What the Woods Keep

by Katya de Becerra

  * * *

  We land in Denver, and it’s good to have my feet on the ground again. I keep my disturbing dreams to myself, taking sneaky deep breaths to calm myself down when Del’s not looking.

  While Del goes over the car-rental paperwork with a cute redheaded guy wearing a TRAINEE tag, I loiter close by. I feel the trainee guy’s eyes on me, and then Del turns to look at me, too, her face half illuminated, half hidden by shadow. They’re talking about me. Del waves me closer. I oblige. “Hayden, this is Mark. Mark, Hayden.” As she makes the introductions, I blink at her in confusion, unsure why my presence is required, since all the paperwork is in her name. Voice sweet, she explains, “Mark’s father is from Promise. I thought Mark could give us some pointers on what to do, things to see.”

  The way Mark becomes visually tense when I approach bothers me. He stays silent for too long after Del stops talking, and when he does speak, the words out of his mouth have nothing in the way of sightseeing advice.

  “Your eyes are different colors. Weird but not uncommon in Promise, right? I mean, weird how common it is, not that your eyes are weird. Though … they are!”

  He’s still mumbling when I meet his light-brown eyes and then two things happen at once: His pupils shrink into tiny black dots, and my heart rate goes up, not a lot but enough for me to sense the change. There’s a familiar tension in my chest, a precursor of the panic attacks I used to have as a child, and cold sweat forms between my fingers. I break eye contact and Mark shakes his head, as if clearing it. The moment passes. I’m not sure if Del even noticed anything odd.

  “It’s called heterochromia,” I say, trying to act normal.

  A polite smile forms on Mark’s lips. “I was just telling Del,” he says, eyes flitting, “that you girls should check out Edmunds’ Gorge. Also do lots of hiking. The mountains are the best out there. So are the woods.”

  “Del’s not big on hiking.”

  “There’s also this bookshop that has the most amazing coffee.” Mark-the-trainee is starting to sound like a tourist-office brochure now. “The owners are as weird as they come, but if you keep an open mind, you’ll have a great time.”

  Del’s cracking up as we leave Mark at the counter. Apparently, watching me stumble while trying to talk to cute guys is funny. I guess she didn’t notice anything off, like how I made Mark space out for a second. My pre-panic attack feeling lingers as we walk out of the airport and are greeted by sunshine and the clearest blue skies I’ve seen in weeks.

  Our rental is a tiny yellow Kia that just barely fits our luggage and leaves some space for us, too. Del takes the first shift driving. As we get going, I roll down my window and take off my hoodie, determined to soak up every bit of sunlight available. Some of the earlier tension returns briefly to my chest, accompanied by that knotted-stomach feeling that comes with a sensation of being watched or experiencing déjà vu. In my head, I start to repeat the words of my old calm-down song—a lullaby Mom used to sing to me:

  The first one was a warrior, the second a handmaiden; their queen who led the army was third. They’ll save their people! The blood of the first three, it’ll break down the walls—it’ll set their people free, and the new world will emerge.…

  As I repeat the offbeat, Bob Dylan–esque lines, the uncomfortable feeling in my gut begins to disappear, but then, just like that, the sunny day morphs into a thunderous, lightning-striking nightmare. I hurry to roll up the window before I get soaked. Del reduces the speed and turns on the headlights. She’s a good driver and I feel safe with her at the wheel, though my eyes keep returning to the rearview mirror, watching for something, anything, unusual in the thickening fog. But all I can see are the lights of cars moving carefully through the haze.

  Observations Journal 2.0

  It happened again today.

  Just before hitting the road with Del, bound for Promise, Colorado, I observed some kind of random hypnosis. A guy at the car rental got all hazy, his pupils shrinking in size.

  He snapped out of it pretty quickly (the exact moment I broke eye contact with him, to be precise), but the lingering sensation of wrongdoing remained deep in my chest.

  I’d write off the occurrence as the guy spacing out, if only it didn’t remind me so much of the way Dr. Erich sometimes got around me. Or the way Jen Rickman became right before our infamous encounter that led to my expulsion.

  Conclusion: Need to investigate if some people naturally possess some type of innate ability to hypnotize others. This is unlikely but worth looking into.

  Research findings: The lion’s share of what we know (or, more appropriately, think we know) about hypnosis has been shaped by popular culture and media. Hypnosis is not a mindless trance but a natural state in which the conscious (logical) mind becomes relaxed, making it possible for ideas to be communicated directly to the inner mind, which is governed by emotions, perception, and habits.

  Hypnosis is a recognized psychology method used to treat addictions.

  Hypnosis can occur in our daily lives without us even knowing it’s happening, like when you’re riding a train and zone out, getting lulled by the motion into a state of quiet.

  While some people can develop traits and quirks that make them more “charismatic” and “hypnotic” to others, there’s no such thing as hypnosis induced by the mere physical presence of a “hypnotist.”

  Hence, there has to be some other explanation of my (random?) “ability” to put animals and people into a trance.

  P.S. Maybe it’s just that I’m that boring?

  10

  SOMEWHERE IN COLORADO:

  PART 2

  “What are you typing?” Del asks without looking away from the road. Deep into my Internet research, I lost track of time.

  “Nothing. Just something silly.”

  “Right.” She sneaks a quick look at me.

  I put my phone away. “Just jotting down some observations. Did you notice anything unusual about that guy at the Denver airport?”

  “That Mark guy? Sure. He was totally checking you out. His eyes got all dewy.”

  “Hmm.”

  “‘Hmm’? Just take it for what it is, Hayden. You’re finally blossoming into the beautiful young woman you were always meant to be, and men are starting to notice.”

  I inspect her profile, the twitch of her lips telling me she’s playing with me. Her next words confirm my hypothesis. “If only you’d let me give you a makeover, you’d blossom at long last.…”

  “Oh, shut it, Del!”

  To that she says something so crude, we both break out into raucous, loud laugher. The unexpected release leaves me weightless, calm, and with a sense of grateful affection for Del, who always knows what to say to snap me out of my mood.

  It’s my turn driving, navigating Route 25 through the wall of rain. The car radio’s breaking up. Both our phones are running low on battery. We have to find other, nontechnological entertainment. We burn through twenty questions quickly. Del keeps choosing characters from her favorite fantasy book series, while I stick to Kubrick movies (“Open the pod bay doors, HAL!”) and the Buffyverse (“I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.”). As far as our pop culture tastes go, Del knows me as well as I know her. We’re getting bored.

  Another hour in and Del takes the wheel again, letting me rest. She proposes a new game. “How about three things?”

  I chuckle. “We’re making up games now? Here’s one I just came up with: Guess that song.” I start humming “Ride of the Valkyries.”

  Del shakes her head. “Stop being a weirdo, please. And my game is legit. You have to name three things I don’t know about you yet.”

  “Ah … sounds promising. Number one: My middle name is Bellatrix.”

  Del rolls her eyes. “I knew that. It was on the apartment lease. Besides, revealing to me the mystery of your middle name isn’t good enough. The stuff you share has got to be personal and not things like I’m wearing pink underwear today. By the way, I am wearing pink u
nderwear today.”

  “What, are you hitting on me now?”

  “Nope. Definitely not. Not that there’s anything wrong with you. You’re perfect. Or you would be if you straightened your hair once in a while.… But even with your hair wavy like that, I’d totally do you … if I were into girls.”

  “Just stop talking, Delphine.”

  For the record, Del loathes her full name. I would, too: It sounds too much like dolphin, which is a great name for a mermaid, but for a human girl … not so much. But Del barely notices my jab, that’s how fired up she is about playing her totally made-up game.

  “So you in?” She cocks her head to the side, like a bird. I nod reluctantly. She drums her fingers against the wheel. “I’ll go first. We start with the least shocking thing and work our way up to the most shocking, so we can discuss it at length.”

  “We’re supposed to discuss it, too?”

  She snorts. “Perhaps you have a better idea for entertainment while I’m doing all the work driving? Do you?”

  “No, I do not.”

  “Okay, so hear this and learn. Thing number one: I’m a sleepwalker.” Del pauses for effect, but all I can think about is this creepy old movie Sleepwalkers, based on a Stephen King story, which I think is about vampires feeding on virgins or something equally gross.

  I say weakly, “Really?”

  Del’s eyes do this glare-of-death thing when she’s stuck between being annoyed and disappointed. This is so not the reaction she was hoping for.

  “In case you want to know”—Del’s voice comes off slightly pissed-off—“it’s a sleep disorder. I’ve been suffering from it ever since I was a child. It can be pretty dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to whom?”

  Del enunciates, “To me and to those around me. I take pills to control it, and I have to lock myself in my room at night. Once, when I was seven, I wandered out of my parents’ house and onto the road. A car was going by, and the driver had to swerve not to hit me head-on. That’s what the driver said happened, anyway. I have no memory of it, because I kind of slept through it all.”

  “That sounds awful, Del.” How come I didn’t know any of this after living together for months and exchanging vows of everlasting friendship? Maybe I’m not a very good friend after all. “Is there anything I can do?”

  She laughs but not harshly, thawing already. She can’t stay mad at me for too long. “Not really. But you have nothing to worry about. I have it all under control. Okay, enough about me. Your turn! Better make it good.”

  I don’t think too long about it. “I’m a virgin.”

  “Oh, honey, I know.” Del’s face assumes what I believe is her “poor baby” expression.

  “What, you’re feeling sorry for me now?”

  “If only you’d let me give you a makeover.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I stop her before she launches into her makeover nonsense again. “There’s nothing wrong with me. And there are other things in life, you know, aside from chasing after guys or whatever.”

  “Now that’s just sad. A little boy-chasing never did anyone any wrong—in fact, it gets your heart pumping, keeps you spritely and healthy. And besides, what are you—some bad romance heroine fated to fall in love for the first time at the not-so-tender age of twenty-five?” Del chews on her bottom lip, eating away some of her translucent lip gloss. “Okay, whatever, my turn. I was an army brat growing up. Impressed, Ms. Brooklynite-who-has-never-ever-even-left-the-States?”

  “I already knew that you grew up moving around with your family, Del.”

  Can we be this boring? Is it possible we already know everything there is to know about each other? Not everything, a little voice hisses inside my head. She doesn’t know what you did to Jen Rickman, why you were expelled from Stonebrook. She doesn’t know how your mother went dark and scary weeks before her disappearance, and how there’s suspicion that she burned up part of the woods the night she left you. Or the other weird detail. Del doesn’t know the real you. If she did, she’d run away screaming. Or lose control and smash her head against a mirror.

  Oblivious to the dark thoughts in my head, Del goes on, “Sure, but did you know I lived in, like, fifty different countries, all before I turned ten?”

  “Exaggerate much?”

  “Not at all. That’s like five countries a year.”

  “And you can count!”

  “I’ve lived everywhere. Just ask! Ask me anything about any country.”

  I rack my brain for something difficult to ask, though I suspect Del’s telling the truth. She’s not one to brag. “The capital of Zimbabwe?”

  “Oh, good one.” Del all but squeals in delight. “Harare. But it used to be called Salisbury.”

  There’s no way to check the validity of her answer. I can’t look it up on my phone—the battery’s now dead and my charger is unwisely packed somewhere in my luggage.

  “Another one,” Del demands. I ask again. And again. And every time, she’s got an answer. Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. And Malaysia has two: Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.

  “You’re like a rain woman,” I note. She glows with pride. Del loves the movie Rain Man and, I suspect, nurtures a secret crush on Dustin Hoffman circa 1988.

  My turn to share. I blurt out, “I was expelled from school when I was eight. After that, I was homeschooled.”

  “I suspected as much.” Del shrugs, feigning casual interest. But I know from her long, sideways glance that she’s hooked and wants more.

  “But did you also suspect the reason why I was expelled?” I tease her, knowing I’m now wandering into dangerous territory.

  “Because you bored them all to tears with your jeans and hoodies, and they could no longer look at you without wanting to give you a makeover? Oh, no, no, let me try again … because you’re an antisocial weirdo?”

  She’s not that far off.

  “I might be a weirdo,” I say, “but I’m not exactly antisocial, though some people from my former school most likely think I am.” And that’s putting it lightly.

  “You’re not going to kill me and bury my body in the woods, are you?”

  “Nah, I only do that to girls who don’t try to give me a makeover.”

  That’s when our GPS loses its mind. The power is on and the navigator’s screen is lit up, but our path on the map’s all jumbled, like a kid’s scrawl of crayon on a wall. The GPS’s sudden demise saves me from having to elaborate on my impromptu confession. Del parks on the side of the road. We take turns staring at the GPS screen as it goes mad. As of this moment, we are somewhere in Colorado. And we are lost.

  11

  THE FOREST TAKES NOTICE

  So our GPS succumbed to madness. Probably all those quantum mechanics and special relativity formulae that keep it going, connecting with a group of satellites circling Earth and communicating to pin our location in the depths of Colorado, finally drove our GPS into insanity, and it just checked out.

  We get out to have a look around. Though it’s mostly stopped, the rain’s presence is heady in every inhale I take. The air’s got that drunk-on-nature quality you can only experience far, far away from big cities. Tall whispering firs frame the road, their heads lost to the high mist.

  A flutter of wind sends a pang of recognition through my veins, but there’s also unease—the kind you get when you know you’re lost in an unfamiliar (and possibly hostile) place, its rules a mystery to you.

  To make matters worse, it’s getting dark, fast. Through the thin material of my tee I feel every outburst of the wind. I need to get back inside the car, but the air here is borderline addictive. My lungs beg for more. It’s only when I notice Del’s full-on shivering that we get back into our Kia and shut the doors. I slide into the driver’s seat and get the car going. The engine sputters but then roars to life.

  Del doesn’t stop trembling even when it gets toasty inside the car, goose bumps crawling all over the exposed skin of her arms. To di
stract her I ask, “Can you look anything up on your phone? My battery’s dead.”

  She does as I ask, but her frown tells me it’s bad news. “No reception. No Internet. Nada.” She lets out a nervous exhale. “Are we officially screwed now? I can already see the news all over the web: ‘Two hot girls go missing in Colorado while on spring break from hell.’”

  “Why is it important that the girls are hot?”

  “Because that’s the truth. And news reporters never lie. It’s in their professional code to only tell the truth.”

  That’s when I notice that the fuel gauge’s showing a dangerously low level of gas. How did we miss that?

  Our salvation comes after about twenty minutes of driving semiblind and completely alone on the road. A crooked road sign announces we are approaching the “last gas station until Promise.” At least we’re on the right track.

  I take the exit against Del’s protests. “What do you expect me to do?” I exclaim. “Would you rather walk the rest of the way? Through the woods?”

  “But this is how horror movies begin,” she says, her voice small. “Don’t you know the first rule of all horror movies? When stranded in a fog in the middle of nowhere, do not stop your car and do not get out of your car!”

  “That’s two rules. And I thought the number-one rule of horror movies was to not ever go inside the house. Or was it the basement? Nope, it’s … never ever split up!”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Del murmurs. “Number-one rule of surviving a horror movie scenario is—do not be a virgin.” I snort at that and she laughs, too.

  * * *

  We find the gas station and park. I’m so happy to stretch my legs again. My jeans have become a second skin by now, and an itchy one at that. Also, I seriously hope there’s a working shower in Holland Manor.

  Once I’m outside, the drizzle envelops my face like a thin veil. Humidity flattens my hair. The air’s so saturated with oxygen, it makes me light-headed.

  The “last gas station until Promise” and its adjacent little shop are manned by a totally normal young man and his adorable, peach-haired mother. We pick up a regional map, several bags of chips, pretty much all of the fresh fruit the shop’s got, and a lot of bottled water.