After the Woods

by Kim Savage

  Wind stirs the few stubborn beech leaves clinging to branches.

  “Part of it, I think, is that they’re afraid I’m going to spill lurid details of what happened to me. When mostly, I just ran and hid and ran,” I say.

  Paula eases backward to sit on the entrance step, resting her forearm on one folded leg, the other extended luxuriously. Like me, she takes up a lot of space. “You must get angry,” she says.

  “Technically, I no longer have an object to be mad at. Donald Jessup is dead. His mother is an old hoarder who lives in a house with petrified dog poop covering the front lawn. I can’t exactly take out my anger on her, even if she did spawn Satan. There’s really no one else.”

  “No?”

  I work my mouth into a corkscrew.

  “Sit,” she says as she pats the stone stair next to her. “You were saying?”

  I sit. “The only other person is Liv. And I can’t blame her. She’s the other girl who was with me, in the woods,” I tell her.

  Paula smiles. “I know who Liv is.”

  I laugh a little. “Yeah, you do. You probably know more about her than I do.”

  “The girl who got away,” she says slowly, resonant.

  “She ran away. Anyone would have.”

  “And you’re the girl who got caught.”

  I smile ruefully. “For a while.”

  We stay this way for seconds, then minutes. The distant roar of Route 93 is cotton to my nerves. Paula smells like vanilla and lemon. It doesn’t feel like I’m sitting next to someone you can see on TV any given night. It feels like I’m sitting next to an aunt, if I had one. Or a girlfriend of my mother’s, if she had one.

  “Can I be honest?” she finally says.

  My heart trips a little.

  “If I were Liv, I would have run too. I could never do what you did.”

  “But you get why I did it?” I ask.

  “I totally get it. I might seem old to you, but I remember what it was like, being young and having a best friend.” She moves a bit of hair behind my ear. It’s a little weird, and a lot like what Kellan did last night. Again, I don’t dislike it. “You’re probably closer than sisters. I imagine an experience like this, horrific as it was, bonds you for life.”

  I stand and throw my pack over my shoulder. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I really need to get going.”

  “I’ll walk with you. You shouldn’t be alone anyway.” Paula scrambles up, limber and quick. “Do you mind if I walk with you?” she asks.

  “Guess not,” I mumble. We ignore the caution tape and take the trail fast, walking wide over roots and loose rock. This section of the Fells is intentionally less groomed than the main loop, to keep partiers away from the watchtower, and is illegal to enter after four p.m. for the same reason. Glass bottles and cans litter the brush, along with plastic dog-waste bags and cigarette butts. It’s the way I came out on my stretcher, holding the hand of the biker who rescued me after I almost killed him when my screams made him crash. He had the gaunt cheeks and prominent eyes of an adrenaline junkie; he was, I believe, more frightened than I was. We must have talked, or we didn’t. He stayed with me until the paramedics and the police came, and they say I wouldn’t release his hand, even in the ambulance, but I don’t remember that. I do remember being flat on my stretcher, the sun glittering painfully through the lacy treetops, hurting my eyes, but I kept them open. I would keep my eyes open when they set my ankle. I would keep my eyes open when the sad-mouthed nurse swabbed me for evidence of Donald Jessup.

  “I understand why you want to come out here,” Paula says suddenly.

  “You do?”

  “You believe your cases are linked. You need to see what happened to Ana Alvarez to understand the fate you escaped.”

  “Some people call that macabre.”

  “I call it necessary. Otherwise the entire episode has a randomness that doesn’t sit with you. If Ana Alvarez was your corollary, Donald Jessup had a plan. And if Ana Alvarez was his trial run, at least knowing that would put order to chaos.”

  I scowl at the ground, my quads itching to run.

  “You think if you go to the spot where they found her, you’ll know. You’ll know if he did it, because you’ll know what his plan was.”

  I pump my arms hard. I can’t decide if I’m mad that Paula’s making me sound like an awful person, or that she’s cutting too close to the truth. Either way, the black in my belly is on high alert. “You think I want Ana Alvarez dead?” I ask. “You think her murder is useful to my recovery? What kind of a person do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re the kind of person who’s never content with what they’re told,” she says.

  “Who checks out their own mother. That’s pretty sad.”

  “If it makes you feel better, it’s not sad.”

  “You know what would make me feel better?” I huff. “If reporters didn’t pop out of the bushes or the trailhead or vans at Shiverton High School, and I could get on with my life.” I pick up my pace to a jog.

  “There’s a place to put your anger, you know,” Paula says, struggling for breath.

  “Besides on you and your compadres? Because that feels right, right about now.”

  “When the police caught Donald Jessup he was wearing an ankle monitor.” She pants mightily. “Do you know what that is? It’s an electronic device that recorded his location. Donald Jessup was required to wear it—it looks like a thick, black, rubber bracelet around his ankle—as a condition of his parole. The monitor sends a radio frequency signal, a ping containing the offender’s location to a receiver. If the offender moves outside of the allowed range, the police are notified. The allowed range did not include any area within twenty feet of a place that children congregate.”

  I start to sprint, calling back, “Like a playground?”

  “Like a high school!” She stops and plants her hands on her thighs, leaning over. “Donald Jessup violated his parole by parking at Shiverton High School more than ten times during October and November of last year!” she calls, straining.

  I know she’s making a point, but my thoughts migrate as I gain speed. What kind of car did Donald Jessup drive? A beat-up truck? A geriatric Cadillac with handicapped plates? His mother’s? A Lester-the-Molester white van with tinted windows? Did he park in the student parking lot? Why did no one notice?

  I trip over a root and sprawl on my hands and knees. Paula catches up and grabs my elbow to lift me. I pull away, swiping at a tear, embarrassed. “How is the tracking even accurate?” I ask. “Couldn’t Jessup just take off the bracelet if he wanted to go somewhere he wasn’t allowed?”

  “Ankle monitors are tamper-resistant. It alerts the police if the wearer tries to remove it,” she explains.

  “So Donald Jessup was stalking us. What does that prove? We already know he was a pervert.”

  “It proves the police failed you. You didn’t know Donald Jessup was wearing an ankle monitor because the police hid it from you, your mother, and the media.”

  “Why would they do that?” I ask.

  “Julia,” Paula says, trying to touch my arm. I dodge her grasp. “When the offender moves outside of the allowed range, the police are notified. What’s more, Jessup’s parole officer was required to check in with the police weekly to make sure that he wasn’t violating his parole. It was a double oversight.”

  “So they were lazy.”

  “That’s not all. The pings indicated Donald Jessup was walking here, in the Middlesex Fells Reservation, nearly weekly from September to November. At minimum, that kind of suspicious behavior warranted checking up on him, seeing as his prior took place where women jogged or walked.”

  The sun goes behind a cloud, or the tree canopy grows thick. Either way, I don’t like it. “Where did he walk?”

  “Between the Sheepfold and the fire watchtower. Where we’re headed at this exact moment,” Paula tells me.

  “Right,” I whisper, unsure if I said it to her or to myself.
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  “There’s more if you want it.”

  I stare out in the direction of the tower.

  “He drove down Wildwood Road, parking for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, multiple times.”

  “Liv’s house.” I turn to face her. “So he was stalking us.”

  “It appears that way. But if that’s what he was trying to do, he wasn’t successful. I’ve traced his movements on a timeline with Liv’s and yours, and they don’t match up.”

  I make a face. “You know where Liv and I were every day last fall?”

  “For the most part,” she says plainly, like it’s not unusual. “But here’s the thing. On the days Donald Jessup was hanging around Shiverton High, you and Liv were on a field trip, out sick, or it was a Jewish holiday and there was no school. Donald Jessup was at Shiverton High only on the days you and Liv were not.”

  Far away, an owl screeches, or a person screams. I take off again, yelling over my shoulder, “So he had bad luck!”

  She lets out a theatrical groan, then resumes her chase. “Cross-country training in the off-season,” she calls from a few feet behind. “You train differently on different days, is that right?”

  “Hard and easy. Hills some days, speed work on others. Hard is hills, easy is flat, like grass and cement. We use the track, too, but not last November, with the Aberjona rising and the floods.” I glance backward; she’s really struggling. “Why?”

  “Different routes on different days, correct?” she pants.

  “Yep!” I call.

  “Hill work was in the Fells, speed work was in a loop from the high school to downtown. Always the same?”

  “For group practices, yeah, pretty much. What are you saying?”

  “Donald Jessup’s monitor showed him at various points”—she pauses for breath—“on both of those routes”—she sniffs juicily—“but never on the days that the team was running them.” She yells in defeat, “Uncle!”

  I jog back and around her in circles.

  “Julia,” she says, her face pinched.

  I keep circling her.

  “Julia!” she repeats, clearly pissed.

  I halt. “Whaaat?”

  She says, “What are the odds he’d get it wrong every time?”

  I rake my hand over my face. “Maybe he was staking the places out. Maybe he was working up his courage.” I should want this information. I need this information. Yet the urge to deflect is overwhelming. I pull out my phone. “I need to check in with my mom.” The phone goes to voice mail, and I hang up.

  For a while the only sound is Paula breathing. She sits on a log and unlaces her boot, yanking it off to reveal blood seeping through her sock toe. “Ouch.”

  “No one answering at her work?” she asks, looking up at me sideways.

  “She didn’t go in to work today,” I reply. “I guess she’s still asleep.”

  Paula pulls at the tip of her sock gingerly. “Asleep? It’s past noon.”

  “She had too much wine last night. Company came over. A couple of guys. Guy friends. Both of ours,” I stammer. Somehow it all sounds so wrong.

  She winces, in pain, or possibly at what I said.

  “It’s not typical that she’s asleep. Usually she goes in to the lab on days when there’s no school.”

  “Of course. You’re sixteen. Still, I’m sure your mother resents putting in so much time at the lab, away from you.” She shakes out her boot, whacking it on a rock before jamming it back on.

  I smirk, which she interprets as psychological pain over my domestic situation, because Paula stands and places her hand on my shoulder. “You have every right to be angry at all the people who failed you,” she tells me.

  I close my eyes against a second wave of unwelcome thoughts. Donald Jessup’s knob of a head behind a steering wheel in downtown Shiverton, buckles on his camouflage jacket clinking as he eases down on the brake, watching the backs of girls’ heads as they run. Maybe one head is blond, the other, brunette. I ought to be recording the facts Paula has spread before me. Yet it’s all too close. A dull throb starts at the top of my head.

  “Julia, you don’t look well.”

  Paula places her hand on my other shoulder. As her jacket swings open, the buckles shake and clink the way his buckles did. Snowy fuzz creeps into the corners of my eyes. Not a daymare, not here, not with her. A knot hardens at the base of my throat and my hand rises, filled with air, untethered.

  No!

  I yank down my hand and grab the hem of her jacket blindly. It is smooth and finished and tailored, and that is good. The buckles are on her jacket, a woman’s jacket, this jacket. Good.

  “Julia!”

  I wrench myself away and stagger, sweating, plucking at the armpits of my coat and swallowing air.

  “You’re not well. I have a granola bar you can eat.” She forces me to sit on a fallen tree, unwraps the bar, and hands it to me. “When you’re feeling better, we’re turning around.”

  I devour it, noisy and uncaring. When I’m done, I feel steady enough to look her in the eye. “Liv and me. He was looking for us, that day in the woods.”

  She nods solemnly and helps me rise, linking her arm in mine, and we walk, her limping, me with my head down, the mile back to our cars in silence. The sun drops lower. At one point, a biker comes out of nowhere and whooshes past. I let loose a little yelp. Paula swears at him, and we both laugh.

  It’s ages before I convince Paula that I’m all right to drive. To do so, I have to give her something, a benign bit of me that I wasn’t wanting to share. I tell her about the notebook, not specifically, but that I like to organize my thoughts in writing, like her, I bet. She is jazzed, says we are connected in so many ways, and that even though she knows I have the bloodline to be a famous scientist one day, she recognizes a future journalist when she sees one.

  For the second time, I find myself liking someone I don’t want to like. Someone with capable hands. I wonder if it’s too late to set the boundaries, and if not, what will they look like?

  When Paula finally drives away, I lock my car door and prop my notebook up on the steering wheel, wondering how to represent all of Donald Jessup’s missed connections with Liv and me. How a stalker even chooses his next victim. Did he pick us out of the pack running through town that rainy fall? Shouldn’t a sociopath who already killed once be better at stalking his victims such that he doesn’t miss every opportunity to stalk them? I draw a whorl, one line never meeting itself. Eventually my mind moves to easier thoughts.

  I write:

  Things I Know About Paula Papademetriou:

  - Had a best friend

  - Isn’t content with what she’s told

  - Thinks I’m not content with what I’m told

  A blast of music draws my attention back to the woods. I check the rearview mirror in time to see Shane’s ancient matte black GTO pull in across the small lot and park, its windows open halfway. I spin fast to see a head in the passenger seat. Blonde, heart-shaped face: unmistakably Liv. I know why they’re here. The parking lot at the Fells’ fire watchtower entrance is famous for smoking, hooking up, and perverts alone with newspapers in their laps. The cracked window suggests the first. I stash my notebook in the wedge next to my seat and climb over the console to the backseat. If the car looks empty, it will draw less interest, in case Shane gives the lot a stoned-and-paranoid once-over.

  “I’m stretching my legs,” Liv says over a rusty creak—the GTO’s door opening.

  I slide to the backseat floor and fold into a tight ball, as if my perfect stillness will render my car invisible. I’m not a praying sort, but I mutter a short prayer anyway, that Liv has chosen this one time to partake in what Shane is offering, and her fugue state will cause her to miss my car. I add a quick thank-you prayer, too, that Mom choked when the dealer suggested the SPUNK vanity plate.

  A second car door slam. I hitch my breath.

  “What you really mean is you want to shake off the smoke so Lady Deborah doesn’
t smell it,” says Shane.

  “I’m not the one smoking,” Liv replies, her voice thinner, moving away. I scramble to peek through the rear window in time to see Liv heading for the trailhead.

  “Fine. You don’t want Mama to know you consort with delinquents. That’s cool. Except you’d think you were the one stoned, all paranoid, ducking down like you got shot when we drove by Paula Pappa-dem-meaty-o’s in that SUV. Do you know she lives in Shiv—?”

  “I’m aware,” Liv interrupts.

  “Have you ever seen her in person?” Shane says.

  “Yes, Shane. She was just at our school,” Liv says.

  “Man, she’s tight. Who would think she has a kid our age?”

  “My age,” Liv says, reminding me that Shane’s real age is up for debate, a question related to the accuracy of his adoption records that emerged around fourth grade after he grew a full mustache.

  Shane walks toward Liv, the cuffs of his thin jacket rising as he twists pale wrists back and forth. He sprawls on the stairs where Paula asked me to sit hours ago.

  Liv glances back. “Don’t get too comfortable. You know I hate it here. There are so many other places to smoke.”

  “I won’t be but a moment, milady.” He reaches around to his back pocket and pulls out a plastic bag.

  “You should save that. You owe Boseman,” she says.

  He drops the bag in his lap and reaches into his coat. “Just a pinch. Your knuckle-job cousin won’t know the difference.” His head hangs down, twisting the joint, flicking away seeds with fingernails that I know are dirty. Liv ignores him, gazing into the woods, not unlike the way she did that morning last November. I wonder what she’s thinking about. Is she imagining what I went through? Remembering what she went through? Shane lights the joint and sucks, then exhales through pursed lips.

  “Harsh,” he gasps, but it doesn’t stop him from taking a second drag, then a third. After a while he notices Liv. “What are you staring at, girl?”

  “Nothing.”

  Shane stubs out the roach on the stair and considers it, then flicks it into the woods. “Wait. I know. You’re thinking about the boogeyman in the woods. Your personal boogeyman. Look out, hot runner girl! I’m going to hunt down you and your friend!” He lets loose a grating cackle.