What She Found in the Woods

by Josephine Angelini

  I see his eyes flicker with suspicion. All he knows is that he shouldn’t want what I want, but I’m following his rules, so he’s stuck. I toss my head back around and look at Raven.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ I whisper. I’m ready for this.

  I know if I wait to hear the shot, it’ll be too late. We’re grouped too closely together. Instead, I listen to something else. I’ll call it hunter’s instinct. I turn and step into the path of the bullet as Rob fires. Raven is about three inches shorter than me, so the shot he meant to put right between her eyes grazes the top of my left shoulder.

  Even though it just nicks me, really, the power behind it is startling. I feel it throw me back, and I hit the ground.

  Oh, Bo. All he can think of is me. He shouts my name and lunges for me, when he should be turning around and getting that rifle away from Rob.

  ‘Raven!’ I scream, hoping she’s got something good hidden down the front of her shirt. I reach for the knife at my ankle.

  I see a tiny arrow fly past Rob, but Raven misses. He raises his rifle and takes aim at her.

  I’ve never thrown a knife, but if I hit the rifle with any part of it hard enough, it might throw off his aim. I rear up and pinch the blade between my thumb and forefinger. Then I chuck it from some muscle deep down in my belly.

  Rob staggers back, shocked. The knife sticks out of the back of his trigger hand. I landed it. Killing things always came naturally to me.

  Bo has the sense to dive for the rifle, but it’s still strapped high and tight across Rob’s torso. They struggle with each other. They’re two guys who grew up wrestling each other. They’re evenly matched, but Bo has more to lose. He gets Rob in a hold, lifts him right up off the ground with his gorilla strength, and slams him down on the ground.

  Bo is stronger, but Rob is a piece of shit murderer like me. He’s not looking to subdue his opponent, like Bo is. He’s looking for the kill. I know this. Even though Bo is on top, Rob knows how to kill from the bottom. Like me.

  Bo won’t kill Rob. That’s why I love him. Before Ray can make it over here to help overpower Rob, I make a choice. I snatch the tiny bow and the remaining arrow from Raven’s uncertain grip. At the same moment, Rob notices the knife sticking out of the back of his hand.

  He yanks the knife out, as I draw back the arrow in Moth’s training bow.

  ‘Rob,’ I call gently as I stand over them.

  When he looks at me, I shoot him in the eye.

  It’s like hitting a switch. Everything stops. I made a clean kill, which is more than he deserved. Rob is dead.

  My arms fall. I drop to my knees. Bo pushes himself up off Rob’s corpse and reaches for my head to cushion it as I fall to the ground.

  Bo’s face is over mine. His big, tender eyes. I try to reach up to touch his mouth, but holy shit my shoulder is killing me and I can’t move. I’m so cold.

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispers, breathing a laugh. ‘You are.’

  I think I smile. ‘I’m sorry I was late.’

  ‘I waited for you.’ He grins. ‘Good thing you’re worth it.’

  ‘She’s in shock, and she’s losing blood fast!’ That’s Ray speaking. ‘Karl, get blankets. Raven, go to the storeroom and get the emergency kit. Aspen, boil water. Rainbow, let go of her so I can treat her.’

  I’m so cold.

  ‘No,’ I protest. ‘Don’t let go . . .’

  6 AUGUST. BEFORE NOON

  I know I’m safe because I can smell Bo.

  Every inch of me hurts. I open my eyes but stay where I am, absorbing Bo’s room. I have no idea how they got me up into one of those tree-house dormitories, but I’m glad they made the effort. It’s beautiful to me. Probably because it’s his.

  The small room is circular with a peaked ceiling. There’s a trapdoor skylight that’s open to let in a breeze. The wooden walls are covered with posters of the periodic table of the elements, star charts, and a fold-out anatomy print of the human body. The floor is covered in a handmade hook rug.

  The sheets on his bed are mismatched, clean, and worn to softness. The bottom sheet has big yellow flowers on it, and the top one has sailboats. I notice I’m clean, my hair has been washed, and I’m wearing a long cotton nightgown. I can still feel a hot rock at my feet, but the piles of blankets that they had to put on top of me when I was in shock are gone now. Bo keeps me warm enough.

  It’s small and cosy, and I love it here, mostly because I can feel the length of Bo’s body pressed up against my side. I hear him turn the page of a book, and I have to move my head to see what it is. Something mathematical. He reads maths books. That’s adorable.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’ he asks, putting his equations aside.

  ‘I just woke,’ I say. My voice is really scratchy.

  I remember IV bags and catheters while Ray fought to flush out my system and keep me from bleeding to death. My body is ultra-hydrated right now, but none of that fluid went down my throat. My mouth is gritty.

  Bo picks up a mason jar of water and helps me sit up to drink. It’s so good. I finish the whole thing. Bo watches me drink, smiling, as if my moving and drinking on my own is a pleasure to him.

  I give him back the mason jar. ‘Will you help me with something?’ I ask him.

  ‘Anything,’ he replies immediately.

  ‘I have to go back into town.’

  Bo frowns suddenly. ‘Can it wait? There’s no way out of this camp except on foot.’

  ‘I know,’ I say quietly. ‘And no. It can’t wait.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You got poisoned and shot a day and a half ago.’

  ‘I’ve been getting poisoned for a year now – and, ironically, that’s why I’m still alive. And I didn’t get shot; I got grazed. On the shoulder. I promise I won’t walk on my shoulder.’ I get him to smile, at least, but he’s still worried. ‘Please, Bo.’

  He nods gravely. ‘OK.’ Then he gives me a half-smile. ‘I went into town to look for you, you know. But I had no idea where your grandparents lived, and at the shelter they said no one named Lena had ever worked there.’

  I give him a matching half-smile. ‘Well, Rain, I always preferred Lena to Magda.’

  He grins at me sheepishly, and we share one of those rare moments when you not only understand someone else, but you see yourself in them. We stay like that for a while.

  I take his hand. ‘What did you do with his body?’ I ask. He knows I mean Rob.

  ‘My dad and I buried him deep,’ Bo replies, his voice low and rough.

  ‘And his cell phone?’ I ask carefully. I don’t know if Bo knows enough about electronics to have considered it. ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘I took it back to his father’s camp and left it there. Don’t worry, I wore gloves.’ Bo’s face is pale and frozen.

  ‘So you saw.’

  He nods. ‘We had no idea, you know. We knew the Claybolts were drug dealers, and my mother hated them, but we didn’t know.’ He stops. He swallows. ‘I thought about taking Rob’s body back to his father’s camp, too, but . . .’ He looks away and lets out a long breath.

  ‘But if his body is ever found, I could go to jail for killing him,’ I answer for him.

  ‘It was self-defence – more than that. You were defending all of us,’ he says, his anger mounting.

  I smile and pull his hand against my chest, holding him to my heart. ‘You don’t have to tell me I did the right thing. But thank you.’

  He gathers me to him in a careful hug, avoiding my shoulder. ‘I know you did the right thing,’ he says.

  We stay like that until I can cry.

  Bo gets me down by having me sit in a hammock that’s attached to a rope, which is swung over a branch right outside the tree house and counterbalanced by a big rock. He holds the hammock as I get in and then lets me swing down slowly. It’s fun, actually, and it answers the question as to how I got up there in the first place.

  ‘She’s awake!’ M
oth screams, and then her tiny body is hurling towards mine.

  Bo intercepts the pre-school projectile. He tosses her up in the air playfully and reminds Moth that she needs to be gentle with me. Moth settles for a one-armed hug and an Eskimo kiss.

  Sol gives me a tortured look. I smile, but I skip over her because the conversation we need to have can’t happen now.

  Karl and Aspen are simultaneously too fascinated and too terrified by me to come any closer than ten feet, so I just wave at them to let them know that I see them.

  Raven stops in front of me. She’s trying to say thank you, but I’m not going to make her.

  ‘Good thinking to hide that training bow,’ I tell her. ‘You saved my life.’ Before she can argue about who saved whom, I move on to Ray.

  ‘You’re a great doctor,’ I tell him. He looks at his feet and gets angry at them because he’s not good at hearing compliments.

  ‘Your blood salts were so high and kidney failure was definitely a worry, and I didn’t have everything . . .’

  His eyes are blinking rapidly. I interrupt him before he can go into genius mode and get all technical on me. ‘Ray. My kidneys are applauding right now.’

  He laughs, and shuffles, and tries to disappear, so I let him.

  And then, Maeve. She folds me into a deep, soft-bodied, sweet-smelling, everything-is-going-to-be-OK mommy hug. I just let myself sink into that for a while. Strange how quickly the unknown can become second nature. The strangers in the crowd are now my family.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asks, all business now. Because of course she knows I didn’t drag myself out of Bo’s bed before I was totally healed for nothing.

  ‘First I have to get my pack. I left it outside the Claybolts’ camp. Then I’ve got to visit an old man,’ I reply.

  Bo and I hold hands as we walk to Whispering Pines.

  We enter, and I go to the nurse’s station and sign us in as Aura-Blue and Guest. The nurses here don’t really check those things.

  Francis Tanis is sitting in his usual spot, reading the paper. I smooth the cute patchwork dress I borrowed from Raven and squeeze Bo’s hand as we go over to him.

  ‘Mr Tanis. Do you remember me? I’m Aura-Blue’s friend,’ I say. He looks at me blankly, and for a moment I think all is lost.

  Then Mr Tanis stands. ‘Of course I remember you. Magda, wasn’t it?’ he says in his hale and hearty way.

  I shake his hand, relieved, and introduce Bo by his first name only. The old sheriff asks us to join him.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asks, giving me that knowing smile.

  I get right to it. ‘I found Dr Goodnight,’ I say. ‘His real name was Michael Claybolt.’

  ‘Michael Claybolt?’ Mr Tanis repeats, obviously recognizing the name.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I say bluntly. Mr Tanis’s eyes flash, but he keeps his mouth closed. ‘I’ve written down the GPS coordinates for his drug lab in the forest. His body is in his tent.’ I stop. This was always going to be hard. ‘There’s also a mass grave. It’s just a pit, really.’ My voice cracks, and I clear my throat so I don’t start crying. I hand the piece of paper to Mr Tanis.

  He takes it. ‘Do you need some water?’ he asks. I nod, and Mr Tanis goes to the nurse’s station to get it for me.

  ‘You OK?’ Bo asks quietly when the old sheriff leaves. I shrug with my good shoulder. ‘Do you really think this guy can help?’

  I shrug again, and he laughs. He leans towards me. We touch our foreheads together, eyes locked.

  Mr Tanis returns with a small paper cup for me. I take a sip and continue.

  ‘In the pit is the body of a woman with a police-issued handcuff around her wrist. The keys for those cuffs belong to Officer Longmire.’

  Mr Tanis jerks forward suddenly as if he’s about to leap out of his seat. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘I’m very sure. He didn’t kill her, but he was involved. And I’ll bet he’s not the only one at the local level who is.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He’s an idiot. Why would he be the only officer handling the disappearance of a teenage girl, unless people higher up in the food chain needed a fall guy in case everything went sideways with the FBI? I know you’re friends with the new Chief, but . . .’

  He looks devastated, but he nods. ‘I figured it had to be something like that, even though I didn’t want to admit it.’ He looks out the window. ‘If it was just about the drugs, there’d have been as many men dying as women. But only women? It never made sense.’

  I give him a moment before asking, ‘Can you get this –’ I gesture to the GPS coordinates – ‘to the FBI?’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ Mr Tanis replies quietly. ‘I’ll go out into the woods myself if I have to and take pictures for them if they don’t listen.’

  ‘One more thing – I’m giving you this information anonymously,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t want to be brought into this in any way.’ He narrows his eyes at me, gauging how serious I am about that. ‘If the FBI shows up at my house, asking me to testify, I’ll say you’re a crazy old man I visited once with a friend.’

  His eyes widen momentarily, but then they settle into something like respect. ‘You have my word,’ he says in a way that tells me his word is worth something.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, standing up. ‘The women’s rehab shelter was involved too. But I think the FBI will be able to figure that out once the dirty cops are taken in.’

  Mr Tanis nods again, but he seems too overwhelmed to speak.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Tanis. You were right.’

  ‘Doesn’t feel right.’ He looks at me, his eyes sad. ‘How did you get away from him?’

  I smile, but I don’t answer.

  ‘OK, then. Good luck.’ He shakes hands with Bo and me, and he waits for me to turn before saying, ‘Take care of that injured shoulder.’ Clever old buzzard.

  ‘I will,’ I tell him.

  Before we leave, I send a text to Rob’s phone that says, Where are you????

  With the last bar on my battery, I call my grandparents. I tell them a convoluted lie about having been out looking for Rob, who’s gone missing. When they pick us up, I introduce Bo as one of Rob’s childhood friends. They invite him over for dinner, and when that goes well (and how could it not after Bo admits he’s been accepted to seven colleges), they invite him to stay the night in the guest room.

  My grandparents have always been good at getting back to normal.

  19 AUGUST

  This will be my last entry.

  What’s left of the summer is a circus for this small town.

  TV crews, true crime novelists, talk-show hosts, and religious leaders looking to recruit new followers descend on this pretty little pocket of the world, all of them wailing about the social issue closest to their hearts and looking for anyone to talk to them.

  Despite the fact that I dated the son of a mass murderer, and work at the shelter that same mass murderer funded and used to cultivate his prey, no one has shown up on my doorstep yet, which isn’t surprising considering the mess the FBI is dealing with. They may come to ask me about Rob’s whereabouts eventually, but it’s likely they’ve already written me off. On his phone, which they have, it’s clear from our text messages that Rob was lying to me and I had no idea he and his father were killers.

  I’m not worried. I was careful. It’s not like the police have my DNA or even my fingerprints on file. I’ve never been arrested and booked. If any physical evidence of me were left behind, it would be in the genetic soup of the pit. Good luck sorting that out. As long as I’m not placed on the scene, there is no way anyone will know. So far Mr Tanis has kept his word, and then some.

  The local police force has been gutted.

  The FBI is trying to close down the shelter, but a few of the kitchen workers (all clean and sober) are putting up a fight to keep the doors open for the women and small children who have no place else to go.

  The TV came
ras have come in handy in that respect. Every day the kitchen circle stands outside in the parking lot holding hands in protest at closing down the shelter. Every evening after they go home, I go to the office, get the books straightened out, pay the electric and water bills, and call in stock orders for the upcoming weeks. That may sound overly optimistic, but I already know which way public opinion will swing this decision. I don’t want one of my walk-in refrigerators warming and wasting weeks’ worth of produce.

  The fact that the shelter is the sole beneficiary of an offshore account controlled by a non-taxable, non-profit organization that has millions of dollars in its coffers means that it won’t have to close down for financial reasons in the foreseeable future, either. Dr Goodnight made quite a lot of money as a drug manufacturer, but it seems after what he gave to Rob to live comfortably or used to set up his own camp in the woods, he put the rest of that fortune into this account. And in that way, he left one tiny cove of purity in the catastrophic oil spill that was his existence. I’m not letting this shelter go under. If I do, I may as well have stayed in the pit.

  I’m going to make something out of the rest of my life. I may never be able to atone for what I am or what I’ve done, but I’m going to try. There are piles of drug money stashed in that account – enough to open and run several shelters. This isn’t the only town where women are chewed up and spat out.

  Amy will run things here when I’m gone. She’s surprisingly good at accounting, she’s reliable, and the kitchen likes her because she’s recently joined AA. She’ll keep the lights on when I’m not around.

  I found a new doctor, and I’m on meds again, but gentler ones. We’re still working on getting my dosage right, but I’m feeling better every day. I am mentally ill, and I need help. I’ve accepted that. Medication is a part of my treatment, but it’s a delicate balance. I’m still discovering mine.

  Bo and I have gone to visit a few colleges, but I already know where he wants to go. Berkeley has always held a fairy-tale fascination for him. And he already dresses like half the hippie love children that go there, so that works. I have no preference. I would live on Mars if Bo asked me too. I’m sure there are plenty of women in Berkeley who need a safe place to get clean and sober. I’ll start there.