If you ever see a door hovering in the middle of an ethereal, gray fog, don’t open it.
In fact, no matter how adventurous you’re feeling, or how curious, or how baffled you are by that freestanding door floating in the void, promise me that you’ll run in the opposite direction.
In other words, don’t be an idiot like me.
The door isn’t anything special. Three horizontal panels, distressed white wood, greening brass knob. It’s nothing to write home about. But its sudden appearance triggers Christmas-morning-like excitement. Nothing else is happening. I mean, literally nothing. I’m all alone in this gloomy mist. It’s been hours since I went to bed. And I am bored. So the sudden appearance of the door is a thrill.
I reach out to turn the knob, and it doesn’t once occur to me that what lies on the other side might not be the golden ticket. So when the door doesn’t budge? I want in even more.
As I stare at my nemesis, growing more and more desperate to get inside it, my thoughts turn to Gigi MacDonald, captain of my lacrosse team, queen bee to all us wannabes. Any time we drop a pass or let another player get a fast break to goal, she relentlessly runs drills until we get it right. But her favorite motivator is the football team. “You want them to think we’re weak?” she’ll scream until this little vein pops on her forehead. “Or are you gonna show them that real athletes do more than just run until they hit something?”
The question is rhetorical. But tonight?
I face my opponent. Channeling every football player who’s ever scoffed at women’s athletics, I take a step back, lower my shoulder, and ram the door with all my might. It flies open, and I fall.
Into…
Black.
Silence.
Chest-compressing airlock.
A stinging wind needle-pricks my face as a deafening FWAP, like the amplified-times-a-million fluttering of butterfly wings, beats against my eardrums, and I’m sure they will burst. My mouth drains of all moisture. I blink and I blink and I blink and I blink. It’s all I can do to see anything against the slapping wind in the darkness. I am being swallowed into nothingness.
Until…
I’m not.
My blinking eyelids reveal a flipbook of images: arthritic branches, leafless in the moonlight; a rocky path; the color green.
And then I land, face first, in a mountain of crunchy brown leaves. I lie still, inhaling the crisp autumn air that tickles the inside of my nose. Raising myself onto my elbows, I brush away a leaf that’s tangled in my thick, dark hair. I’ve come through the looking glass, but I totally know this place.
I am in the nature preserve behind the Horsemen’s football field. In front of me is the Stump—what remains of the massive oak tree that the town cut down when I was ten. I know it now as the favorite late-night hangout spot for Irvington High School’s cool kids and a monument to some personal firsts. Not only did I try my first beer here, but it’s also where an upperclassman soccer star gave fourteen-year-old me my first kiss. (The beer may have been an acquired taste, but that kiss was like coming home.)
Tonight though, the Stump is deserted. Leafless trees canopy overhead, and a bright full moon plays hide-and-seek between branches. Twigs crunch under my feet as I move over rocks and roots, seeking out a random course that soon becomes an actual path. I’m dressed only in a tank top and boy-short hip-huggers, the slumber party uniform I went to bed in. I rub my arms for warmth. “Always the fashionista,” I chide myself. “Never the weathergirl.”
I follow the path obediently, trying my best to ignore the goose bumps that have turned my skin to sandpaper. By the time I jump at the particularly loud crack of a twig snapping under my foot, I’ve wandered deep into an unfamiliar part of the woods.
“Shhhhh,” whispers someone directly to my right. Every molecule of my being tenses. Beside me, leaning against a tree, is a shirtless boy with sun-kissed brown hair and four-out-of-six-pack abs, watching something on the other side of where we stand. He is tall, taller than me by a foot at least. Though his shoulders are broad, he’s lean, his width easily framed by the thick trunk of a maple. He’s got that effortless shaggy short hair that curls at the edges and a long, slightly off-center nose that’s all the more intriguing for its character-building crookedness. It’s like a wobbly arrow that bursts forth from a prominent brow and ends pointing at some seriously kissable lips. An enjoyably clichéd shiver ripples through my still-tense-but-now-in-a-good-way body. I’m psyched for the companionship but more so that said companion is hot.
He looks over at me, his Oz-green eyes sizing me up before they return to the subject of their stealthy surveillance. Then he reaches out his arm, providing a perfect me-size opening against his chest.
For the first time, I hesitate.
When you’re here, in this place, you generally don’t waste much time with contemplation. Why would you when there’s no such thing as consequence, no final exam, no why or what were you thinking? Here, there’s nothing but now. So it strikes me as odd that I have the sudden urge to cover up. Am I feeling shy? Why, when none of this is real, am I embarrassed that the space between this half-naked wood god and a giant tree trunk is the only place I want to be?
I tell my subconscious’s conscience to shove it and take a step forward. As I inhale this dream guy, I forget everything else. His intoxicating odor of Dove soap and all-American-boy sweat beckons to me like one of those finger-shaped scent streaks from Scooby-Doo. I slide into place against him.
His chest is warm, but my shivering doesn’t stop. I turn my face up to his and smile. He doesn’t so much as glance down at me, fixated instead on that spot beyond us. I wonder what could be more compelling than a scantily clad girl leaning against his chest.
So I look.
In the center of a clearing, spotlighted by the impossibly bright moon, lies a fawn. Her eyes are wide and her breathing shallow. An arrow protrudes from her side.
“The wound’s fatal, but it’ll take a while for her to die,” the boy says.
I feel a sob build deep within me, but when I open my mouth, I don’t cry out.
“I know what to do,” I say instead.
Suddenly, I am running into the clearing. I place one hand on the trembling deer’s chin and the other on the opposite side of her head. In her surprise, she struggles against me, and I lose my grip. But she is also wounded, groggy, and I use that to my advantage.
I wrestle the animal still, pinning her with my legs. My absolute certainty that this mercy kill is the right thing to do gives me strength.
The boy at the tree calls to me, telling me to stop, but I won’t—I can’t.
The deer’s eyes widen.
My hands return to her chin and forehead and lock in place.
I prepare to snap her neck.
“No!” the boy shouts. “Wake up!”
Everything freezes. The woods disappear. The wind stills. The deer vanishes, though I can still feel her against my hands. I ask, “What did you say?”
I don’t get an answer. The boy is gone, and new sounds engulf me, muffled at first.
Someone is screaming.
“Sarah! Stop! You’re going to kill her!” a familiar female voice shrieks. I blink my eyes, flickering myself back to reality. No longer am I looking into the blinding late-autumn moon; instead, I see the recessed halogens of a suburban basement.
I lower my gaze and take in the room where two of my best friends are staring at me. Tessa’s the one shouting, “Stop! Sarah, you have to stop!” Amber is clutching her pillow, her jaw almost unhinged in shock. I feel something struggle against me, trying to free itself from the restraints that my limbs have become to hold it in place.
No, not something. Someone.
Gigi, the boss of us all.
She is sobbing. She trembles against my iron-clenched hands, which are locked firmly on her chin and forehead. About to snap her neck.
Crap, I think. Not again.