After the Woods

by Kim Savage

  “You know a lot about architecture.” Alice looks at me, with her lack of filter, and that absolute sincerity that is somehow endearing. “You know a lot about everything. I kind of forgot that about you.”

  I look down at the brown lawn, embarrassed. “Someone told me that.”

  Alice gazes up at the house for a minute, considering. “If that’s where the supports really were, the house would fall right down.” I’m still staring at the sticks and lost in the wonder that is Alice when she points at the foundation. “Check out that crack. It goes right up the side of the house.”

  A zigzag fissure runs from the bottom center to the top right, just under the gutter, in the shape of a staircase.

  “What do you think it is?” asks Alice.

  “I don’t know. Something’s wrong with the foundation. All the rain, maybe.” As I say it, a wind picks up and a slant of rain falls from the trees, pelting us.

  Alice shivers. “It’s like the Gingerbread House is about to crack in half.” Alice suddenly looks at me. “What would it take to do one of those well-check things?”

  “You mean like they do for old people and shut-ins who don’t answer their door? Proof that something is wrong, I suppose. Unless you had a friend in the police department. And I don’t think I do, at least not these days.”

  “Maybe you could do it anonymously.”

  I bite my lip.

  “Or we could ring the doorbell.”

  “I really just want to make sure she’s okay,” I say. Because I’m furious with her. But I also need to know she’s alive.

  “Then ring the doorbell and say that.”

  I stand there for a minute, shifting around in my coat, shoulders shoved around my ears.

  “If you’re not going to ring the doorbell, can we go? I’ve kind of got the creeps.”

  I laugh lamely. “Worse than when we visited Yvonne Jessup?”

  Alice nods seriously. “Actually, yeah.”

  We trudge across the yard together, feet sinking in the loam. I feel eyes on my back, but maybe it’s just the Amityville windows, or the rain that has started again, harder this time. Alice wants to go to the new coffee shop on the outskirts of town where everyone hangs after getting kicked out of the downtown coffee shop for overcrowding it. Alice, with her outsider’s curiosity of things insiders do. Socializing is the last thing I’m in the mood for, but she begs, and I’m afraid she’s starting to feel like the girl I secretly hook up with when no one else is around. It shouldn’t take long to get there, but it does, because miserable cops in yellow slickers are redirecting cars around holes in the street.

  Alice slips into the past. I half listen. The skies have opened and my wipers can barely keep up. It’s hard not to fixate on the streaming rivulets instead of watching the road.

  “I remember Liv’s third-grade birthday party so clearly. I thought Mrs. Lapin was the prettiest mom I’d ever seen.”

  I snort.

  “You’re not a fan. But all things considered, she is an attractive woman,” Alice insists.

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “Okay, whatever. I was eight. Anyway, I kept wishing I could sneak upstairs to Liv’s bedroom to see the carousel horse her father gave her,” Alice says.

  I laugh. “She never had a carousel horse in her bedroom. That was a rumor.”

  “You remember it though,” she says.

  “I remember the rumor,” I say.

  “Was the canopy bed in the shape of a pumpkin carriage true?”

  “She had a canopy bed. It was not in the shape of a pumpkin.”

  “The slide from the hole in her bedroom floor that led to the playroom?”

  “Liv’s house doesn’t even have a playroom.”

  “What about the secret eaves through her closet? A whole room where you could play, and no one could find you. Like Narnia.”

  “All part of the mythology,” I lie, a little. I can’t deal with Alice’s imagination going wild right now, when I’m convinced that Liv is mysteriously holed up in her house.

  “Well, her dad is a billionaire, right?” Alice continues. “Royalty, too?”

  “More like a millionaire. Maybe a thousandaire. Honestly, I have no idea. He’s rich, I guess. I doubt he’s royal. Liv never talks about him. In fact, she hates him.”

  “I guess on some level I knew all that. Still”—Alice pulls down the vanity mirror and adjusts her headband—“why do you think some people inspire so much speculation?”

  I pull into a spot in front of the coffee shop and sigh. “You take a little personal attractiveness and add some mystery. Just enough to keep people wondering. Voilà. Instant Fantasy GIRL.”

  “You know what’s funny? I preferred thinking all those stories about Liv’s house and her family were real.”

  “Alice.” I turn off the car and shift to face her. “That house might look like a gingerbread house from the outside. But I gotta tell you, there ain’t nothing about Liv Lapin’s life that’s anything close to a fairy tale.”

  “I guess that depends on the fairy tale,” Alice says. She frowns, thinking hard. “It’s a shame that Mrs. Lapin doesn’t do anything to make the house pretty anymore. It’s really dilapidated. Mom said they might even have to have a talk with her, because it’s on the historic register and people get mad about those things.”

  I throw my hood over my head and get ready to run. Alice aims her Hello Kitty umbrella out the door. “I don’t get how you suddenly abandon a project you were obsessed with,” she yells, fixated, her train of thought unstoppable as we bolt under the rain into the cozy shop, where Christmas music plays prematurely and pretend presents are wrapped near a fireplace.

  Looking directly at me is Kellan, standing at a high table with a group of kids, one of whom is the Apple Face girl, perched on a stool. He looks to Apple Face, then to me, and his mouth falls open.

  Alice fusses with her umbrella loudly, shaking it out and closing it at her side. “Now that the house is in such disrepair, I guess Mrs. Lapin’s more likely to leave it alone.”

  I spin and face Alice, flipping back my hood. “What was that you said?”

  “I said, now that it’s not so pretty”—Alice closes her umbrella with a whoosh—“Mrs. Lapin will leave it alone.”

  I grip the back of a wire newsstand. The Christmas carols sound like demented fun-house music, and the warmth is suddenly stifling. I fumble for my bag, soaked, the notebook inside probably soaked too. It doesn’t matter, because I’ve run out of white space. Alice jams her umbrella maniacally into an overfull umbrella stand, nattering about squirrels in danger of mistaking the chipped paint around Liv’s house for butter. I squeeze my eyes tight, and think of

  Things Liv has:

  - A knife

  - A boyfriend with a temper

  - A mother who won’t leave her alone

  When I open my eyes, Alice is staring at me.

  “I have to go,” I whisper.

  “What? You can’t leave me! Hey, there’s Kellan. Hi, Kellan!” She waves frenetically at Kellan heading toward us.

  My heart feels like it’s been fitted in a vise compressing slowly. “I have to go see Liv. Right now.”

  “She’s not even home. You can’t leave! I don’t know anyone here. I’ll come with you.” Alice fights to release her umbrella from the stand.

  I put my hand on Alice’s arm. “I have to go alone. Stay here and make new friends.”

  Her lip quivers.

  “You’re a true friend, Alice. Anyone would be lucky to have you in their corner.” I dash out the front and make it inside my car, slamming the door.

  Kellan bangs at my window with the side of his fist. I jump.

  “Wait!” he mouths, forearm protecting his eyes from the forming sleet.

  “I can’t! I have to go!” I yell, already pulling out. Kellan does an awkward jig to get away from my squealing tires.

  I take the back roads that wrap around the high school. I can speed this way; the st
reets are long and straight with no lights or stop signs. Wind gusts sway my car, all 2,750 pounds. Black branches weakened by the rain hang low and lean ominously on power lines. It takes until the first stoplight for me to realize Kellan is in pursuit. When the light turns green I peel out, my tires spinning in slush. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if Kellan shows up in Liv’s driveway right behind me, he can help set things straight. Shane is skinny but he’s still a guy, and a guy Kellan can take, if it comes to that.

  Though if Kellan got hurt, I couldn’t forgive myself.

  Ice pellets fly at my windshield. My wipers can’t keep up. Fog makes it impossible to see the next traffic light until I’m on top of it. Yellow turning red. I can make it, but that’s a cop on the side opposite, and I have to stop or I’ll get pulled over. I slam on the brakes, and Kellan hits his too, missing my bumper by a hair. The cop is a good thing, because now Kellan can’t try to run up to my car. He has to stay put; no shenanigans will be attempted by the son of Detective Joe MacDougall.

  My phone rings next to me. Kellan. Whoops, can’t answer it, the car won’t let me, safety feature. I meet Kellan’s eyes in the mirror and shrug. His eyes narrow, and he mouths something that is most certainly not romantic. When the light changes, I pull out slowly past the cop, then start to speed again as he shrinks in my mirror.

  How couldn’t I have known this before?

  Donald’s purpose. Shane’s purpose. What would it take for Deborah to leave Liv alone? Her words haunt me.

  I know exactly what I’m doing with Shane.

  I take the sharp corner before Liv’s street too fast. I am in flight, in this car, super-safe, they say this car is, but that telephone pole is right in front of me; it’s taking up my whole windshield.

  The crash is harder and louder than I imagined a car hitting a pole could be. The airbag explodes into my wrists and arms, and I choke on white dust and fumes. The pole is inside my car, about four inches from my face, the smell of outside in.

  What would Alice do? Pray, probably. How to pray, again?

  A click-click-click at the door, Kellan yanking the handle. Muffled screams, his.

  This goes on forever, or minutes. The sleet runs fast down my windshield and puddles, resting on the wiper blades until they lift and drag the slurry away. It is mesmerizing.

  “Shut the car off!” Kellen screams through the glass.

  Time moves thick and slow. Too slow. I have somewhere to be.

  Sirens. Faint, now loud.

  “The ignition! Push the ignition or the door won’t unlock!” Kellan’s voice, drowned out at the tail end of a siren whine.

  The car is still running. I try to press the starter button, but my right wrist feels loose, unattached and unusable. I reach over the deflated airbag with my left hand and shut off the car, and for a second there is only the patter on my roof. Kellan rips open the door and drags me out, but already the EMTs are here, and they are scolding Kellan for moving me.

  “I have to go,” I whisper, sinking to the ground, the sleet striking my head and shoulders like rubber bullets.

  A paramedic kneels in front of me. He is tan and dark-eyed, slender with high cheekbones, wet beads where the rain hit them, more like an actor playing a paramedic than a paramedic. He puts his arm under my back and guides me gently to the ground. “My name is Charlie. What’s your name?”

  “Julia!” Kellan says.

  Charlie the paramedic shoots him a dirty look. “She’s supposed to say it. Julia, do you know what day it is?”

  “It’s late,” I whimper. “I have to go.”

  “Julia, do you know who our president is?”

  “You’re not hearing me. I have to go!” I beg.

  “Do you have any pain or weakness, Julia?” Without waiting for the answer, he opens my jacket and reaches underneath my sweater, palpating.

  “Julia, does this hurt?”

  I should look toward Kellan, wonder what he is thinking, with this hot guy’s hand up my shirt. But instead I flash on Liv, old Liv, imagining her wisecracks, imagining what she would say about the Model Medic pushing on my chest and stomach.

  “Does this hurt?”

  Old Liv is standing behind him, mouthing Oh my God, trying to make me laugh. Only you, Julia, she would say. Only you would get action from an EMT who looks like he stepped out of a telenovela. How funny would it be if you started moaning right now? Imagine the look on his face!

  “How about this, does this hurt?” he asks.

  Liv. What are you doing to yourself? When was the last time we laughed at something together, hard? What’s going to happen to you? What will it take for Deborah to leave you alone?

  “Does this hurt?” he repeats.

  I let out a howl.

  The medic’s perfect features draw together, deadly serious. Kellan tears his hands through his wet hair. Two other medics loom close, blinking rain from their eyes.

  “Get her on the spine board,” Charlie says over his shoulder.

  “I don’t need to be immobilized, I have a hurt wrist!” I’ve been here before, and being strapped to a backboard means they’re not letting me go any time soon.

  “We’re going to move you onto a backboard and splint your neck, as a precaution. You have to start answering my questions, Julia. When did you last eat?”

  “No backboard!” I writhe, and they are on me like ants, and Charlie has his hands on both sides of my head, and he is counting, one, two, three, and I am rolled to my hip before being lifted onto a backboard the length of my body. Straps tighten across my hips, legs, forehead, and chin. They slide my arms under the strap across my pelvis. I whimper as my wrist moves, tiny bones shifting and shaking in jelly.

  “Are you on any medications?” Charlie asks, hovering in my field of vision now, asking questions while the other two float in and out like disembodied heads, reciting in sharp notes vague things about my color and breathing. The squeeze of a blood pressure cuff on one side, my wrist moved flush against my immobilized body on the other.

  “Have you used any illegal drugs in the past thirty days?” Charlie asks, relentless.

  I blink against the rain. “Kellan, tell them I’m all right!”

  Kellan’s face pops into my reduced square of vision. Fat drops drip from the ends of his curls. “You need to follow orders. You need to stay still,” he tells me.

  Someone murmurs something about possible traumatic brain injury, which makes me even more pissed, because I don’t have an injured brain, I have an injured wrist, and a friend who needs me now. I wriggle pointlessly against the restraints. “I have to go! You don’t understand!”

  “Please stay calm, Julia.”

  A tiny prick on my arm, a cool rush through my vein. In seconds, I don’t want to fight anymore. I love Kellan; he’s so worried about me. Listen, he’s giving someone my address, he’s such a good guy, so responsible. There, now Kellan is speaking in formal tones on his phone, she’s okay, Dr. Spunk, it was a super-minor accident, the air bags deployed but she’s one hundred percent fine. That car has so many safety features, it protected her like a steel cage. Good.

  Kellan shoves the phone into his back pocket and runs beside as they carry me Cleopatra-style on my board. I am loaded into an ambulance for a second time in my life. The dangling equipment is familiar, a sure enough trigger, and yet I won’t go anywhere, because all of my memories are on the surface now, where they belong.

  Kellan holds my hand. I try to face him, then remember I can’t. He realizes I can’t see him and gushes apologies.

  “I need to see Liv before she gives Shane his present,” I whine. It sounds so silly now, listening to myself under the lovely narcotic haze of whatever just entered my bloodstream.

  He laughs. “You are most definitely not going anywhere.” He’s beautiful when he laughs.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” I say.

  He laughs again. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been at a hockey tournament in Lake Placid. My father
and me. We thought it might be a good time to get out of town.”

  I smile. “Placid. Placid is a nice word. Placid sounds … placid. Hey. At the coffee place. You were with the Apple Face girl.”

  “With the who?”

  “The blonde.”

  “Kerrie? I wasn’t with Kerrie, she just happened to be there. I was saying hello!”

  “Of course her name is Kerrie. A Kerrie would like fresh milk. Milk and apples.”

  “Do you seriously think I’d start seeing another girl because of Paula Papademetriou’s stupid interview? We covered this, Julia.”

  “Papademetriou. Papa-dem-meaty-o’s. Like bad canned pasta. With minimeatballs.”

  “Julia.”

  “Listen, I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.” I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “If you unstrap me now, you can come with me.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re going to the hospital. Even if you’re mostly fine, that wrist isn’t fine. You won’t be doing much writing with that hand for a while. You’re not ambidextrous, are you?”

  “Am-bi-dex-trous. Sounds like dom-in-a-trix. A deviant who’s skilled at using both hands.” I giggle.

  “Oh boy.” Kellan casts a look at the medic riding in the back with us, whom I can feel but not see monitoring my vitals.

  “It’s the Haldol talking,” the medic murmurs, unamused.

  “My boyfriend likes a girl with an apple face,” I tell her.

  “I do not like a girl with an apple face,” Kellan says.

  “I have to save my friend. My friend’s name is Liv.” It suddenly seems important to get the girl medic on my side. Because even if she’s not a GIRL—especially if she’s not a GIRL—she will understand that you have to save your best friend’s life. It’s just what you do.

  The strap across my pelvis tightens.

  Kellan leans close. “You can see Liv when you get out of the hospital. And you will: if there’s one thing you can’t do, it’s stop saving Liv.” He strokes my forehead with his fingertips, and it feels lovely. “When you’re done, I’ll be here,” he whispers. I breathe heavily, and my breathing feels luscious, slow and measured. I have the sense I’m forgetting something, but it’s okay, because Kellan doesn’t like apples, and Liv thinks Charlie the paramedic is way cute, and I won’t be doing much writing for a while.