After the Woods (16 page)

“I don't mean to be impolite, but if you're saying Donald Jessup was acting out Prey in the woods, the cops figured that out a year ago. Based on the fact that he was chasing me. In fatigues,” I say.

“I know Donald Jessup liked to hunt. He also liked talking off the Twitter feeds. And that's something he and Ana Alvarez, a veterinary student passionate about animal rights, with a history of … let's call them
unusual
interests, had in common. The police hacked Donald and Ana's direct messages. Ana arranged to meet Donald in the woods to play Prey and wound up dead.”

“Are you going to say all that on the news?” I ask.

“I can't tell that story, because it looks like I'm blaming the victim. Besides, I don't have independent corroboration.”

Alice swings close as she completes her first lap. I lower my voice. “How will you get it?”

“We need a source in the police department. That's where you come in,” she says.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Alice, trying to read our lips and stumbling. I start toward her, but she leaps into the air, hands stretched to the sky. “I'm okay!” she yells.

I turn to laugh, and am surprised to find Paula's eyes boring into me.

“You're friendly with the son of Detective MacDougall, yes?” she says, eerily focused.

“You want me to ask Kellan to ask his dad if it's true that Ana Alvarez was playing a kinky game with Donald Jessup?”

“Like I said, that isn't the story we're going to run with. I see it as background information, a piece of the puzzle. We just need to know if it's true to decide whether or not to include that piece. Detective MacDougall was on the case initially, and rumor has it he's dissatisfied with the way things are being conducted this time around, with all new players. He's a perfect source: knowledgeable, respected, and with a motive to talk. You might even consider asking him directly; I understand he's quite an admirer of yours.”

I gasp. “I'm not in a position to do that!” I catch myself and lower my voice. “I can't.”

“It's your call, of course. I really just wanted you to have the information anyway. Because you deserve to know.” Paula turns to Alice and waves. “I'm leaving now. Nice to meet you, Alice.” From an inside pocket, she pulls a glossy headshot postcard and a pen, and scribbles across the corner. When Alice runs up, she hands it to her. As Paula walks away, Alice stares at the picture. I stare at the real thing, her pale heels slipping from the backs of her shoes, a move at once sexy and kind of icky.

“This is so incredibly cool,” Alice says, holding the edges of Paula's headshot as though she might smudge the image. “What did she want?”

“Just checking in. We're friends. I guess.” I walk slowly, putting distance between us and Paula.

“This is about the big police exposé, isn't it? Mom says it's awkward, because they both live in this tiny little town and Detective MacDougall is
so
not having it, he might even lose his job, and, my gosh, Paula Papademetriou is a major journalist! She wins all kinds of awards, and she's gorgeous, and she's powerful, and maybe if the local police and these guys in the state government did something wrong that put Donald Jessup out on the street, they should pay.”

I charge ahead, pointing my keys at the car. “The woods. Not the street. He was in the woods.”

Alice runs to keep up. “Call me Pollyanna. I guess I want something good to come. Maybe that makes me naïve. Or annoying. I think the laws ought to be toughened or something, so that nothing like this ever happens again. Paula is doing what … oh, never mind.”

I look at her over the car roof. “You think Paula is doing what Jesus would do.”

“I do!”

I slip behind the wheel and close my eyes. Alice jumps in and throws her arms around me, squeezing hard.

“Oh Julia, I was so afraid to say it. But I do! I think Paula is your avenging angel,” Alice declares.

I think about that as Alice hugs me in silence. I don't hug her back, but I don't resist, either.

“Julia?”

“Yeah?”

Alice drops her arms. “I overstepped a line before, when I was gossiping about Liv. What I said was totally inappropriate. And now I feel bad.”

“Consider me your safe place to vent.”

“Oh, I like that. Then can I ask you a question?”

“As long as you run it by Jesus first.”

Alice screws her mouth to the side. “Do you think Donald killed that other girl? Ana Alvarez?”

“No,” I lie, because I can't bear to put my gory suspicions inside Alice's head, alongside all those kitties and rainbows. “Okay. Now can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“Do you think Liv feels guilty toward me, because I saved her and got caught?”

“Hmm. A valid question, that one.” She taps her lip with her finger, then stops. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Raise the floodgates.”

“Well then. There was this one time about a week after the Shiv—the unfortunate event—and youth min was meeting in the church basement. It was Liv's first meeting back, in fact. I wanted to plan a candlelight ceremony thanking God that you both returned to us. I got some dirty looks. It was kind of soon, I guess. My suggestion was viewed as ‘indelicate' by some. But I promise you my intentions were pure. Anyway, Liv got teary and ran to the bathroom. The other kids didn't want me to, but I chased after her anyway. I say, do what's in your heart, right? Anyway, I think I caught Liv at a low moment, because she said the oddest thing that I'll never forget.”

I pull my scarf up over my mouth to keep from interrupting.

“I tried to say the most comforting thing I could possibly think of. I said, ‘God was watching over you that day when he sent Julia.' I figured she'd agree. Instead, she snapped at me. She said, ‘
That
day she finds her speed.
That
day, she catches up. I needed a few simple minutes alone to make things clear.' It was like she was talking to herself, as if I wasn't even in the room. I said, ‘What are you talking about?' Maybe
that
was indelicate. But she wasn't making any sense.”

I tug my scarf down from my mouth. “What else?” I ask.

“She looked at me, horrified, like the way your parents do when they drop the F-bomb? Well, maybe just mine. Anyway, she tried to smooth it over, got affectionate, hooked her arm through mine, and said, ‘You know how it is, Alice, when you're best friends and you're together constantly? I wanted some space from Julia. To think. That's all.'”

I cringe. Now I understand why Alice remembers this so vividly. There was nothing crueler to say to the friend I dropped than what a pain it was to be my best friend.

Alice takes a deep breath and shakes out her neck. “Naturally I never said anything to anyone. I had to respect the fact that maybe she wasn't feeling like herself. You'd both been through heck. But secretly, at the time, I thought it was strange. Almost like she was angry with you for saving her. So no,
guilty
is not the word I'd use to describe the way Liv feels about you.” She looks away hard, out her window and into the night.

I want to ask more questions, get more information to process Liv's weird outburst, but Alice is trying to keep it together. The urge to flee is overwhelming. I drop my phone into the cell dock ignition lock that Mom installed so that I can't drive and text. A chirp, loud and long, my tone for missed calls, makes us jump. I shut off the car and hit Play on speaker.

“Julia, it's Paula.”

Alice explodes into tiny, soft claps.

“I forgot to tell you. I thought you'd like to know your friend Olivia has been admitted to Saint Rose of Lima Hospital.”

 

EIGHT

360 Days After the Woods

Shane refuses to acknowledge my glare across the hospital waiting room, his pale eyes fixed on the high-mounted TV. I search for guilt in his mouth, the angle of his shoulders, the set of his cheeks with their spray of rosacea bumps, but there is nothing. Eventually, he tosses his chin, remembering I am Julia Spunk and he's known me since he was little, or, more likely, that I have a murky relation to the girl he's hooking up with.

Beside me, a teenage sister and brother text nonstop while their mother cries into a tissue. A guy with a new baby and a toddler tries to jostle the baby while interesting the toddler in an aquarium built into the wall. On TV, a woman with saggy chins is told to pack her knives and leave a reality cooking show. The baby shrieks like a cat. Over the din, I hear Deborah's tinkly laugh, followed by her struggling to push an empty wheelchair alongside a jacked orderly who resolves the problem by kicking up the chair's metal feet.

Deborah stops short and coos, “Why, it's Shane Cuthbert! And Julia!” oozing charm in front of the handsome orderly with the pipes. “You're a little late for a visit. Liv is about to be discharged. It was just a touch of mono.” She looks pointedly at Shane. “No flowers?”

Shane, low in his seat, lolls his head to one side. “No, ma'am.”

Deborah looks up at the orderly. “Everyone has been so worried about Liv. Popular girl, you can imagine. Well, this works out perfectly. You two can keep Liv busy while I sign the discharge papers. First door on the left.”

Shane rises and slinks down the hall. I follow at a distance. He stands at the doorway, as if to say,
Me or you?

“You go,” I say roughly.

Hands jammed into the pockets of his shredded jeans, he sways his hips and gives me a once-over.

“What are you looking at?” I say, so sharp it slices the air.

He nods, smirking, and slides into her room. I sink to the corridor floor and wrap my hands around my knees as Liv calls out, “Shane, oh my God. Thank you for coming. I'm already discharged, believe it or not. I would have told you…”

The door closes partway. “You didn't answer my texts,” Shane says.

I scramble to the door and place my ear flush to the crack.

“The service in here is very spotty,” Liv says.

“I've been worried,” he says, hangdog. “I love you, Liv.”

“Oh, Shane. That's so sweet. I don't deserve you.” A creak, the sound of her shifting in her bed. “You know what I learned? The incubation period for mono is four to six weeks. You might want to get checked.”

“When did you start feeling sick?” he says, suspicion threading his voice. I can hear the gears in his head turning, see the bubble over his head that says,
We starting screwing around on this date …
Even Shane is capable of mental math.

“Four weeks ago. I think I got worn down, spending all that time preparing for my ethics oral. Mr. Austen has been really hard on me.”

Liv took ethics last year. What is she talking about?

“Austen? The guy who got caught in the sexting scandal with Gina Rubino?”

“Yes, him. Also, remember that reporter, Ryan Lombardi from WFYT? He and I have been working really hard on this story he's writing about the state's corrupt parole board.”

My muscles go rigid. That's Paula's angle on the story, not Ryan's. And there's no way Liv would be working with the media; she hates the media, wants the attention to go away.

“The guy you told me you think is good-looking?” Shane's voice quavers.

Liv laughs lightly. “Did I tell you that? Sometimes I'm too honest for my own good. Anyway, I'm not sure if you heard, but the police failed me. There are so many facts you have to dig up—it's perfectly exhausting. We've been spending hours and hours together, often until very late.”

“You've been with that little putz?” His words are compressed, as though his teeth are clenched.

“Ryan is a cruel taskmaster. But that's okay. You, if anyone, know I like things rough.”

I spring to my feet and knock briskly on the open door. Shane whips around, close to the bed now, his ears angry pink seashells.

“Julia! I'm so glad you're here!” Liv says, flushed. “Shane was just checking in to make sure I didn't need anything. I told him I've been getting everything I need.”

Shane's head snaps back to Liv. Against his thigh, his fist opens and closes.

“They're letting me out early, mainly because I gobbled up every last bit of goo they thrust upon me and washed it down with plastic cups of apple juice. Yellow custard, neon Jell-O, crystalized Italian ices. All that sugar! Deborah made puffer-cheeks at me the whole time.” She says the last part to me, winking.

“I overheard you saying crazy, nonsensical things just now,” I say, underscoring every word. “Because of your fever.”

“Nope. Not saying crazy things, no. Shaney, could you find one of those hospital carts and steal me a tube of that hospital-grade Eucerin? It's hand cream. Everyone steals it, the orderlies, the dietary aides. I've been watching them. It's like hotel soap: you're supposed to take it.”

Shane's eyes flicker between confusion and malice.

“They keep syringes in there too,” Liv says.

He wipes his nose hard and stalks away in search of a cart.

“You look really well,” I say, because she does.

“Yeah, well. They overfeed you here.”

“I was at your house when it happened. Your mother was looking everywhere for you. They said you passed out at youth ministry?”

“Mono can cause anemia. I guess I just fainted.”

“Liv,” I say softly, approaching the bed, “can we talk about you and Shane?”

“I really need to go to the bathroom and get dressed before Deborah comes back. Will you stay?”

“I'm not going anywhere,” I say, looking at the door. Not while Shane's here.

Liv eases from her bed, holding her johnny behind her. I hand her an orange bag with her clothes inside from the L-shaped table. A chart is clipped to a hook on her bedpost. My eyes flash over the word
ketoacidosis.
The nubs of Liv's spine snake down her neck and back, visible between loose johnny ties. As she reaches for the doorknob, her johnny parts at the back.