At Woods Edge

by E. M. Fitch

  The rest of the group was quiet, jerking out of their collective awkward stupors when a group of junior guys burst out onto the deck to dig around in a nearby cooler.

  Cassie blinked back the moisture pooling in her eyes and looked up to the stars, hoping to keep the tears at bay. It was a cool night, the stars visible as just a smattering of light behind thin clouds. It was bad enough that Ryan said the words, saying them in front of their friends like that was just plain humiliating. The junior guys found the drinks they wanted and headed back inside, the door slamming in their wake. In the sudden quiet, all Cassie could hear was the laughter from the river.

  “Sorry, Cass,” Jon said eventually, drawing her attention.

  “I really can explain it all,” Cassie responded softly. “He won’t listen.”

  No one answered. She wasn’t really sure she expected them to anyway. Samantha was just too drunk. Rebecca had planted herself so staunchly on Cassie’s side that it wouldn’t matter what she said, Rebecca would back her up. Cassie was surprised Jon said anything at all, especially considering how rocky their friendship had been at the beginning of the year, when he had been passing around the picture of her and Aidan at the party in the woods.

  “He’s hurting,” Jon said, sounding uncomfortable. “He really care—”

  “Thanks, Jon,” Cassie interrupted, cutting him off before he could finish the word. She didn’t think she could stand to hear it uttered in the past tense. “Sorry, guys. I’m no good for tonight.”

  “Want me to take you home?” Rebecca offered quietly. Cassie was torn, wanting that more than anything but not wanting to ask.

  “I can drive you later, Becca,” Jon offered. “If you want to let Harris have your car.”

  Rebecca walked her all the way down the driveway to her car. Cassie was so angry and hurt, that it wasn’t until she twisted the key in the ignition that she realized the fight with Ryan had made her completely forget about the creatures who were probably watching her. The headlights flooded the woods in front of her, highlighting Rebecca in harsh light. Cassie rolled the window down.

  “You’re going right back inside, right?” Cassie asked, suddenly anxious. Rebecca nodded. A small group of partygoers burst from the walkway to the house out onto the driveway. The group opened the trunk to one of the parked cars and dragged a case of beer from its interior. In the harsh glare of Cassie’s headlights, she could just make them out: all boys, none that she recognized, two wore baseball jackets and one wore a bright red hat.

  “Right back to the deck, I promise,” Rebecca said, shouting a bit over the rumble of the engine. “I’ll keep an eye on Joanie.”

  It was probably better that she was leaving, Cassie thought to herself as Rebecca joined the group heading back toward the party. Maybe Aidan and the rest would follow her home and leave the other high schoolers alone. On the ride home, more to distract herself from her anger toward Ryan than anything else, Cassie’s mind drifted back to the pond. She let her thoughts soak in Corey’s words, as haunting as they were.

  Worse. Aidan was worse than Jude.

  When Corey had first said it, Cassie felt her body rebel against the knowledge. Corey’s frame had wavered in the clear, bright air, the lines of his face shifting as Cassie’s mind reeled.

  “Judoc likes to amuse himself. The girls are playthings for him,” Corey explained in a soft voice. “But my brother doesn’t like to play. He gets attached. When he finds something he wants, he is relentless.”

  Cassie had to swallow hard, squeeze her eyes shut, and force her body to calm down. The trembling had felt out of her control and the desire to run, somewhere, anywhere, had been almost overpowering. When she was able to look up again, Corey was gone. Laney was left alone on the bench, her small hand reaching toward Cassie.

  Cassie had gripped her friend’s fingers hard, searching for a lifeline. Laney tangled their hands together, her thumb stroking comforting circles on the meat of Cassie’s palm. “It’s going to be okay, you know,” she whispered.

  “It’s not, Laney,” Cassie had said, trying to speak through the burn that was tightening her throat. “I don’t want this, and he won’t leave me alone.”

  Cassie had leaned back into the bench, letting her eyes wander into the trees that surrounded them. Beyond the pond, she saw them. Faces peered back at her, some familiar, some not, all lined up in varying heights at the edge of the water. The foliage hid most of their bodies and the faces that peeked out all looked familiar but different. The redhead from the coffee shop was there, smiling. Another woman stood as well, her long dark hair reached past her waistline. There were men, staring at her speculatively; and Corey, his face lined in concern. Their reflections shimmered in the ripples, pale, luminous faces that watched her, waiting.

  “Can they take me? If they wanted to?” she remembered whispering to Laney. Her friend’s hand slipped from her grasp. She stood to face Cassie.

  “The question you should be asking,” Laney said gently as she backed away, “is why wouldn’t you want them to?”

  Laney’s words echoed in Cassie’s brain now, playing over and over. They were said with such softness, a sureness, as though Laney was right and always had been and she was just waiting for Cassie to see it. She expected Cassie to see it. Cassie didn’t. Even after Ryan’s rejection, even after the emptiness that plagued her, making her crave quiet and solitude. Laney was still wrong, they were wrong. Cassie would never join them.

  Her mother’s car wasn’t there when Cassie pulled into the driveway. Her father looked surprised when she opened the door.

  “That was quick,” he said, looking up at her from his place on the couch. He was laying back, a pillow behind his head. He paused the horror movie he was watching, the killer frozen in the act of running full tilt at the screen with a machete over his head. Cassie shrugged.

  “I wasn’t feeling up to it,” she answered. “Becca lent me her car.” Cassie waved goodnight and took off up the stairs, wanting nothing more than the comfort of her bed.

  That night Laney’s face swam in and out of her dreams, her lines shifting and changing. Her mouth opened and closed on empty words that meant nothing, platitudes and hollow reassurances that were first whispered and later growled. The swell of her belly expanded grotesquely, ballooned in dangerous ways before bursting in a kaleidoscope of colors. All colors, but mostly red. Red and then black and then nothing but whispers, first in Laney’s familiar tone and then in Aidan’s, dark and terrible.

  The door to her room slammed open, banging into the wall. Cassie gasped and sat up, pushing hair out of her face. Aidan still taunted her from her sleep. Panic reared in her chest as her eyes sought out shapes in the dim light of her bedroom. The sunlight streaming from the hall was blinding, the person standing in the doorframe was a silhouette in the early morning light.

  “Were you home all night?”

  Cassie relaxed as her mother’s voice, edgy and worried though it was, came from the silhouette. Cathy Harris moved into the bedroom, striding toward the window and pulling the curtains wide. Cassie cringed away from the rush of sunlight.

  “No,” Cassie rasped, sitting back against her headboard. “You knew that. I went to a party.”

  “After that, I mean,” her mother pressed.

  “After I got home?” Cassie clarified, clearing her throat. “I was here. Weren’t you home, too?”

  “You didn’t sneak out?” Cathy asked, standing over her daughter’s bed. Her hand darted out and Cassie moved away from it, not letting her mother rest her shaking palm on her forehead.

  “No! Why? What’s wrong?”

  “The party last night,” her mother started, watching Cassie for her reaction, “in the woods … ”

  “It was at Gwen Spiro’s house,” Cassie corrected. “Is that what you mean?” Ryan’s angry face swam in her vision, his shoulders taut as he walked away from her. Aidan’s laugh touched at the edge of her mind, like a high-pi
tched ringing that wouldn’t go away.

  “A lot of kids got sick.”

  “Oh?” Cassie frowned and touched her ear, rubbing absently. She didn’t understand what the big deal was. So some kids came down with a stomach bug, who cared? Her eyes sought out the phone she always left on her bedside table. The screen was dead. She had forgotten to charge it last night.

  “They’re in the hospital, Cassie.”

  “What? Who?” Cassie asked, staring at her mother.

  “You were here? After you came home, I mean. All night?”

  “Mom! Yes, I was. Who’s sick?” Cassie asked. She pushed her comforter away and put her feet on her floor. Faces of her classmates flashed through her thoughts: Rebecca, Joanie, Lara, Jon, and Samantha. Ryan.

  Curses flew around inside her skull as anxiety spun coils in her chest. She grabbed her charger off her dresser and moved back to the side of her bed, bending low to plug in her phone. It vibrated in her hand, the screen lighting to show it was charging.

  When she stood again her mother was watching her, sitting on the corner of Cassie’s bed. She patted the space beside her. Cassie sat.

  “A bunch of kids were brought to the ER last night,” her mother started. “My co-worker called this morning, wanted to check and make sure you were home safe last night.”

  “But how sick were they?” Cassie pushed. “Like, puking? Or … ”

  “Like might-not-wake-up kind of sick,” her mother answered, her eyes locked on her daughter. Cassie felt her shoulders drop. Her mother reached out a quick hand and pushed some stray hair behind her ear.

  “How?”

  “Sounds like they were experimenting with a new kind of drug,” her mother said, taking a deep breath. “Strange effects though. Some of the kids weren’t too bad off, fainting, dizzy spells, dehydrated like crazy. Whatever drug it was, it doesn’t sound familiar to me, might be a street mix. Your dad might hear more through the school soon.”

  “But who’s still in the hospital? Do you know?”

  Cassie’s mother paused, her brow furrowed as she watched her daughter. “A boy named Mark DeRubertis. And two girls, Lara Mitchell and Samantha Reynolds.”

  Cassie left her phone on her bedside table, a useless hunk of uncharged glass and metal, and flew down the stairs. Her mother insisted on driving to the hospital. Cassie’s mother made her daughter wait the few minutes it took for her to change into scrubs and find her ID badge. Cassie pulled her hair up into a sloppy bun as she paced the hall, turning to check her face in the mirror.

  Lara and Samantha had been together, she knew that. But Mark? None of them really hung around each other, and especially not enough to be experimenting with new drugs together. Cassie wondered where they even got the drugs. Nothing had been going around when she was there. Alcohol, sure, that normally did float around the parties, but drugs usually didn’t. Especially not bizarre street combinations that would land anyone in the hospital. Her mother ran down the stairs a moment later, jingling keys between her fingers. Cassie followed her out the open front door.

  The hospital looked so normal, not like what Cassie had been expecting. She had expected the news vans and cameramen, like the day she and Laney had barged into the ER looking for her mother to tell them that no, it wasn’t Jessica’s body that had been found on the side of the road.

  It was different this time. It wasn’t something preying on school children, it was school children acting like idiots, taking drugs they all should have known could hurt them. Cassie couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She didn’t know Mark DeRubertis well. He was a junior. She remembered him being there at Jessica’s funeral, passing the flask around and toasting their lost classmate. She thought he might play on the baseball team, though she wasn’t even sure if that was Varsity or Junior Varsity. She definitely couldn’t remember seeing him last night, though she hadn’t really been looking. If he was a closet druggie, she had no idea.

  Lara and Samantha were not drug users. Cassie knew them well enough to be able to say that with confidence. Samantha had been drunk at the party, but Lara wasn’t. Either they took something not understanding what it was, or it was slipped to them, of that Cassie was certain. This meant that there was someone else responsible, someone who had brought the drugs to the party.

  Though none of that mattered just now, not when her friends were laying sick in a hospital bed. Cassie thought back to the younger guys she had seen, the ones with the strange pink hats. She wondered who else had landed in the hospital.

  Cathy Harris left her daughter at the entrance to the hospital’s front lobby, dashing ahead into the ER with a whispered, “I’ll come check on you as soon as I can.” Jon was the first person Cassie saw when she entered the ER waiting room. She ran straight to him, throwing her arms around him in a tight embrace. He gripped her hard, pulling her up to her tiptoes.

  “Any news?” she whispered after Jon started to release her. She moved back on her heels, looking up at him. He was a mess. He looked like he hadn’t slept all night. His hair was disheveled, pushed back from his forehead, his eyes bloodshot, skin splotchy and red in places. He shook his head.

  “Nothing. Cass, I don’t even know how it happened,” he started before he broke off, one large palm coming up and cradling his forehead.

  “Mom’s in the ER,” Cassie said softly. “She’ll come if she hears anything.” Jon nodded as Ryan stepped up next to him, Cassie hadn’t noticed him there when she first walked in. He steered Jon to a nearby seat, grimacing at Cassie in acknowledgement.

  Her eyes swept the waiting room. There was a clump of students that Cassie recognized, but didn’t really know, all sitting together in one corner. Along a wall opposite them, a single woman waited with a young child. Rebecca sat across the room, next to a woman Cassie recognized as her mother. She patted Jon’s shoulder as she moved toward them.

  “Hey, Cass,” Rebecca murmured, standing to hug her friend.

  “Jon said he hasn’t heard anything,” Cassie said, after greeting Rebecca and her mother.

  “I know, we’ve been waiting all night. Sam’s parents are with her, but—”

  Just then the door to the hall opened with a bang, a distraught woman, still in what Cassie assumed were her pajamas walked through with her head held high. Her face was blotchier than Jon’s and the skin around her eyes was especially puffy and red. Her hands shook and she brought them in front of her. She clenched her fingers together as she strode briskly forward.

  “That’s Mark’s mom,” someone muttered. Cassie heard another whisper from behind her, “Mrs. DeRubertis.”

  The woman didn’t speak to anyone, crossing the room without making eye contact, and opening the heavy wooden door that led to the ER triage area. Noise swept into the still waiting room, a barrage of nurse murmurs and beeping machines, the sound of a curtain being drawn between gurneys. A confused looking older gentleman turned when he saw Mrs. DeRubertis, speeding to his side. She gripped his arm and led him through the waiting area and back out the door from which she had first come.

  The wooden door slammed shut in their wake.

  A soft curse flew from Cassie’s lips. She moved on wooden legs to sit next to Rebecca. Her friend stretched an open hand over, and Cassie gripped the offered fingers hard.

  It was several hours before anyone came to talk to the people sitting in the waiting room. Most of the lingering students had left, the classmates they had been waiting for already discharged and headed home to sleep off whatever had been bothering them. Cassie couldn’t leave. She was there, not just for Jon and Rebecca, both of whom looked exhausted, but for the three people laying upstairs with their families. It didn’t feel right to leave without hearing any word of how they were doing.

  Ryan paced the back of the waiting room, his eyes darting from the closed doors to his friend. Jon hadn’t changed position in over an hour. If it wasn’t for the subtle rocking, Cassie would have assumed he was asleep. Rebecca was
nearly passed out next to her. Her mother had already tried to take her home but Rebecca had refused, standing and pacing next to Ryan for a bit to wake herself up. Cassie had told her to go, said she would wait it out for the both of them. Rebecca merely shook her head and sat back down.

  Her fingers were limp in Cassie’s by now though.

  “I’ll be right back,” Cassie murmured, letting go of Rebecca’s fingers. The girl murmured her understanding, leaning toward her mother and putting her head on her shoulder. Cassie crossed the room to Ryan, who jerked when she reached out and touched his elbow. Cassie raised her eyebrows, looking at him. He grimaced in apology.

  “Coffee run?” she asked stiffly. He nodded, looking from her to Jon.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, man,” he said, knocking a closed fist lightly into Jon’s shoulder. His friend waved him off without looking up.

  Cassie led the way through the waiting room doors and down a long corridor. When she was a child, the hospital had always been an imposing building full of secrets. It was a place her mother saw sick people, a place in which her mother was sometimes threatened. There was a morgue, crying, screaming, and an overhanging threat of death. Her child’s mind knew all this, but not how to process it. The smells were strange and pungent, her mother always smelt of them when she came home. Harsh and antiseptic, she would tell Cassie not to hug her yet because she needed to wash first. Scary. What strange illness could be on her mother’s skin that could get her daughter sick, but not her?

  The hospital still unnerved Cassie. All the stories she had heard inadvertently over the years, the strange accidents that brought people into the ER—the car wrecks, the illnesses—they were all happening, right now, behind the closed doors. Cassie tried not to think about it, tried not to think that her own classmates, her friends, were above her at this very moment, in the inner sanctum of the large building, the ICU, where only the sickest people went.