Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (30 page)

He kissed
her. Julia crawled into his embrace, felt the heat of his hands on
her body, sensed the love he felt for her
throughout her body. It felt completely natural to seek
shelter with him, as if he’d been her refuge for years. When he
lifted her in his arms and carried her up the stairs toward the
bedrooms, her stomach fluttered nervously, though.

Once they got to the landing, he pulled his
mouth away from hers, looking left and right into the corridor.
“So, uhm… where’s your room, actually?” he inquired with a sheepish
grin, sounding so genuinely innocent it made Julia crack up with
laughter. She felt the anxiety drain from her body.

“Why don’t
you put me down, and I’ll show you,” she suggested with a
smile.

Her bedroom
door was open.
Michael hesitantly
followed her in, gazing around in awe as if he had entered a
majestic cathedral. His eyes drifted past the posters of natural
parks and waterfalls on the wall, the multi-colored fairy lights
she’d strung onto the wall and the ceiling in the left corner, her
shelves crammed full of books, and the keyboard next to her desk
before finally landing on her. “Yes, this is your room,” he simply
said. With a smile he sat down in the lazy chair in the right
corner.
“No TV?”

Julia chuckled.
“No. You think that chair should come with a TV
set?”

“No, not really. It’s kind of a book-reader’s
chair, don’t you think?”

“Anne actually has my TV in her room. I never
watched it a lot anyway. And she wants to watch her DVDs every
morning, so…”

Julia walked
over to her bookcase to take out Gran’s storybook about the Prince
of the Forest. Sadly, all it made her feel now was that her dreams
had shattered beyond repair. This book had done too much damage –
without it, Anne might have never fallen for Andreas Mittelmayer’s
stupid stories about magical realms and secret doors. Abruptly, she
felt sick with guilt – she should have read Anne stories from
the
Stop Child Molestation
Handbook
, not these useless
fairytales.

“What’s that?”
Michael asked, getting out of his chair and
walking over to her.

Julia put the
book back with a deep sigh.
“Nothing.”

He rubbed her arm.
“Is that the fairytale Anne started to believe
in?”

She blushed with shame. “Repeated to her over
and over by her big sister, who should have known better,” she
replied bitterly.

“Don’t blame
yourself.”

“But I
am
to
blame.”

“You’re being
unfair to yourself,” Michael insisted. “She’s got a vivid
imagination, just like you. You couldn’t have known this would
happen.”

“True, but
maybe I should have just kept dreaming on my own
, instead of infecting my sister with all my
fantasies.”

He remained
quiet for a moment. “Do you still like to dream?” he asked her
curiously.

Julia sat
down on her bed. “Yes, of course I do. I mean, I’m trying to be a
responsible grown-up, but I kind of suck at it. The other night, I
even dreamed about the forest being magical. In my dream, the trees
were talking to me. They were looking for you.”

Michael stared at her. “They
were? Why?”

“No idea.
My phone rang and it woke me up.”
Julia observed him closely. He somehow seemed shocked she’d
dreamed about him. Was that so strange?

“Do you ever
dream about
me
?” she wanted to
know.

He sat down next to her. “Yes. A lot,” he
admitted, his cheeks light-pink. “I wrote you that poem because of
a dream I had about you.”

Julia’s
heart was hammering
against her ribs when she bent over to grab her scrapbook from
underneath the bed. “Look, I stuck it in here,” she said softly,
her hands clammy when she opened the book. She had
never
shown this book to anyone, not even to Gaby. Michael took
it from her. He stared at his poem in her book, then flipped a few
pages back and smiled. He was so clearly admiring her handiwork
that just for a moment, she felt like a true princess of the
forest, sitting next to her royal suitor.

“This is what I pictured your dreams to be
like,” he gently mumbled. “This is beautiful, Julia. I hope you
never stop dreaming.”

She scooted
closer to him, touched by his words.
“Thanks. You’re
so sweet to me.” She closed her eyes and stifled a yawn.

He kissed her on the
cheek.
“You want to go to sleep
now?”

Julia looked up at the clock above her door.
Half past nine – it wasn’t anywhere near her normal bedtime, but it
was probably a good idea to get some extra sleep. “Yes, maybe I
should,” she replied.

“You got some blankets for me? I’ll sleep on
the couch downstairs.”

“No, don’t.” Julia grabbed
his hand.
Only now did she realize how
badly she didn’t want to be alone. “You can sleep here.”

Michael
looked at the single bed, blinking his eyes nervously. “With
you?
Well, I don’t know… I, uhm…”

“We have a spare mattress,” she interrupted
his rambling. “I can put it in my room.”

“Ah.” He
raked a hand through his hair.
“Okay. I guess we can
do that.”
He shot her an apologetic look,
blushing a little. “Sorry. I promised to be a gentleman, but I’d be
having a
really
hard time with that if we slept in the same
bed.”

Julia’s face
reddened too. “You would, huh?”

“Uhm,
yes
. Obviously.”
He
shrugged and looked away. “Okay, so – let me get that spare
mattress. Where do you guys store it?”

Julia bit her lip to stop herself from
laughing out loud. She’d embarrassed Michael – never in a million
years would she have thought that were possible. “In the hall
closet,” she replied, getting up to help him carry the mattress to
her room.

A few minutes
later, they were each in their separate beds in her room,
illuminated only by the fairy lights in the far corner. In the
soft, dreamy light, Michael looked at her, curled up in his
makeshift bed.
“Good night,” he said with a smile.
“You’re safe with me.
If you have any
nightmares, you can wake me up, okay?”

“I will.”
Julia pulled up the blankets all the way to her chin.
“I’ll be fine, though. I feel calm now. Thanks to
you.”

“I feel good when I’m with
you.”
Michael got up to switch off the
light in the corner. It wasn’t quite dark outside yet. In the
half-light of dusk, Julia observed him walking back to his bed to
crawl under the covers. “My heart longed to be with you,” he
whispered softly.
“And now I’ve found you.”

Julia sighed
in satisfaction, closing her eyes.
Michael’s words
seemed familiar. Had he told her this before?
She couldn’t remember, but it wasn’t important right now.
Slowly, she felt herself drifting off into a deep, dreamless
sleep.

The next
morning, Julia’s grandmother turned up at nine o’clock sharp.
Ignaz, her neighbor,
loudly honked
several times to alert Julia to their arrival.

“Is that idiot trying to get the whole street
to come with us to the hospital?” Julia grumbled. Quickly, she
handed Michael a mug of hot coffee and ran to the door. “I’m not
done having breakfast yet,” she shouted at Gran, who was just
getting out of the car. “Why don’t you come inside for a few
minutes?”

Ignaz and
Gran followed Julia to the kitchen. They both gazed questioningly
at Michael, who turned slightly red under her grandmother’s
scrutinizing look.

“Good
morning,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry we’re running late. I just
couldn’t seem to wake up. Julia knocked on the guest room door
like, three times, but I slept right through it.”

Gran
cocked an eyebrow and refrained from commenting.
Julia tried her very best not to giggle. Poor Michael – he was
trying so hard not to embarrass her in front of her grandmother,
who clearly didn’t buy his story. “More like four times,” she
supplied, nodding vigorously before nudging her gran in the side
when the old woman started to grin mischievously.

“I wouldn’t
mind some coffee, actually,” Ignaz piped up, glancing at the coffee
pot on the kitchen top.

In the end,
they left for the hospital at ten past nine, dropping Michael off
at the bus stop before turning onto the main road leading
downtown.

Ignaz let
them off at the front entrance before turning into the car park.
Julia entered the hospital together with her gran, a smell of
antiseptic and bleach hitting her full force. She hated this odor,
associating it with illness, pain and death – the death of her
grandfather. She hadn’t been back ever since he’d died in this
hospital, and she hoped this would be the last time.

Ms
. Gunther was waiting for them
at the reception desk. The dark rings under her eyes made her skin
look even paler than it was, but her smile brightened her whole
face. “I’m so happy you’re both here,” she enthused. “Anne has been
asking for you all morning. She had a good night’s
sleep.”

“You didn’t, I take
it?”
Gran rubbed her daughter’s pale
cheeks.
“You look crumpled.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”
Ms. Gunther shook her head as though she was
trying to rid herself of nightmarish images. “I kept thinking about
what might have happened to Anne, over and over again. How this
Andreas must have touched her – defiled her.”

“He was a
creep,” Julia said flatly. “He was stunningly beautiful, but he had
this
dead
look in his eyes. It was as if something inside of him had
withered away.”

The three of
them walked over to the
bank of
elevators. “Last night, when Anne was asleep, I went over to the
police station,” Julia’s mother told them quietly. “I wanted to
look him in the eye; the boy who’d dared to touch and abduct my
beautiful child. But once I got closer to that prison cell, I
couldn’t go in. I was allowed, but something stopped me. He didn’t
see me, but I did get a look at him.”

“Why did he
do it?” Gran asked just as quietly. “
Did
he say anything about his reasons in the confession?”

Ms
. Gunther sighed. “Detective
Spitzer told me he talked to Andreas’s mother. He didn’t exactly
grow up in a stable family environment before they moved to
Salzburg. She was married to a man who didn’t just beat her up on a
regular basis but also turned out to have abused her daughter. She
only found out after the abuse had stopped, but it was enough for
her to file for divorce.
That’s why she moved
here.”

“And nobody
thought of sending Andreas to a shrink to cope with
the entire trauma from his childhood?” Julia
asked in astonishment.

“No,
apparently not. His mother
did send her
daughter to Child Care Services and had her apply for counseling.
Now that Andreas is in jail, it seems likely the boy was as much a
victim of abuse as his sister was.”

“That might
explain his need to escape to a fantasy world filled with portals
to magical realms,” Gran
said. “Or why he
has such a distorted image of sexuality.”

It was
strange, but all of a sudden, Julia could al
most feel sorry for the guy who’d abused and tricked her
sister. He must have escaped into a dream world to cope with his
life, just as she had done so often – the only difference
being
she
had never harmed anyone in doing so. In all likelihood, he
didn’t even know right from wrong.

“So, is he
gonna get professional help now?” she asked timidly. “Or will they
just sentence him to
years in prison
without any counseling?”

“Look, that’s
not for you to worry about,” her mother replied in a soothing
voice. “Let the police handle it, honey.”

Julia
still
felt overwhelmed by her mother’s
story by the time they entered Anne’s room. She had a room of her
own, and her little sister looked so fragile and vulnerable in the
big hospital bed that Julia couldn’t stop herself from storming
forward and pulling her into a warm embrace. “I’m so grateful
you’re still alive,” she whispered.

Anne pressed her tiny body against Julia’s, a
stifled sob escaping from her throat. They wordlessly clung to each
other for a moment that seemed to last forever.

“I was protected,” Anne then said almost
inaudibly.

“Protected? By whom?” Julia
blinked at Anne in bewilderment.

Anne smiled.
“When I was asleep, I could hear voices. I think
they were coming from the woods. They told me help was on the
way.
They said you would find me. That’s why I wasn’t
scared.”

Julia cast a
glance over her shoulder, but her mom and gran
dma were still in conversation.
They hadn’t
heard Anne’s story.
“Did you hear
Michael’s voice as well?” she inquired curiously.