The Little Woods (26 page)

Noel was especially quiet during sports that afternoon. For a while now she’d been distant, but that afternoon she was noticeably withdrawn. After signing in, we parted ways and I headed over to the mailboxes, wondering how I was going to get any homework done. I was rounding the corner when I saw Jack in the distance talking to Pigeon. He didn’t see me, and the way he was talking to her seemed unlike him. He leaned in,
laughing at her presumably dumb joke. And when she talked to him, she didn’t look like Pigeon. She didn’t make any of her annoying little Pigeon faces, and for the first time, I saw what boys saw in her. She was gorgeous, absolutely radiant when she talked to him, her dark eyes wide with admiration. She tossed her silky hair over her shoulder and turned to walk. He fell in step alongside her, and just before they disappeared around the corner, I saw him place his hand on the small of her back.

I steadied myself against the mailboxes. For a second, I was filled with a kind of raging jealousy. Was this the girl Jack was seeing? Was I sleeping with Pigeon’s secret boyfriend? Pigeon?
Pigeon
? But behind the anger, behind the jealousy, there was a cushion of relief. I didn’t like jealousy. I didn’t know how to navigate it, how to understand who I was when it inhabited me. I didn’t understand what I felt for Jack, but it scared me, and I wanted it to stop.

I needed to clear my mind, so I headed up to the library.

Carlos was in our spot, staring out the window. He smiled when he saw me.

“How’s it going?”

I slumped into my chair and shook my head.

“That bad?”

“I’m feeling kind of homicidal right now. Tell me something. Do you think Pigeon’s pretty?”

“You mean Paloma?”

“Yeah, Paloma, whatever.”

He furrowed his brow. “I don’t know how to answer this question. I’m afraid it has something to do with your being homicidal.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

“Oh, wait,” he said, “I’ve figured out how to answer it. The answer is: not as pretty as you. Is that correct?”

I nodded.

“Oh, fuck it,” I said. “Hey, Carlos. Different question. You ever hear of anyone here selling mushrooms?”

His eyes widened. “Calista, I really don’t think you’re in any shape to take mushrooms right now.”

“Not for me,” I said, laughing. “I’m just interested.”

He shrugged. “I hear all sorts of things like that. That’s what I was trying to hint at a while back.”

“You?” I asked, shocked, leaning forward.

His cheeks flushed, and he shook his head. I’d never seen him embarrassed before. “God, no. Tanner. Tanner sells them, but he keeps it relatively quiet, unlike his little pot operation.”

“Tanner sells mushrooms? Really?”

“Sure. I hear him through the wall.”

“You don’t remember him selling mushrooms to anyone around the time Iris disappeared, do you?”

“Of course I do. I remember it well. It was the morning of.”

“Really? You really remember that? You must have a crazy memory.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not really. I wouldn’t have remembered at all except that it was Iris. It was the last time I saw her.”

“What?” My head was numb. “Did you just say Tanner sold mushrooms to Iris?”

“I did, yeah. The day she vanished.”

“Oh my God,” I said, shaking my head. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

What if Reilly hadn’t given Iris the mushrooms, but it had been her decision? She’d decided to take them. This was important. This meant something big. I knew it; I just couldn’t tell what it was.

“Did you tell the police?” I asked.

His eyes widened. “Are you insane? No, I didn’t tell the police that one of the most popular kids on campus is dealing drugs out of his room. Do you have any idea what would happen to someone like me if I did that? Besides, she bought from him all the time. It was nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Was she buying from him her freshman year?”

He raised his hands. “I can’t speak to that. I just know what happened last semester. I was living in Stanton House before that.”

I chewed on my finger a bit, and then I decided to pay Jack Deeker a visit.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Carlos,” I said, and he waved me off.

Jack wasn’t in his room, so I climbed over his balcony and grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled:

I headed back to the library. I wanted to ask Carlos more questions about Tanner, but he was gone when I got there. I sat for a moment and stared out the window into the darkness.
How had I allowed myself to get so caught up in boys? That wasn’t like me. My grades were crap, and I was no closer to figuring out what had happened to my sister. They were still holding Reilly. There were so many things that didn’t add up. Who had sent me the box? I knew there had to be more to do with it. I knew it held more answers, but I couldn’t figure out how the hell to get to them. Then there was Asta and her recent odd behavior, her lies about being out in the woods the night my sister died. If they hadn’t died in the fire, then what had happened to them? Had they really gone out of the house of their own volition, or had someone come in and led them away?

The answer was close, but it was like there was a thick fog obscuring it. I decided to go back to my room and have another look at the puzzle box. Something bothered me about that logo. I knew there had to be something more to it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Those letters: upside-down
Y, O, T
, backward
E, I
. Could they be another code? An anagram, maybe? Mentally, I tried to rearrange the letters, but even if I assumed that the first letter was a
Y
and that the
E
wasn’t backward, the letters didn’t generate a single English word. I was sure of it.

I had just left the library and was about to walk around the corner and through the hallway outside the Prexy classrooms when I heard something that made me stop short. It was Helen’s voice, but there was something wrong with it. There was a strange note to it that made me hang back. Gone was her typical nonchalance, and in its place were a pulsating anger and, if I wasn’t mistaken, fear.

“I know because Cally told me,” she hissed. “I’m not going to tell you again. You can’t trust anyone. Not Asta, not Cally—especially not Cally. I’m serious. You have to listen to me and do what I say. I’m not joking around here.”

The next thing I knew, Noel came around the corner, her face flushed, her cheeks smudged with eyeliner and tears. She didn’t see me, and I ducked into the library and leaned against the wall, trying to think over the beating of my heart. What was going on? When I’d steadied myself, I headed back through the library and out the front entrance, but when I got to the dorm, I saw Jack waiting on the lawn outside my room.

He waved the note at me.

“Um, Wood?” he said. “What the hell is this?”

“I really don’t have time to talk right now,” I said.

“Yeah, well, make time, okay?” he said, his face flushed with anger.

I sighed and motioned for him to walk with me. “Not here, okay? Come on.”

I couldn’t have this discussion in public, so I led him behind the music classrooms. He didn’t speak while we walked, but once we’d stopped, he looked at me with wounded eyes and slapped the note with the side of his hand.

“This is a joke, right?” he said.

I shook my head, afraid of what I was saying, what I was doing. “I still want to be friends.”

“Friends? After the other night? Christ, Wood, I thought you were going to break up with Alex. I thought things were going to be different.”

My heart was racing, and in one deft motion, my brain disconnected
itself from my heart. Because the truth was I didn’t know how to be with someone else—not with someone who would need things from me, someone who would ask me for promises. I couldn’t do that. I was terrified of loving Jack. I was terrified of wanting him to stay.

“I know about your little secret,” I said. “I saw you and Pigeon down by the mailboxes.”

“What? So?”

“You had your hand on her back.”

“You think I’m seeing Paloma? That’s ridiculous. She’s my friend. She’s a good kid, but I swear to you, there is zero going on between us.”

I knew he was probably telling the truth, but I also knew that I had to end things.

“Look, Jack, seriously. You are one of my best friends. It’s just that I choose Alex.”

“What?” he said, his voice too loud, fear in his eyes. “Why?”

“I don’t have to give you my reasons, Jack. Sorry. That’s just my choice.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. He furrowed his brow and pointed at me, then shook his head. “So that’s how it is, then? You’re serious?”

I nodded.

“Fine, Wood. Then good luck with that.” He turned on his heel and started up the path.

“I still want to be friends,” I called, but he didn’t turn around again.

I avoided talking to Helen that night. I didn’t understand what I’d overheard, but I knew I didn’t like it, and I knew there was no way I could ask Noel about it. She would do what Helen wanted, and for some reason Helen didn’t want her talking to me.

What was it with this place? It seemed like the whole school was nothing more than a collection of terrible secrets. Maybe that was just what happened when you put a bunch of adolescents and young teachers together, overworked everyone, and trapped them on campus. Maybe everyone went a little crazy, and bad decisions, and the secrets they generated, were the inevitable outcome.

The next morning in English, Jack made a big deal of sitting across the room from me, and when Sophie came in, she chose to sit with him, not me. I kept my head down and doodled. Fortunately, Ms. Harlow left me alone.

Chemistry was strange without Mr. Reilly. Dr. Harrison was substituting, and the whole of his pedagogy seemed to consist of reading aloud the steps of our experiment and then cowering at his desk as if he expected something to explode. Jack switched partners on me and was now paired with Cara Svitt, because apparently the prospect of sharing a Bunsen burner with me was too odious. He also made a big display of laughing with her, presumably to show how she was just the best chem partner ever. It made me want to puke.

To make matters worse, my new partner was Shelly Cates, and she had all the personality of a taxidermied otter. What
was wrong with everybody? Asta was a psycho, Ms. Harlow hated me for some mysterious reason, Helen was talking shit behind my back, and Jack was running around touching every girl in sight, which, honestly, kind of made me want to stab myself in the eye with a micropipette.

I was first out of the room when the bell rang. Anger made me hungry, and I didn’t want to have to stand in line to get a hot lunch. I’d have to eat quickly if I wanted to finish my math homework, because my free period was to be spent with the school counselor. It was going to take all my willpower not to beat the poor woman to death with her sand tray.

DURING OUR AFTERNOON WALK, I
regaled Noel with tales of my free period spent with Gibby, the counselor, an anemic scarab of a woman who quoted extensively from
Chicken Soup for the Soul
, took a minimum of twelve packets of Sweet’N Low in her coffee, and, despite my being sent to her for grief counseling, promptly diagnosed me with anorexia nervosa.

I had been forced to make a wellness collage and had spent half an hour cutting phallic shapes out of a magazine and pretending not to know what I was doing. Gibby had seemed happily troubled by the final product and told me we were making great progress.

But throughout the walk, Noel remained quiet, and strangely distant and unappreciative of my Gibby jokes. I
assumed this was Helen’s doing. When we went to sign in, Ms. Sjursen looked at me and shook her finger.

“Noel, dear, you haven’t signed in properly.”

“What?” I said. “Are you talking to me?”

“Your name’s Noel, isn’t it?” she chastised.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No it isn’t. She’s Noel.”

Ms. Sjursen raised a hand to her mouth. For a moment she was confused, but then her confusion bled into irritation, and she snapped at Noel. “Well, then you have made a mark outside of the box, and you know how I feel about marks outside of boxes.”

I stood there a moment, watching Noel appease Ms. Sjursen, and I realized this wasn’t the first time she’d mistaken us.

“Noel,” I said as we walked back to the dorms. “There’s something kind of weird I need to talk to you about.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. A while back someone left a package with Ms. Sjursen. She gave it to me, but now I’m wondering if maybe she meant to give it to you.”

Noel stopped in her tracks and stared at me. “What was in the package?”

“This weird box. It was a puzzle box.”

Noel laughed her same easy laughter, but just for a second, I thought she’d gone too pale.

“A puzzle box? I don’t even know what that is. I’m sure it was for you. Ms. Sjursen’s batty, but she’s right about people a good sixty-five percent of the time.”