Good Girls

by Glen Hirshberg

  “Hey,” Rebecca called. “Trudi, wait.”

  If anything, Trudi sped up, barging through the evergreen branches into the forest. Swearing to herself, Rebecca followed. By the time she reached the tree line, Trudi had vanished completely. Luh-luh-luh … Love Me, Rebecca thought—almost hummed, in her head, to drown out the other voices—and pushed through the needle-pines and grabbing pricker branches after the little girl.

  She caught up right at the edge of the clearing where the trailers huddled around the campsite’s blackened fire pit, and only because Trudi had had the good sense to stop there. When Rebecca reached her, she was crouching almost inside a pricker bush. Thorns rested against but apparently did not penetrate her skin, like half-retracted cat claws. Rebecca crouched beside her. The little girl didn’t say anything or even acknowledge Rebecca’s presence.

  “What?” Rebecca whispered. She reached out a hand to touch Trudi’s back, then decided not to. Rebecca herself had never liked those automatic grown-up’s touches—the ones Amanda never gave—that were meant as reassurance but probed like a dental tool, tugged like a leash.

  “Ssh,” Trudi hissed.

  So Rebecca shushed, and they crouched together. For the first time that afternoon, Rebecca noticed the heat, which was high-summer humid and had long since permeated her skin, slicking it with sweat. Three minutes outside, and she already felt like a puddle of popsicle left on a counter. Midges rose and swirled, sipping at her ears and the corners of her eyes. Except for those, and the fire ants hurrying around and under her feet, swarming the pricker branches and nearby tree trunks, nothing moved. Even the single squirrel Rebecca spotted had draped itself along the lowest branch of the nearest evergreen like a pelt hung out to dry. A pelt that had hung out itself. Rebecca slapped at her neck, felt that familiar wet squish, the midge she’d just killed not so much smearing as drowning.

  Quite some time passed before Rebecca realized she was looking anywhere but into the clearing. The truth was, she didn’t like this place any more than Amanda did, and never had. She made herself look.

  It was just as she’d remembered: the crumbling fire pit, still blackened all the way around and inside the rim, but possibly crumbled even more, now, like the mouth of a forgotten well; the curled, colorless drifts of dead leaves that always seemed deeper and denser around the pit, as though they’d been gathered rather than blown there, ages ago. As though neither squirrels nor birds nor time nor wind had disturbed them since.

  Worst of all were the trailers themselves, angled together as though they’d been circled, their windows shattered or shot out, some of the openings covered over with warped, fire-blackened wooden boards. The trailer on the left, the one she’d always hated most, remained tipped forward almost off its blocks, its front door hanging open, nearly touching the ground, like a hand extended to break a fall. Instead of wooden boards or cracked glass, the windows on that trailer were barred with chicken wire, suggestive of some abandoned circus-train car, the one for big cats. Sometimes, as a kid, she’d found herself imagining that those cats might still be in there, curled and starving in the heat, trapped where they’d been left, tails whapping. Just waiting.

  “Why do you come here?” Rebecca whispered.

  “It’s scary,” Trudi whispered back.

  “Right. Exactly. So why come here?”

  It was less the ferocity of Trudi’s I-just-told-you look than the way her braids jiggled that caused Rebecca to laugh. And it was her laugh that woke the clearing.

  In a blast of breeze—was that breeze?—the leaves in the center of the trailers stirred, flapped, and settled right back where they’d been. The bent-wire antenna atop the tipped-over trailer waggled as though warning, or beckoning. The open front door edged farther open, drifted almost shut, and it occurred to Rebecca that this place almost certainly was inhabited, at least sometimes. It was probably the best squat in town, especially in summer, when the Salvation Army/UNH-D shelter closed down.

  “Why are you clutching me?” Trudi snapped—still whispering—and Rebecca looked down at her arms, which had encircled the little girl.

  “Why are you letting me?” Rebecca whispered back, and Trudi squirmed free. For one more moment, they stared together into the clearing. Only then did Rebecca understand, at last, why Trudi had stopped here today instead of tramping through on her usual march to the lake, and why both of them were whispering, and what was wrong.

  Tugging at the little girl’s shoulder, she started edging back. “Trudi. There’s someone here.”

  “What?”

  But Trudi knew, even if she hadn’t figured out exactly how or what she knew. Rebecca could see it in the uncommon curl of her shoulders, and also the fact that she was edging back, too. Following a grown-up’s directions, for once.

  “That truck,” said Rebecca, still retreating, hoping the shush of her feet in the leaves was less loud than stepping and crackling would be. She gestured past the trailers to the far side of the clearing where the sugar maples and evergreens crowded together, closing out the light almost completely.

  The hulking black Sierra over there had been tucked so deeply into the clustered branches that the pine needles seemed to have assumed its shape, blanketing it like camouflage netting. Rebecca could see just enough of the windshield and driver’s-side window to know that they were all the way tinted; even if she’d been standing right beside that cab, she couldn’t have seen inside it or made out who was in it.

  “You mean that pickup? Wasn’t that here?”

  “I don’t think so, Trudi. Come on.”

  Grabbing the girl’s hand, Rebecca stood and tugged her away up the path. She started to jog, felt Trudi glance back but not resist, and then she heard the footsteps.

  Not their footsteps, but someone else’s, off to their left. Steady, and gliding.

  Squirrel, she thought furiously, except it couldn’t have been. There was no scurry-scatter, no stop-and-start; this was more of a trot. And whoever was in there, trotting, was maybe ten feet off the trail on the other side of the wall of evergreens. When Rebecca accelerated, the footsteps did, too. Like something stalking, moving ahead of them, now.

  Fox?

  Nope. Whatever it was, it was bigger than that. A big thing, moving light.

  Bear?

  “Rebecca, wait.”

  “Trudi, come on.”

  “Rebecca, there’s someone in that tree—”

  “Oh, shit,” Joel said, tripping on a low branch and spilling out of the evergreen where he’d been hiding directly in their path. As he fell, he twisted sideways to protect the Bluetooth speaker in his hands. He landed hard and lay there a second with his back to them as Rebecca yanked Trudi to a halt, heart flailing under her ribs, beating its wings. Like the loon on the lake, she thought, grabbing hold of the thought, using it to anchor her. Reminding itself it can go, but deciding to stay.

  Rebecca breathed slow, made herself settle. Joel rolled over on his back and looked up at them. He was grinning.

  “Spider races?” he said.

  Trudi glared, looking ready to lunge forward and jump on him. Joel laughed.

  “What the hell are you doing, Joel?” Rebecca barked. But barking made her feel like Amanda, and anyway, she didn’t seem to want to bark, anymore. She fought for control of her own smile and lost.

  “Did I scare you?” Joel asked.

  “No,” Trudi said.

  Rebecca shook her head as a shiver rippled through her. “Why are you even out here?”

  Sitting up, Joel dusted dirt and pine needles off his work shirt and the top of the speaker. Then he gave the speaker a pat, as though it were a lapdog. “Following you, of course. I’m Blair Witching you.”

  “Why?” Her skin had slicked again, or slicked more, and the shudders weren’t quite done rippling through her. But Joel was here, casting his spell, shedding his light where light was most needed. Out of sight of his house, where it isn’t even wanted, Rebecca thought, but that thought co
nfused and alarmed her. She pushed it aside.

  “For fun. Why else?”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “I’m a little funny. Wait, Rebecca, are you mad? Are you actually scared right now? In these woods? After all the years we spent wander—”

  “Joel, there’s someone in the clearing.”

  Joel stopped grinning. “What?”

  “She’s not lying,” Trudi said, and Rebecca had to give it to the kid; she didn’t sound scared at all.

  “Someone who shouldn’t be, you mean? As in, not a homeless person or—”

  “How would I know?” Rebecca snapped, more at her own thoughts than at Joel, and as she did, she glanced over her shoulder again down the empty path. “There’s a truck. A big black one. I’ve never seen it there before.”

  “Someone drove a truck in there?” Pushing to his feet, Joel looked past Rebecca toward the clearing. Abruptly, Rebecca felt thirteen years old again. All she wanted to do was grab Joel’s hand, the way she’d grabbed Trudi’s, and pull all three of them out of these woods and back to Halfmoon House.

  “Joel, let’s just—”

  “Do you want him gone?” he said, and his grin resurfaced. “It sounds to me like this guy should be gone.”

  “I want to do spider races,” said Trudi, crouching over a stump near where Joel had tripped, poking at a web with a stick. “I think I’ve got mine.”

  “Joel, whatever you’re thinking, no.”

  But Joel was already walking straight past her and back down the path. As he went, he pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, reaching for the iPod he kept strapped to his biceps and switching on the speaker.

  Lonely Street, Rebecca thought abruptly, catching her breath as last night’s whisper bubbled up in her head again. It was as though that whisper had been lurking in her ears all along, holding its breath, biding its time.

  I can see you.

  “Joel,” she called, as he fiddled with the iPod. “Joel, I mean it, don’t. Please, please, please, just leave it alo—”

  “BOYYYFRRIEEND!” screamed Joel’s speaker, in the voice of that girl-woman from the radio show. Then it screamed again, higher, as Joel strode straight into the clearing, stopping in line with the tipped-over trailer, right beside that broken, barely open door. He hoisted the speaker above his head and aimed it into the bushes at the black truck. Snapping-finger sounds crackled from it, and the crazed girl-woman shrieked again, and then again, faster and louder, like a genie pouring out of a bottle.

  “BOYYYYFRIEEND,” she screamed. “Back…”

  12

  He woke up wild, his legs banging the bottom of the dashboard and the body next to him and his head caroming off the steering wheel as he jolted upright, eyes shooting around the cab, which was dark, close, shadowless, motionless. In a daze, he squinted into his own gaunt face in the rearview mirror. Memory, delicious memory, flooded through him.

  First came the sensation—sensations—of kissing the dart-head boy. In all these years, he had never thought to try that. So interesting that he hadn’t. At first, it had felt like kissing a gorse bush, all bristly-dry, and then suddenly: There! The hidden burrow, all warm and wet behind the lips. And there! That little pup that lived inside, that so-familiar softness, that heat the Whistler could not generate, could only appreciate in ways they never would, wafting up from this boy’s guts as though from the center of a volcano. It hadn’t filled the Whistler—it could never fill him, he could not hold it—but it had reminded him, yet again, of what warmth felt and tasted like.

  Interesting. Yes.

  But the kiss hadn’t been nearly as interesting as the Asian girl’s reaction while he did it. Of course, that might have had something to do with what he was doing to her at the same moment. But she’d been watching, too. Oh, yes. He could still see her eyes bulging out of her plum-colored face like seeds as he squeezed and squeezed. All that amazed panic, and—this was the best part—it wasn’t even mostly about him, or even about dying. It was about her would-be lover kissing her killer, screaming through his open teeth while she clawed uselessly at her hold on this world.

  That girl had seen, even through her filming eyes. She’d understood what was happening.

  And that had been more than interesting. The astonishment in that poor girl’s face—the sheer primal anguish, as everything she thought she knew about love and people she loved fell away with her breath—had positively electrified him.

  In fact, it had thrilled the Whistler so much that he hadn’t even bothered killing her. He’d danced away instead, skin burning in the sunlight, back into the woods to his darkened truck to dream of the two of them resurfacing inside themselves, looking into each other’s faces. What on earth could they have seen there, said to one another?

  That’s what he’d been dreaming about, surely. And the dream had been delicious.

  So why was he awake?

  Swaying to the echoing guitars, he glanced toward Mother’s seat, which had mostly been his seat when he’d traveled with Mother. His new companion just leaned into the door, slumped in the dark. Around the rim of the blackout shades, the Whistler could see daylight pouring even through the snarled branches in which he’d hidden the truck. And yet he was conscious, tingling, swaying to the guitars.

  Guitars?

  Spinning to the door, he grappled at the handle, jerked it, and froze again, processing.

  It wasn’t the music that had woken him. The music was out there, all right; he wasn’t imagining that. But it wasn’t what had lured him from his dreams. Slowly, he reviewed the last few moments. His mouth opened in astonishment.

  Yes, it was true. He was astonished.

  Was it possible? How was it possible? He had seen the trigger pulled, the head exploding, that firework burst of white and bone and teeth and red. He’d watched his poor Destiny fold, ruined, into her mother’s lap. And he’d known, in that instant, that he really had loved her, hadn’t he? Poor, murdered Destiny. How marvelous they could have been together. And what a poor, bereft Whistler he’d become in that moment, just like in the songs. He’d loved her tender, loved her true, hadn’t he? And that explained why he was dreaming—or imagining—that he was hearing her still, hearing her voice, whole weeks after her murder.

  Yes. That was it.

  He actually had himself convinced, momentarily. Removing his hands from the door handle, he let his shoulders sink back into themselves and his head tip once more toward the seat in relief. And then he heard her again.

  “BOOYYYYYYFRIEEENND!!!!”

  This time, his hands positively flew to the door, fumbling, tripping over themselves, his body resisting the orders from his brain because it knew that going out there was going to hurt. With a snarl, he yanked the handle, kicked open the door, and staggered from the truck. Branches clawed at him, and a shaft of light raked like a fingernail down his wrists. He flung up his sleeve and plowed forward toward the clearing.

  “Oh, shit!” someone said, out there. It wasn’t his Destiny or even a woman. But there were women with that man, or a woman, at least, and also a girl. The Whistler could just see them.

  “Joel, you moron,” the woman said. Laughing? Were they laughing? “Run!”

  And the Whistler, in his confusion, thought he knew that voice, too, though he couldn’t place from where. But that voice had also been in his dreams. Lunging, he burst through pines and prickers into the light.

  Pain seemed less to crash down on than blaze up in him, in his face, his wrists, his ears, and not just the exposed places but all over his body. Everywhere the light touched or probed, rashes raised themselves like bites. As though the light itself were biting him. Several seconds passed before he could get his eyes all the way open; when he did, he was sure he would see himself smoking, melting.

  Instead, he saw sun, and daylight colors: deep-pine green, cirrus-cloud white, blinding blue. Even his assailants—three of them: a man, a little girl, a waify young woman—were just fleeing blotches of color
: flying pink dress, blue work overalls on black skin, plain brown hair spattered with sun.

  So much color.

  The Whistler’s heart broke. It did, it surely did.

  Falling back into the shadows, he hunched against his truck without climbing into it, his eyes lapping the light, the world in light, sucking it down, as though he were a cat stealing milk. But even here, all the way back in the branches, light hurt. And so, with a mournful sigh, he hoisted himself back into the cab of the Sierra and closed his burning eyes to rest.

  Almost immediately, he opened his eyes again. He’d seen what he’d seen, all right: the guy, the girl, the not-quite-girl-anymore, racing away. He’d also heard what he’d heard: his Destiny’s voice, he was almost sure of it.

  It had sounded so, so like his Destiny’s voice.

  Also, he knew what the other voice had been, now, and where he’d heard it, and where he’d been: last night, atop the campus Clocktower, listening through the stolen phone, the whistling wind. That was the voice of his new, Still One, who very likely had no idea, yet, that he had met her friends.

  Glancing at the mirror, the Whistler checked his greasy hair, finger-combed it, smiled. He felt so much better, all of a sudden. Not only that, he felt hungry. In fact, he realized, he’d been hungry for days. It was just as Mother had always admonished him, and she really had been a decent sort of mother, all in all: “You’re still such a child,” she’d cluck, wiping his face clean with one of her lavender-scented handkerchiefs. “Never once stop Whistling and dreaming long enough to recognize you need to eat.”

  So that was one more thing to do tonight.

  But not the only or the most important thing. Not even close. And these other things Mother could never have understood, even if he could have found the words or the Whistle to explain them to her. It would have been … like explaining music to the deaf. She simply didn’t have it in her.