twenty-two

I head for my shack. I tell myself I’m looking for Jude, but that’s really an excuse. I should be able to handle this better—should have been able to convince the deputy to investigate, should have been able to prove Edie was missing, should have been able to keep Lennon from disappearing. I feel helpless, which means I need to go into the forest, a place I understand, where I’m in charge.

Jude is not at the shack. As I string fresh barrier thread, I’m fixed on an image I can’t shake: the walls in Doc Southcott’s office. The whole clinic is decorated with photographs of the lives that pass through his doors. There’s one of me shortly after I arrived, hanging on Cadence’s arm, another where I awkwardly pose in my elementary school graduation dress, and a third taken last year, when I was putting away supplies and a box of cast plaster powder fell and my laughter brought Doc Southcott running in time to snap a picture of me covered in white dust.

“That’s the best one,” he said. “That’s the real you.” Except it isn’t. The other two better reflect the Winter Crane I see in my head, the awkward and somber girl. The laughing one is a stranger I never see in the mirror.

For many people, those office photos start with a first baby shot, taken shortly after Doc Southcott brought them into the world. Lives told in pictures. So many lives. Yet many sets don’t progress past teenage years. People leave after that, moving away as soon as they can, and sometimes never coming back, their photo sets ending with a final shot of a sullen or smiling teen, eyes already fixed on the horizon beyond Reeve’s End.

So many leave. Some plan to return, at least for visits, like Edie. Others don’t. Like Cadence.

I swallow hard. That’s why I’m thinking of those photos. I’m thinking of all the kids who leave and never come back. Of my sister who left and hasn’t come back. Of how easy it would be for someone to grab…

I put aside the boundary thread, go inside, pull out my notebook, and turn to a blank page. Then I stare at that page as I fight the urge to snap the book closed. To tell myself I’m being silly. Overreacting.

But if there’s a chance—any chance at all—that Edie’s disappearance is part of something larger…

Maybe I’ve just watched too many of those damned crime shows. Read too many of Cady’s mystery novels, the ones she rarely actually read, buying them secondhand and then telling me to take what I wanted, and now I wonder if they were really for me, a small way of continuing to be my big sister.

Miss you, Cady.

I give myself a sharp shake. None of that. I have work to do.

I steel myself and write Cadence Crane: left last May.

I know the date. I know the hour. I can still see her the day after graduation, walking to hitch a ride to the city, me running after her, feeling like I was five again, chasing her after I’d done something wrong and she’d had enough of her little sister for a while.

“Go home, Win.”

“I just want—”

“And I just want to be alone.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Go home, Win. I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

Are you ready yet, Cady? It’s been over a year. Isn’t that long enough? Whatever I did…

Whatever I did…

I force myself to keep writing, adding to my sister’s entry. Last contact: none. Last known location: none. Reason for departure…

None.

I’d love to write that. Or simply the usual. But it isn’t true. I gaze down at the paper, my pen bleeding a growing pit of black as I press the tip in harder.

Reason for departure?

Her sister.

Her stupid, foolish sister, who thinks she’s so smart, thinks she has the answer for everything, knows what’s best for everyone.

Her sister made a mistake.

I swallow and then I write family tragedy. I look at the words, and I squirm in my seat and I want to change them. It wasn’t really family. More personal. And tragedy? More of an accident, really.

An accident. Seriously?

I leave the words family tragedy. They do not overstate the matter. I only wish they did.

I push on to the next name.

Marty Lawson: left…

I continue on, dredging through my memory for the names of every kid who’s left in the last few years and never returned. For the other columns—date of departure, last contact, last known address, reason for departure—many remain blank.

When I’m done, I have a list of twelve names dating to when I started high school. That’s when I began paying attention to those who left, if only because they were setting out on a trail I planned to follow.

I’m eating an energy bar when I hear a soft clink. It’s a Coke can rigged to my thread-line, letting me know I have an intruder.

I climb onto the chair and pop my makeshift periscope through the hatch. Fifth-grade science comes in handy sometimes. I scan the surrounding woods as best I can. Nothing.

I’m still looking when something pushes against the door. It’s a tentative push, stopped by the latch. I jump down and snatch up my hunting knife and stand on the other side of the door.

“Who’s there?”

No answer.

“Jude? If that’s you, and you’re trying to spook me…”

I know it isn’t. Jude doesn’t have the patience or the personality for games. He’d pound and say, “It’s me. I want to talk,” and then be genuinely confused when I didn’t throw open the door.

I stand poised with that knife for at least two minutes. Then I decide I’m overreacting. The wind must have set the can clinking and pushed the door. I hear the whistle of it over the roof.

I lower the knife. The door moves again.

I freeze, blood pounding in my ears, hand gripping the knife handle so hard it hurts.

There’s nowhere to run. No one to call. I’m trapped here, alone, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

I back to the chair, ease up onto it, and then push open the hatch. I put my knife on the roof, making sure it’s caught on a board and won’t slide off. I tense, certain the maniac below will pick this moment to break down that door, and I’ll grab for the knife and send it skittering down the roof and be helpless to fight back.

But that’s not what happens. I slide to the roof on my stomach, staying low. Then I have a choice. Try to see him over the front or escape over the back.

The obvious choice is “flee while you still can!” Yet if I do, I lose an opportunity. So I creep on my stomach to the front. First, I scan the forest, in case he’s backed away from the door. Then, face plastered to the roof, I inch forward until I can just barely see over the edge and…

And nothing.

I’m heading back to Reeve’s End. Every crackle in the bushes makes me jump. I hate that. Hate feeling as if my forest has been taken from me, my place of refuge now a place of danger. I walk fast, senses on high alert. I’m a third of the way to town when a low growl ripples from the bushes. I spin as a dog leaps at me. I don’t even see which one it is. I kick as hard as I can, hitting it under the muzzle. Then I run.

When I hear pounding paws, I glance back to see Flea and Alanna tearing after me. I look around wildly for a tree to climb, but I’m in the wrong part of the forest; this patch is too rocky for more than bushes and saplings. As I’m looking for shelter—any shelter—I stumble. Flea pounces. He’s a small dog—some terrier mix—and I shove him away, but not before he chomps down on my arm. I manage to throw him off and resume running, but the alpha bitch has taken advantage of my stumble and accelerated, yowling as she closes in.

When Alanna snaps at my flying feet, I ignore it as best I can, but she snags my sneaker enough that I stumble again. I twist and I manage to kick Alanna’s belly. Something cracks, and she goes down. Then a brown blur streaks from the bushes.

I see a flash of light blue—a filthy and tattered kerchief still tied around the dog’s neck. It’s Mange. He’s big—part hound, part shepherd—and when he leaps, I slash with my blade. I don’t see where I’m striking. I stab and I yank the knife out and blood flies and I stab again. I catch another blur in the corner of my eye as Flea lunges and grabs my arm again. I strike at him—a blind and wild strike. It makes contact, though, and he loosens his grip, and I swing the knife and slash, equally blindly. Blood sprays. Flea yelps and drops from my arm.

Mange is rising. Blood stains his coat, and I can see one ugly gash, muscles ripped, but the dog is on his feet, snarling and enraged. I kick him in the chest and run. I’ve kicked so hard that my sneaker—already loose from the alpha’s nipping—flies off. I can’t stop to grab it. I just run.

Flea comes after me. Alanna does too, having recovered. When I glance back, I see Mange lurching in my direction, staggering and stumbling.

That’s when I see the tree. It’s a small one, as big as they grow in this section. Sneakers hang from the top branches, where kids threw old ones up. That’s not random. It marks a spot. A spot that has exactly what I need.

I race to the top of a rocky mound beside the tree. There, half hidden in the undergrowth, is a hole. I don’t look down it. I don’t look back at the dogs. I just jump.