The Little Woods

by McCormick Templeman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by McCormick Templeman

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by Albert Delamour

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Penguin Group (USA) Inc. for permission to reprint excerpts from The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, copyright © 1996 by Robert Fagles. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Templeman, McCormick.

  The little woods / McCormick Templeman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Entering St. Bede’s Academy halfway through her junior year, Cally Wood is thrust into the complex social world of the upper echelon, but she is more interested in Iris, a girl whose recent disappearance is similar to that of Cally’s own sister ten years earlier.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98349-8

  [1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Boarding schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Social classes—Fiction. 5. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.T2557 Lit 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011047345

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  FOR QUILL

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit, rustling, flitters away … flown like a dream. But you must long for the daylight. Go, quickly. Remember all these things.

  —Homer, The Odyssey

  (translated by Robert Fagles)

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE LAST TIME I SAW my sister we played hide-and-seek. My dad was still alive then too, and heart attacks were something that happened to other people. My mom wasn’t drinking back then. Or maybe she was. It’s hard to know when you’re a kid.

  We were supposed to be playing in the yard, but I knew Clare had gone inside. From my perch up in the oak tree, I saw her slide open the back door and sneak through. My dad was trying to find us, and I didn’t want to be the only one playing inbounds, so I climbed down, darted across the yard, and crept in after her. I found her in the den, her pink Keds poking out from under the heavy curtains. I thought I might hide with her; we usually did that, but for some reason, that day it wasn’t allowed. Sensing me, she pulled back the thick fabric, and meeting my eyes, she shook her head. Not today. Today I would have to find my own hiding place. She held a finger up to her pencil-thin lips, and then, closing her eyes, she drew the curtain, disappearing behind it.

  It was ten years old, that memory of my sister, and the last one I had, though I knew there must be others somewhere. I must have stood behind the car waving as she and my dad drove off for California. I must have helped her pack. I must have at least hugged her goodbye and inhaled the scent of her for the last time—strawberry ChapStick mixed with soap. But I don’t have those memories. I don’t know where I put them.

  That summer my dad had a conference to go to in Sacramento, and Clare had a camp friend nearby. The mother of this camp friend was a teacher at a boarding school called St. Bede’s Academy, and my dad thought it would be great for the girls to have the run of the place while it was empty. How liberating, he’d said. He was always going on about how kids these days were too constrained, too protected, unable to roam wild and free like he’d done when he was a boy.

  Whether Clare enjoyed the freedom was something we’d never know. On the third night of her visit, she and her friend vanished from their beds. Their bodies were never found.

  My aunt Kim, my cousin Danny, and I were sitting at their kitchen table when I told them I’d been accepted at St. Bede’s Academy. Kim looked up from her pile of bills and stared at me like I was an alien species. Danny continued munching his Cocoa Puffs.

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Kim said, but she knew I wasn’t. Mom had recently broken a six-month sober stint, and her appearances at home were becoming increasingly sporadic. Soon she would take off again, and I didn’t plan on waiting around for her.

  “You can’t change schools in the middle of the year like that.”

  “Yes I can. I’ve already been accepted. Kim, it’s a top school, and they’re giving me a full ride,” I said. “Because of Clare.”

  My aunt winced.

  “That school?” Danny stopped munching and froze. “You want to go there?”

  “It’ll get me into a good college. Besides, I don’t want to be home anymore.”

  “Cally,” Kim said before taking a drag off her cigarette. “You can always stay with us. You don’t want to go to that place. Danny, tell her she’s being crazy.”

  Danny’s eyes met mine. My cousin was a big guy—close to three hundred pounds—with eyes like mud. He was also my best friend. “You sure about this?” was all he said.

  “I’m sure,” I said, though I wasn’t. How could I be?

  Danny nodded and gently placed a hand on his mom’s arm. “Cally knows what she’s doing. She goes there, she could probably get into Stanford or something. Let her go if she wants.”

  Kim winced again and stubbed out her cigarette.

  It wasn’t that I needed permission—Mom had already signed everything that needed to be signed—but Danny and Kim were important to me. Maybe I wanted their approval. Maybe I wanted them to stop me.

  But no one did stop me, and a month later, I took a plane down to California and a bus up into the Sierras. It was a gorgeous campus with rolling green lawns surrounded by a dense, rich forest of poplars and pines. The buildings looked like miniature castles, and for the first time, I felt incredibly fortunate to be given this chance. Maybe St. Bede’s didn’t have to be just my escape. Maybe it could be something more. Maybe it could be my opportunity.

  I was met by Mrs. Harrison, the headmaster’s wife, a sweet redhead with bouncing curls. She called me sugar and looped her arm through mine. When I’d spoken to Dr. Harrison on the phone, I’d told him I didn’t want the other students to know about Clare. I didn’t want to be that weird girl with the dead sister. I’d been her enough already. I wanted to be someone new. Dr. Harrison had seemed relieved—what headmaster wanted so
mething like that dredged up after ten years?—but immediately upon meeting me, he offered his condolences and told me his office was always open. Then he handed me my orientation packet and pointed me toward my dorm.

  My dormitory was called McKinley, and I was lingering in its dimly lit foyer, searching through my packet for my room assignment, when someone stepped into the hallway.

  “Um, hello?” she said, her voice scratchily feminine as she held a hand up to her eyes as if it would allow her to see me better. “I was just about to turn on the lights.”

  “Hi,” I said into the darkness. “I’m Cally Wood. I’m new.”

  She stood for a moment, small and wispy, and I remember now that I thought she must be a student, and a younger one at that. But then she switched on the light and I saw that her face had the sharp demarcations around the cheek and jaw of a woman in her early twenties.

  “Welcome,” she said, holding out her hand, but something in her eyes told me that I was not, in fact, welcome, that there was something she was doing in her apartment that she wanted to keep on doing, and that she didn’t want to have to deal with me. “I’m Ms. Harlow. I’m your dorm head.”

  “Hi,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “Well, let me show you around,” she sighed, and brushed her waist-length honeyed curls over her shoulder, only to have them fall forward again.

  I followed her through the dorm as she pointed out the showers, the laundry, the common room. She moved languidly, one of those people with a deep inner stillness that always scared the shit out of me. She wore ratty sweatpants with a red Harvard curving around her left quadriceps and a white T-shirt that was so old it looked silky and chic. I could see her lavender bra through it, though I kept trying not to. At last we reached my room.

  “Four-oh-six,” she said, shrugging. “Why it’s called four-oh-six when there’s only one floor is beyond me.”

  “Oh,” I said, attempting to laugh out of politeness, but only half committing, so it sounded weird and vaguely rude. She squinted at me like I’d just stuck to the bottom of her shoe and now she’d need to decide how best to scrape me off.

  “Your roommate’s name is Helen Slater,” she said, opening the door. “But she won’t be back from winter break until tomorrow morning, so you’ve got the place to yourself tonight.”

  I said thanks and smiled at her, and she smiled back, but not really, and that was that. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it.

  The room was cozy, with warm hazy-yellow walls, two wooden sleigh beds with matching desks, and a sliding glass door that looked out onto an upward-sloping, intensely green lawn. I felt like a gnome hiding in an underground bunker.

  My roommate’s side was subdued but lived-in. A navy-blue flannel comforter smoothed neatly on the bed. An Egon Schiele print. A few music posters: Leonard Cohen, Bauhaus, Billie Holiday. A smattering of interesting books showing a clear preference for French existentialism. There was a framed photograph of a remarkably pretty little girl wearing makeup and a beauty pageant sash. I hoped this person was not my roommate. She wore a tiara. The girl with the navy comforter and the Bauhaus and the Sartre probably didn’t wear tiaras or frame pictures of herself. Or maybe she did. I would find out soon enough.

  I stepped into the closet and poked my head inside. The cedar planks were lined with what looked like decades of ballpoint graffiti. It was too dark to make out much more than Ashley Sodor is a Tit Queen! but that was enough. I unpacked, stuffing T-shirts into drawers, haphazardly draping things in the closet, pretending not to notice when items slipped off hangers and puddled on the floor. I tossed my paperbacks onto the shelves above my desk and threw shampoo and soap into a bathroom basket, which I placed near the door. When I’d finished, I sat on my bed and wondered what I was supposed to do. How did a boarding school girl act? What was going to occupy all the time I would have spent doing slightly illegal and potentially dangerous things with Danny?

  I was hungry as hell, so I headed for the dining hall—a crosshatched L at the far end of campus, according to my map. The walk was eerily quiet. Just the odd pair of girls wandering back from dinner arm in arm, intent on not seeing me.

  I paused outside the dining hall, then steeled myself and opened the door. Inside, they swarmed like terrible aphids, laughing too loudly, prancing and strutting like all high school kids do, but there was an intensity to them I found unsettling. The boys were especially daunting, trying to sit casually at their tables, passing condiments when you could tell they wanted to go apeshit.

  I opted for the soup, which, after surveying the situation, I realized was a poor decision. Soup required sitting. There’d be no ducking out with a sandwich now. I slunk through the rows of tables, looking for an opening. There were seats, of course, but no openings. The din grew louder, and I tried to swallow over the burgeoning lump in my throat. I sat between a pale red-haired boy and a heavy boy wearing a stern expression and a Cthulhu shirt. They ignored me and each other.

  I ate my soup, all the while watching a man across the room. He was blond and handsome in a B-list-celebrity way, and he had a dog at his feet—a golden retriever that seemed to be named Tinker. As more and more boys passed, flicked their chins out, and called, “Reilly, what’s up?” it became clear that he was faculty or a coach of some kind.

  One of the boys who stopped to say hello was intensely easy on the eyes. He was black with vaguely Asian features, bright eyes, and the most incredible body I’d ever seen—broad shoulders and smooth, muscled arms. Nothing extravagant, just everything exactly as it should be. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and without warning he turned and stared directly at me. I looked away and tried to seem preoccupied with my soup, but I must have been completely obvious, because he laughed—a deep, wonderful sort of laugh—and then headed to his table.

  I finished quickly and realized I’d no idea what to do with my tray. I stood awkwardly and tried to look around for a place to bus it without looking like I was looking. The last thing I wanted was to appear confused. I walked toward a little room, an annex of sorts that emitted a glow like kitchen lighting. I was just walking in when a pair of long, slender hands slid the tray away from me and set it on a conveyor belt. I followed the hands up to find a teacher with the face of an elven princess. She had arresting blue eyes and ice-blond hair that fell in wispy waves to just below her shoulders.

  “You must be Calista Wood,” she said, grasping my hand to shake it.

  I knew who she was. I had seen her a million times in my dreams, and in the newspaper photograph I kept hidden in a shoe box in my closet at home. She was older now. Ten years older. In my photograph, she was crying, crumpling into a spasm of grief, but in real life, she was fresh and bewitching, and her eyes held no pain. When I wished on stars and birthday candles, this was what I wished for—to be that fresh and empty.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying my best not to have a weak wrist, looking for recognition in her eyes.

  “Welcome,” she said. She smiled unevenly. “I’m Ms. Snow, but please call me Asta. I’m your advisor.” I knew that already. Dr. Harrison had told me as much. Presumably he’d placed us together because of some ill-conceived notion that she could help me heal, as if such a thing were possible. “You look scared,” she said.

  “I do?” I asked, my carapace slipping. There was a sparkle to her eye and a warmth to her smile that intimated that astoundingly wonderful things might happen in her presence.

  “It’s okay,” she said, gently guiding me toward the dessert table. “They all look like you when they get here. You’re going to be fine.”

  “I am?”

  “You’re going to be better than fine. You’re going to have fun.” Her eyes lit up and suddenly it seemed like it could possibly be true. “I’m going to make sure of it.”

  “People don’t normally come midyear, do they?” I asked as I watched her wrap some cookies in a napkin.

  “Not usually, no.” She laughed and handed me the little package of
cookies. “You should be really proud of your acceptance. I’ve seen your PSAT scores. Very impressive. Now, take these back to your room and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “Thanks,” I said, stroking the rough red paper napkin. “I’ll see you around, then.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow. I have you in biology.” She smiled. “And in assembly. We sit together in advisee groups.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice disappearing somewhere inside my throat.

  She laughed—a great, open-throated joyous laugh—and every muscle in my body seemed to relax. “Look at you. So shy. Don’t worry, okay? You’ll like it here. I promise.”

  I smiled and nodded, then made a quick exit. Holding the cookies at my side, I headed back to the dorm, determined to go directly to sleep even though it was only seven-thirty. In my absence, the dorm had changed considerably. Girls. Lots of girls with high-pitched, chattering voices. I tried to push through, but the hallway was thick with them, carrying duffel bags or nibbling dinner leftovers. It seemed every few steps I took, two girls erupted into screams and threw themselves at each other, three weeks apparently more time apart than they’d been able to manage. I weaved through them and made it to my room, ready to slip into my pajamas and turn out the light.

  Inside I found a gangly redhead going through my underwear drawer while a gamine with huge eyes and a bleach-blond pixie cut spat a viscous black substance into my green mug. Their eyes widened when they saw me, and the blonde covered her mouth. The redhead casually shut my drawer.

  “Jesus, this is awkward,” the redhead said, looking something like a praying mantis.

  “I’m, um, just gonna get my backpack. Sorry.”

  “Oh my God, no!” squeaked the blonde. “This is your room.” There was an incongruous globule stuffed in her cheek, slurring her otherwise clarion voice.

  The redhead approached and extended her hand. She slumped a bit at the shoulders, possibly an attempt to hide her prodigious altitude, and she smiled sharply, as if reminding herself to hold something back. She wore a formfitting blue sweater and a gray flannel skirt. Her metallic-orange hair was pulled back on one side by a barrette. It hung to her shoulders, thick and intractable. I pulled my oversized Bikini Kill T-shirt farther down over my skater shorts and did my best to brush the hair from my eyes.