The Woods Are Always Watching

by Stephanie Perkins

  “What?” Josie called out.

  “When you’re done, I need the toilet paper.”

  “Oh, you have to shit. I thought you saw something.”

  “No,” Neena said. “I’m spotting.”

  “Oh! Shit.”

  Neena’s period wasn’t supposed to start for another week. Hopefully, this was as heavy as her flow would get. Foliage rustled, footsteps scuffled, and a pack unzipped. Josie hustled up the bank. “I have something better,” she said. An arm materialized around the boulder holding out a puffy object in a rosy pink wrapper.

  The sight instantly soothed Neena. “You’re a gem.”

  “Be prepared,” Josie said. “The Boy Scouts were talking about menstruation, right? I’m not looking,” she added, shuffling backward until Neena could grab it.

  Neena was grateful they subscribed to the same philosophy regarding privacy. While they didn’t mind peeing beside each other in public stalls, neither wanted to be seen with her pants down. Their philosophies split, however, when it came to products. Though a real pad was far superior to folded toilet paper, Neena still felt as if she were wearing an adult diaper. But Josie’s periods were lighter, and Neena knew tampons were uncomfortable for her—Josie said it was like hard-packing her vagina with dry cotton balls.

  It was a lot to know about another girl, but Neena Chandrasekhar and Josie Gordon were as familiar with each other’s cycles as they were with their own, having been best friends since freshman year.

  They’d attended the same middle school but had only known each other by name. That changed one day when their Honors Biology teacher had removed his scuffed dress shoes to display an eleventh toe. While the other students scrambled from their lab chairs in a mad rush to gawk, Neena and Josie’s disbelieving eyes had met across the room as if to say, What does this have to do with dissecting fetal pigs?

  The funny and bizarre often kick-started great friendships.

  Before they found each other, they’d had different best friends, but those attachments had fallen apart around the same time. As their exes rose into bigger crowds—Neena’s to the cross-county team, Josie’s to a group of girls who didn’t do anything, but who were moderately more attractive—Neena and Josie became a new twosome. To this day, they still talked about Grace and Sarah the way others might pore over a painful romantic breakup. Because that’s what it had felt like to lose the person who had once been each girl’s most important person. The losses were devastating.

  Though their bond had strengthened over being dumped, it was solidified by a shared sense of humor and passion for the same TV shows. Josie was the first classmate Neena had met who not only watched all the best current sitcoms, but all the old ones, too. They were willing to try anything from any country or decade. They loved good comedy with the fervor of televangelists. Josie didn’t even mind whenever Neena insisted on listening to the commentary features, and it was within these tracks that Neena had begun to realize people were making these shows—writers, not just the actors and comedians in front of the camera. Neena wanted to be one of those people.

  Her plan was to major in economics at USC, but to study film and television production on the side. Maybe, eventually, she could even convince her parents to let her double major. Because what she wanted more than anything was to be a showrunner someday—to write and sell a pilot and have her hand in every aspect of its production. And she was willing to work twice as hard as the other students, pursuing two careers at once, if it kept her parents happy.

  They didn’t hide that they would have rather she attend MIT, like her brother, Darshan, or at least—at least—one of the Ivy Leagues. It embarrassed Neena that her parents fell into this cliché. Briefly, she had even considered disguising her intentions, but she wasn’t the type of teenager who lied to her parents. And, perhaps because of this honesty, they had reluctantly given their support.

  Her father had instilled a love of comedy in Neena, but this time it was her mother who had argued on Neena’s behalf. What did you expect, filling her head with Mindy Kaling and that Fleabag woman, day after day? Ma had said to him, her stacked bangles jangling with each emotional finger jab. And Neena had been granted permission to study film production as long as it didn’t interfere with her economics classes.

  Despite this, she was afraid. Soon she would be dropped off in America’s second-most-populous city, and she would be alone. No Ma and Baba. No Josie. She was scared to move somewhere so unfamiliar, and she was scared of not being able to make any new friends. People in LA were undeniably more sophisticated and worldly, and she worried that she would appear plain and backwoods by comparison. That the other students would all have better clothes than her, better skin, better hair.

  But, most of all, Neena was afraid of failure. Of not being good enough and getting stuck in the economics department forever. Or maybe being just good enough to find employment someday as a writer’s assistant, but never good enough to climb any higher.

  She also feared that if she admitted any of this to her parents, they would change their minds about letting her go. And whenever she broached the topic with Josie, Josie quickly shut it down with tight-lipped petulance. Because even though everything felt scary, she knew it was also exciting. One day, it would even feel normal.

  Meanwhile, Josie would still be living in this version of normal. The depressed mother, the filthy house. It was why Neena kept trying—to buoy Josie’s mood, to keep her active and doing. Not only had this trip been Neena’s idea, but she’d also had to reach for her pack first. Step onto the trail first. Hell, she’d even had to announce her intention to pee first.

  As Neena zipped up her pants, Josie’s gaze remained tactfully averted. They trudged back down the bank, and then Neena tucked the empty pink wrapper into her top pouch. All trash had to be carried out of the forest.

  Neither girl wanted to struggle into her pack again.

  “Do we really need food? Or water? Or shelter?” Neena asked.

  Josie squinched her nose in concentration. “There’s a correct way to do this. I know it. We just have to remember.”

  Neena stood aside, idle and useless, while Josie grunted through several flawed attempts. But then, miraculously, she hoisted her pack onto a knee, turned her upper body sideways, slipped the pack onto one shoulder and then efficiently onto the other.

  “How’d you do that?” Neena asked, despite witnessing the marvel.

  Josie beamed. The thirty-something pounds of discomfort only mildly tarnished her smile. “Told you it had something to do with the knees.”

  She guided Neena into the lavender pack, and they basked in newfound confidence. Their endorphins were finally kicking in. The righteous pleasure of their hard work was certain to propel them up the rest of the mountainside.

  * * *

  • • •

  It wasn’t to be. Once again, the trail was instantly grueling. Nonstop switchbacks kept the incline constant and demanding. Twenty feet up from their resting place, Neena gasped—bug-eyed and wretchedly out of shape. Her clothes, muddied from earlier in the parking lot, were drenched with sweat. No doubt this trip would be a disaster, but, even so, Neena was still hoping for a lighthearted disaster. At the very least, this would make a funny story she could tell at parties. Assuming she ever started going to parties. Her borrowed boots slipped on a tottering rock. Her heart catapulted in panic.

  “Are you okay?” Josie asked behind her.

  Neena steadied herself and held up a hand that meant, Yes, too breathless to speak.

  As her best friend literally walked her first mile in somebody else’s shoes, Josie tromped forward in her own. Her sturdy hiking shoes, more like sneakers than boots, had only been worn twice, including today. They had been preserved in closet dust ever since her mother, in one of her sporadic attempts to be a mother, decided they needed to get out of the house. She had surprised Jo
sie with a name-brand pair, purchased off the clearance rack at DSW. They had driven out of the city to hike, but, after only a few steps toward Looking Glass Rock, her mother had crumpled into the dirt. Inconsolable. Win had to pick them up because Josie was afraid to drive. Later, she learned the trail had been one of her father’s regular haunts. Now these mountains felt haunted in a different way.

  The untested shoes pinched her toes and rubbed her heels. Josie comforted herself by remembering the Band-Aids. If necessary, they could be slapped over any blisters later tonight. She had packed more than enough for three days.

  The girls were returning home on Wednesday because Thursday was Josie’s freshman orientation. Unlike Neena, Josie had no idea what she wanted to study. She wasn’t excited about college. It felt like being sentenced to four more years of high school. Though her situation wasn’t uncommon—most teenagers didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives—it was impossible not to compare herself to her best friend, and it was inevitable that she had interpreted this uncertainty as a personal shortcoming.

  But, secretly, Josie wondered if this trip was about to change everything. This wasn’t as outlandish as it sounded. It wasn’t unreasonable to hope that her passion might turn out to be the same one as the rest of her family. Surely the outdoors coursed through her blood, too; she’d only been denied the opportunity to discover it. Josie imagined these mountains becoming her sanctuary. Envisioned herself as such a natural that she would be mystically compelled to through-hike the Appalachian Trail, like in A Walk in the Woods, or the Pacific Crest Trail, like in Wild. Would this trip be the turning point when she stopped envying everyone else’s adventures and started having her own?

  The trail dipped unexpectedly. Josie fell.

  Neena spun around at the sharp cry. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  The pack was so huge that the spill didn’t hurt. Josie landed on padding. But the drop had startled her, and unwanted tears sprung to her eyes. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” She laughed to disguise her embarrassment. Of course I’m the one who can’t catch herself, she thought, conveniently forgetting Neena’s incident in the parking lot. Her mind was skilled at self-sabotage. “Uh, remind me again why we’re here?”

  “Because we’re becoming one with nature. We’re soaking in Gaia’s bounty! And tonight, we’ll sleep beneath the stars like . . . sumptuous pagan goddesses.”

  “This backpack,” Josie said as Neena helped her stand, “does make me feel mega Zen.”

  Neena burst into laughter. Her outrageous cackle had been the soundtrack to their entire friendship. Normally, it was Josie’s favorite music. But in her humiliation, it grated.

  The path worn into the mountain was only one person wide, and, as always, Josie fell in line behind Neena. An ancient oak surveilled them from the woodsy depths. The unusual tree was stripped bare—struck by lightning or disease, Josie couldn’t tell. A single arthritic branch remained, pointing like a crooked arm and knobby forefinger back the way they came. A strange revulsion drifted over her.

  “Maybe it’s just because hiking is terrible,” she said, “but doesn’t it look like that tree is telling us to go back?”

  “That tree is an asshole,” Neena said.

  The forest returned to tranquility. Strenuous, laborious tranquility. Panting and puffing and chattering like wheezy songbirds, the girls crossed through a velveteen outcrop of mossy green boulders. Ferns carpeted the shady groves. Tumbling cascades of a nearby stream, present but unseen, were amplified throughout the canopy.

  The combination of sublime beauty and severe exhaustion began to soften Josie’s fatalism. A tenuous but arresting sense of empowerment manifested in its place, and, although she didn’t realize it, the same sensation was happening inside Neena. It was their first taste of adulthood. A preview of what was to be forever. They were here without parents, teachers, or supervisors. They were going to feed themselves and build their own shelter, and no one could tell them where to go or what to do.

  Gnawing disquiet gradually slowed Josie’s pace. Her instincts perceived the subtle shifts in the trees before her ears understood: shuffling leaves and crunching dead wood.

  She stopped. Stiffened.

  The faint noises grew more distinct. Neena halted. She glanced back at Josie, and the girls exchanged mirrored expressions of wide-eyed alarm.

  Josie’s nerves pulsated. Bear.

  A man’s timbre rumbled down the mountainside. But as Josie slackened with relief, Neena compressed with fear. The voice was heading toward them, broadening and becoming cavernous. The southern half of the trail was often used for day hikes because it was easily accessible from the parkway, but the northern half, their half, was less traveled. More isolated. It wasn’t that Neena hadn’t expected to run into anybody out here, but the sudden approach of an unknown man cowed her. She felt disarmed in the most literal sense—like his presence stripped away any weapons she thought she’d had.

  The voice grew louder.

  Neena couldn’t pick out any of his words, only his tone. The boom was commanding and confident. Almost sardonic. It reduced her back into a child.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Josie said, although doubt had already crept in. “He’s probably someone like Win.”

  Immobilized by dread, Neena didn’t respond. Humans were far more dangerous than bears. She knew plenty of stories about hikers who had disappeared, plucked off the earth by their own careless mishaps . . . or by other hikers.

  “I used to think that if I said hello to somebody,” the voice said, “and they didn’t respond . . .”

  Josie gestured toward the trees. Neena nodded but then shook her head. It’s what they should have done—hidden—but the voice was too close now. They were out of time. Neena strained to listen for the sounds of a woman, hoping he wasn’t talking to another man. Or worse, himself. But was that worse? Would she rather run into two men or one possibly deranged man?

  “. . . it meant I was a ghost,” the voice finished.

  He emerged into view. Neena shuddered from the release of tension. His companion was a girl, and he wasn’t even a man. They were teenagers, maybe twenty at the oldest. The atmosphere brightened. The trees shook out their nervous leaves.

  “I’d love to see a ghost,” the girl said.

  “But that’s the problem,” the boy said. “Nobody could see me.”

  The two jumped as they rounded the switchback, startled to discover Neena and Josie on the other side. “Oh! We didn’t see you,” the girl said, which made her laugh. An accidental callback. They both looked at ease, the type of people who hiked difficult trails and made their own gorp. Neither wore a backpacking pack, but the boy had an enviably small daypack. He was white, and the girl’s features were East Asian. Her hair was pinned up in a thick crown braid. A Heidi milkmaid braid.

  “I like your hair,” Josie said. Her own strawberry blonde locks were in two long plaits—a much more simple style. Josie usually wore her hair loose or in a ponytail, and Neena suspected she’d done the braids to look outdoorsy. It was cute, though. Sweet. Neena’s black hair was snipped into a blunt bob, too short to do anything but hang.

  Heidi’s smile grew. “Thanks.”

  Normally, this was when the two parties would nod and move along, but a conversation had already been started. It seemed polite to talk a little bit longer.

  “Are you headed to the summit?” the boy asked. He was tall and strapping, and his irises sparkled in a warm chestnut brown. The whole package reminded Neena of Win. A long time ago, she’d had a crush on Win. If she was being honest, she still did, though not in any serious way. Just in the way that when he was around, he was pleasing to look at. Perhaps for this reason, Neena felt tongue-tied.

  “No,” Josie said. “We’re doing the Wade Harte.”

  Neena was glad when Josie didn’t clarify they were only doing part of the Wade Hart
e, and equally glad that the couple didn’t comment about how defeated they already looked. These two must have arrived at the crack of dawn to have already summited and be on their way back down. Neena felt envious that their torture was almost over.

  Concern flickered across the boy’s face. “You aren’t staying in Deep Fork tonight, are you?”

  “Yeah.” Josie frowned. “Why?”

  “Oh man. You haven’t heard?” When the girls gave him a puzzled look, he glanced at Heidi. Her eyes flashed a warning at him.

  “Heard what?” Josie asked.

  “No, nothing. It’s fine. It’s just . . .” The boy appeared torn between regret at bringing it up and a pressing need to continue. Unconsciously, Neena leaned in. “Weird stuff happens there,” he finished. “Be careful, is all I’m saying.”

  “What kind of weird stuff?” she asked. Voice rediscovered.

  “Unexplained noises in the night. Items stolen from tents.”

  Neena’s pulse thumped.

  “A buddy of mine once swore that someone took a picture of him while he was sleeping.” As the boy gripped the straps of his backpack, his eyes darted into the woods behind them. “He’d been out here hiking solo, and he didn’t find it on his phone until he got home. I would have thought he was messing with me, except his hands were shaking when he showed me the picture. He looked dead asleep in it . . . I don’t know.” His cadence was changing, dropping into a redneck lilt. “Some folks say when the mist creeps in after midnight, there’s a man who likes to play tricks on campers—”

  Heidi thwacked him across the chest. “He’s joking,” she said as he collapsed into laughter. “I’m sorry. My boyfriend has a horrible sense of humor.” And then to him, “God, you almost had me, too. You’re such a dick.” But she grinned as she scolded him.

  “Sorry,” he said to Neena. “I couldn’t resist.”

  The hot shame of gullibility flared inside her. But then she was laughing, too. She admired his boldness and showmanship. Josie glanced at her, less amused, as their bodies all shifted and resumed walking—interaction complete.