The Little Woods

by McCormick Templeman

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I RETURNED TO CAMPUS EXHAUSTED and wary. Despite the school’s beauty, it was difficult to feel at ease within its corridors, and I found myself longing for company in a way I never had back home.

  I tried to suppress my growing disquiet by focusing on the Cally Wood Social Integration Project, but after the weekend I wasn’t sure how close I wanted to get to the Slaters and their friends. They seemed nice enough, but they also seemed a bit like hipster debutantes, and that wasn’t really my scene.

  I quickly realized, though, that my concerns about my newfound social acceptance had been premature. Come Monday, I found that a fine glass wall had been erected between us, and that while Noel and I shared an afternoon sport, and Helen and I might have some laughs together, when they and the rest of the girls took off to do whatever it was they did, I wasn’t usually invited. It was as if I’d failed some test I hadn’t known I was taking. If I was being purposely excluded, I would have preferred it be overt, but they were all so terribly friendly that I was never sure where I stood.

  “They’re creepy, right?” Sophie said. “Everyone thinks they’re a coven.”

  “Really?” I said, a spoonful of Cheerios in my mouth.

  Sophie and I had taken to eating breakfast together on the balcony that overlooked the ravine. I hadn’t had a lot of female friends growing up, and was quickly finding that girls, especially St. Bede’s girls, were much more difficult to impress than the boys back home, who thought it was hilarious when I shoved an entire orange into my mouth or wore my pants on my head. I liked Sophie, and she seemed to tolerate me as one might a perpetually unkempt neighbor’s pet.

  “No, they’re not a coven,” she said after taking a tidy sip of her herbal tea. “But it would be great if they were, right? It would make things so much more interesting if they skulked around doing witchcraft instead of talking about pedicures or whatever it is that interests them.”

  “Actually, they all seem pretty smart. I don’t think they talk about pedicures.”

  “I bet they do. They probably quote Foucault while they do it, but they do.”

  I set my bowl down and pushed it away. “You don’t really think Helen killed that girl Iris, do you?”

  Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have any hard evidence or anything like that, but she’s hiding something.”

  “How did Iris go missing?” I asked as I choked down my cereal.

  “No one knows really. The first night of fall break, Iris stayed on campus because we had a math competition the next day. She signed in to dinner that night, and she didn’t sign in to breakfast the next morning. Somewhere in between she just disappeared.”

  “Was Helen on campus too, for this academic thing?”

  “No. She had one of her big parties. They always have them the first night of break. Out at that lake house. I hear they’re basically bacchanals.”

  “But if Helen was hosting a party during the time Iris disappeared, doesn’t that give her an alibi?”

  “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Here, eat my toast. I think I’m developing celiac.”

  Thursday night was our first advisee dinner. I was vaguely aware of my advisee group because we sat in the same row during our weekly assembly, but I hadn’t really spoken to any of them. I usually spent assembly doodling and staring a few rows ahead to where Helen and Alex sat side by side, giggling like schoolgirls. Aside from me, my advisee group consisted of five freshman boys and the Cthulhu boy from the dining hall, who was a sophomore. His name was Carlos, and he seemed always to be doing sudoku puzzles and glaring at me.

  Asta lived in a small cottage with a thatched roof and dormer windows at the edge of campus. My heart contracted when the house first came into view, and I couldn’t help thinking about Clare. There was a slight mist covering the yard, with its rosebushes and fruit trees, from which were tied strange ribbons and little cloth bags. I stood there a moment, listening to the wind move through the trees, and I had a strange feeling that I was being watched. I turned around and peered into the trees. Twilight was just nestling into the woods, and I thought I could hear the night creatures beginning to creep out of their hollows. It must have been their strigine eyes I felt on my body.

  I walked in to find a fire crackling and the boys deep in a game of Risk. The freshmen looked up and smiled shyly. I waved. Carlos refused to make eye contact. Savory aromas drifted from the kitchen—butter and cheese and happiness.

  I stood for a moment, unsure where to put myself. For someone so small, I was disproportionately destructive and had found that it was usually best to keep my hands in my pockets.

  One of the freshmen whispered something in Carlos’s ear. He groaned and looked up at me.

  “You want to play?” he asked, clearly pained.

  “No,” I said, taking a seat on the sofa. “I’m cool.”

  He sighed, seeming relieved. “So, Calista.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We haven’t been formally introduced,” he said, standing.

  “Yes we have. In assembly.”

  “Well, I’m Carlos,” he said, and somehow it felt like an admonishment.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

  He shook my hand. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but we have to get a few things straight.”

  “We do?” He was only an inch or so taller than I was, but he possessed so much gravitas he seemed much larger.

  “Yeah. Listen, I know you’re supposed to be hot shit, but I pretty much rule this advisee group, okay?”

  I nodded, bewildered.

  “What I’m trying to say here is don’t fuck this up for me. You got that?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “What?” I laughed, but he wasn’t joking.

  “I’ll take you down,” he said. “I’m dead serious.”

  I couldn’t say why exactly, but I suddenly liked Carlos very much.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We don’t have to, like, rumble or whatever.”

  He nodded, all business, and went back to Risk.

  Dinner was delicious, pasta with strange gourmet cheeses, basil, garlic, and succulent diced tomatoes. We ate slowly and lounged a bit too long, and the boys continued their Risk game while Asta and I chatted. She filled me in on some St. Bede’s history and told me where the teachers had gone to college or grad school. She said that my dorm head, Ms. Harlow, was only twenty-one and had graduated early from Harvard and come directly to St. Bede’s.

  “Go easy on her, will you, Cally?”

  “What? Why?”

  “Some of the girls give her a hard time, and, well, Courtney—Ms. Harlow, I mean—has been having a tough time. We want to keep her.”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged, thinking Ms. Harlow would not care one way or the other how I treated her.

  “You’re a good kid, Cally. I’m so glad you’ve come to St. Bede’s.”

  I looked away, blushing, wondering how much she knew about me.

  Around nine, Asta cut it short and told us it was time to go. The boys groaned and packed up their game. I was gathering my things when Asta touched me lightly on the arm.

  “Cally,” she said. “Stay a minute, if you don’t mind. I want to have a word.”

  The boys filtered out. Carlos gave me a furrowed brow and a conservative wave.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Tea?” she asked brightly as the kettle whistled on the stove. “Come into the kitchen a minute. Take a seat.”

  I sat down at the large wooden chopping block, next to a vase of gray-white flowers. I reached out and touched a petal.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Those are asphodels.”

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Really? The word daffodil is a derivation of asphodel.”

  “Oh,” I said, running my finger along the silky petals. “So these are daffodils?”

  “No,” she said, laughing. “They’re asphodels. They’re the flowers of the dead. It’s
said that when you die, if you’ve led a drab, unexceptional life, then you spend eternity in a field of asphodels. It’s one of the lands of the dead, Tartarus and Elysium being the others, for the villains and the heroes respectively.” She smiled and poured the boiling water into two mugs. “I like to keep them in the house. It reminds me to be exceptional.”

  Soon I had a cup of tea before me, threads of steam swirling off the top, the scent of chamomile making me a little sleepy. She sat across from me, her eyes wide and gentle.

  “So, um, Ms. Snow, you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Asta. I want you to call me Asta. Listen, Cally, I think we need to confront the elephant in the room,” she said, fixing her cool blue eyes on me. “I’ve been waiting for you to say something, but it doesn’t seem like you’re ever going to. You know who I am, don’t you? You know I’m Laurel’s mom, right?”

  I nodded, my stomach contracting in unexpected spasms.

  “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about your sister. Clare was a lovely girl. You remind me of her.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m not really telling anyone about, you know, what happened.”

  “Mmm.” She nodded. “I see. But why here? Of all the schools, why here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m getting a free ride, and I figured why not take advantage of that opportunity?”

  If she noticed how finely my statement rode the line between bullshit and sincerity, she didn’t let on. She nodded, and then, after a moment of silence, she spoke. “I think that’s very wise, Cally. Very mature.” Then she reached across the table and took my hand. “You know, in some ways, I think it’s fate that’s brought you here. And I want you to know that you can come to me with anything. I think you’re a very brave girl.”

  Something about the way she smiled at me and the warmth of her touch reminded me of my dad teaching me to ride a bike, and how with the warmth of his hand at the small of my back, falling had seemed impossible.

  Those first few weeks of school were difficult. I did my best to fit in and be social, but I was finding it somewhat awkward. Cliques had been formed so long before my arrival, and were so firmly demarcated, that I just couldn’t seem to squeeze my way in. Helen and her crew seemed always to be off doing their own thing, and while Jack and Sophie were usually better about including me, they were like a long-married couple—straightening each other’s clothes and kissing each other’s cheeks—and spending too much time with them could make you feel like a third wheel.

  Every time I came into the dorm, I checked the message board, just in case Danny had decided to get off his ass and call me back, but my name was never written up there. Then, one Saturday evening, I found a message from Kim.

  Her voice cracked when she answered the phone, and I could tell she hadn’t been sleeping. Danny had been arrested. He’d been caught with explosives in his backpack and had been sent to one of those boot camps for miscreants where they made you stomp around endlessly in the woods, testing the limits of your humanity. When I hung up the phone, I wanted to cry. Poor Danny. The only thing he hated more than nature was exercise. How was he going to manage? Danny didn’t always make the best decisions, but he was a good kid. I knew if I’d been home, I would have been with him, and now I’d probably also be marching around in the middle of nowhere, trying to light fires and survive the elements. Honestly, at the moment that didn’t sound too bad.

  I needed to talk to someone who’d understand, but telling people my cousin had been arrested didn’t seem like the greatest idea from a social-normality standpoint, so I just swallowed down my worry and headed to dinner. If I got up there in time, at least I’d be able to sit and talk with someone, even if it was just about the basketball team. But my social timing seemed to be perpetually off.

  I saw Sophie and Jack leaving the dining hall just as I was entering. They were flushed with laughter and linked arm in arm. I thought they were going to stop and talk, but they just waved and passed me by. A moment later, Jack turned and grinned at me.

  “I like your shirt,” he called.

  I stared down at my oversized T-shirt with the logo of a Japanese noise band on the front. I wasn’t sure whether he was making fun of me.

  “Thanks. Where are you guys going?”

  “Town,” he said.

  “We can go into town?”

  “Only on open Saturdays.”

  “Oh,” I said, still not entirely sure what an open Saturday was, despite being in the midst of one.

  “We’re gonna be late for first bus,” Sophie said, and pulled him on.

  He blew me a kiss and then they were gone. As usual, I had no idea what was happening. I grabbed a grilled cheese and some chocolate milk and went to sit with Helen, Pigeon, and Freddy. They seemed to be just finishing up.

  “Hey there.” Helen smiled. “You look cute in that jacket.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I looked at the sleeve of my grungy army jacket I wore pretty much every day.

  They were starting to clear their plates away, and with a sinking feeling, I realized I’d be eating alone again.

  “Sorry we can’t stay and eat with you,” Helen said. “We’re in a hurry.”

  “Where are you guys going?” I asked hopefully.

  “Town,” Helen said, looking around the room. “We have to hurry if we want to get ready and catch the second bus.”

  Plates clattered and Pigeon giggled excitedly as they gathered up their things.

  “Maybe we’ll see you down there.” Helen smiled and then skipped off with her tray.

  I looked down at my sandwich and felt a terrible weight on me. I took a bite and tried to choke down a familiar feeling. It wasn’t exactly like I’d been excluded, but I hadn’t been invited either. Did everyone need an invitation, or was that just me? Was I socially reticent to the point of phobia? Would a different girl simply have invited herself along?

  After dinner, I wandered over to the library and went upstairs to the reading area with the comfy chairs. Carlos was up there reading the Wall Street Journal.

  “What’s up, Carlos?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Just catching up on current events. I hate feeling so isolated here.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  I read for a while and then fell asleep in my chair. Carlos woke me just before the library closed, and groggily, I made my way back down to my room.

  The next day, I was in my room, trying to keep my books from falling over on the shelf, when the door slammed open and Helen came flouncing in. She tossed her copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare onto the bed and smiled triumphantly.

  “Audition go well?”

  “Let’s just say I tore Miranda a new asshole.”

  “And that’s what they’re looking for these days, is it?”

  “The part is mine,” she said, smiling brilliantly. “Cara Svitt was practically crying when I left. Hey, listen,” she went on, placing a hand on her jutted-out hip. “Sorry we kind of ditched you last night. I thought you’d meet us downtown, but you never showed.”

  “Yeah, I went to the library.”

  “Next time just come with us, okay? I felt really bad.”

  A moment or so later, Noel trailed in behind her, a Cheshire grin lighting up her face.

  “I just had a really good talk with Asta,” she said, and sat on my bed, pulling her legs up into the lotus position.

  “God.” Helen rolled her eyes. “You are developing a serious case of hero worship.”

  “I am not. We just have really good talks. She’s wise, you know, and it makes me feel better to know that someone has the world figured out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Helen said, shaking her head. “But she does not have the world figured out. No one does.”

  “What are you up to now, Cally?” Noel smiled.

  I shrugged. “Nothing. I don’t know. I guess I should go to the library. Do some home
work.”

  A wicked grin spread across Helen’s face. “No you shouldn’t. Come with me.” She grabbed my hand and started pulling me from the room. Noel sprang up to follow.

  “Where are we going?” I was resistant at first, but soon we were running down the hill toward the theater, the air around us cold and lit with a kind of moist electricity. My knees felt weak and wobbly as we ran. Helen pulled me harder, smiling back at me over her shoulder, and soon we were laughing, swept downward toward a little rock wall. I stuck my hands out just in time to keep from slamming into it, but Helen simply leapt up and perched on top like a sparrow. A moment later, Noel caught up to us, panting.

  “What’s going on?” she managed to say. “What are we doing?”

  “We’re hanging out outside the theater,” Helen said, and rolled her eyes at her sister.

  Noel shot her a confused look, and then the metal front door swung open and boys started trickling out. Shane Derwitz, Brody, Alex Reese. Now I knew what we were doing here.

  I glanced sideways at Helen and she smiled at me. I climbed up to sit beside her.

  Alex nodded when he saw me. He came over and leaned up against the wall. Brody followed.

  “How’d it go?” Helen asked.

  “Okay, I guess,” Alex said. “Even if I get the part, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it. The coach is kind of on my ass about it.” Then he met my eyes. “Why didn’t you try out?”

  “For the play?” I laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “I bet you’d be good.”

  “Sorry. I can’t act my way out of a paper bag.”

  “What are you guys up to now?” he asked, and I could feel something tingle and lurch up my spine. I’d never met a boy like Alex before. At my old school, a guy as hot and popular as Alex would have been a dick, and probably kind of an idiot, but Alex was different. He was smart, and kind, and I wanted to hang out with him as much as I could. It was a weird feeling.

  “Nothing,” Helen said. “What about you guys?”

  “Let’s do something fun,” Brody said, taking my hands to help me jump down from the wall. “Let’s go up to the pond and look for salamanders.”