What Waits in the Woods

by Kieran Scott

  Penelope laughed in a self-deprecating way and looked at her toes. “I know. It’s stupid, I know. She just … it’s hard to disagree with Lissa,” she said, looking Callie in the eye in an almost pleading way. “And honestly? She’s usually right.”

  Callie laughed, thinking back to how Lissa had told her to break in her hiking boots for two weeks before the trip, that she should make sure to pack light, that she needed to triple check everything before she left the house.

  Right. Right. Aaaand (water bottle) right.

  “You got me there.”

  Callie could vaguely hear wailing guitar music coming from the second earbud. Surprising, considering all Lissa and Penelope ever listened to was top forty and hip-hop.

  “Are you a closet hard-rock fan?” Callie asked.

  Penelope blushed, a pretty pink color lightening her skin. “A little obsession I picked up last summer.” She stared off into the distance as they crested a hill, and Lissa and Jeremy came into view down below. They were walking and—if their gestures were any indication—arguing. Great. “I know it sounds weird, but I find it calming for some reason.”

  “Yeah, that’s not a sensation I equate with hard rock, but whatever floats your boat,” Callie said with a laugh. They started downhill and Callie had to lean backward to keep the backpack from toppling her over. “You know, I didn’t think you and Lissa had any secrets. From each other, I mean.”

  “Everyone has secrets,” Penelope said quietly.

  Something about the way she said it made the back of Callie’s neck tingle. She was about to ask what she meant when Penelope suddenly brightened.

  “For example, Lissa does not know that I used to have a huge crush on her brother,” she said with a proud smile. “Or that I still have my entire My Little Pony collection hidden in the back of my closet.” They both laughed. “I also never told her why I asked you to sit with us at lunch that day.”

  “Really? Why not?” Callie asked. “I mean … why did you?”

  It had been a big moment for Callie—the new girl who knew no one—to get asked to sit at the table of the coolest girls in the sophomore class. She’d gone a whole week sitting by herself at a rickety corner table, unable to get up the guts to randomly sit with strangers. When Penelope called her over, she’d been missing her friends from home so much—missing math team practice and after-school pizza runs and rom-com marathons and just conversation—she’d been seriously considering spending all her savings on a ticket back to Chicago.

  “You really don’t know?” Penelope asked, her green eyes wide.

  Callie shook her head and shrugged, which was next to impossible with the bag weighing down her shoulders.

  “Do you remember that day at basketball practice when Coach Fox went ballistic on me?”

  “Yeah.” Callie was on the JV team, but she and a few of the other girls had practiced with varsity that day to make up for a handful of members who were out with the flu.

  “Well, afterward Lissa was all ‘Let’s go lift weights! It’ll make you feel better! Work out your aggression!’ But you … you were so nice to me. You came over and asked if I was okay and got me a tissue and then you listened to me whine. And you didn’t even know me. I thought that was so cool of you.”

  “Anyone else would have done the same,” Callie said.

  Penelope smirked. “You’d think that, but no one did.”

  Which was true, Callie realized. The rest of the girls on the team had given Penelope a wide berth. “Which is so weird. I mean, because you’re always so nice to them. To everyone.”

  Penelope shrugged. “A lot of people can’t deal with other people’s feelings. It’s like it’s too messy or something.”

  Callie smiled, taking this as a compliment. “Well, messy doesn’t scare me.”

  Pen grinned. “Good. Me neither.”

  They stopped walking as they heard Lissa’s voice rise. She and Jeremy were still arguing. A line of concern appeared between Pen’s eyebrows.

  “What’s with those two?” Callie asked.

  “I don’t know. They’re being such freaks today,” Penelope replied, then smiled sidelong at Callie. “At least we’re normal,” she joked.

  “Go us.”

  They’d taken a few more steps when Pen’s hand shot out to stop Callie. “What is that?” she hissed.

  Penelope’s alarmed tone set the tiny hairs on Callie’s arms on end before she had even turned to look. She swallowed hard and braced herself, imagining some big hairy bug clinging to a branch or a rabid furry animal crouched beneath the brush ready to pounce and tear their throats out. Imagining, as hard as she tried not to, the Skinner and his blood-dripping knife.

  “What?” Her voice was a terrified squeak.

  “That!”

  Penelope pointed into the woods along the right side of the trail. Tangled around a branch on a half-rotted, hollowed-out tree trunk was a scrap of pink fabric, torn and stained with mud. Callie didn’t really feel the need to investigate further. In fact, she wanted to turn and run. But Penelope dragged her forward, clinging to her arm as their steps shuffled across the packed dirt.

  The scrap of fabric was bigger than she’d thought, and decorated with small white flowers, like something a little girl might wear. It stretched out on the other side of the trunk, the delicate weave snagged and ragged. Callie’s throat went dry. Beneath the smears of mud was something darker—a wide, deep, set-in stain. Dark. Red. Crusty.

  Blood.

  How had Lissa and Jeremy missed this? Were they so caught up in their fight that they’d blown right by it?

  “Oh my God, Callie. What is that?” Penelope whispered tersely.

  “I don’t know,” Callie said.

  That was when she saw the hair.

  Lissa and Jeremy raced back up the hill at the sound of Callie’s scream. By the time they got there, Callie and Pen were huddled on the far side of the trail, clutching each other. Callie’s face was pressed against Penelope’s shoulder, her nose mushed flat.

  “I knew it. I knew I saw someone in the woods last night,” Callie rambled. “And that bloody gauze? There’s someone out here and they’re on a killing spree.”

  “You saw someone?” Penelope demanded. “Who? Where?”

  But Callie didn’t get a chance to answer.

  “Are you guys okay?” Lissa demanded, heaving for breath. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a body!” Callie blurted, her finger shaking as she pointed. “A dead body!”

  Lissa and Jeremy exchanged an alarmed look. They both inched toward the trunk, then stopped, staring down at the corpse. Then, horribly, Jeremy reached over to grab something.

  “What’re you doing?” Penelope screeched.

  Jeremy stood up, lifting a bundle of white cloth. Penelope’s fingernails dug into Callie’s arms. Callie felt like she was about to faint—until she finally focused and saw what Jeremy was holding. A very old, very muddy, very broken baby doll. Its dark hair stuck out in all directions and its ceramic face was cracked on the side, causing one eye to yawn open so wide, the whole white ball was exposed.

  Lissa burst out laughing.

  “It’s not funny!” Callie blurted.

  A smile tugged at the corners of Penelope’s lips. “Well. It’s a little funny.”

  Penelope and Jeremy doubled over laughing and before long, Callie felt herself relax, too. She laughed, forcing out her fear and paranoia with each gasp for air, replacing it with cool, sweet relief. Bending at the waist, she used the opportunity to shift the weight off the small of her back temporarily.

  “Hey. Don’t you have a doll just like that?” Penelope asked Lissa. “It used to be in a carriage in your room when we were little.”

  Lissa narrowed her eyes. “Oh, yeah! Melinda.” She laughed and took the doll from Jeremy. “My mom still has it in the hall closet. She’s saving it for when she has grandkids. Zach went in there for a towel one time and thought it was a real baby. He screamed li
ke a little girl.” Lissa snorted, tossing the doll back into the underbrush.

  Callie was still laughing when she looked up at Penelope. But her friend’s entire expression had changed. She looked freaked.

  “What is that doll doing all the way out here?” Pen asked. “I mean, I know it’s not a real dead body or anything, but … what’s that red stuff all over it?”

  Lissa crouched over the doll again to check it out. “My guess is cranberry juice?” she offered. “Maybe some kid forgot it on a camping trip. Or decided she was too old for it and left it behind. Who knows?”

  Penelope shuddered, still looking creeped out. Not that Callie could blame her. She was glad Lissa had dropped the ugly, staring thing out of view. But she’d take a mangled doll over a mangled body any day.

  Callie thought of her journal. Maybe she could get a new story out of this. Something about the beloved childhood toy left behind … lost innocence … the uncertainty of growing up.

  But no. No. She had to finish at least one story before she’d allow herself to start a new one.

  Callie started to stand up straight again and realized she couldn’t. Her back would not unbend. She grabbed Jeremy’s arm and squeezed, letting out a very unappealing grunt of pain.

  “Are you okay?” Jeremy asked.

  Callie glanced over at Lissa, hating to admit what she was about to admit. “Not exactly. I don’t think I can stand.”

  “All right, that’s it. I’m taking the heavy pack.” Jeremy slipped the bag off Callie’s shoulders, then ripped his own bag off and dropped it at Lissa’s feet. Callie let out a relieved groan and straightened her spine. She felt something crack near the center of her back and hoped it was nothing important.

  “Aw! Look at you! So chivalrous!” Lissa teased, crossing her toned arms over her chest. “You know you can’t be knighted, right? You’re an American citizen.”

  “Just give hers back to her,” Jeremy said, annoyed. “It’s the lightest, isn’t it?”

  Callie rolled her shoulders. “No. It’s okay. I can—”

  “Cal, it was an impressive effort, but give it up,” Lissa interrupted, slipping Callie’s red backpack onto the ground. “And actually, I think Penelope’s bag weighs less. What the heck do you have in here?”

  Before Callie could stop her, Lissa had yanked open the zipper on her backpack.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” she blurted, and pulled out Callie’s copy of Jensen’s Revenge.

  “You brought a book?” Penelope asked.

  Callie’s cheeks flushed hot. What had made her think she could keep that thing hidden from them for five straight days? But even in her humiliation, she was glad when Lissa dropped the bag again without pawing through it further. If she’d found and read any of Callie’s journal, Callie might have actually died.

  “Not just a book.” Lissa flipped through the pristine pages. “A five hundred and forty-six page hardcover with topics for discussion in the back. Did you think we were going to sit around and read this together by the fire? Have some deep debate about”—here she paused to read from the discussion page—“Jensen’s motivation when sparing the life of the evil troll king?” She looked up at Callie. “Seriously?”

  Callie felt her blush deepen.

  “Back off, Lissa. We all know Callie likes to read,” Jeremy said, adjusting the straps on the backpack so that it sat higher on his shoulders. Something Callie sort of wished she’d known she could do, as it might have prevented her from having a permanently deformed rear end.

  “This thing weighs, like, ten pounds!” Lissa laughed as she tossed it back in Callie’s bag.

  “It just came out on Tuesday!” Callie protested. She bent to yank the ties at the top of the pack as tight as she could get them before anyone could spot her leather journal. They could never see what was in there. Never. “I’ve been waiting to find out what happens for an entire year.”

  “You couldn’t wait four more days?” Lissa suggested, raising an eyebrow.

  “Or put it on a tablet maybe?” Penelope offered.

  Callie itched to explain, but she knew they’d never understand. To her there was nothing more satisfying than being in the bookstore the day the latest book in a series was released, picking it up off the shelf, reading the first page, bringing it to the counter, being one of the first people to buy it, then scurrying off to a corner to devour chapter one. She loved the feeling of a big, heavy book in her hands. She loved marking the pages with the flap of the jacket to see how far she’d read. That was who she was. She was not a tablet girl.

  And besides, she didn’t mock Penelope because she was obsessed with weaving bracelets or try to take Lissa down a peg because she was constantly talking about the tattoo she was going to get the second she turned eighteen. Sometimes she wondered why it was still socially acceptable to pick on brainy pursuits. But she wasn’t going to start a fight about it with Lissa and Penelope. Especially not right now, when her survival literally depended on them.

  “Even if I had a tablet, I couldn’t keep it charged out here anyway.”

  Callie shouldered her own backpack, which felt much lighter than it had the day before, and tromped down the hill. After a couple of minutes, Jeremy fell into step at her side.

  “Just ignore them,” he said. “The idea of reading for fun doesn’t compute in their tiny little brains.”

  He handed her a water bottle and she gratefully took a swig, wiping sweat from her brow as Lissa and Penelope caught up to them. She realized her hair was starting to frizz even more from the humidity, her natural curls winning out over the expert straightening she’d done yesterday.

  Callie grimaced, half wishing she could look in a mirror and half grateful she couldn’t. She was just going to have to accept the fact that she would be one huge frizz bomb for the entire trip.

  If Jeremy didn’t like her that way, well, then he wasn’t worth it.

  At least, that’s what her mom would say.

  Mom.

  Three more nights. Three more nights.

  Then home. Showers. Air conditioning. Shopping in New York City.

  “I can’t wait to get to soccer practice on Monday,” Lissa said, brushing a fly off her arm. All the fall sports had practices the week before school started. “We’re so going to the championships this year, right, Pen?”

  “Yeah,” Penelope said, sounding distracted. “I guess.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t start,” Lissa said.

  “What?” Callie asked, looking back and forth between them.

  “Penelope wants to quit the soccer team,” Lissa said, rolling her eyes as her feet stomped heavily downhill. “You can’t quit, Pen. Only losers quit.”

  Penelope flinched. Callie knew she should say something to defend Pen or defuse the situation. But she couldn’t seem to find her voice. Sometimes the very idea of standing up to Lissa was too scary, or too exhausting, or both.

  “Check it out,” Penelope said suddenly, holding up a hand to shield her eyes. “There’s a bridge down there.”

  “Yeah? Where?” Lissa asked, turning.

  Topic officially changed.

  “Why do you sound surprised?” Callie asked. “Haven’t you hiked this trail before?”

  “Not this one.” Lissa reached for her own bottle. “But Zach has. He told me it’s got some really cool scenery, and won’t be too challenging for the newbie,” she joked, giving Callie a smirk.

  Callie’s battered toes curled inside her boots. “Wait a second. Do you guys even know where you’re going?”

  “Of course we do,” Lissa replied. She gestured toward a blue metal square nailed to a nearby tree. “We’re following the trail markers.”

  “And we have the compass and the map in case we get lost,” Penelope put in. Then, clearly seeing how the blood rushed out of Callie’s face, she quickly added, “Which will not happen.”

  Lissa unclipped a heavy silver compass from the pack Jeremy was now carrying. “See? The trail we�
�re on heads north-northwest so as long as the arrow points that way, we’re cool.”

  Callie looked down at the unfamiliar letters and markings. The red arrow wavered between the N and the W. Penelope and Lissa started down the hill again, but Callie hung back, needing a moment to breathe. Jeremy stayed with her.

  “I wish I’d known we were on a new trail. Why doesn’t anyone feel the need to tell me anything?” Callie asked as she clipped the compass back onto Jeremy’s bag.

  “Sorry. I should’ve told you,” Jeremy said softly. “I think they just figure you’re, like, along for the ride, but it’s true, you should know what’s going on. I’ll keep you better informed from here on out.” Jeremy reached over and tucked Penelope’s flower tighter behind Callie’s ear, letting his fingers linger for a second.

  “Thank you.” Callie looked down at her feet, which were throbbing. When this trip was over, she was going to soak them in the tub for at least an hour. They deserved it. “I guess we should catch up.”

  At the foot of the hill, the trail widened into a clearing, where Penelope and Lissa had paused to wait for them. Up ahead was the bridge—a long structure made of wood planks, with rope holds on either side. Beneath it, a body of water that was too big to be a stream, but too small to be a river, burbled over rocks and dipped down hills. The drop from bridge to water wasn’t that far, maybe eight feet, but the idea of walking over those planks made Callie’s stomach flop over.

  “We’re supposed to cross?” Callie asked, not bothering to hide her nervousness.

  Lissa gave one of the ropes a good tug and tested the first board with her boot, rocking her foot from toe to heel.

  “Yep. There’s a blue marker on the other side.” Penelope pointed confidently.

  “Come on, Callie,” Lissa said, her blue eyes glittering. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “I’ll lead the way,” Jeremy offered.

  “And the chivalry continues,” Lissa teased. Callie wished Lissa would give her boyfriend a break for once. She watched as Lissa stepped back from the bridge, giving a bow and gesturing with her arm for Jeremy to move forward.