counter stool, knees pointed, bopping his head to the Sirius grunge station and smiling at Mom, who’s decided this is the right moment to belatedly carve our Halloween pumpkin, which smells rotten. She’s got the top off, and is digging the guts out with bare hands, sleeves up to her elbows. They both look snockered. Someone has lit votive candles and set them on the counter and the breakfast table. The timer dings, and Mom rushes to pull some kind of Indian rice pudding off the stove. I block her way. “You wash your hands and let me get that,” I say, slipping on potholders and lifting the pan. The aroma of cardamom and raisins grows, nearly eclipsing the pumpkin funk. My stomach growls. Mom and Erik take forks to the pudding and hash out whether or not some professor’s article was worthy of having been published in the Lancet, and how they are sooo bad to be gossiping about it, never mind having double dessert, shame on them, giggle-giggle.
Kellan and I stand back, gawking. “Should Erik ride his bike home?” I whisper, flustered. If there’s anything more paralyzing than seeing a parent drunk, it’s seeing your parent’s friend drunk and scarfing down rice pudding.
“I’ll offer to drive him home.” Kellan tilts his head until our temples nearly touch. “But I think he might stay.”
“Should I throw a sheet and some pillows on the couch?” I ask.
“They’ll sleep together, dummy,” he says.
“Oh no. They’re research partners. It’s not like that,” I say. But I can’t tell you what it is like, either.
“Oh really? I guess you weren’t picking up the signals I was picking up. There’s major history there.”
I nearly yell “Ha!” Instead, I deflect. “It’s … complicated. They’re kind of codependent. Like, Erik completes my mother when it comes to things like social skills. She doesn’t have the greatest EQ. After the woods, she dragged me out of Shiverton, supposedly to get away from the nosy reporters and bad memories. So where does she take me? To the Berkshires. Home to the largest state forest in Massachusetts. This at a time when I’m avoiding trees in any number.”
“I maintain anything in large numbers is scary. Take kittens. One kitten is cute. Five hundred kittens in one place? Terrifying. The principle applies to anything. Birds. Ladybugs. Babies.”
“It’s not a joke,” I say, trying to scowl, though I want to laugh. Because an argument right now would make it easier to keep things on the right plane, with this guy who not only hooked up with Liv, but is involved with an aggressively preppy puck—
“I know. You were traumatized. And half the time you feel like you’re being punked, because of the wildly inappropriate things people do and say in front of you. Like trying to make you feel better by sending you to a vacation home surrounded by woods,” Kellan says.
“Or worrying I might get PTSD from seeing Ana Alvarez’s dead body, because it’s not like I might already have it from, say, getting abducted.”
“Or saying they’re acting like they haven’t seen food in days, when you went two days eating, what?” he says.
“Basically nothing.” I smile a bit. “You caught that.”
“And I’m sorry for saying it.” He leans against the wall, thumbs hooked in his pocket, his signature slouch. “It must be hard to feel like the world is periodically surreal. Like you’re being punked all the time, or on Candid Camera. Don’t you feel like looking into the camera sometimes and saying, ‘Seriously?’”
My jaw drops. How does he know?
“But I’ve figured something out about you. You think it’s kind of funny when people make those gaffes,” he says.
“I think it’s funny when someone offends me?”
“I know you do. You’d be looking straight into that camera, your eyes wide with disbelief, getting a laugh. You know what else? If I was in the audience, I’d be laughing with you.”
The show of my life. Who gave him a seat in the audience?
Kellan points at a votive on the counter dissolving into a molten mess. “That’s going to leave a stain.”
I yelp and blow it out.
He lifts his back off the wall. “Oh, and the fact remains that your mom and Erik are totally a couple. You might be a brainiac, but you’re the least aware person I’ve ever met.”
“Now I’m truly offended,” I say, frowning energetically. He smiles, mocking and irresistible. We stand like that, me scowling, him smiling, until he wears me down and I laugh.
Suddenly Erik lurches across the room to us. “Did you kids see my bike helmet in the dining room?” he slurs.
Mom insists he’s in no condition to ride, and besides, they’re expecting torrential downpours. Perhaps Kellan could give him a lift?
Kellan’s eyes bore into me. My face gets hot. He doesn’t want to leave. Do I want him to leave?
I shake my head. “Go.”
Kellan disappears into the front hall looking for his coat. I pace, trying to pull myself together. Erik staggers in first, jacket over his shoulder. Kellan follows behind and Mom chases after them, forcing the pumpkin onto Erik, saying he needs fall decorations because his condo is as spartan as a monk’s. I don’t ask how she knows what the inside of his condo looks like. They climb into Kellan’s truck as I stand in the doorway waving. Mom sprawls on the couch, minutes from sleep. Smoke from a neighbor’s c
oal stove laces the air, and I breathe deeply as I walk down the driveway to move Erik’s bike into the garage. Back inside, Mom snores. I tuck a blanket under her chin and walk around blowing out votives, greasy wax puddled on countertops. We can chip at it with butter knives tomorrow, I think, shutting off the nineties grunge music and dragging myself upstairs.
I reach for the picture tucked into my mirror. It’s the same picture Liv has of middle school graduation. It’s a gorgeous shot of her, her rosy cheek squished against my pale one. Easier times. It was never really the same after that, when Deborah began focusing on every thing about Liv: a gradual shaping of the way she looked, the friends she made, the clubs she joined.
From the top of the stairs I listen to Mom’s woolly snores. In her empty room, the coat she wore to work still lies across her bed. I feel a finger-flick at my thawed heart: single mom, lonely mom, only able to laugh when I leave the room and after two and a half bottles of cabernet. I really am a drag.
But fascinating. Mostly, morbidly fascinating. Any girl can have an apple face, or boobs since fifth grade. But she can’t be an ironic heroine survivalist.
I grab my notebook and flop onto my bed.
Things I Know About Kellan MacDougall:
- Loves to be fed
- Wants to know what it was like in the woods
- Would laugh with me
My notebook falls to the floor with a satisfying flutter. I lie back and drift off, Kellan’s voice curling around me, until I’m distracted by the feel of something solid underneath my butt. My fingers graze the sharp point of the little tinfoil wedge. I unpeel it carefully, and the numbers are faded, but I grab my phone and type them as best as I can make out, giggling.
Hi I type.
Immediately, the telling ellipses appear on my iPhone screen. Three little circles, three little hooks to keep me tuned in. My breath hitches. Three words appear.
Is this Julia?
FIVE
356 Days After the Woods
It’s nearly eleven a.m., and Mom is home sick, scraping candle wax off the counter with a butter knife. “Remind me never to order from the new Indian place again,” she groans, picking at the fossilized mass. “Clearly the tikka masala was bad.”
I murmur in agreement, reminding myself that I should be relieved. She wasn’t supposed to be home on my day off, but her debilitated state will make ducking out easier. Still, seeing her vulnerable makes me feel worse about where I’m going.
The knife crashes to the floor as she cups her mouth with both hands.
“Do not puke!” I yell.
Her hands fall slowly. Her face is green. “I’ll be okay,” she whispers faintly.
“I beg you to go back to the family room and lie down. I’ll scrape the wax and put away the dishes. I can’t clean around you. Puke, and there will be more to clean.”
Mom touches her fingertips together and bows to me, wincing from the pain of gravity. A whoosh as she collapses onto the couch. “Tell me again where you’re going?” she calls weakly.
“Starbucks. With Petra. Nice girl, you don’t know her,” I call back. I consider telling her that Alice might join us for extra insurance, but I can’t afford tripping her antennae right now. “We’re going over biology for the exam this week. It’s on the nervous system of a hare.”
“Fun. Fix yourself lunch, please. I won’t be eating.”
Neither will I, I think, stomach tight. I throw myself into flaking wax off the granite counter. Next, I attack chunks of pumpkin innards, a nasty mess of threads and dangling seeds. I pry them from their sticking places and dump them into a large wooden bowl. I think of bits of melon rind I saw once, in the woods, in the pit, along with other things. I grab the edge of the counter, which is smooth and gloriously man-made, reminding myself I am not in the woods, and that pumpkin is not melon. I shake my head loosely and notice Mom’s phone, lit with messages. Six from postdocs, none from Erik, which feels like a bad sign, as far as the evolution of their unrelationship goes. I wonder if he’s still hungover too. In the distance, Mom snores. I snatch a pen to write a sticky note, then stop. Promising a return time will only complicate things. I crumple the first piece of paper, peel off a new one, and stick it on the fridge. I write “Feel better!” with a smiley face for good measure.
But for a shiny black SUV, my car is conspicuous among the beat-up numbers parked in the Parlee entrance lot. My brand-new Dodge Dart SXT is one of the many new things Mom threw at me for coming out of the Fells alive. If she couldn’t protect me, paying for ten standard air bags, front crash prevention, and a body that weighs 2,750 pounds might. The car feels downright sparkly, and since break-ins along with roaming sociopaths are not uncommon in the Fells, I tuck my car next to a Parks Department truck.
Yellow caution tape flaps between saplings at the trailhead, sending a trill through my nerves. There’s a fresh memorial pile on the bottom of the steps. Stuffed puppies and kittens. A light blue T-shirt that says Real Doctors Treat More Than One Species. A Brazilian flag. Flowers trapped in cellophane. It’s a smaller pile, I imagine, than the one that’s cropped up at the main entrance by now. But the main entrance is too main for my purposes.
My stomach hardens. Get down to business.
I slide my backpack off my shoulder and bend on one knee, checking my notebook against my watch. The sun sets at 4:25 p.m. The hike to the fire watchtower is 4.3 miles. Walking on a flat trail at an average pace, I can expect to walk three to four miles in an hour without stopping. Since the half mile before the tower is rocky and steep, I figure about a half to one hour just for that section. The entire trip should take no longer than two and a half hours. I could figure more, but this isn’t intended to be a sightseeing stroll.
“Your answers aren’t in there. Trust me. I’ve already been.”
Paula Papademetriou appears at the trailhead. I check past my shoulder like she’s talking to someone else, but we are alone.
“Did you follow me here?” I ask, startled.
She steps over the yellow tape in hiking boots, jeans, and a short quilted jacket with buckles. Her ponytailed hair is damp at the temples. Her face is bare, with pointed cheekbones and a square jaw. It’s a face to apply makeup to, slip glasses onto, try any hairstyle. Strong bones under her clothes too. If I put my thumb and index finger around her wrist, there would be a half finger’s length between them before they met. It’s a weird thing to think of, Paula Papademetriou’s thick bones.
Even her bright teeth look powerful. “I came out of the woods, remember?” she says, looking at me sideways, teasing. “I was here first?”
“Right.” I shrug awkwardly. “Obviously.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a feeling you’d be here.” She holds out her hand, tanned, with squared, French-tipped nails. A thin diamond bracelet flashes on her wrist. “It’s really nice to meet you in person. I’m Paula.”
Her voice isn’t the high one I heard gossiping in the tavern. It’s low and throaty, the kind of voice owned by a dame in a dime-store detective novel. Closer to her TV voice, but not that, either. I wonder how many voices she has.
I tug off my thin glove to shake her hand. “I’m Julia.”
She laughs, and it’s kind of musical. “I know who you are.” She brushes her hand against her thigh. “Sorry I’m a little sweaty. The hike was longer than I estimated.”
“It’s 4.3 miles to the fire watchtower. If that’s where you were going.”
Paula’s eyes narrow slightly. “You have my number,” she says, then seizes the opportunity to get literal. “And now I have yours. You sent me a text last night. You’re a woman of few words.”
I blush. My “hi” text was the equivalent of a giddy prank. “I wasn’t sure if I had the right number.”
“Well,” she says, digging through a slouchy bag slung over her shoulder, “now you do.” She hands me a business card with raised lettering and her phone number. “My business card, with my private cell. It’s old-fashion
ed, I know.”
It says:
PAULA PAPADEMETRIOU
News Anchor and Investigative Journalist, 3 News Boston WFYT-TV
If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.
781-555-9698
“That saying is pretty funny.”
“Words to live by. It’s an old journalism maxim my first producer used to say. It means familiarity and history do not excuse you from checking and double-checking your sources. Never be content with what you’re told. Always dig.”
I tilt the card in my hand. When she leaves, I will tape it to a page inside my notebook. “Even when everyone’s telling you to be content?” I ask.
“Especially when everyone’s telling you to be content.”
I look toward the sun. “I should really hit the trail. I want to get in and out before dark.”
“I imagine you would. Pardon me for saying this, and I’m sure you’ve heard it ad nauseam, but you are a remarkably brave person. Most people in your circumstances would never want to see the woods again, never mind a crime scene that could have been their own.”
Person instead of GIRL. And she called me a woman, too, before. It’s like she knows I’m not a GIRL anymore.
Paula’s face softens. “I’ve angered you. Forgive me for being so direct. It’s an occupational hazard,” she says.
“I was just thinking. I space out like that sometimes. Actually, I’m okay with directness.” I get quiet again, not sure what else to say. Paula looks at me searchingly for so long, I feel compelled to fill the silence.
“What I mean is, it’s a nice change. Pretty much everyone treats me like I’m a porcelain doll,” I explain.
“That must be unbearable,” Paula says, sympathetic but not patronizing. Which is nice.
I shrug. “I can’t blame them. What happened to me was scary. And it scares them. So they act weird.”
“You deserve to be treated like a normal person.”
I gaze at the trail, thinking about that. Mom would have me banished to the countryside. Ricker wants to shape me to fit the textbook trauma victim. But Paula thinks I should be treated like a normal person.
