What She Found in the Woods Page 7

  Our parents loved the idea of us babysitting these pretend children from India for free, and this fake job opened up our schedules, so we could do what we wanted with that time – all while seeming to be the most generous of young ladies, of course.

  The contact number that we gave our parents for Ali’s house was an Indian restaurant that always answered the phone in Hindi. If our parents tried to call ‘Ali’s house’, they wouldn’t understand a word of it. Not that any of our parents ever called that number. While they loved the idea that the Five of us were open-minded, that was as far as their involvement with other cultures went. The truth is, none of us would have gotten away with this if all of our parents didn’t have their heads firmly up their asses.

  Parental heads being as deeply implanted as they were, the Ali Bhatti alibi had been working for us for over a month now. We went where there were no parents, and one of us almost always had parents who were taking a week in Paris or going on safari in South Africa, so we would always have a place to ourselves. Sometimes we invited boyfriends and other acquaintances over, and sometimes we didn’t. We partied a lot that month. It was, without a doubt, the best time I’d ever had in high school.

  But this was different. Up until now, Ali was just for our parents. Using Ali to get out of stuff in school could be tricky. Everyone looked at me to figure it out.

  ‘I don’t know how we’re going to pull that off,’ I said. ‘If we want to start using Ali at school, obviously she can’t go to school with us, so what school does she go to? How do we know her? Why do we have an obligation to her that would supersede our obligations at school?’

  Jinka stared at me with an eyebrow raised.

  ‘I don’t have any answers for those questions,’ I replied defensively.

  Jinka threw a pillow at me. ‘You’ll figure it out,’ she coaxed. ‘You always do.’

  I looked around at Scarlet, Olive, and Ivy. They looked between Jinka and me. Jinka’s ultimatum was clear. Figure this out or one of them will be my new best friend.

  I went over to my bag and pulled out my journal. I opened up a fresh page and started to write while I spoke.

  ‘It’ll have to be a club. A club that helps welcome people from foreign countries,’ I said, but I was just vamping because the pressure was on.

  And then I had what I thought, at the time, was a brilliant idea. I actually smiled while I wrote and spoke aloud. ‘It’s a club that not only helps introduce foreign kids to American students so they can make friends, but a club that helps American kids learn more about foreign cultures. The Cultural Outreach Club.’

  ‘The Cultural Outreach Club?’ Olive said, nearly squealing the words, she was so excited. ‘That’s brilliant! My parents would literally force me to join that club if it were real.’

  Confidence flared in my chest as I wrote down the bullet points. ‘We’ll need a charter if we’re going to register the club with school so we can cut classes,’ I said. ‘And we’ll need to make up a teacher from another school to be the advisor. We don’t want to have to choose an advisor from our school, for obvious reasons. Oh. And a web page. Yeah. We need to upload lots of pictures.’

  ‘Of what?’ Scarlet asked. I could hear the challenge in her voice, and it only pushed me harder.

  ‘Of our dear friend Ali in a sari for some Indian festival, or Django from Angola doing whatever rite of passage people in Angola do. The club is just a blog, really.’ I shrug and keep writing. ‘I’ll just write a few lines about some lesson learned, download tons of culturally diverse pictures from the web, and post them in between pictures of us dressed up like we’re attending some function. Cultural outreach achieved.’

  A slow clap started. I looked up to see Jinka beaming at me while she clapped, Scarlet glaring at me with barely repressed envy for impressing Jinka, Olive giddy with the thrill of danger, and Ivy shying away with a hint of fear in her eyes that this elaborate lie had come to me so easily. Ivy was the only one who had it right.

  The Cultural Outreach Club is where we proved to be more racist and more classist than our parents. We treated other people’s cultures as if they were there solely for the purpose of serving our most frivolous whims – fake proof we were enriching lives when really we were somewhere else partying. At least when our parents threw one of their charity balls that were really just an excuse to wear couture gowns and make the society page, some deserving cause got a fat cheque at the end. We served no one but ourselves.

  And I poured myself into it. Writing that blog became my un-journal. It was an account of exactly where I hadn’t been and the people I hadn’t met.

  I stopped writing in my real journal and wrote lies for the Cultural Outreach Club instead. But even before the blog for the Club, I used to write things in my journal that weren’t true. They weren’t better or worse; they just weren’t what happened.

  Silly stuff, like I’d lie in my journal about getting a deli sandwich when really I’d had pizza. Or that I’d got into an argument with Jinka when I hadn’t. I’d lie about the most random things. Maybe it was to embellish my life a little. To smooth out the uglier bits. But sometimes I’d just substitute one ugly truth with an equally ugly lie. Honestly, I don’t know why I did that. It’s not like I expected anyone else to read my journal, not before the blog, so I don’t know what the lies were for. Maybe they were for me. Maybe they were what I’d wished I’d done and hadn’t. Or maybe it’s easier to own up to an ugly lie than the ugly truth. I can’t remember.

  It’s easy to forget what’s real when you’ve spent so much time and care describing what isn’t.

  24 JULY

  I’m early getting there again. But Bo is already waiting for me.

  The saying is that your heart leaps, but to me it feels like all of my insides do, which is disturbing. Uncomfortable, even. I have to stop myself from skipping, because skipping is lame. I almost skip, though.

  His lips part in a crooked-toothed smile, and I can see his chest bellow in and out with deep, fast breaths. I’m in the river and freezing from the thigh down, and he’s already at the bank to take my hands and help me up the other side. He’s so close to me, but still straining just a few inches closer, and then away from me again before his chest touches mine. He does this towards-me/ away-from-me vacillation over again, and it’s like I can see two halves of him running in opposite directions.

  So I kiss him to answer that silent question he’s asking me. Yes, my kiss says. You may.

  But he has no idea how.

  ‘I’ve never kissed anyone before,’ he admits, frustration and embarrassment flushing his skin. I giggle a little and open his mouth with mine. His hands come up to my face and then drift down to my shoulders. He slips the straps of my bag off them, and he laughs when he finally gets my body free from my backpack. Now he can hold me against him, and now I can show him how to kiss me, but I don’t need to any more because he’s already figured it out. He makes a noise somewhere deep inside. It sounds like waking up or remembering.

  I don’t need anything but this. This kiss is big enough to fill a whole day – a whole day doing one thing, so completely it’s like you’ve done everything.

  When we finally break apart, Bo helps me open my pack and spread out the blanket. He’s still so nervous, I can see that his eyes are unfocused like a sleepwalker’s.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.

  He nods, and I start to pull out some trail mix I have in my pack, but he catches my hands and draws me to him again. We lie down together, food forgotten, and I rest my head on his shoulder.

  He looks up at the canopy and touches my hair. I can feel him getting shy again. I feel shy. I’m never shy.

  ‘This is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me,’ I say.

  He chuckles uncertainly. ‘Strange good, or strange bad?’ he asks.

  ‘Strange perfect,’ I reply.

  He rubs a strand of my hair between his finger and thumb. ‘Yesterday, when I couldn’t see you, I kep
t telling myself there was no way you were real,’ he says. He tilts his head so he can see my face. ‘Where do you work, by the way?’

  ‘At a women’s shelter,’ I say. ‘I volunteer there.’

  ‘The one for addicts?’ Bo asks.

  ‘You know it?’

  He nods, his forehead creasing with troubled thoughts. ‘It’s one of my father’s favourite examples of the failings of Western medicine,’ he says.

  I lift my head and prop myself up on his chest. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

  ‘A lot of the women there started on pain pills. Prescription drugs lead to addiction.’

  Technically true, but an oversimplification. ‘Your dad knows they have addicts in the East too, right?’

  Bo laughs, his eyes sparkling. ‘You should tell him that.’

  We both stop laughing. ‘You want me to meet your dad?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘I want you to meet my whole family. Is that OK?’

  I nod and rest my head on his chest again. I fall asleep.

  I wake alone.

  ‘Bo?’ I say, looking around, but I already know he’s not here. I can feel that he’s gone. It’s an unnerving thing to fall asleep with someone and then wake up alone. It’s like there’s a hole in your day – a swath of time where you know something important happened, but you can’t remember what it was. I hate that feeling.

  As I start packing up my stuff, the initial surprise I felt at his absence turns to anger. Just as I’m working myself up into the thought of never seeing him again, I find a torn-out page from my notebook with blocky, masculine handwriting on it.

  I tried to wake you up, but you were sleeping too deeply. I had to go. See you tomorrow?

  Though the page he used to write on is from my journal, I know he didn’t peek at my writing while I was asleep – that’s not what worries me. Bo has too much respect for others and for himself to trespass in such an underhanded way. What worries me is that I can’t see him tomorrow. And now I’m imagining him waiting here for me and me never showing. I imagine his anticipation turning to worry turning to disappointment, and it actually hurts me to think of him being hurt. I tear out a fresh piece of paper and write,

  I can’t tomorrow. The day after?

  I leave the slip of paper under a river rock, right where I usually put my blanket. That’s when I notice that he’s left me the bow, arm-guard, and a few arrows. I smile, thinking how awesome it would be if I practised non-stop and became amazing enough to impress him.

  I put on the arm-guard and nock an arrow. I pull back in the long, drawing motion he taught me. My feet are planted. My breathing is steady. I think I’m actually better at this when he isn’t with me. I’m calmer. Everything is still. I close my eyes and just hold fast, letting the posture sink in. Letting the wilderness teach me to do something wild.

  I hear a rustling in the underbrush and turn to it. I don’t think. I don’t feel. I loose the arrow.

  Something shrieks. The ferns twist in circles as something I can’t see struggles among them.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I whisper.

  I realize I’m frozen to the spot. I drop the bow, wrench my numb feet into action, and blunder into the ferns. All I can hear is Bo’s voice that first time I met him, when he fell on me, chasing the wounded deer. He said, ‘I can’t leave her like that,’ and the words echo in me until they become all.

  Whatever it is I hit, I can’t leave it to suffer, but how am I going to kill it? I don’t have a knife.

  A rock. I’ll use a rock.

  I find a sizeable rock and clutch it tightly in one hand as I push the ferns back with other. There’s blood. A lot of blood. This isn’t a rabbit. I picture a fawn, and my stomach heaves. I try to follow the path of blood. The poor creature must have been running in circles.

  Whatever it was, it was big. It looks like there are buckets of blood smeared on leaves and ferns, enough so that it’s transferred to my clothes as I’ve been circling. And then – nothing. I double back and try to find a few drops trailing in a new direction, but I can’t see anything. I start stamping down the ferns so I can see more clearly where I’ve been. I can’t find the trail.

  I’ll do it in quadrants. I have to find this animal and put it out of its misery. I start sectioning off areas, looking for the trail leading out of the panic circles. Nothing.

  I start calling out to it. Begging it. Saying it’s going to be OK in my most soothing voice as I heft my killing rock.

  I don’t find it. I find the arrow. Must have come out in the mad whirling circles the creature made. I pick up the arrow and realize I’m covered in blood.

  I go to the river. I wash Bo’s things first. I leave the bow, arm-guard, and arrows with my note. I can’t bear to take them home with me. Then I wash my body. Blood is stained deep in my skin and clothes. I can’t tell Bo. Something in me says he’d be furious with me for doing something so thoughtless, even if it was a million-to-one shot.

  I never should have done that. Careless carnage. I thought I was through with that. Shame stains me more deeply than the blood.

  By the time I get back to my grandparents’ house, dusk is turning into dark.

  ‘I’m here!’ I call out as soon as I push in the code my grandmother had me memorize and open the front door. I slip off my sandals and take off my backpack before rushing upstairs to shuck off my bloody clothes. I toss them to the back of my closet and pull on a sundress. Then I rush to the back deck.

  ‘We started dinner without you,’ Grandpa tells me as I join them outside.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, slipping into my seat at the table, my good-girl mask in place. ‘It got dark fast.’

  My grandmother has her lips pressed together in disapproval, but she can’t get too angry. The last dregs of light don’t disappear until after I’ve served myself some salad, so I did make it back before dark. I can tell she’s anxious and feeling a bit out of control. Asking for advice always makes them both feel like they’re in charge of the situation, and luckily I do have something I could ask them.

  I don’t want to let anyone else down today.

  ‘I need a bicycle,’ I say. ‘Any tips about where to buy one?’

  ‘I’ll take you down to the Outdoor Shop tomorrow,’ Grandpa promises.

  The Outdoor Shop is an all-round outdoor equipment store in the centre of town. Taylor works there. I don’t mention that I know all about the Outdoor Shop and don’t need him to take me there to pick out a bicycle. Best to just let Grandpa feel like he’s helping.

  I also decide not to tell my grandparents that I need the bike to get to and from the shelter to help Maria with stocktaking of the inventory – at least not right away. I have to ease them into it. They’ll probably object to me being there more. As it is, my grandmother has already asked me a dozen times if three days a week isn’t too much responsibility. Morning bike rides shouldn’t be an issue, though. She’ll probably tell me that they’re calming, or something. She’s always worried about my stress level.

  The thing about having a nervous breakdown is that no one ever trusts you to keep your shit together afterwards.

  25 JULY

  My grandpa and I go to the Outdoor Shop first thing in the morning.

  Taylor is there, and he greets me like we’ve been friends for years. I can see my grandpa is torn between being happy that I have friends and feeling silly that I don’t really need his help. As Taylor leads us down the row of different types of mountain bikes, I make sure to keep asking my grandpa for his opinion so he feels useful – and so that he doesn’t feel like I was working him by asking him to come with me in the first place. Which I totally was, but it’s better for everyone if he never catches on about that.

  While we’re at the register paying with one of the credit cards my father gave me, Taylor asks how I like working at the shelter.

  ‘I like it,’ I tell him. But I have to make light of it so he doesn’t sense that what I really mean is that I love it. ‘And i
f I ever want to get a job chopping onions at a restaurant, I’ll have experience.’

  ‘Yeah, Mila mentioned they’re keeping you back in the kitchen,’ Taylor replies. His wincing smile tells me that the kitchen job is probably considered the worst one, so I roll my eyes and throw up my hands.

  ‘I’m the new girl. They’re supposed to haze me,’ I say breezily.

  ‘Yeah, but you gotta get out front to get to know the right girls,’ he says, like I know what he’s talking about. I have no clue what girls are the right ones, and the confused look I give Taylor makes him switch gears.

  ‘Do you want me to help you hitch that bike up to your car?’ Taylor asks a little too brightly.

  I look at my grandfather. ‘I think I’m going to take her out on her maiden voyage,’ I tell him.

  ‘All right then,’ Grandpa says. ‘See you at lunch.’

  ‘I got to get back on the floor,’ Taylor tells me.

  ‘See ya,’ I say half-heartedly. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in him. I never pegged Taylor as someone who classified people as right or wrong. But who am I to judge him? The majority of my life has been about classifying people.

  Taylor gives me an awkward one-armed hug then goes to accost some tourists who don’t need a tent but will probably buy one from him anyway because he’s such a charming bastard. My grandpa heads home.

  It’s still early, so I head back into town to check out the public library. I realize I’m pulling the ‘girl in a dress on a bike riding through town fetchingly’ routine, but I don’t care. All I can think about is that I’m going to see Bo tomorrow, and I want to make sure I have something to talk about with him. I’m no longer allowed to use the Internet without adult supervision, and I’m OK with that. My phone is locked, and here at the edge of utter wilderness, Internet access is spotty at best. It’s a relief in many ways. I know I can’t ruin any more lives with a few keystrokes and a click. But it does impede my access to information. So if I want to keep the existence of my ‘druggie’ boyfriend hidden from my grandparents, I’m going to have to look things up the old-fashioned way.