CHAPTER 14
I can handle this.
That’s what I tell myself.
We’re only going to Central Park, for God’s sake. Not a forest in the middle of nowhere. I have my pepper spray. I have Sam. We’ll be fine.
But doubt takes over as soon as we step outside. The night air is shockingly cold. I rub my arms for warmth as Sam lights a cigarette beneath the building’s awning. Then we’re off, my heartbeat racing as we cross Columbus Avenue, Sam ahead of me, trailing smoke.
When we reach Central Park West, my anxiety only increases. The wrongness of the situation is obvious. I feel it in my gut, as if my conscience is an internal organ, crimson and fleshy, flaring with unexplained distress. We shouldn’t be out here. Not at this hour.
I had wanted to feel radiant again. Instead, I feel dim and hollow and small.
“I think we’ve gone far enough.”
My voice gets lost in the chilly breeze. Not that Sam would have turned back had she heard me. She’s all determination as she crosses the street and makes a right, heading toward the park entrance one block south. I break into a run, following the route of my morning jogs until I’ve caught up to her.
“What are we going to do out here?” I say.
“You’ll see.”
Sam ditches her cigarette and veers into the park. I pause at the threshold, the headlights cruising up Central Park West catching me in their glare and bending my shadow over the sidewalk. I want to turn back. I almost do. My body’s prepared to sprint back to the apartment and dive into bed, clinging to Jeff. But I can no longer see Sam. She’s been swallowed by the park’s dark mouth.
“Sam?” I say. “Come back.”
There’s no response.
I wait, hoping she’ll reappear, grinning, saying this is just another one of her tests. One that I have failed.
But when she doesn’t come back, my nervousness ticks up another notch. Sam’s alone in the park. In the dead of night. And even though I know she can take care of herself, I worry.
So I curl my fingers around the slim canister of pepper spray in my pocket. I curse myself for not taking a Xanax. Then I inhale a deep, jittery breath and step into the park.
Sam is right there. Not lost. Just blending with the shadows as she waits for me to catch up. She looks impatient. Or annoyed. I can’t quite tell.
“Come on,” she says, grabbing my arm and pulling me along.
I know this part of the park well. I’ve been here a thousand times. The Diana Ross Playground is to our left, its gates closed and locked. On our right sits the exit curve of the 79th Street Transverse. Yet night has transformed the park into something forbidden and unfamiliar. I barely recognize it. A mist has rolled in, shivery and thick. It whispers against my skin and haloes the lamps along the path, diffusing their glow. Muted circles of light creep across the grass and get tangled in the trees, making the park’s woods seem thicker, more wild.
I try not to think about the woods surrounding Pine Cottage, even though it’s all I can think about. That thick forest, filled with hidden dangers. It’s like I’m back there again, ready to break out into my life-or-death race through the trees.
Sam heads deeper into the park. I follow, even as a chant of worry forms in my thoughts—This is dangerous. This is mad. This is wrong.
Through the mist, I see the hazy outline of the Delacorte Theatre. Just beyond it is Belvedere Castle, a miniature fortress rising from a rock outcropping. Its fog-shrouded silhouette brings to mind fairy tale forests.
One could get lost in a place like this, I think. One could stray from the path and never be seen again.
Just like Janelle.
Like Craig.
Like all of them.
For now, Sam and I keep on the path as we head south, staying close to the park’s western border. Despite the hour, we are not alone. I glimpse other people—moving shadows in the distance. A couple crossing the park swiftly, heads lowered against the mist. A late-night jogger behind us, breath heavy, tinny music drifting out of earbuds. Their appearances make my heart crash like symbols.
Then there are the solitary men with fog-blurred faces that cruise the park’s paths, looking for the erotic thrill of illicit, anonymous sex. Many of them wear similar clothes, as if there’s a dress code involved. Track pants and expensive running shoes, hooded sweatshirts unzipped to expose tight T-shirts. They emerge from the mist in all directions. Roaming, circling, searching.
Thankfully, they don’t give Sam and me a second glance. We’re not their type.
“We should go back,” I say.
“Chill,” Sam says.
She shares the same restlessness as those discreetly prowling men. There’s something driving her. A hunger. A need. She plops onto a bench, her right leg fidgeting as she searches the horizon. A hardness has replaced the earlier fire in her eyes, her stare cold and coal black.
I sit beside her, my heart beating so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shake the bench. Sam digs a cigarette out of her jacket pocket and lights up. The flare of her lighter in the fog gets the attention of one of the prowlers—a leather-clad moth drawn to the flame. I tense up as he gets closer. My hands tighten around the pepper spray.
Once he reaches our bench, his features clear. He’s handsome and lithe, with a peppery stubble tracing the line of his jaw. An air of dark sexiness radiates off of him.
“Hey,” he says, voice hushed and apologetic, as if talking isn’t allowed. “Can I bum a smoke?”
Sam obliges, slipping a cigarette from her pocket and into his palm with the ease of a dime bag dealer. She flicks her lighter and the man leans forward, cigarette tip catching, glowing hot a moment before darkening into a smolder. He nods at Sam, blowing out smoke that mingles with the mist.
“Thanks.”
“No prob,” Sam says. “Good luck tonight.”
The man smiles, sly and sexy. He begins to walk away in a leather-clad strut, saying over his shoulder, “Luck has nothing to do with it, sweetie.” Then he’s gone, vanishing back into the fog from which he emerged.
I think about Him. In a different woods. In a different time. If only He had disappeared like that, slipping away, leaving us alone. We should have let Him go. I should have demanded it.
“Sam, I want to go home,” I say.
“Fine,” Sam replies. “Go.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“Nope.”
“What are we doing here? Will you tell me that much?”
Sam shushes me, suddenly alert. She stands, looking in the direction we just came from, body taut, poised, ready to pounce. I follow her gaze, seeing what she sees. A woman has appeared in the mist, roughly a hundred yards away. Alone, she hurries through the park with an unwieldy canvas tote held tight against her chest. Young and poor, probably. Crossing the park on foot to save on cab fare, not thinking about how spectacularly bad an idea that really is.
A man emerges from the fog right behind her, so close he could be her shadow. Shrouded in a black hoodie, he even looks like a shadow. He moves at a steady clip, faster than the girl, gaining on her. She realizes this and quickens her pace, on the cusp of a run.
“Sam?” I say as my heart begins to thud hollowly in my chest. “Do you think he’s going to mug her? Or—”
Worse. That’s what I’m about to say. Or worse.
I don’t get the chance because the half-man, half-shadow is already upon the girl, a hand clamping down on her shoulder, the other reaching for either the tote bag or her breasts hidden behind it.
Sam takes off, sprinting up the path, the sound of her boots muffled in the haze. Instinct makes me run after her, even though I only vaguely know what’s about to happen.
Up ahead, the girl sees Sam and recoils. As if Sam is aiming for her. She struggles under the man’s grip, legs unsteady, the tote bag raised like a shield in front of her. Sam passes her in a wide arc, heading instead for the man, not slowing, smashing right into him.
The collision knocks him away from the girl and into the grass. Sam bounces off of him, staggering backward. The girl hurtles away, wanting to look back but too scared to. I leap in front of her, hands raised, adrenaline frothing inside me.
“Friends,” I say. “We’re friends.”
Behind her, the assailant slips over the grass as he tries to flee. Sam hurls herself at him, leaping onto his back. Quickly, I guide the almost-victim to the closest bench, set her down, order her to stay there. Then I’m off, rushing toward Sam.
Somehow, she’s pushed the man onto his knees. He slumps more the longer she’s on top of him, bending so far forward his face brushes the grass. Something Coop said earlier fills my skull.
We don’t know what she’s capable of.
“Sam, don’t hurt him!”
My voice cuts across the park, distracting Sam. She looks up. Not long. Just a split second. But it’s enough time for the man to kick at her. His foot hits her in the stomach and sends her rolling through the grass.
The man rises in a lunge, legs spaced apart and bent at the knees. A sprinter at the starting line. Soon he’s off, shoes slipping a bit on the slick grass. Sam’s still on her back, trying to flip onto her side, sucking in air to cool the pain in her stomach. Not down for the count, but close enough.
I break into a run, awkwardly, with one hand in my pocket fumbling for the pepper spray.
The man is completely up now, also running. But I’m faster, all those jogged miles paying off. I catch the man’s sweatshirt, jerking the hood off his head. There’s a baseball cap underneath, slightly askew. I see a shock of raven-black hair, cocoa skin on the back of his neck. One hard pull of the hood is all it takes to slow him down, sneakers sliding, arms flailing.
When he whirls around, I expect to see his face. Instead, all I see is the blur of his hand as it streaks toward me. Then the slap comes—a brutal backhand whipping my cheek so hard my entire head jerks to the right.
My vision clouds with a red pulse of pain that blocks out everything else. I haven’t felt pain like that in years. Ten years, to be precise. Fleeing Pine Cottage. Screaming through the woods. That thick branch knocking me dizzy.
Suddenly it’s like I’m right back there again, feeling the deep, throbbing hurt from that branch. Time contracts. It’s a dark tunnel, and I’m about to fall through it, not landing until I’ve returned to that cursed woods where all those bad things happened.
But I don’t. I’m back in the present, shock numbing my body. I let go of the hood, my hand opening against my will. I can still see the man through the red haze clouding my vision. Now free, he’s running south, getting further away, soon gone.
His presence is replaced by two others, swooping in from different directions. One of them is Sam, hurrying up behind me, saying my name. The other is the girl we just saved. She’s left her bench and comes toward me, hand deep in her tote bag.
“You’re bleeding,” she says.
I press a hand to my nose as something hot and wet trickles from my nostrils. Looking down, I see blood glistening on my fingers.
The girl hands me a tissue. While I dab at my nose, Sam presses against my back, encircling me with a hug.
“Goddamn, babe,” she says. “We’ve got a fighter on our hands.”
I breathe through my mouth, swallowing crisp air that smells faintly of grass. My entire body hums with a mixture of adrenaline and fear and pride that Sam might actually be right. I am a fighter, aglow with radiance.
The girl we saved—she never does give us her name—also seems astonished. She speaks in awed, hushed tones as we whisk through the fog on our way out of the park, asking us if we’re vigilantes.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Sam says.
Once we’re on Central Park West, I hail a cab and make sure the girl actually gets into it. Before closing the door, I shove a twenty into her palm, closing her fingers over the bill and saying, “Cab fare. Don’t ever walk through the park alone this late again.”
She nods, chastened. “You, too.”