‘That’s Ray, my husband,’ Maeve tells me. It’s OK, she mouths silently. Like that’s going to make me feel better about the fact that Ray definitely does not want me here.
I move to Bo’s side while everyone else stares. On my way, I have to brush past the eldest girl. She’s fifteen, maybe sixteen.
‘Raven?’ I guess. I smile at her, but she doesn’t smile back or answer me.
She’s dark-haired and dark-eyed and obviously has some opinions about my expensive clothes. They are not charitable opinions, but if memory serves, when you’re fifteen very few thoughts you have are charitable ones. She’s wearing a hand-sewn patch dress made out of what looks to be several different T-shirts. It’s cool, actually, but it’s too soon to compliment her. My hiking sandals have caught her eye, despite the fact she’s decided to loathe me as a decadent capitalist.
Hovering close in her shadow, and obviously taking her cues from Raven, is another, much younger girl. She looks about six or seven, I guess. I smile at her and give a little wave.
‘That’s Sol,’ Bo tells me. Sol’s holding the youngest and hikes her up a little higher and tighter as a way to look over and check with Raven if it’s OK if she smiles back at me. It isn’t, so she doesn’t.
‘And that’s Moth,’ Bo says, his fondness for the youngest apparent in the way his voice softens.
Moth smiles at me from her sister’s hip, with a grubby finger stuck in between her baby teeth. Cutest kid ever. She’s practically edible. Rosy cheeks, big pouty red lips like Bo’s, and the same blonde hair that runs on the father’s side. She’s only wearing cotton shorts and a handmade necklace of shells and twine, like some ocean sprite.
The two boys who were fighting earlier blush and smile, then frown, and generally don’t know how to act in front of me. Both of them are trying really hard not to look at my legs. The bigger one, Karl, has a blue bruise forming under his right eye. I guess Aspen is a leftie like Bo. They’re both dark like their mother, and I don’t know if it’s because my first sighting of them was when they were tangled up together or not, but I’ll probably always confuse the two of them unless I see them standing right next to each other.
Before the silence gets overwhelming, Maeve steps in and gives everyone a task. Bo pulls me aside, his eyes wide and anxious.
‘You OK?’ he asks.
‘Of course,’ I reply, facing him, grabbing both his hands, and leaning towards him. I need to fill up on him. ‘Your mom is amazing.’ His face breaks into a huge grin.
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Later,’ I say. And I will tell him everything I told his mother, and then some. Just not right now. ‘Are you OK?’
He nods, but his eyes shoot over to his father and Raven, who are both watching us with narrowed eyes.
Maeve saves us all from another long, awkward silence by doling out more chores for everyone, and in moments the freshly stir-fried veggies are divvied up into little wooden bowls with rice and some kind of spicy sauce that is just divine. We all take mismatched chopsticks and sit cross-legged on the ground together. Maeve starts asking her children questions about their day and lets me sink a bit into the background. I stay close to Bo’s big body, sharing his silhouette.
The younger kids get swept up in their own stories and forget I’m there, tucked into Bo’s shadow. Soon I’m listening to an exciting recounting of Karl and Aspen’s hunt at dawn this morning, and how they came across a puma that was tracking the same herd of deer as them. They’re good storytellers, and the rest of the family listens completely. No one is waiting for a text message or thinking about something that might be more interesting than this. They’re just listening.
A part of me is aware of the danger that Karl and Aspen were in this morning, but since no one else reacts with alarm, I don’t say anything. What do I know about pumas? I don’t even know if they’re the same thing as cougars or mountain lions or if all three of them are different kinds of cats. I think pumas are the all-black ones, but seriously – what the hell do I know?
As Sol takes over recounting her day, Moth makes her way over to Bo and scoots herself into his lap. He makes room for her, holding her absently against him, like his lap is her personal story nook.
Dinner flies by, and before I know it I’m standing over a tin washbasin doing the dishes. I choose to wash, and Bo dries. Flush with calories, Sol and Aspen are running around, tickling Moth and howling like wild animals. Under cover of the din, Bo and I stand as close to each other as we can, our arms touching. His lips are set in a small smile, and his eyes are soft. It’s gorgeous torture, just standing here.
When we’re done, Maeve asks Bo to get more firewood from the pile before he walks me home. As soon as Bo is gone, Ray approaches me, and I realize Bo and I have been strategically split up for something. Maeve is good.
‘Do you have any food allergies? Eggs, nuts, milk, shellfish?’ Ray asks.
‘N-no,’ I stammer.
‘This will help with the withdrawals,’ he says gruffly. He places something in my hand. I look down and see it’s a small leather pouch. ‘Take one in the morning instead of that poison they’re forcing on you. Let it dissolve under your tongue,’ he tells me. His stony expression gives way to caring for a brief moment. I see Bo written all over him. ‘Ativan is highly addictive. Quitting won’t be easy.’
I open the pouch and see a pile of tiny white pills that look like beads. ‘Thank you,’ I say, still not sure if I’m going to use them or not.
A part of me wants to know what it would be like to feel again. Another, louder part of me is screaming that going off my meds without a doctor’s supervision is about the stupidest thing anyone can do. People can die doing that.
But Bo’s father is a doctor. While I don’t think he’d advise me to do something that could kill me, he and his family do have outlier views on Western medicine that I don’t agree with completely. I respect his and Maeve’s holistic approach, but I’ve got problems that can’t be fixed with some essential oil and a better diet.
Bo joins us cautiously. Ray turns to him and says, ‘You should be getting her back now,’ and he walks away.
Bo takes my hand and starts to lead me away. I stop him for a moment so I can say goodbye to Maeve. She gives me a hug.
‘We’ll be seeing you soon,’ she says with a knowing smile.
‘Definitely,’ I reply, although she seems to be the only one inviting me back. My eyes flick over to Ray and Raven, just to make sure they are as disappointed by Maeve’s invitation as I think they’ll be. Disappointment doesn’t cover it, though. They look downright dismayed. If I weren’t on so many drugs, it would hurt.
Everyone pauses to watch Bo and me go, and then, after we’ve crested the rise that obscures Bo’s camp from any approaching view, piping voices rise up in question and are hushed before I can understand what’s being asked.
‘Was that OK?’ Bo asks me after a while of walking in silence.
‘Yeah, except for one thing.’ I wait for him to turn towards me anxiously as we walk to say, ‘You never told me your full name was Rainbow.’
I’m about to tell him my full name, but his face darkens.
‘Someone told me once it was a girl’s name. A stupid girl’s name was what he said, actually.’
‘Who told you that?’ I ask, but Bo shakes his head.
‘I had a friend from town once,’ he says quietly. ‘I thought he was a friend, but I guess I wasn’t cool enough for him.’
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘We always did everything together. Fishing, tracking, hunting,’ Bo says. ‘Then when we were thirteen, it changed. He didn’t want to be friends any more.’
I see Bo’s face flush red with humiliation. He’s so easy to read. It’s like his face is a beach, and everything swirling around in that ocean inside of him washes up there eventually. So, this is why he thinks I’ll find out he’s strange and cut him off.
‘What happened?’ I repeat, louder
. I’m angry now because I can see it all like a sad little movie in my head.
Two young boys meet out in the woods. They become best friends. And then, one day, the city boy starts caring about clothes and who sits with whom in school, and all the bullshit that was my bread and butter not too long ago, and Bo is nothing to him any more. And some dickhead breaks the biggest heart I’ve ever stumbled upon in my ridiculous excuse for a life.
‘Who was he?’ I ask.
Bo looks over at me, suppressing a smile. ‘I’m sorry I brought it up,’ he says gently. ‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK,’ I snap. I realize I’m yelling. ‘Just tell me his name and he’ll be the sorry one,’ I promise.
Bo looks troubled. ‘I believe you,’ he says. ‘That’s why I’m not going to tell you.’
Then he’s kissing me, and I can’t be angry any more because my thighs are on fire. How does he do it? I mean, really. How does he light me up when I’m such black hole? I’m on the same dosage they give PTSD war vets. I’m supposed to be emotionally bulletproof.
But I can feel Bo. He’s so real. So present. Every sound I make, it’s the first time he’s ever heard anything like it. Every place he touches me, it’s the first time he’s ever felt that.
It’d be so easy to slip into symbiosis, just one body instead of two. It would be the most natural thing in the world. Like coral – half animal, half plant. Me, red in tooth and claw, and Bo, green and open to the wide sky. The line between us is already blurred in every way but the physical. He and I were always meant to share a body, I think.
Still, I stop him.
‘Wait,’ I whisper, pushing his hips away from mine. ‘I’ve never done this before.’
He’s flushed, and pale, and shivering, and sweating, and coiled tight, and loose as melted wax, and vulnerable, and powerful, and pretty much the whole world and everything in it to me right now.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers, pulling back. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No.’ I roll my eyes a little. He could kick me down a mountain, and it wouldn’t hurt me. I’m frigging Teflon. ‘I just think, maybe not here, right now,’ I say, looking pointedly at the leaf litter we’ve stirred up around us and the sticks poking us pretty much everywhere we’ve managed to shimmy out of our clothes.
Bo laughs sheepishly as he sits up and pulls on his shirt. The getting-mostly-naked bit happened fast. Like, really fast. I think it scared him. And now I’m worried. I don’t want anything about him to change, especially not the way he throws himself at me with a boldness that can only come from utter innocence. I love the way he’s shy-not-shy.
‘Look, Bo, it’s not that I don’t want to,’ I begin, but his head suddenly spins around and his whole body tenses.
‘Shh,’ he hisses, and goes still. He listens intently for a moment, his eyes scanning, and one of his hands stretched out to me.
Moments pass. His tension dissipates but doesn’t disappear.
‘Come on,’ he says hastily. He helps me up to my feet, and we hurry on our way.
I know enough to stay quiet until we’re nearly back to there.
‘What was it?’ I ask. ‘That noise you heard.’
Bo shakes his head. ‘Not sure.’ He shrugs and lets out a long breath. ‘Maybe nothing.’ He looks up at the canopy. ‘It’s almost sunset.’
‘I’ll have to run,’ I say, finally noticing a shift in the light after so many days out here. ‘You should get back, too. I don’t want you stumbling around after dark.’
Bo opens his mouth to argue, but he can’t. It simply isn’t safe to go hiking at night with no flashlight. Even with a flashlight, it’s extremely dangerous.
‘Bye,’ I say, but Bo catches my wrist and pulls me back towards him.
‘I know you want to,’ he says. It takes me a moment to recall that he’s addressing what I said before we were interrupted.
‘Oh, you know, do you?’ I say huffily.
His smile is almost cocky, but it isn’t. It’s confident. The difference is ego. Bo has none.
‘I’ll go as slow or as fast as you want,’ he tells me. ‘You’re in charge.’
Well, now I can’t be mad at him. Especially since he remembered what I’d said long after I’d even forgotten about it. Bo listens. He’s a better listener than anyone I’ve ever met.
We kiss for longer than we should. By the time we make plans to meet back here the day after tomorrow, even this long summer day has had it.
‘Be careful,’ he tells me sternly. ‘If you see or hear anyone on the way back, get off the path and go around them. No one out here after dark is out here for a good reason.’
I’m about to crack a joke about him and me being out here after dark, but I can tell he’s in no mood for that. I nod and plunge through the icy river, already sprinting by the time I reach the far bank.
27 JULY
So here it is. Morning. Five amber-coloured bottles with childproof caps sit in a neat row on the shelf in the medicine cabinet behind my bathroom mirror. And a leather pouch full of don’t-know-what sits in my hand.
I’m already drowning, like every morning.
No, actually I think I’m burning. But it’s not where I am right now that scares me. It’s not that this, as uncomfortable as it is, is unbearable. It’s the thought that it might become unbearable that makes me think I should take my meds. I am an ant under a beam of light that will only grow brighter and hotter.
But taking my meds is what I did yesterday. And the day before. And I’m not better. I still haven’t paid for what I’ve done.
So here it is. Decision time.
OK. This is a terrible idea. No one in the history of the world has ever had something good happen to them when they either started or stopped taking prescription medication without a doctor’s supervision. But maybe Ray, the radical hippie genius in the woods, knows more than those quacks I had at the hospital. The doctors at the hospital didn’t really want to help me. They just wanted me to obey them. One of the possible side effects of clozapine is sudden death, and those doctors put me on it. On the other hand, Ray seems like a zealot when it comes to holistic healing. His beliefs could be clouding his judgement.
Stopping my meds could kill me. Continuing on my meds could kill me. I have no idea who to trust any more.
Well, fuck it. I’m just going to be chopping onions and scrubbing pots at the shelter. I don’t need to be anything but what I really am today. Tomorrow I might choose something else, but today – just today – I’m going to take the Gandalf pills from Bo’s renegade genius doctor father, and if my heart stops, I’m pretty sure they’ll have a kit at the shelter to revive me. In fact, a drug rehab shelter is probably the best place for me to be while I come down off my meds.
I try to think about nothing while I let the little white bead dissolve under my tongue, but the truth is I’m thinking about Bo. I’m wondering if I’m doing this for me or for him.
The answer will determine my success, but I honestly can’t tell right now, with Bo looming so large in my mind. I hope it’s for me, but I’m pretty sure it’s because I want to be the real me for him. That might still count as a good thing, though. This is the first time I’ve wanted to be the real me for any reason in a long, long time. Maybe ever.
I go downstairs to have breakfast with my grandparents. Is the sun always this bright?
I drink a cup of coffee and try to follow along with the conversation, but it’s like I’m only catching one in three words. The rest of the time, I’m fighting the urge to simply leave. They are ridiculous. How is it we’ve never talked about my time in the hospital? Worse – we’ve never spoken about why I was there to begin with. We just talk about the crap other people are saying about each other. And the weather.
They aren’t evil. They are pleasant people. We always have pleasant conversations. They were even pleasant when they agreed to let me stay with them, even though they knew it was because I had made myself into a pariah.
Here’
s the problem with always acting like everything is pleasant: zero accountability. My mother may be schizophrenic, but that’s not why she’s such a disaster. She grew up in a place where anything less than pleasant was hushed up and locked away, rather than dealt with openly.
My dad is the exact same way – when he’s around. He doesn’t do complicated or hard. If things get messy, he leaves. I think my mom chose him because that’s what she was used to. Or at least, that’s what she was used to manipulating. Not that it’s been better for her in the long run. My mother never became a fully functioning human being because she never learned to itemize her bullshit and call it her own.
And neither did I. Until I found myself in boiling hot water for the first time, and it was sink or swim. Of course I drowned. Or burned. Still haven’t decided which metaphor I’m going for on this one.
‘I’ve really got to get going,’ I say, standing suddenly.
My grandparents look at me, shocked. I have no idea what I just interrupted, but it’s totally awkward. They were saying something about the sheriff and the investigation? And then something about ‘those druggies out there in the woods’, I think. Wait. Did they say something about another body found in the woods?
‘Did I mention that I’m doing inventory now at the shelter?’ I add as an excuse for my hasty departure.
‘Yes,’ Grandma replies. ‘Several times.’ Her eyes widen anxiously.
‘I’m kidding,’ I say, nudging her shoulder. ‘I know I’ve told you; I’m just reminding you how awesome I am at chopping onions.’ I smile, but she still looks hesitant. ‘I’ll see you guys later,’ I say breezily as I hurry out to the shed to get my bike.
It’s rather a long bike ride to the shelter from where I live with my grandparents, but I’ve never minded it. I didn’t get many chances to ride bikes in New York City, so I’ve always seen it as a leisurely activity. Something you do in Central Park on a carefree day when you’re feeling extra whimsical.
Today the wind on my face is soothing. The exertion keeps my mind in one place instead of scattered across a million different narratives. I press down on the pedals and feel my breath go in and out, and that is enough to keep me focused for now.
What She Found in the Woods Page 10