Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  “The garbage,” I say. “Have you seen it?”

  There’s something wrong. I wasn’t this tired until right this second. I shouldn’t be so tired. I should find Polly. Polly will know how tired I am supposed to be.

  “It’s this way,” he says. He leads me away from the dining hall, where I know the garbage isn’t. For some reason, I can’t tell him that he’s going the wrong way.

  There’s a moment when I know that I should scream. But screaming would be hard. And blackness would be easy.

  Black picks me.

  PART 2

  Why, this would make a man of salt to use his eyes for garden waterpots. Ay, and laying autumn’s dust.

  CHAPTER 7

  I’VE NEVER SEEN POLLY’S FACE so white. I’ve never felt this rough waking up, either. I can’t remember what we did, why she’s so worried, but it must be awful. I hope we don’t get expelled. Also, I am going to vomit.

  The nurse is there as soon as I heave and has me sitting up and puking into a small tin pan almost before I realize what I’m doing. I’m vaguely impressed with my accuracy, to be honest. It’s not a big pan. Maybe the nurse is just really good at this. I don’t remember why I’m sick. I don’t even feel that sick. I just feel . . . completely wrong.

  “Oh God, Hermione!” Polly breathes. She hasn’t let go of my hand, even though vomit is the one thing in this world she can’t stand the sight of. Whatever this is, it must be bad.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Polly and the nurse exchange a glance, and the nurse shakes her head. I realize that I am very naked under the blanket and hospital gown, and that I seem to have pulled a muscle in my thigh. Or maybe my abdomen. It’s not something I’ve ever pulled before, and I’ve strained almost every muscle I have at one point or another in my cheerleading career.

  “You remember nothing?” the nurse says. She is being so careful. I wonder if this is what it’s like to feel fragile. I have never in my life been fragile. She passes me a drink of water, and I take a mouthful before she lets me back onto the pillow. Everything is heavy and the light hurts my eyes.

  “We were at the dance,” I say. “I was with Polly.” There’s something missing. Something important. “No,” I say. “I wasn’t with Polly. I had an empty cup, and I was looking for the garbage and then . . .”

  It’s blank. It’s blank for about ten seconds, and then it stops being blank very quickly.

  Polly grabs my other hand and the heart monitor they’ve got me hooked up to beeps at a frantic pace. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I left the dance with a boy I didn’t know and I can’t breathe.

  “Honey, honey,” the nurse says. “He’s not here. You breathe with Polly, okay? You breathe with Polly and no talking. When you think you can handle some questions, there’s an officer—a female officer—and your coach ready to talk to you.”

  “Her parents are in Europe. Vacation,” Polly says. “I can’t remember if we told you that.”

  “Your coach is taking care of it,” the nurse says, and I will never forget the look she gives Polly before she says, “You just hold her hands.”

  “Polly,” I say. And then I can’t stop saying it. “Polly Polly PollyPollyPolly.” I’m near hysteria, I can feel it. I’m going to scream and scream and scream, to make up for the screaming I didn’t do last night. I am going to pull my skin off and grind it into the floor and then I’m going to cry until I’ve got nothing left.

  I don’t do any of those things, though, because Polly climbs right into bed with me. She can move so fast. The nurse doesn’t even have time to protest. She’s on top of the blanket, and her legs are on top of mine, but her arms are around me, keeping me from flying apart, and suddenly I want to die slightly less than I did the moment before.

  “Breathe,” she orders, and we do.

  We breathe for a whole minute. And then two. And then three. After five, Polly sits up a bit. I make an absolutely broken sound, and she kisses me on the forehead.

  “I am getting up now,” she says. “And I am getting Caledon and the officer. And you are going to breathe and talk. And then we’re going to eat Jell-O. And then you can cry some more, okay?”

  I nod.

  “Say it,” she says.

  “I am going to breathe and talk, and then we’re going to eat Jell-O, and then I can cry,” I parrot obediently. I think I mean it.

  “Well done,” the nurse whispers as Polly takes her seat. “Officer? She’s ready.”

  I can tell that Caledon wants to rush in, pick me up, and make sure I’m okay. She stays outside of my personal space, though, and I’m so grateful for the breathing room that I want to vomit again, except I’ve got nothing left.

  The officer is in plainclothes. There probably aren’t a lot of female officers in the Ontario Provincial Police north of Barrie. I wonder how far she’s come from. She’s taller than I am, which is not hard, and shorter than Caledon. She’s also much stockier. She looks like you’d need a bulldozer to knock her over. She’s not young, particularly, but there’s a sense of newness to her that makes me wonder how long she has been a police officer.

  “Hello, Hermione,” she says.

  I wonder if she’s a Harry Potter fan, like my dad, or a Greek myth groupie, like my mother. Or if she just got lucky reading my name off the report, and pronouncing it correctly was a fluke. I shake my head and force myself to pay attention.

  “My name is Officer Plummer,” she says. “You can call me Caroline if you like.”

  Maybe I am supposed to say something? All I can think is how I can’t quite figure out how she might fit into a routine. Maybe she’s a base? I don’t know what to say, which is awful, because I always know what to say. I am not fragile and I know what to say.

  She pushes on. “If you need to stop for any reason, you just tell me, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, and then because I can’t stop myself I add, “Polly promised me I can cry later if I talk now.”

  “That’s a good plan.” Officer Plummer must be a real pro because I sound like a moron and she isn’t even cracking a smile. “Can you tell me what you had for dinner on Friday?”

  “Pizza,” I say without hesitating. “We went in seventh, so all that was left was vegetarian and Hawaiian, and it was cold.”

  “Good,” says Officer Plummer when Polly nods. “Then what did you do?”

  “Amy and I had volunteered to shower last,” I tell her. “The others thought we were doing them a favour, but really we just wanted warm water. We took our showers, and then Amy did my hair.”

  I remember my hair. It had been beautiful and intricate. I touch my head, and then I wish I hadn’t.

  “I’ll comb it out later,” Polly quickly promises.

  “Did you go to the dance with Amy?” Officer Plummer asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “And Mallory—another girl from Palermo. Everyone else had gone ahead by then.”

  “What happened when you arrived?”

  This part is harder, blurrier. I try to make the memories sharpen into focus.

  “Polly was already there,” I say. “She pulled me into the middle of the dance floor. We’re very good dancers. Even in a room full of people who dance competitively. It was fun.” The lack of clarity in my memory shows in my voice. It’s quiet and static, a far cry from my usual range. I can only think enough for short sentences.

  “Do you remember who was with you?” Officer Plummer isn’t taking notes, I notice, but then I see the recorder in her pocket.

  “No. It was crowded and hot, like a mosh pit or something.” I have no idea what a mosh pit is like, but it seemed as good a comparison as any.

  “What happened next?”

  “Someone gave me a drink and I drank it,” I say. “And then I went to find the recycling, but I was tired.”

  Polly winces.

&nb
sp; “I can’t breathe,” I say. “I mean, I can’t remember. And I can’t find the garbage or Polly. But I do find a guy.”

  “What does he look like?” Officer Plummer sounds hopeful. I suppose I’ve been doing well up to this point.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her after a moment. I am good at col-ours, but faces always stream together. I remember Polly’s face, and Amy’s, and my own team, but the others—I didn’t even try. It is my last camp. No, was. I was thinking about other things. “I can get that far, but it was dark, and I don’t know. I know what must have happened next, but I don’t remember getting there.”

  “That’s a side effect of the drug you were given,” the nurse says. She seems caught between wanting to step towards me, to take care of me, and staying as close to the door as she can, and still do her job. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Will her memories come back?” Polly asks.

  “I’m not really an expert at this,” Officer Plummer admits. “I’m mostly here because . . .”

  She stops talking, but we all know how the sentence ends. We’re in the middle of nowhere, far away from the officers who have been trained for this, and she was probably the only female on duty when the call came in.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “You’re okay.”

  “You call me,” she says, passing over her card. “You call me if you remember anything, or if you need to talk, okay?”

  Polly puts the card on the table next to the Jell-O, and the officer leaves. Caledon and the nurse exchange a look, and then Caledon steps a bit closer. “Do you want all the details, Hermione?” she asks. I’ve never heard her sound so scared and unsure.

  “Can I have them from Polly?” I whisper. I’m so pathetic, but if I hear it from grown-ups it will be worse.

  “Of course,” she says. “But there’s one more thing.” She hesitates for a long moment, and then takes a deep breath. “They couldn’t do a full ess ay ee kay for you,” she says, and it takes me a moment to process that she’s saying some sort of acronym. “Polly can explain the details, if you like, but the evidence left on you was contaminated. The tech was concerned that with the water, the DNA profile won’t be complete.”

  I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that something is always left behind. I scratched him or he licked me or something. But if Caledon says it, it must be the truth.

  “Oh,” I say. I’m not sure what else I can say. Polly will be better at the details. She always is.

  Caledon picks up a small plastic cup from the tray. It was on the other side of the Jell-O, so I hadn’t seen it until now.

  “This is an emergency contraceptive,” she says. The pills rattle against the plastic. Her hands are shaking.

  “Polly, help me sit up,” I say. “Will they make me sick?”

  “A bit,” the nurse says, “but you’ll be here the whole time.”

  Polly pours more water and passes me the cups. I down the pills quickly, and then lie back down.

  “I’ll be just outside,” Caledon says.

  “Where’s Florry?” I ask. “And the team?”

  “I’ve sent them home,” Caledon says. “They’re okay. You just shout if you need me.”

  “Here’s the call bell,” the nurse says, indicating where it’s been clipped to my bed. “Press the red button, and I’ll be along.”

  And then we’re alone, Polly and me. I realize that I’m not even sure where we are, though I assume it’s the hospital in Parry Sound. Polly hands me my Jell-O and I eat it mechanically. When I’ve finished, she climbs back into bed with me, and I curl on my side so that we’re face-to-face like we used to do when we had sleepovers as children and had to whisper because we were supposed to be sleeping and the adults were only a wall away.

  “I need you to say it, Polly,” I whisper. It will be real as soon as she does, but there’s no one better at pulling off Band-Aids than Polly Olivier.

  “They found you in the lake,” she says, her shining eyes inches from mine. “Amy did, I mean, when you weren’t at the cabin when she got back. She was frantic. You were still in your dress, but your underwear was gone, and you were up to your waist in water, lying on the rocks.”

  “Stop stalling, Polly.” I’m not even sure who is talking anymore. SAEK. Sexual Assault something something. Our hands find each other’s, and I know now I won’t fly apart.

  She closes her eyes for a second, and the shining leaks out as tears. Then she forces them open again. “Someone spiked your drink at the dance. And then he got you alone and took you down by the water. And you couldn’t stop him, because the bastard drugged you. And then he raped you.”

  She never hesitates, my Polly. She just rips it right off. She never cries, either. Not usually. But this time we lie together in the hospital bed and I can’t tell whose tears are whose.

  CHAPTER 8

  I DREAM ABOUT CLARA ABBEY, which I haven’t done in years. She’s still eleven in my dream, swinging by her ankles from the monkey bars at recess. It’s not graceful, not the way she does it. She loves to be up high, but she’s grown faster than the rest of us have. She’s tall and not sure where the ends of her arms and legs are. I can twist myself around the bars, flipping and contorting like a trapeze artist, but Clara can only hang. She never learns how to deal with her height. She’ll be hanging there forever.

  “So will you,” she tells me. Her voice is strained and her face is red from being upside down. “They’ll talk about both of us forever, now. It won’t matter what else you do.”

  “No,” I tell her. “I won’t let it. I won’t let them.”

  “You can’t control it,” she says. “You can’t control the other cars. You just have to keep driving and hope for the best.”

  “Who are we talking about?” I ask. “You or me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “We’re the same now. Two more numbers on the scorecard.”

  I flip over the bar next to her, and for a moment we hang beside each other. The bell rings, and the playground starts to empty. The real Clara would have pushed herself off the bars and landed heavily on the ground as soon as the bell sounded. This one doesn’t move. She’s stuck on the monkey bars because some moron drove drunk on Christmas Day. I start to push off, heading for the ground, but I get stuck halfway around.

  “No!” I shout at the empty yard. The door shuts. Everyone has moved on and left us behind. “NO!”

  And then Polly is shaking me, and I am awake.

  “Nightmare?” She hands me the water and I take a sip.

  “Kind of,” I say. “More disturbing than scary.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I say. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly eleven o’clock,” she says, glancing at her watch. “And it’s Sunday, if you were curious.”

  “I had figured that out myself, actually.” I’m not trying to be funny, but I’m in serious laugh-or-cry mode right now. “On account of the sunlight streaming through the windows.”

  Polly shrugs, but does me the courtesy of smiling a little bit. Yesterday evening passed in a blur of painful cramping from the emergency contraceptives, and I cried so much that I had a headache. They didn’t sedate me, for which I’m glad, so I hadn’t expected to sleep that long.

  My parents aren’t getting in until Monday evening, so Caledon put most of our equipment on the bus and is going to drive Polly and me back to Palermo in the van herself. My parents must be absolutely miserable. Being on a plane is bad enough.

  There’s a knock on the door, and Polly looks to me for a moment to make sure I’m ready for people. I nod.

  “Come in,” she says.

  It’s Officer Plummer again. This time she’s in uniform, her hair all secured under her hat. She does not look like someone I would want to mess with. When she comes through the door, she takes her hat off and tu
cks it under her arm. I wonder if there are rules for that, or if she’s just hot.

  “Sorry to disturb you again,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I say. It isn’t, but it’s not like I can get very much more disturbed.

  Officer Plummer swallows. I know instantly that she’s been practicing all day the speech she’s about to give me. Probably in the car. Probably in the elevator. Probably in her head right now. And it never gets any better. I do my best not to panic, which is harder than it used to be.

  “Miss Winters,” she says, apparently deciding that formality will make whatever this is easier, hopefully for both of us. “As you know, the physical evidence on you was compromised by your time in the lake.”

  She makes it sound like I went swimming. I wonder what the criminal charge for “dropping an unconscious person in the lake” is.

  “Therefore, it was decided that no samples were to be collected from the male campers and staff at Camp Manitouwabing.” I know that already, but it still feels hopeless. Part of me is glad: No samples means no charges, no trial, no thinking about this once I go home. Part of me, the part that sounds like Polly, is fighting mad.

  “However,” she continues. “Should the results of your pregnancy test be positive, and should you wish to share that with the Ontario Provincial Police, we will have reason to take those samples, and run the tests when the pregnancy has . . .” Her professionalism fails her and she deflates. “I’m really sorry, Miss Winters,” she says, shoulders rounding forward. “You deserve much better than this.”

  “Honestly, the fact that this isn’t old hat to you makes me feel like there’s some hope left,” I tell her. It’s a slight exaggeration, but it costs me nothing. I like to know that I can still give. “We don’t have that result yet.”

  “Do you still have my card?” Plummer asks.

  “Maybe,” I say. “Though it might have gotten a bit crumpled yesterday.” I’d lost track of holding it after everyone left and Polly got back into bed with me. I think at one point, one of us might have tried to use it for Kleenex.