Penpal (16 page)

It was running in the same direction we were pointed.

“C’mon, man! Paddle!” Josh commanded.

We were thrashing frantically in an effort to increase our speed. Reflexively, we began trying to kick our legs, which were dangling over the side of the raft, though not touching the water. In our panic, we jostled the raft too violently, and I felt one of the ropes under my chest loosen.

“Josh, be careful!”

But it was too late. Our raft was breaking. I tried to pull the rope taut, but I wasn’t strong enough, and Josh began
drifting
away. I reached for his hand, but not quickly enough. We each held onto a separate piece of Styrofoam, but we knew individual pieces wouldn’t suffice from when we had first built the raft. We bobbed and rocked as our legs dangled beneath us in the cold water.

“Josh! Quick!” I yelled as I pointed at the water right next to him.

He scrambled, but it was too cold to move quickly, and we both watched as the map floated away.

“W-wha-a-at do we d-do now?” Josh chattered.

It was cold. We needed to get out of the water. Swimming directly back wasn’t an option, and we couldn’t go back into our woods – there were greater problems than the congestion of trees now. I turned my eyes to the other side of the tributary and the woods that bordered it. We had never even thought of going into those trees before – we just didn’t
consider them part of
our woods. They would have to be
now, though.

“This w-w-ay.” I began kicking my stiff legs in the water, and Josh followed. We propelled ourselves to the opposite shore.

The woods were just as thick on this side of the tributary, but we had no real choice. We abandoned what remained of our raft and clawed our way out of the water and into the alien woods as the sun took its final bow somewhere on the
western horizon.

Taking care with each step, we marched through the trees and stayed close enough to the water so we could see where we needed to cross when we got there. Our breath steamed in the cool air, and every now and then, a violent shiver would quake through my still-soaked body. We were taking care not to make too much noise, but apparently so was the source of the voice that had greeted us earlier, because our footsteps were the
only sounds.

Suddenly, the sound of a cracking branch echoed somewhere in the distance. Josh and I stopped and held each other’s gaze. Too afraid to talk, Josh mouthed the words, “What do we do?” I shook my head and brought my finger to my mouth, telling him to keep quiet while we listened. Every part of me was screaming to run, except for the one that was too scared to do anything at all, and so we just stood there.

There was another cracking limb. I held my breath.

It was answered by the sound of dead leaves being crushed. I looked at Josh and could barely see his tears through my own.

crunch

…

snap

…

crunch

snap

snapsnapcrunchsnapcrunch

No. He’s running
! I thought I had said this aloud, but I suppose I actually hadn’t, because Josh yelled to me as I ran furiously away from the stampeding sound behind us.

We were running fast, but not fast enough; the sound was getting closer. We leapt over decaying trees and tore through thorn bushes. The sound was just behind us now. There was no way we could outrun it – it would overtake us any second. I wanted to look back, but I forced myself to stare ahead. “Josh, the woods!” I yelled. Just ahead, the trees were tangled in a gnarled mass that would be too thick to run through. Should we dive into the water? Could we charge through the dense woods in front of us? Josh didn’t say anything. He seemed at as much of a loss as I was. In a flash, Josh grabbed my arm and pulled me behind a large oak tree. We stood there like statues.

The sound stopped.

Steam billowed out of our mouths and into the frosty air as we tried to catch our breaths. I covered my mouth with my hand to conceal the blasts of visible air, and I motioned to Josh to do the same. There was a rustling behind us. I leaned my back against the tree to steady my shaking legs so my feet wouldn’t audibly grind the leaves under them. We tried to be as quiet as possible.

We waited, shivering against the tree and sensitive to the sound of every movement behind us. Perhaps it was too dark for our pursuer to see where we had hidden. Perhaps if we quietly stood there for long enough, it would be over.

beepbeep! … beepbeep! … beepbeep!

My watch!

The last alarm for the day was sounding. I smashed my fingers on the buttons, but the cold had numbed my hands, and fear had clouded my mind. I couldn’t remember how to stop it. Hundreds of times … I had silenced that alarm hundreds of times, but there I stood fumbling and trembling, unable to end its high-pitched death knell.

“Stop it!” Josh pleaded.

“I’m trying …” I whimpered.

The rustling behind us began to move. It was getting closer now. I tore at my wrist and yanked at the plastic clasp and rubber band until it finally came off. With a whipping of my arm, the watch landed and sunk into the water.

But it was too late; the crunching and snapping was right next to us now. We had nowhere to run anymore. I closed my eyes tightly, squeezing tears out of them, which rolled down my face. Defeated and terrified, I collapsed at the base of the tree and wrapped my arms around my knees, pressing them to my chest. A figure appeared in my peripheral – emerging from its hiding spot on the side of the same tree that we had hoped would conceal us. I turned my head so my eyes could take it in.

It was a deer.

I stared at it in disbelief, and it stared back at me in what might have been confusion or curiosity. It was the closest I had even been to a deer before – or since, for that matter. Even in the poor light of the pale moon, I could see the texture of its fur and the moisture on its nose.

“Get out of here!” Josh snarled in a tantrum, apathetically throwing a small stick at the creature. It bounded off into the woods; we could still hear it long after it had disappeared from sight.

We trod through the woods, moving as the dead might move. Exhausted by both fear and the winter air, we didn’t speak another word until we had arrived at the point from which we had departed; only now we were on the opposite side of the water. The tributary was narrower here, but neither of us wanted to get back into the water to cross. Josh asked me what I thought we should do, but I didn’t respond. I thought that if we continued through the woods along the water, we would get to the lake, and we could just circle around it. But that would take far too long. I didn’t have my watch anymore, so I didn’t even know what time it was; for all I knew my mother could be home already. There was no time.

“We have to cross here,” I said.

As quickly as we could, we moved through the water and onto the opposite shore. The earth sloped into the water here, so we were able to simply walk out of it and back onto familiar ground. We took off our swimsuits and were desperate to get into dry clothes that would shield us from the biting chill of the air. I slid on my shorts, but there was something wrong. I turned to Josh.

“Where’s my shirt?

He shrugged and gestured toward the water, “Maybe it got knocked into the water and floated into the lake?” As he motioned, I saw one of the pieces of our Styrofoam raft floating in our direction – back toward the lake.

I told Josh to go back to my house and to say that we were playing hide and seek if my mom was home. I had to try to find my shirt.

I ran behind the houses and peered out over the water while scouting along the shoreline. It occurred to me that with any luck I might find the map too – if the raft had floated this way, then maybe the map had. I was moving fast because I needed to get home, and I was about to give up when my concentration was interrupted by a sound coming from just behind me.

“Hello.”

I whipped around. It was Mrs. Maggie. In the porch light, she looked incredibly frail, and the usual warmth that wrapped her manner seemed to have been snuffed out by the chill. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her without a smile, and so her face looked strange to me.

“Hi, Mrs. Maggie.”

“Oh! Hi, Chris!” The warmth and smile had returned to her, even if her memories had not. “I couldn’t see it was you in the dark there. What’re you doing out so late?”

“J-j-just playing with a friend …” Now that my rapid movements had stopped, the cold had started to creep into me again, and I could feel my teeth chatter against themselves. I was beginning to feel weak; each breeze seemed to drive the icy water on my skin through it and down to my bones.

“M-Mrs. Maggie …” I thought for a moment and collected myself. “Mrs. Maggie, c-c-an I come inside? I just need a t-towel.” My head began to swim.

“Not right now, Chris. Your … bother, how do I put this?” She seemed to search for the words, as I half-heartedly searched for my missing shirt and any scrap of paper that might be the map. She spoke out again at the same time I did, and her voice fell dully on my ear.

“Mrs. Maggie, have you seen—”

“—om’s home!”

I felt the world drop out from under me. “Mom’s home!”? Had she just said that? She was still talking, but I couldn’t hear her anymore. I abandoned my search immediately and ran around the side of her house. I could hear Mrs. Maggie running through her house parallel to me. My legs felt weak, but I pushed them hard against her concrete driveway. My stomach twisted when I saw my mom’s car in our driveway, but then I remembered that she hadn’t taken her car. I thundered down toward the street and could hear Mrs. Maggie walking briskly across her frozen yard behind me – the ice-covered grass snapping and crunching beneath her feet – but I didn’t look back.

Instinctively, I ran around the house and went to the backdoor. I eased it open. I couldn’t hear anything – no yelling, no talking, not a single sound. I slid into the bathroom that connected to my bedroom and cracked the door open. I heard Josh yell, and I flung the door open the rest of the way.

“You scared the crap outta me!” he protested.

“Is my mom home?”

“No.”

The tightness in my stomach relaxed, and I could feel my whole body slump a little in relief. Had I heard Mrs. Maggie right? I supposed that it wasn’t very surprising that she could be wrong about mom being home when she had trouble remembering what my name was. Josh had already changed his clothes and was looking much more comfortable than I felt. I went into my closet, stripped the wet clothes off, and put some dry ones on. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes later that my mom came home. We’d actually gotten away with it, even though we’d lost the map.

“Couldn’t find it?”

“No, I looked hard, but I didn’t see it. I saw Mrs. Maggie, though. She called me Chris
again
. She’s pretty scary at night.”

“Don’t you
ever
make fun of her like that. Understand?!” Josh whispered in a mocking tone so that my mom wouldn’t overhear.

We both laughed, and he asked me if she had invited me in for a snack, joking that the snacks must be terrible since she couldn’t even give them away. I told him that she hadn’t – that I had actually tried to invite myself in and been rejected – and he was surprised. As I thought about it, it really was surprising. Nearly every time we had seen her, she had invited us in for snacks, and here I had invited myself, and she said no. But she had evidently thought that my mom was home, so maybe it wasn’t so strange that she didn’t want me to come in.

The subject turned to what had happened in the woods. We discussed it at the lowest possible volume; we were no longer sure about what we had heard. When Josh mentioned the Roman candle, it occurred to me that the lighter I had taken on the raft might still be in my pocket; even if we had gotten away with our secret mission, if my mom found a lighter in my pocket, the penalty would be severe.

The fact that I had thrown my watch into the water and would have to explain why I no longer had it was slowly presenting itself to my attention, but I subdued its nagging while I grabbed the shorts off the floor and patted my pockets. I felt something, but it wasn’t the lighter. I squeezed it and felt it crinkle in my hand. From my back pocket, I removed a folded piece of paper, and my heart leapt.
The map
? I thought desperately.
But I watched it float away
. As I unfolded the paper, my palms began to sweat as I tried to understand what I was seeing.

Drawn on the paper inside of a large oval were two faceless stick figures holding hands – one much bigger than the other. The paper was torn so a part of it was missing, and there was a number written near the top right corner: either “15” or “16.” I nervously handed Josh the paper and asked him if he had put it in my pocket at some point, but he scoffed at the idea. I put the question to him again, hoping he would change his answer – that he had just forgotten that he’d done it. He denied it again and asked why I was so upset. I pointed toward the smaller stick figure and what was written next to it.