What She Found in the Woods Read online

  He realizes I’m telling the truth. ‘What happened?’

  I look out at the sun that just won’t set. ‘I told a very big lie,’ I say. I look back at him. ‘And I got caught.’

  His eyes pop with intrigue. ‘You have to explain that.’

  I shake my head and poke at the ice in my glass with my straw. ‘Some other time, maybe.’

  He doesn’t push. Instead, he keeps talking. Filling the silence with information about the town of Pinedale, our current home. We finish our tea, and he pays. I offer, but he shrugs me off with a ‘Next time’, and then he walks me to the car and opens the door for me.

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll take you to a barbecue so you can get to know everyone again,’ he says, climbing into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I ask, raising an eyebrow. ‘We’re going out again tomorrow?’

  ‘Definitely.’ He starts the engine and backs out with a smile. Like he’s daring me to contradict him.

  He walks me to my door, even though it’s a little silly and completely awkward. I put a lot of space between us, just in case.

  ‘Give me your number,’ he says, pulling out his phone. We exchange digits, and he pockets his phone again. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says firmly. His eyes dart down to my lips, like he’s thinking about kissing me. I turn away from him to unlock the door.

  ‘Maybe,’ I reply, pushing my way inside.

  16 JULY. MORNING

  I used to be really popular.

  But the problem with having a packed social schedule is that you can’t always go where you say you’re going to go. You make promises to acquaintances, to parents, to guys, and you mean to follow through, but then things happen. And before you know it, someone is hurt or angry or disappointed.

  It’s hard to be perfect and popular. When everyone wants something from you, eventually you reach a breaking point. Someone is going to be let down. But I thought I was so clever. I thought I came up with the perfect solution. Actually, it wasn’t just me, but that doesn’t matter any more. I’m the one who took the fall.

  ‘Are you going for another hike today?’ Grandma asks, interrupting my reverie. ‘By yourself?’

  ‘Do you need me to stay here and help you with something?’ I ask.

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ she says through a forced smile. I notice she looks fluttery and anxious, like she either skipped one of her pills this morning or took one too many. ‘You spend so much time alone. Aren’t you going to see your friend?’

  It takes me a moment to understand. ‘Oh, you mean Rob? I think he’s taking me to a barbecue tonight,’ I say, threading my arms through the straps on my backpack.

  Her face relaxes. ‘How nice,’ she says. ‘Well, enjoy your hike.’ In her mind, as long as I’m social, as long as I’m ‘getting out there’, then she needn’t worry.

  ‘Thanks, Gram,’ I say, because there’s no point in trying to explain to her that some of the sickest people I’ve ever known were also some of the most social. And I put me, as I was a year ago, at the top of that list.

  It’s not her fault. My grandparents take everything at face value. The scary part is, I don’t think they realize how shallow that makes them. That sounds mean, I know, but it’s true. They only go so deep, and asking for more from them is pointless. They’re easy to live with, as long as I fit into their picture-perfect idea of what life should be like. As long as I seem happy, they’ll be happy to have me here.

  So I play along. I smile, I joke, I follow their rules – which is easy to do because they don’t ask much. When I came here, I knew what kind of contract I was signing. Only perfect and pleasant will be tolerated. Just like my dad. Don’t make it hard, or you have to go.

  I hike back to the place by the river with the flat green bank and the little waterfall. I don’t have a name for it. I just think of it as there in my mind, and I picture it rather than name it. I don’t feel like I have the right to name it, actually, because it doesn’t belong to me.

  I think the whole way, which is a terrible mistake.

  I set up in my spot and take out my books. Walden is not happening right now. Neither is the Longfellow I’ve brought. My eyes keep scanning the words ‘This is the forest primeval’, but they can’t seem to get to the next line in the poem.

  I look at my notebook.

  I hear a pounding sound, and I startle.

  It’s coming from behind me, so I twist around and look up the sheer wall that drops about seven feet to where I’m lying.

  The pounding stops, and a deer comes flying over the edge. I scream and duck and cover my head as a few hundred pounds of terrified animal lands on my picnic blanket and narrowly misses crushing me to death.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ I hear. And then something big and heavy lands on top of me. I realize it’s a large, dirty boy.

  He rolls, keeping his weight off me as we tumble across the blanket. The deer struggles to get her legs under her. She kicks and makes an almost human sound as she screams. The boy drags me as far away from her thrashing hooves as he can and protects me with his body until the deer hauls herself up and trots off with a laboured, uneven gait.

  I’m too stunned to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ the boy keeps repeating.

  ‘What the hell?’ I manage to choke out.

  ‘Are you OK? Did I hurt you?’ he asks, and he starts inspecting my head and upper arms.

  ‘I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine, but I’m not hurt,’ I say, pushing on his bare chest. Wow. He’s really solid.

  He looks down at my hands, touching him. He shakes and pulls back. Then he jumps off me as if stung. He sits back on his heels and nervously starts handing my books to me although that makes no sense.

  ‘I got it,’ I say, gesturing for him to stop. I look at my blanket. It’s streaked with mud and blood. ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I live here,’ he says with a shrug. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was reading,’ I say, gesturing to my books.

  He looks at Walden and scoffs. ‘Wasting your time is more like it. You know Thoreau left the woods every Sunday to have dinner with his mom?’

  I did not know that. I stare at him. ‘Well. Doesn’t that just kill all the romance?’ I say drily.

  He stands, and I see a brace of arrows is strapped across his back. There’s a huge knife tied to his thigh over a pair of worn camouflage pants. I look at his face. He’s about my age, maybe older. I can’t really tell what he looks like because of all the mud on his face, but his eyes are two bright blue-grey discs. He turns the way the deer went and then back at me anxiously.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK? That deer’s injured and in pain. I can’t leave her like that,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, right,’ I say, frowning at the thought of that poor animal. ‘I’m fine. Go kill the suffering deer.’

  But he hasn’t waited around to hear the catty ending to my response. He’s already running off yelling, ‘Sorry!’

  In moments, he’s disappeared in the underbrush. I stare after him, my mouth hanging open. I look down at myself and realize I’m filthy. There’s blood everywhere. I should be disgusted, but I’m not. I’m definitely feeling something, which is remarkable, but it isn’t disgust. My heart takes forever to stop pounding.

  I rinse off as best as I can in the river and pack my things up while they’re still a little damp. Luckily, these water-repellent blankets also repel a fair share of blood. The scent lingers. Musky and metallic.

  On the walk back to my grandparents’ house, I can’t stop wondering about the wildboy. He was out here, hunting I guess, with no rifle and no one to help him. He just had a bow and some arrows and a giant knife. How would he even carry a dead deer back to wherever it is that he lives by himself?

  I mean, seriously. Who is this guy? Slaying deer with his bare hands by day and reading philosophy by night . . . Who does that? Not that I’m into the whole Tarzan thing – or the smarter-than-thou philosopher thing, either.
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  I mean, it’s nice to know a guy is tough enough to chase down a deer. And that he’s smart enough to do more than just hit things with rocks. And the way he shook when I touched him . . .

  It’s dark by the time I get back to my grandparents’ house. I see Rob’s car in the driveway and mentally kick myself. The barbecue.

  ‘Sorry!’ I call out as soon as I open the front door. ‘I fell asleep! I’ll be right down.’

  I go straight up the stairs and run to my room. I hear Grandma calling after me, but I don’t reply. My clothes are irreparably stained with blood. I take them off and throw them into the very back of my closet. I’ll have to get rid of them when my grandparents aren’t around.

  I rush through a shower and quickly dab on lipstick, and then I’m down the stairs again wearing another one of my old dresses.

  I can’t apologize enough as I enter the living room. ‘Rob, I’m so sorry,’ I say as he stands to greet me.

  He looks me over. I’ve twisted my damp hair on top of my head in a bun, and the dress I’m wearing has a low neckline, showcasing my long neck and toned arms.

  ‘Worth it,’ he says, making me and my grandparents laugh.

  We chat with my grandparents for a little before we head out the door. I don’t know why I don’t say anything about the deer and the wildboy. I don’t feel like trying to explain it, I guess. I can’t really explain it to myself, let alone anyone else.

  Wildboy said he lived there. Does that mean he lives in the woods? It’s illegal to live on public land. He must have meant in town. For all I know, he’ll be at the barbecue, and then I’ll have him there to explain it to everyone else, because I don’t even know where to start. A deer fell on me, and then a guy did? My grandmother is anxious enough as it is. No. This I’m going to keep to myself until I get a little more information from Wildboy. If I ever see him again, that is.

  When we get in Rob’s car, I see him check his watch. It’s a Patek Philippe, I’m sure of that, but it’s got an obscure complication I’ve never seen before. It must be very rare.

  I apologize again for being late and ask, ‘Did we miss it?’

  ‘No,’ he replies, but I can tell he’s annoyed. ‘It’s not that late. It’s just a little rude.’

  He lets the word hang there. I realize he’s implying I’m rude. He’s either expecting me to insist that I’m not rude or he’s expecting an apology. But I already apologized. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever actually agreed to come out with him in the first place.

  I’m starting to think up a convenient bellyache, maybe a migraine. I’m contemplating going for the gold by saying I have massive period cramps so I can have him bring me home, when he completely changes the subject.

  ‘So, you fell asleep?’ he asks. ‘Were you writing?’

  ‘Reading,’ I reply, shaking my head.

  ‘What were you reading?’

  ‘Evangeline.’ I cringe at how pretentious I sound.

  ‘This is the forest primeval,’ he quotes in a stage baritone, ‘with the murmuring pines and the hemlocks.’ He looks over at me as he stops at a sign. ‘Very fitting.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ I say. ‘And, yes, I do realize that I am a giant cliché.’

  ‘You don’t believe that,’ he says like a statement, not a reassurance. And he’s right.

  ‘No. I don’t,’ I reply. ‘Nothing about me is a cliché.’

  He’s quiet for a moment. His eyes are on the road. ‘That’s why we’re both still here.’

  I don’t quite get what he’s saying. I can feel an undercurrent to his words, something deep and murky, but I don’t know him well enough to take any guesses about what it is.

  ‘Who’s going to be at the barbecue?’ I ask him.

  He smiles to himself. ‘Don’t worry.’ He looks at me. ‘Whoever they are, they’ll love you. Everyone loves you.’

  I’m not going to argue with Rob, although I know from the expectant way he’s glancing at me that he’s waiting for me to.

  Here’s how this normally pans out. If I were to say something like, ‘No they don’t,’ he would accuse me of false modesty. Or if I accept it and say, ‘OK, yes, most people love me,’ his next move would be to accuse me of vanity. Either way, it would lead to him taking me down a peg.

  If I were to skip a step and simply point out that there is no way for me to answer a loaded statement like that, all he has to do is say something like, ‘I was just teasing. Can’t you take a joke?’ or some such passive-aggressive nonsense, when we both know there’s no way for any girl to win an argument like this. And that’s why guys start them. So they can win.

  See, I’ve had this argument before. Many times. Usually with guys who know I’m not that interested in them. They’re looking for a way to get in my head. Call a girl rude or phoney or vain, and she’ll do anything to prove to you she isn’t. By my count, Rob has implied all three of these things in less than a minute. I get it. He’s offended I think so little of him, and he wants to punish me. If he were wrong about any of the things he’s implied, I’d think he was a dick.

  But he’s not wrong. I think he’s kind of hit the nail on the head here. In fact, I know I am far worse than rude or phoney or vain.

  Instead of getting into all that, I look out the window.

  16 JULY. NIGHT

  I was not the most popular girl in school.

  That was Jinka Pritchett. Jinka was the one everyone wanted to be close to. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful with light brown skin, hair for days, and an impossible figure. It wasn’t even that she was valedictorian-smart, or unfailingly funny. No. Everyone wanted to be close to Jinka because she was, hands-down, one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

  In my school, there was none of that mean girl bully shit you see in teen movies from the nineties. Not with Jinka around. She would defend any geek to any jock, and vice versa. She was patient with even the most annoying, socially awkward kids who invariably say something that they shouldn’t and make everyone uncomfortable. She included even the most forgotten members of our graduating class in at least two parties a year, and she genuinely tried to get to know them.

  Jinka reached out to everyone. Jinka cared about other people. Jinka made everyone around her be the best versions of themselves because she wouldn’t tolerate gossip, cruelty, or petty gripes. And Jinka was almost my best friend. I say almost because, with someone like Jinka, everyone wants the best-friend job, and I was just one of the select few who was in on the rotation.

  The thing about Jinka was that while she was all of those lovely things I said, she was also incredibly shrewd.

  There were five of us. Five beautiful, smart, funny, sweet girls who did everything together: Jinka Pritchett, Scarlet Simpson, Olive Wentworth, Ivy O’Bannon, and me. Jinka was the lynchpin, and the rest of us subbed in as her best friend in a sort of round robin, depending on how uppity any one of us was getting.

  For example, if I was rising high and mighty, Jinka would schedule in some one-on-one time with Scarlet and leave me out. I’d get the hint pretty fast. Scroll back your ego or get replaced.

  Jinka was the centre because she kept the rest of us a tiny bit off balance. We had no choice but to spin in her orbit, but we didn’t care because having Jinka for a sometimes-best-friend felt better than anything.

  But it wasn’t just Jinka. It was the Five of us. Having friends like that was more important than any guy or any teacher or any parent, and we didn’t really care what anybody else thought. Because we were perfect.

  And perfect is hard to do. Impossible, in fact.

  Rob and I arrive at the barbecue fashionably late. His charm offensive begins as soon as we pull up to the Craftsman-style house. A college-age guy is chatting up a younger girl on the wide front porch.

  ‘Tay-dog,’ Rob calls out to him.

  Tay-dog lifts his beer and starts to howl at Rob in greeting. ‘There he is! Robert the Bruce!’

  Rob looks at the girl and wav
es politely, but he doesn’t seem to recognize her. He introduces me to Taylor, or Tay-dog as Rob had called him, and he leads us into the house and through to the back deck. There’s a great view of the ocean and coolers of beer between the comfortable but not expensive deck furniture. The grill is still going, but the burgers and dogs on it are all charcoal.

  There’s a mix of teens and college-age kids here, but there’s no more than three or four years of an age difference among them. It’s obvious that the core of this group has known each other for many summers. These are the vacation friends I gave up for the Hamptons set.

  Olive’s family has a house in Southampton, and by the time we were freshmen, the Five of us couldn’t bear to be separated for a whole month. I traded my grandparents and this woodsier West Coast clique for the posh and polished teenaged spawn of the rich and famous on the East Coast. I traded micro-brew beer for mimosas, and real hugs for air-kisses. I never even thought to think about it.

  I don’t know Taylor from the old days, or at least I don’t think I do. He’s one of the year-rounders, and I didn’t meet many of them back in the day. But the next guy they introduce me to I do remember.

  ‘Liam?’ I say to the tall, blond guy in a button-down shirt and swimming trunks. It’s an odd look, but he’s got an amazing body, so he can pull it off.

  He turns and faces me, and there’s a blank moment that is quickly replaced with disbelief. ‘Magda,’ he breathes. ‘You’re back?’

  Liam gives me a hug, and we both laugh. We had a thing the last summer I was here. We were only thirteen, so it never progressed past handholding and a few regrettably limp-lipped kisses that promptly ended my interest in him, but he was a nice guy. Can’t remember how we lost touch. I probably just never texted him back.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ I say. ‘You look great.’

  ‘You look amazing,’ Liam replies, and I notice a touch of disappointment.

  ‘OK, OK, break it up,’ Rob says laughingly. He takes my hand. ‘You’ve got a girlfriend,’ he reminds Liam.