The Little Woods

by McCormick Templeman

  That night when I went to bed alone in my room, an uncharacteristically fragile Helen having gotten special permission to sleep on Noel’s floor, I locked the door and said my heathen version of prayers. Please, Universe, don’t let anyone kill me tonight.

  It had been a strange day, and I found myself wondering just how much stranger things would get. There had been a lot of relief—a feeling that we could finally let our guard down. The sense that the entire campus had just exhaled was mixed, though, with a kind of morbid fixation on what if it had been one of us. I worried that it still could be.

  I could see Reilly killing Iris. I could create a scenario in which that made sense: They have an affair; she gets obsessed. He breaks it off with her in the spring because he comes to his senses. She’s so distraught she has a nervous breakdown. Then there’s a stretch of several months where nothing happens. She goes home and starts to get herself back together, but when she comes back to school, she’s still in love with him. And then something happens. The day she dies, she finds something out, maybe that she isn’t the first student he’s taken advantage of. Maybe she finds out there have been—or are—others, and she freaks out. Totally enraged, she threatens to go to the police. She blackmails him. He comes by her room to talk some sense into her. They go somewhere secret—up to the cave. He gives her mushrooms, and she draws her dragon because … I don’t know, because she likes to draw dragons.… Maybe it doesn’t even mean that much. Maybe she just likes to draw it. He thinks he’ll be able to talk her out of going to the police, but high on mushrooms, she’s unreasonable. They argue, things get out of hand, and in the heat of the moment, he strangles her. I could see it. I could see it all. But what about my sister? That made no sense. He hadn’t come up here and killed her for no reason.

  But what if there were two killers?

  What if Clare and Laurel’s killer knew about Reilly and Iris and suspected that Reilly had killed her? What if he then used the opportunity to frame Reilly for Clare’s and Laurel’s murders? It would be easy enough. Take Reilly’s gym bag, plant some fibers from his apartment. Reilly hadn’t been sitting on those bones for ten years, but someone had. Someone had kept them close and then buried them out in those woods. Whoever it was, the killer was still out there watching—watching me.

  I pulled up the covers and sank into opacity. I don’t know how long I slept before I heard the sliding glass door shudder. Adrenaline rushed through my body and I sat up in bed. I heard a faint knocking and a cracking male voice.

  “Woodsy, it’s me.”

  Jack.

  I opened the door and he came in, quiet and strange. He sat on Helen’s bed.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, his voice still wavering. He’d been crying. He was exhausted.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine,” he said, putting his head in his hands. “Or, I don’t know. Maybe I’m not.”

  I could smell something strange on his breath. Whiskey? Jack didn’t drink whiskey.

  “Jack, what’s going on?” I asked, shivering a little. “Where have you been?”

  He shook a finger at me. “Ah ah ah,” he admonished. “Can’t tell. Part of my great big secret.”

  “The other person? The person you’re seeing?”

  He nodded.

  “The thing is, Wood, I’ve been with this other person all night, but I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be with you.”

  “Jack, what are you doing here? You’re going to get in so much trouble if someone catches you.”

  “I don’t care. I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you were safe.”

  A part of me felt a pull to him so strong I thought I might break. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to say things to him I knew I’d regret. I wanted to hold him, but all I could do was say, “I don’t need anyone to keep me safe, Jack.”

  He started to speak, but then paused. His voice cracked when he finally spoke again. “Can I … can I stay here with you tonight?”

  When he said that, it was like part of me simply went numb. I felt cold, as if I’d never had a single normal emotion in my life. I wanted to say the right thing, but suddenly I didn’t know what that thing was. I didn’t know who I was.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?” he asked, running his hands through his hair. “You’d rather be alone than have me spend the night with you?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said.

  “No, I’m sorry, but this is weird, right?” he asked, his voice wavering.

  “What?”

  “Us. Sneaking around. Hooking up, but nothing else.”

  “I thought that was what we both wanted.”

  “I know, but after what happened the other day, I’m confused. I don’t think I’m okay with this anymore. I want … I don’t know, I want more.”

  “I have a boyfriend, Jack.”

  “Well, don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “I really like Alex.”

  “Then why are you cheating on him?”

  The question hung heavy, and I closed my eyes, as if that could protect me from it.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I like you both.”

  “This isn’t a buffet, Wood. We’re people. Alex and I are both people.”

  “You’re the one who suggested this.”

  “I know, but I was wrong. It’s fucked up and it hurts.”

  “But what about you? What about your secret girlfriend? What about that whole thing?”

  He shrugged. “The thing is that this person, every time I saw them, I used to be so, I don’t know, excited or something, but now every time, every time they leave the room and come back in, for a second, just a second, I think it’s going to be you. But it never is. It just isn’t you. And I can’t explain it, but that, like, hurts me.”

  My breath caught. I didn’t know why, but his words made me feel funny, warm and silky, and I realized that all along that was what I’d wanted to say to him. But now that the words were out there, I found I couldn’t respond. I just sat there, frozen.

  He shifted uncomfortably. Moments were slipping by and I had no way of catching up to them, of getting them back. He cleared his throat. There was no going back. I knew that. I just didn’t know what that meant.

  “Climb in,” I said quietly, throwing back the covers.

  “Really?” His voice was soft, lonely.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He hesitated a moment, then slipped in, folding me into his arms, my head on his chest. I didn’t know I could be this comfortable. We fit together perfectly. And the strange thing was that despite all we’d done together, for the very first time, I felt embarrassed in front of Jack Deeker. I tried to quiet my breath, afraid of drawing too much attention to myself. His chest rose and fell awkwardly as if he was attempting the same strange feat. We lay there in silence, the darkness beating around us.

  I awoke just before dawn, my head still nestled into Jack’s wrinkled dress shirt. I looked up at him sleeping and was shocked by what I found. So much of Jack Deeker was put on. All the hardness, the danger, the recondite sexuality. Asleep, he looked like a child. The feminine arch of his cheek, his long dark lashes, the little crescents of resting eyes. He was beautifully fragile in a way I’d never noticed. Lying there, staring up at him, I was reminded—coldly, starkly reminded—of how much of a child I still was. No matter what I might do or try, I was still a work in progress, and I was raw and aching, straining to make myself fit into something stable when the world around me was constantly morphing.

  He opened his eyes. His lids fluttered as he took in his surroundings. Then he turned to look at me and I felt a rush like when I was a kid and I’d swing so high it seemed like the chains might break. He smiled so wide he looked almost goofy.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “That was really nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  We lay there, staring into
each other’s eyes.

  “Wood,” he said. “I think I might love you.” And then he reached up to touch my bleached spikes, gentle as if he were touching a newborn’s fingers.

  For a moment, I felt a surge of something warm, a kind of peace, but then I was back on those swings again, fear pushing me higher and higher. The trouble was that this time, the chains did break.

  I plummeted to the earth. I went cold again. I went numb.

  “You’d better go before people wake up,” I said, dropping my eyes and pulling back the covers.

  He was almost silent, getting out of bed, slipping on his shoes. He smiled at me, his lips twisted with a quiet kind of pain.

  “Bye,” he said.

  And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING, OUR ALARM DIDN’T go off.

  “Piece of shit,” Helen whined, and threw it across the room. She wasn’t used to objects disobeying her. I’d spent Sunday hiding in the library and wasn’t eager to reenter the world. I pulled on my clothes and sat on my bed, waiting for Helen.

  “Noel’s spending a lot of time with Asta lately,” I said, watching Helen brush her hair.

  “She always does.”

  “No, but this is like more than usual. She seems to be the only one Noel talks to these days.”

  “She talks to me, thank you very much.”

  “It just seems weird to me, spending all that time with a teacher.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t like Asta. Everyone just loves Asta.” She arranged her hair into a neat chignon, then rolled her eyes and started over.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “You don’t like her.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like her.” Helen shrugged. “I just think she’s a phony—all that pseudo-pagan new age crap. I think it’s bullshit.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just think she’s full of shit. Some people are like that, you know—just totally full of shit. But I wouldn’t worry about Noel and Asta. Asta’s her mentor, or whatever.”

  “It’s just that I saw something weird.”

  “What?” Helen faced me.

  “It was right after they took Reilly. When we were all standing around on the lawn, I saw Asta whispering to Noel, and whatever she said, it really upset her.”

  Helen laughed and started re-twisting her hair. “Yeah, I’m sure Mr. Reilly being a murderous psychopath had nothing to do with why Noel was upset.”

  I shrugged. “It just seems like their relationship is a little weird, like unhealthy.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic.”

  “She told me she tells Asta secrets, secrets no one else knows—not even you.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” She snapped the clip into place, nodded at herself, then grabbed the books on her desk.

  “It just seems weird to me to be telling a teacher your secrets,” I said as we headed to class.

  “Cally.” She smiled and punched my shoulder. “You worry way too much. That’s your problem. You have to lighten up. Noel’s fine. Asta’s fine. You know who’s not fine is Reilly. That’s who you should be worried about. That sucker’s gonna fry. Hey, this is me,” she said when we reached the math classrooms.

  “See you,” I said.

  “Fight the power,” she said, raising a fist in the air.

  I headed to English class with a lump in my throat. I hadn’t seen Jack again at all on Sunday. I figured we were both trying to play it cool, but now there was no avoiding him. A slight tingle ran along my arms when I walked in and saw him bent over his book, underlining. He looked up and smiled at me like he wanted something. I nodded to him and took a seat next to Sophie.

  That morning, Ms. Harlow allocated the first half of class to the half-cocked and potentially morbid exercise of writing a memoir from the point of view of the woods, while she quietly cried, scrunched up at her desk like a withered bean. When we’d finished, she didn’t make anyone read their pieces aloud, but instead thrust us headlong into a discussion of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By the time class was over, I was a wreck. I barely made it through the rest of the day.

  Noel was especially quiet during sports that afternoon. For a while now she’d been distant, but that afternoon she was noticeably withdrawn. After signing in, we parted ways and I headed over to the mailboxes, wondering how I was going to get any homework done. I was rounding the corner when I saw Jack in the distance talking to Pigeon. He didn’t see me, and the way he was talking to her seemed unlike him. He leaned in, laughing at her presumably dumb joke. And when she talked to him, she didn’t look like Pigeon. She didn’t make any of her annoying little Pigeon faces, and for the first time, I saw what boys saw in her. She was gorgeous, absolutely radiant when she talked to him, her dark eyes wide with admiration. She tossed her silky hair over her shoulder and turned to walk. He fell in step alongside her, and just before they disappeared around the corner, I saw him place his hand on the small of her back.

  I steadied myself against the mailboxes. For a second, I was filled with a kind of raging jealousy. Was this the girl Jack was seeing? Was I sleeping with Pigeon’s secret boyfriend? Pigeon? Pigeon? But behind the anger, behind the jealousy, there was a cushion of relief. I didn’t like jealousy. I didn’t know how to navigate it, how to understand who I was when it inhabited me. I didn’t understand what I felt for Jack, but it scared me, and I wanted it to stop.

  I needed to clear my mind, so I headed up to the library.

  Carlos was in our spot, staring out the window. He smiled when he saw me.

  “How’s it going?”

  I slumped into my chair and shook my head.

  “That bad?”

  “I’m feeling kind of homicidal right now. Tell me something. Do you think Pigeon’s pretty?”

  “You mean Paloma?”

  “Yeah, Paloma, whatever.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I don’t know how to answer this question. I’m afraid it has something to do with your being homicidal.”

  I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

  “Oh, wait,” he said, “I’ve figured out how to answer it. The answer is: not as pretty as you. Is that correct?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, fuck it,” I said. “Hey, Carlos. Different question. You ever hear of anyone here selling mushrooms?”

  His eyes widened. “Calista, I really don’t think you’re in any shape to take mushrooms right now.”

  “Not for me,” I said, laughing. “I’m just interested.”

  He shrugged. “I hear all sorts of things like that. That’s what I was trying to hint at a while back.”

  “You?” I asked, shocked, leaning forward.

  His cheeks flushed, and he shook his head. I’d never seen him embarrassed before. “God, no. Tanner. Tanner sells them, but he keeps it relatively quiet, unlike his little pot operation.”

  “Tanner sells mushrooms? Really?”

  “Sure. I hear him through the wall.”

  “You don’t remember him selling mushrooms to anyone around the time Iris disappeared, do you?”

  “Of course I do. I remember it well. It was the morning of.”

  “Really? You really remember that? You must have a crazy memory.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not really. I wouldn’t have remembered at all except that it was Iris. It was the last time I saw her.”

  “What?” My head was numb. “Did you just say Tanner sold mushrooms to Iris?”

  “I did, yeah. The day she vanished.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, shaking my head. “Oh my God.”

  “What?”

  What if Reilly hadn’t given Iris the mushrooms, but it had been her decision? She’d decided to take them. This was important. This meant something big. I knew it; I just couldn’t tell what it was.

  “Did you tell the police?” I asked.

  His eyes widened. “Are you insane? No, I didn’t tell the police that one of the most popular
kids on campus is dealing drugs out of his room. Do you have any idea what would happen to someone like me if I did that? Besides, she bought from him all the time. It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Was she buying from him her freshman year?”

  He raised his hands. “I can’t speak to that. I just know what happened last semester. I was living in Stanton House before that.”

  I chewed on my finger a bit, and then I decided to pay Jack Deeker a visit.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, Carlos,” I said, and he waved me off.

  Jack wasn’t in his room, so I climbed over his balcony and grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled:

  Need to call off our “chemistry project.” Going to continue assignment with Alex instead.

  —C

  I headed back to the library. I wanted to ask Carlos more questions about Tanner, but he was gone when I got there. I sat for a moment and stared out the window into the darkness. How had I allowed myself to get so caught up in boys? That wasn’t like me. My grades were crap, and I was no closer to figuring out what had happened to my sister. They were still holding Reilly. There were so many things that didn’t add up. Who had sent me the box? I knew there had to be more to do with it. I knew it held more answers, but I couldn’t figure out how the hell to get to them. Then there was Asta and her recent odd behavior, her lies about being out in the woods the night my sister died. If they hadn’t died in the fire, then what had happened to them? Had they really gone out of the house of their own volition, or had someone come in and led them away?

  The answer was close, but it was like there was a thick fog obscuring it. I decided to go back to my room and have another look at the puzzle box. Something bothered me about that logo. I knew there had to be something more to it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Those letters: upside-down Y, O, T, backward E, I. Could they be another code? An anagram, maybe? Mentally, I tried to rearrange the letters, but even if I assumed that the first letter was a Y and that the E wasn’t backward, the letters didn’t generate a single English word. I was sure of it.