The Little Woods

by McCormick Templeman

  “Is that, like, a euphemism or something?” I asked, looking to Alex.

  He shook his head. “Brody’s really into salamanders.”

  We walked a short way to the edge of the woods and ducked in through an opening in the chain-link fence. I was pretty sure this was against the rules, but I didn’t really want to check with the others. Something fun was finally happening, and I didn’t want it to stop. Noel and I walked a few paces ahead of the rest, but I could feel the warmth of Alex’s body behind me. Soon we were moving into the foliage, bright green leaves gliding against my face. I tried not to slip on the florescent moss. The air was wet, and magical, and cool.

  “How far is the lake?” I whispered to Noel.

  She shook her head. “It’s not a lake. It’s just a little pond out in the woods a ways, but it’s really beautiful, and, like, ethereal.”

  “And we’re looking for newts?” I asked, crinkling my nose.

  “Salamanders.”

  “Oh … why?”

  “Because salamanders are cool,” she said as if everyone obviously knew that.

  As we walked, I became very conscious that Alex was walking a few paces behind me, and I suddenly wondered if my behind might be weirdly shaped. I’d never really thought about it before, but it suddenly seemed terribly important.

  After a short walk through lush green foliage, we emerged into a clearing, and at its center was an enchanting body of water. Like Noel had said, it was just a pond, but what a pond it was. It rested there in a near-perfect circle, mist half shrouding its blue-green waters. Electric-green fiddlehead ferns sprang from the earth, bowing their heads toward it in obeisance. Lily pads and lotus flowers rested on its smooth surface. It was as if we had emerged from the forest path directly into the apse of a magnificent cathedral. My breath caught. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life. I felt someone’s eyes on me. I turned to see Brody smiling.

  “This is the place that’s supposed to be haunted?” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Well, it’s not haunted during the day, silly,” Brody said, smiling like a little boy.

  “Okay, so where are these salamanders?” I asked.

  Alex gently placed his hand on my shoulder. “They’re usually around more after it rains, but it hasn’t rained for a few days. It probably would have been better to come tomorrow after it rains tonight.”

  “You can tell it’s going to rain?”

  “Yeah, I have Native American blood in me and we can all tell magical stuff like that about the weather.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” he said, laughing and crinkling his face into a sneer. “What are you, a crazy racist? I read the weather report in the paper.”

  “Oh,” I sighed, my voice catching in my throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t really think you’re racist. I was just messing with you.”

  “Are you really Native American?”

  “Nope.” He smiled and tousled my hair.

  The five of us rustled around in the woods for a bit, looking for salamanders, finding none. I did see violet dragonflies, beetles fat as prunes, and frogs the size of thimbles. All the while mist swirled around me, and I found that it had a near-hallucinatory effect. Maybe these woods really were haunted. If they were, this was the epicenter, this little pond. There was something like a presence here that I found seductive and calming. Was Clare out here somewhere, like everyone said? Was it her presence I felt tugging at me through the mist and the trees, urging me to follow? I could have lost myself forever in that strange call. I could have, but I shook myself out of it. It’s lucky when you don’t believe in ghosts.

  I was sitting by myself, playing in the mud like a child, when Helen called out, “Let’s go swimming!” Before I even realized what was happening, she’d stripped down to her bra and underwear and cannonballed into the pond. Noel shook her head and laughed. The boys were quickly stripping down to their boxers. I tried not to look, simply because I wanted to so badly that it made me feel like kind of a perv.

  “You want to go in?” Noel crouched in the mud opposite me. “If you’re shy about the boys, we can go in at the same time and I’ll do something crazy to distract them if you want.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Naw. Too cold,” I said, shaking my head.

  Noel rolled her eyes. “At least come hang out with us.”

  Nodding, I brushed the mud from my jeans and followed Noel down to the edge of the water.

  “Wood, you better be coming in,” Alex said, his grin wonderfully potent.

  I shook my head.

  “You have to,” he said. “You can’t sit out there all alone. Come on. The water’s not cold.”

  This I knew to be a lie. He was shaking, and goose bumps were rising on his chest.

  “She’s not coming in,” Noel said firmly, walking into the water in her mismatched bra-and-underwear set as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  They didn’t stay in long. Fifteen minutes maybe, and all the while I sat there on the bank talking to them. It looked fun, but cold, and I really didn’t need to subject anyone to the full extent of my granny-pantied splendor.

  “Do you guys come here often?” I asked.

  “Not too often,” Alex said. “It’s really against the rules, but we risk it sometimes.”

  “I come out here all the time,” Noel said proudly. “But for me it’s allowed because it’s with Asta. We go looking for herbs and mushrooms and stuff, and we always stop here and dangle our feet in and talk.”

  “You go hiking with Asta?”

  “Wood,” Alex said, laughing, “I hate to tell you this, but walking a quarter of a mile through some trees is not considered hiking.”

  “Herbs and mushrooms and stuff?” I said. “What are you guys, like, witches?”

  “Right. No, Asta’s an herbalist. It’s pretty cool. If you’re coming down with a cold or something, she’ll make you a tea and you drink it, wrap yourself all up, and sweat it out. It works.”

  “It tastes like ass, though.” Brody laughed and splashed water at Noel. She retaliated, springing at him and climbing up to his shoulders to perch there like a bellicose sprite.

  “It works,” she said, smacking him on the back. “Now giddyup, horsey.”

  Brody shook her off and she plummeted into the water, emerging a second later only to scream and tackle him.

  “You should come in, Wood,” Helen crooned, floating on her back. “Come be a naiad with me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t think I’m naiad material. And not to be a dick or anything, but you’re thinking of Limnades. Naiads are only in running water, and this pond is still, so you’re probably not much of a naiad either.”

  She stood up and shook her fist at me. “Come in here and say that to my face. Alex, make her come in here.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t drink, you don’t swim, you don’t audition for stupid school plays. How are you ever gonna get to know anyone if you keep to yourself so much?”

  “You have to go through me if you want to get to know Wood,” Helen declared, winding her saturated hair into a dripping knot atop her head. “And there’s a price.” She leapt onto him, trying to dunk his head underwater, but he threw her off with ease.

  When they emerged a few moments later, I tried not to stare at Alex, but he walked over to me, toweling his chest off with a sweatshirt. I could smell the pond, crisp and alive, on him.

  “Are you worried about getting caught off campus?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I just like to know what I’m getting myself into.”

  He smiled. “You’re wise. Wise is good.”

  I shrugged.

  “Seriously, though,” he said, leaning down, meeting my eyes. “If you’re ever worried, you know, about, like, what the rules are or whatever, just ask me. I won’t steer you wrong and I won’t make fun, okay? I was the same way when I got
here. I’m an overachieving stress case too.”

  “That’s not really how I see myself.”

  People were pulling on sneakers, and soon we were heading back into the woods, back to school.

  “Maybe that’s not how you see yourself, but that’s how you are,” he said, walking next to me, every once in a while the skin on his arm brushing against mine. “That’s why you’re going to do great things.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “No, seriously. You’re going places, I can tell.”

  He was looking at me. I could feel it, and I liked it, so I decided to return the gaze like a girl in a movie would do, but as soon as I lifted my eyes from the path, I tripped over a tree root and plummeted to the ground, scraping my elbow.

  “Shit,” I spat.

  “You okay?” Alex said, reaching down to help me up, but Noel swept in from behind and lifted me to my feet.

  “Cally, we’re supposed to excel at walking. You’re gonna give our sport a bad name.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and Alex fell into step with Brody behind us. I tried not to seem disappointed.

  “Thanks,” I said, watching Helen up ahead, dancing through the trees, unaware that she was rapidly losing the rest of her group.

  “Want to know a secret?” Noel whispered in my ear, and for a second I was sure that the secret was going to be about Alex and that I was going to like it, but then she said: “I’ve seen fairies up here.”

  I laughed, but she just smiled and nodded.

  “Right.”

  “No. I’m not joking. I did. Back at the pond. Clear as day. Clear as those fiddlehead ferns, I saw fairies. Come on,” she said, grabbing my hand, tugging me ahead. “Let’s catch my stupid sister.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS DAWN, AND HELEN’S soft breathing made the room seem warm and cozy, like Christmas morning. I was gazing through a slit in the curtains when I saw Freddy on the lawn outside my room. A light rain had dusted her rose slicker, and she walked with a purposeful stride. She slid open the glass door and slipped back her hood.

  “Time to get up, ladies.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  She looked over at Helen, who stirred in her sleep. “Okay,” she said, kneeling down beside me. “I’ve got some very serious pot that needs to be smoked immediately.”

  “It’s like five in the morning.”

  “All the better. That means we’ll be thinking clearly again well before study hours.”

  “What’s going on?” Helen asked, sitting up, chestnut hair matted to the side of her face. Somehow she still looked unfairly pretty.

  “We’re gonna go smoke.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah now. Get dressed. I don’t want anyone to see us heading out. Pigeon’s coming too. She wanted to do her hair first, so I left her in the dorm.”

  “What about Noel?”

  “She didn’t want to get up. She was studying French all night.”

  Helen rubbed her eyes and tried to focus on Freddy; then, reluctantly, she folded back her comforter and swung her legs off the side of the bed. She stayed there a moment, staring at her ankles, her eyes hazy.

  “For Christ’s sake, will you get up already?” Freddy whined. “I’ve got magnificent pot. Harrison told me we’re having a surprise white-glove inspection tonight, and I’ve got to get rid of it before then.”

  “But it’s five in the morning, Freddy. Couldn’t we have smoked it last night?”

  “I didn’t have it then.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “Later. Will you just get dressed?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Fred, I’m trying.” Helen rubbed her eyes again, then pushed herself off the bed and stumbled to her closet.

  “You too, Wood.” But I’d already pulled on my jacket and was zipping up my jeans.

  Helen was pulling a lime-green sweater over her head when Pigeon crashed through the door.

  “I don’t think I’m going to smoke,” she announced.

  “Then why are you coming?” Freddy asked, rolling her eyes.

  “I want a walk.”

  When Helen returned from brushing her teeth, she gave me a long-suffering look and indicated that we were ready to set out.

  The drizzle had stopped, and the sun had fully risen by the time we took turns squeezing through the opening in the fence, but the sky was a graying pink that hinted at more rain. It seemed to me that we were going a great distance just to smoke pot, but what did I know? We passed the pond and took a right up a trail that lurched into the hills. Eventually the path came to resemble less a path and more a collection of plants most likely to give way when Helen hacked at them. I was beginning to wonder where the hell we were going when Helen stopped abruptly.

  “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “There,” she said, pointing incredulously. Before her was a dirt hill. “That’s where we were going. It must have been those rains over break. There must have been a mudslide.” She sat down on a rock. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Can’t we just smoke here?” I asked, and they all stared at me like I was insane.

  “This is a really popular hiking trail. Anyone could come along,” Freddy snapped. “This isn’t a cigarette, Wood. Helen, can’t we just go farther down that way? I’m sure we’ll find somewhere else.”

  “This place was perfect, though,” she whined. “It was like this little mini cave. You went behind this rock, and under this bunch of vines, and no one could see you. It was awesome.”

  “Maybe we should just go home,” Pigeon suggested. It was hands down the smartest thing she’d ever said.

  We did find another place to smoke. It was only a five-minute walk from where we’d been, and it was remarkably similar to the place Helen had described. As soon as we reached it, Pigeon picked up a switch and started hacking away at the foliage at the mouth of the cave like she was a child playing pirate.

  “Quit it, Pidge,” Helen said, taking her switch away. “We don’t want anyone to know we’re in here. We don’t want visitors, do we?”

  “Sorry,” she said, and then we started inside. It turned out to be much larger than I’d expected, with an eerie-looking drop-off from which someone had hung a makeshift rope ladder. Helen wanted to climb down and go exploring, but she was unanimously vetoed. While we were setting up, I thought I noticed a strange odor, but I assumed it must be a dead animal or bat guano or something. I wasn’t a nature girl, and satisfied myself with the explanation that nature probably stank most of the time.

  “Here’s good,” Freddy said, pulling a blanket from her bag to throw down onto the dirt and propping a flashlight against the side of her blanket. It spread light around the area. She pulled a dime bag from her pocket and tossed it, along with a lighter, a little purple pipe, and a few more flashlights, onto the blanket.

  After a couple of hits, I cut out early, like I always did, and lay back on the blanket, staring up into the darkness. I was kind of paranoid about smoking too much pot. I had this fear I might do something I’d regret, or it would be the only time in my life that someone would ask me to recite Avogadro’s number, and I’d suddenly forget it. The others clearly did not share my hesitation. Freddy smoked like it was going out of style, and Helen put on quite a show of it herself. Eventually they gave up and lay down too. That morning turned into afternoon and seemed to last forever, moments blurring and slipping into each other.

  Several hours passed. We lolled. We giggled. Pigeon slowly unpacked a sack filled with delicious food, which she passed around, and we ate languidly—fingers or strawberries dipped in Nutella, peaches bursting with juice, french bread smothered with jam. Helen was particularly fond of corn chips. She’d spend what seemed like hours staring at each chip, then gently press her tongue against its salty outcroppings, her eyes growing wide with delight, then going all soft and faraway. As far as I could tell, stoned Freddy was exactly like regular Freddy. Helen coaxed her into singin
g for us. She was the head of the very exclusive a cappella choir at school, and deservedly so. Her voice rang out clear, cutting through the crisp air and reverberating off the dirt walls. Notes seemed so long I felt like I could climb inside each one and float. Every once in a while she’d stop, claiming she wanted to rest and enjoy herself, but we’d cajole her back into singing.

  I was lying on my stomach, tapping my nails against the cold, hard ground, when Helen threw a corn chip at my head.

  “So, Wood,” Helen said. “Am I a terrible roommate?”

  “What?” I asked, looking at her. She was pretending to joke, but there was something in her eyes that betrayed her sincerity.

  “No,” I said. “You’re good.”

  She nodded to herself. “Good. So you’re not going to leave us and go back to Portland and your microbrews or whatever the hell you guys have in Portland.”

  “I think I’m here to stay,” I said, and she smiled.

  “You like St. Bede’s, then?” Freddy asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” I said, biting into a strawberry, smiling at the sweet tang.

  “I gotta take a piss,” Helen said, and pushed herself off the ground. She grabbed a flashlight and headed for the rope ladder.

  “You are not going down there,” Freddy commanded.

  “Watch my chiseled ass, Miss Bingham,” she said, and descended, the rope from the flashlight between her teeth.

  “So how’d you get the name Pigeon?” I asked.

  “Helen gave it to me. My real name’s Paloma. It means dove and Helen said doves are just albino pigeons and so she started calling me Pigeon.”

  “It stuck?”

  “I like it.”

  “You know”—Freddy smiled, pushing her hair back from her cheeks—“one time in New York, I saw a man catch a pigeon with his bare hands. No joke.”

  Far off down in the darkness, I thought I heard a sound—a horrible kind of scream. My heart stalled. I looked around. Freddy and Pigeon looked pale.

  “What was that?” Freddy said. A cold silence surrounded her question. With uncharacteristic haste, she moved to the ladder and called down. “Helen?” Her voice echoed out, strange and strong.