Laurel 

Friday, May 12th; Saturday, May 13th

Found: Five lost dogs; twelve Scrabble tiles; a scattering of baby teeth

Holly was only grounded for a couple of days. When she came into the forest with us on Friday, Jude stood at the top of our shrine of lost things and spread his arms wide. He said grandly, “Look at this. Look at us! We are the finders; we are the keepers; we are the guardians of the lost and found!”

Holly clapped and Ash crowed. Jude stared at me and waited for my applause, but I just stood and watched him. Did the others not realize how pretentious he sounded? Did they not understand that we weren’t the guardians of anything, and that if it was because of us that these lost things were appearing, then we’d clearly done something very wrong?

I think we all believed it now, that this was happening because of the spell. As if our sudden belief in magic was another found thing. Every time we walked into the forest, we’d find something new. We’d started to gather them in jars. Vases of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Baskets of odd socks. Pint glasses full of hairpins. Jude had started finding things, too. He stood in the forest; the found things we’d gathered surrounded him like a dragon’s hoard and he was the beast in the middle. We were wood nymphs circling him. It’s like we’d forgotten that we were the ones who cast the spell, not him.

I kept asking where his parents were. I kept asking where he lived. He said, “Small talk, small talk,” and he waved my words away. He said, “Why don’t you ask the real questions, Laurel? The questions with fire. The questions that matter.”

So I asked him, “Where do you go with Ash when she sneaks out to see you in the middle of the night? What do you do?”

Ash’s cheeks flamed the color of her hair. Holly’s eyes were huge in the shade of the forest. They turned on me with so much reproach, but I only asked the question.

Jude, for his part, laughed. “That’s more like it,” he said with relish. “That’s the fire I’m looking for.” But he didn’t answer and I didn’t ask again.

I wanted to say something to Holly, and even to Ash. I wanted to apologize, or maybe warn them against him, maybe tell them that they deserved so much more, and better. Maybe they also deserved a better friend than me. But we are so rarely without him now. Even alone in Holly’s bedroom, her patchwork covers pulled up to our chins, it’s like he is there with us. We bend our heads together in class, but somehow he’s there, too. Our hair doesn’t tangle together anymore. The only strands I brush out at night are my own.

We were a coven; we were a crowd. We were a forest; we were a three-headed dog. Now all I want is a minute alone with the two of them, without feeling his breath hot on my neck.

Holly’s been losing weight. I can tell by the bones of her wrists and shoulders, even though she never knots her shirt anymore, doesn’t take off her kneesocks or tuck her skirt into her underwear when she climbs. She wears her scarf all the time now, wrapped so many times around her white throat, it’s like a blanket. I don’t know how she stands the heat.

Holly’s been losing her voice. Her words have lowered to a whisper.

Holly has lost her heart, but haven’t we all? Ash’s hand in the back pocket of Jude’s jeans, her laugh loud every time he speaks. And even me. It’s like my eyes always know where he’ll be. I argue and I roll my eyes at his pretentious words, but I want him to think highly of me. I want him to see my straight spine, my sharp teeth, and I want him to fear my bite but desire it.

I should tear this page out. I’m going to. Crumple it, bury it, make sure it stays lost.

Ash and Holly can’t know this: Last night I waited until all my sisters had gone to bed and I snuck out—the youngest dancing princess alone without a ball. I tied a flashlight to my handlebars and I rode to the oak tree. The rain had washed out the world, and the wind had swept the clouds in under the rug, and the sky was all speckles of stars and the moon, glowing. I didn’t need the flashlight after all.

Jude was there, waiting for me.

Down in the deeper forest he kissed me, pressed up against the body of a tree. I dug my fingers into the trunk so as not to claw his clothes off. My hands came away filled with Scrabble tiles. I opened my palms to show them to him and he picked out two letters: L and J. He stuck them onto the soft bark of the tree and took my wrists in his hands, turned them so that the rest of the letters rained onto the mossy ground. If they spelled anything, the words were lost in the darkness.

My hands, now empty, ached to be filled. They clutched his T-shirt of their own accord and pulled it over his head. He kissed me harder. My hands grabbed at his hair, clawed their way down his back, hooked at the waistband of his jeans, and pulled him fast against me. I could feel every pulse point in his body as my own. Burn, burn, burn.

Then somehow my T-shirt was off, my bra unclasped, my back against the tree and pressing so hard against the bark, I’m marked by it still. His hands holding my face, his palms either side of my neck, his thumbs making paths down my breastbone, his fingers splayed over my breasts. His lips left mine and followed his hands, down, down, a chain of kisses, kisses like pearls, like tears. My mouth was open, my eyes closed, my breath heavy in the silence.

I only opened my eyes when I felt his hands at the buttons of my jeans, and when I looked down I saw that he was naked. It wasn’t like when we swam in the lake, laughing, eyes averted but also drawn to each other’s bodies, beer bottles in hand and water all around. It wasn’t like that at all. It was dark but I saw everything, felt everything. The moonlight shone through the leaves and lit up our skin and the Scrabble tiles on the ground around us. As he took off the rest of my clothes, I could see the letters: the L that fell from where he stuck it on the tree, an A, an H. He took my hand and guided it down to where he was hard against me, and I looked up into the tree to see if the J was still there, stuck on with sap. He started to pull me away from the tree, to lie me down on the letters and the leaves, but my friends’ initials stared up at me and all at once I wanted to be anywhere but there, anywhere but there with him.

Suddenly I was cold, and the forest felt dirty. Suddenly I didn’t want to be naked anymore. I pulled my clothes back on without saying anything and still he kissed me. He ran his hands over me even over my clothes. He left bite marks on my T-shirt. I kissed him until I had the courage to turn away. I rode home shakily. He stayed in the forest. I realize now I’ve never seen him out of it.

It was on the road home that I noticed the dogs. Big brown Labradors, one every few miles, walking toward the forest. They were old and slow. Something about them made me shiver.

Then, today, after her Saturday morning bridge club, Mom told me that people have been finding things all over town. The lost things aren’t staying within the boundaries of the forest anymore. They spill into the lake water, trinkets tinkling on rocks and hairpins trapping frogs’ legs together. Anglers catch brown trout heavy with more than their bones; when they gut them, they find car keys and small change in their bellies. In the nearby fields, horses rip up rings and earring backs with tufts of grass. Odd socks and the glass bulbs of Christmas lights are resurfacing in cow pies.

Then, this morning, a scattering of baby teeth appeared in a clearing. Jude and Ash laughed when they saw them, talked about the tooth fairy and coins under pillows, but Holly and I shivered. We buried the teeth. Hands deep in the soil of the forest, we decided to stay away from the woods.

I knew it then. I knew this was what we’d done. We hadn’t made a sacrifice. We hadn’t traded something we didn’t want to lose for something we wanted found. We got our diaries back because of other people’s sacrifices. Things they didn’t want lost. Things they didn’t realize would go missing. Trinkets, treasures, memories, beliefs. We stole them without knowing and now they were showing up all around us.

In town, people are wondering about thieves at the party, about something in the beer, about pollution in the lake and trash washing into fields with the rain. But it was us. It was the spell. It was three girls messing with something we didn’t understand.

I keep replaying the last words of the spell in my head. Be careful what you wish for; not all lost things should be found.

I can’t stop making lists of lost things that shouldn’t be found again. Lost hair. Lost blood.

Lost souls.

I remember how Jude just appeared in that tree after we cast the spell. No, I tell myself. Don’t be silly. He couldn’t possibly be.