I CAN HEAR RAE SCUFFING her heels behind the equipment shed, and I know this is my last chance to walk away. I could pretend I got the place confused. I thought we were meeting by the track or the parking lot. I thought it was tomorrow. I thought it was yesterday. But I’m here, and my feet are moving me down the path, and I can hear my own false comfort falling from my lips, landing at the feet of Melissa Corey.
I won’t walk away. Girls who are weak walk away and then make up lies later on.
“I didn’t say anything, though. I barely even know her.”
“Just . . . talk to her,” I say, knowing it won’t do any good.
“But why would I—?”
“Just tell her, and I’m sure she’ll calm down. I’m just trying to be a good friend.” It’s as though someone else is forming the words on my tongue.
“Wait, are you mad at me too? Do you actually think—I just sit next to her in chemistry! Can’t you just tell her I didn’t do it?”
When we round the corner, I see Rae. She’s wearing her sympathetic face.
“I didn’t say anything about you. I swear to God. I mean, I don’t even know you—”
Rae looks at her pityingly. “I know. Which is why it’s just so hard for me to understand. Why would you go talking shit about someone you don’t even know?”
Melissa Corey shakes her head swiftly, brown curls slapping her round face as punishment. “I don’t know who told you I did, but they’re lying.”
“Oooh,” Rae says, and now I know it’s begun.
“What?” Melissa Corey is on the brink of panic. Her skinny legs poke out of denim shorts too long to be worn by anyone who would really be guilty of talking shit.
“See, now we really have a problem,” Rae continues.
Now we’re both looking at Rae.
She leaves Melissa Corey and walks to my side. “Because Penny’s the one who heard you say it.”
Melissa Corey is pale and sweaty. Her hands feel cold and heavy by her sides. I don’t know how I know, but I do, and my own fingers are tingling like they might go numb in a second.
Melissa looks at my shoes. “What . . . what did you hear me say?”
But she already knows the answer to that question. And this is when we all know that Rae holds the only important truth between the three of us. No matter what happens now, it will be Rae’s words that feed our ravenous actions. Melissa Corey probably knew that the minute she agreed to walk with me behind the equipment shed.
And I knew it even before that.
So when Rae looks at me, silently feeding me the heinous crime Melissa Corey never committed, I eat every last bite of what she offers before taking one, two, three steps away from a trembling girl in long shorts and prove to Rae I’m a true friend.
Thirty minutes later, in the bathroom Rae shares with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, I look for what’s out of place and find nothing. The pieces of my face are all there. Until they rearrange and scatter, refusing to show me something recognizable. And when I push my head into the sink and come up for air only after I think my lungs might burst, the face I see isn’t mine at all. It’s Rae’s.
She reaches a bright red fingernail to the glass and taps a steady rhythm to a tune I vaguely recognize.
My sheets are soaked with sweat when I wake up in the middle bedroom of the Carver House, though it takes me a minute to remember that. Two nights in someone else’s house isn’t enough time to establish a feeling of comfort upon waking, and it’s been a while since I felt permanent anywhere.
So when I finally remember I woke up for a reason, I search out the clicking. The needles of a nearby tree branch drag across the windowpane, and I follow their shadows’ movement on the wall across the room, the silver light of the moon brightening the scene a little too much for this late at night. I vow that tomorrow I will beg April to get a shade for the window and maybe—just possibly—get a decent night’s sleep in these insanely loud woods.
But as I follow the branch’s dance across my window, I notice that it’s moving with more force behind it than a mere gust of nighttime breeze could provide.
I go to the window and search the ground below in time to see a hand relinquish control of the branch that was tickling my windowpane—a hand attached to an arm leading up to a set of large purple curls pinned to Vargas Girl perfection.
Rae backs into the woods and out of sight.
“No,” I tell her. But I know she’s still there, just outside the light of the moon, and she’ll stay there until I come out to meet her.
“You don’t get to dictate what I do anymore,” I tell her. But I say it softer this time. And I’m already sliding my jeans on, and my boots over my jeans, and my fleece over everything.
“You’re dead,” I say through gnashed teeth.
“Promises, promises,” Rae sings from somewhere in the dark.
“I’m serious,” I tell the dark.
“That’s the problem,” she says from the shadows. “I can’t quite trust what you say anymore, you know?”
I could pretend she’s not there, but I’m half asleep and too tired to pretend. And it’s not like she’s going to let me ignore her anyway. The nights are when she’s at her best.
I hit every creaking step on the way downstairs, but still manage to slip past April’s room on the bottom floor without hearing her wake. I grope my way into the kitchen, squinting through darkness until I make out the tiny square window cut into the back door, its new bolt already in place.
Grabbing a flashlight April must have brought with our meager kitchen supplies, I unlatch the door, catch it before it slams shut behind me, and immediately wrap my arms around me to brace against the night chill that has blanketed the woods. I stare at the tree responsible for tapping me awake and can’t find Rae anywhere near it, not that I’m surprised. She wants me to come to her, and so far, she’s getting her way.
So I aim the flashlight and walk.
At the base of the tree, I see grooves in the damp ground where shoes might have stood. They look a little small to be Rae’s, but it’s hard to see anything, even with the yellow glow of the ancient flashlight. It flickers for a second, as though sensing my disdain with its performance, then sputters back to life.
“Seriously, we couldn’t have put a real flashlight on that massive supply list?”
I cast the beam across the trees in front of me, deeper into the woods. I bury the twitch in my stomach that warns me against walking farther out. There’s nothing out there but Rae, and she’s followed me all the way to this tiny wooded town. I won’t let her chase me back to Seattle. Or Phoenix. Or wherever I’m deposited next when even April has exhausted her supply of hope for me.
“I know you’re here,” I say softly. I mean to sound commanding, but I end up sounding tired.
“This is stupid, Rae. It’s the middle of the night, and I’ve had enough. Whatever you want, you win, okay? I’m done.”
The bulb in the flashlight fades, blinks back to life, then wastes away, a quiet death. I toss it into the grass by the kitchen door.
Wind slides between the branches of the trees, and the trunk closest to me groans under the weight of what it’s holding. I hear a pop in front of me and look up in time to see a branch pull back and snap forward, catching the quickest flash of iridescent skin under the meager light of nighttime.
I stomp forward, no longer caring how much noise I might make. The trees catch every inch of my clothes and whatever skin I’ve left bare in my haste to come outside and rid myself of Rae, and dampness soaks the skin I haven’t covered. I look up but already know it’s not raining. It’s the perpetual moisture that hangs low in the air in these woods. And when I notice that I’m panting, I stop moving, finding only now that I’ve been practically sprinting between trees, my eyes on constant alert for some sign of her. I stand still long enough to pull in three deep breaths and swat away the branches that feel closer than they did a minute ago.
When the sound of my breathing ceases, a different sound takes its place—a steady squeak singsonging its way across the forest floor and climbing into my ears. A flicker of light catches my eye, and I venture more slowly this time toward the movement, which I soon see is attached to ropes in a clearing.
The ropes hold a flat plank of wood, dulled gray and dangling from a nearby tree branch on the outskirts of a brief expanse of open space. The nighttime breeze carries it back and forth, eking out a new creak with each rhythmic movement.
In the makeshift swing sits Rae, cradling a bottle of vodka in her lap.
“You look cold. I’m not cold,” she says, uncapping the bottle.
“That’s because you don’t feel,” I say, standing uneasily beside her. The moon is nearly full, and this is the first time I’ve seen it this clearly since we arrived in Point Finney.
She offers me the bottle, and I see myself refusing but feel my fingers grasp the neck before I sit on the hard ground. I’m freezing and want to feel something burn me. The bottle should be cold but it’s warm from her grip.
“I don’t know how to make you leave me alone,” I say after mentally rejecting a hundred other confessions first.
“Then you don’t really want me to,” she says and takes the bottle back.
“I know that’s what you always thought,” I say. Moonlight reflects off her diamond labret. “But I’m done letting you make my decisions for me.”
“Oh, I know. I read all about it. Face it, Penny. I’m with you for the long haul. Don’t worry, though. I’m entertaining company.”
“So at the rest stop? Was that your idea of entertainment? It wasn’t funny. I thought you were someone who needed help.”
“Well, aren’t you the patron saint of the Pacific Northwest? And who says that was me, anyway?” Rae takes another drink, ponders the taste for a second before swallowing without a flinch. “And if we’re talking about people who need help . . .”
“I’m not here to do any of this with you,” I say, nodding to the bottle and alluding to everything else. “I’m just here to tell you this is the last time we’re going to talk.”
I start to get up, but she beats me to it.
“That’s quite the declaration. So much to live up to.” Rae eases the bottle into my hands. “Sounds like your evil stepmom is starting to get through when your real parents couldn’t be bothered. I’m sure that’ll last.”
I open my mouth to tell her all the ways she’s wrong, but all that comes out is a tiny puff of white air.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I’m only here when you come looking for me?” Rae asks.
She looks up at the moon I was just looking at, which makes me feel oddly jealous, like that’s not her moon to enjoy, and turns in the opposite direction of the house. Ducking under the branch of a nearby tree, she looks it over, offers it a tiny smile and a pat on its bark.
“I like these woods,” she says softly. “It’s like they want you here, you know?”
Then she disappears into the deep part of the woods, and as I search for her vanishing form, I blink back the suspicion that she’s still watching me from the darkest shadow she can find. The longer I stare into the murky depths, the harder it becomes to convince myself I’m not seeing those same white eyes that I saw at the rest stop gazing back at me.
I uncap the bottle she gave me (which looks awfully similar to the one I remember stealing from the kitchen and burying in the Rubbermaid before leaving Phoenix) and pull in another swallow. I feel the drink land in my stomach, on top of the anger I try and fail to tamp down. I consider what might happen if I drink the whole bottle. I picture Melissa Corey’s face smooth from confused pain to vague recognition when she looks at me. I picture the letters I wrote to Rae, all the horrible things she was never meant to read but should have already known. I picture Rae in the desert, walking back to me where I slept, telling me to just leave her alone and she’ll do the same. It’s okay. Sometimes friendships simply don’t last. Sometimes you just part ways amicably. I picture my parents parting ways amicably.
I picture it all melting in a bubbling puddle, evaporating under the wind of these woods, growing over with moss.
I lie down in the needles beside the swing and listen to its ropes creak under the breeze, then I tilt the bottle back and swallow until things look foggy and I’ve forgotten what cold feels like on my skin.
I close my eyes for a moment. For maybe more than a moment.
And when I open them, I see two small feet pass over me.
They pass over me again, then again, in time with the creak of the swing. They’re bare but muddy, limp on the ends of dangling legs clothed in frayed denim.
They pass over me again. A torn white T-shirt drapes over a set of sharp shoulder blades. A dark baseball cap sits beside a boy on the swing.
I ease onto my elbows, and his dangling feet narrowly miss my face. But before I have a chance to react, he leaps off the swing and sets off running, hat in hand, his bare feet springing against the blanket of pine needles that grows thicker the farther he runs. In an instant, he’s disappeared into the woods, the same way Rae traveled.
“Hey,” I mumble, but my mouth is coated and dry and I can’t focus my vision. I hear distant laughter, a kid giggling, and know I must sound as wrecked as I feel.
I struggle to steady myself on my feet, my bones aching from the dampness now plastering my thin fleece to me. I consider brushing the needles from my legs, but my body feels like it somehow filled itself with slowly drying cement, and I’m struggling to keep upright.
Which is probably what I get for falling asleep on the ground in the middle of the woods after—I examine the bottle by my feet—too much vodka.
“She did it to me again.” I make sure to say it aloud. I need constant reminding of how easy it is for me to fall back under Rae’s spell. And how easy it is for me to revisit those same old habits while I figure out how to fill the spaces she scooped out of me.
The walk from the woods back to the house feels like it takes a year. The trees crowd me, their branches seeming to lower into my path at every turn, their needles lifting and pulling the fabric of my clothes. I slip through the kitchen door and drop the bottle of vodka in one of the boxes before dragging myself upstairs to a bed I know won’t feel like my own for the duration of the summer.