WOODS PROJECT — an extract

I never asked the woods to tell me their secrets. They decided to on their own. In my more selfish moments, I thought there was something different about me, something noble and deserving. The truth is, I believe they whispered to me because I was quiet – and because I wouldn't leave them alone. 

      Sometimes, when I go into the woods now, I have something in mind to ask for. Not today, though. I sit in a dappled patch of half-light filtering through the leaves. Around me is the crushed scent of pine and there's the broken-off edge of a branch poking into my thigh. I should readjust, but I'm arranged precariously enough as it is, and I worry what will happen if I shift too much of my weight the wrong way.  

      My English homework is barely holding my attention, and it's even less consuming when I feel the gentle scrape of a branch against my back. This is how it begins: not an accidental prod, like the branch I'm sitting on, but something more intentional. 

      I look up. 

      Not much has changed in the hour or so since I climbed up here. It's probably about five in the afternoon, and the trees are starting to take on that shadowy cast even though it's still early September and there's hours of daylight left. I should probably get down soon anyways – my parents don't like me coming this far into the woods, and they especially don't like me staying after dark.

      There's the branch again, grazing the spot just under my shoulder blade. It digs a little, sharp through the thin cotton of my shirt, as the woods do when they really want me to see something. 

      I sigh and tuck my book back into my bag. English homework can wait until I'm home. The woods cannot.  

      I climb down easily, branches shifting to take my weight, forming a needley staircase down to the foliage.

      If thorns touch me, they caress without scraping. Poison ivy bends out of my way. Snakes and mosquitoes may buzz or investigate, but they otherwise give me a wide berth. I’ve never had a reason to fear the things that live here, really. I think, when the animals look at me, and I at them, we both see each other for what we are: something that fits. There’s nothing to distinguish me from the ferns on the ground other than the fact that I probably don’t taste nearly as good.

      They know I belong to the woods, somehow. Just like I know the woods belong to me. 

      I pull my backpack tight against me, ignoring the patch of sweat on my lower back and the way my hair sticks to my forehead. A quick glance at my watch, to remind myself not to get too distracted, and I'm following the snaking vines that creep out of the ferns to point me in the right direction. 

      There is no trail here, not this deep in the forest. I'm probably a mile or two off it, maybe more. In this part of Pennsylvania, thick forest is the rule rather than the exception. Everyone else in my town is comfortable in the woods, too, but they probably don't go so far in without a map, or a compass, or a phone with service. 

      But the forest is not so thick that I can't pass through. The saplings bend away at the touch of my fingers. Moss clings to my shoes, keeping me balanced as I step over the stones to cross a trickling creek.  

      And still, the vines snake onwards. Soon, they will stop. They will show me what they want, and I'll acknowledge that I know, that I've seen. And the forest will be satisfied for the day or week or month until it wants to show me something else. 

      I let a hand hang down, let my fingers spread. An offshoot from the vine slips up my leg and around my hand, winding through my fingers, looping like rings. Tiny leaves tickle my knuckles.  

      It's like a leash, but I'm not certain who's trying to stay closer: me to the green vine, or the forest to my skin. 

      The vines slither across my palm and around my wrist as the thick main vine in front of me races forward over the forest floor. I'm about to check my watch again, not really paying attention, when I stumble over something. 

      I don't ever stumble here, in my forest. Roots depress to let me pass; stones shift or smooth over. The forest yields to me.  

      When I look down, there's a boot half-buried in the soil. 

      I shouldn’t know what it is, and yet I do. Rough, brown leather; moss growing over one toe. The laces are worn and nibbled, and I have the manic thought that just because the animals respect me doesn’t mean they respect anyone else here.  

      The boot is probably… I can’t process anything else, but it is probably lost, taken out of a tent during a hike, or lost on the trail. I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s still attached to something, but I force myself to look anyways. 

      The vines stop, snaking around the ankle of the boot, knocking away some of the dirt, and revealing a stretch of awful, brownish-ivory bone.  

      I don't want to look, but the woods brought me here. I don't want to look, but my dad is a cop and it's my civic duty to report this. I don't want to look, I don't, I don't, but the vines are tangled in my hand and tugging me closer, and I have to.  

      My thumb traces over the soft velvet of a leaf in my palm. I ground myself in roots. This is what I'll return to, and maybe it's a blessing for these browned bones to be tangled in my wood – maybe this is what will become of me someday. 

      I take a breath, press my non-vined hand to my heart. It's beating out of control. And when I can't put it off any longer, I take a cautious step around the boot, and I look. 

      The vines are still slipping around, knocking dirt away, moving aside the moss. There are blue synthetic fibers clinging – the remains of a bag, I'm pretty sure. I'm trying to examine without thinking, without processing what it is I'm looking at. I'm trying not to think at all, actually, about the fact that there's a body under my feet or that my woods have intentionally led me to it, or whom it may belong to. 

I      smell the deep green of the wood. There is no trace of rot. Any flesh is long-past decomposed. 

      The moss creeps back, revealing the grinning skull. Bile rises to my throat as I notice the glimmer of braces still clinging to the teeth. 

      I press my lips together and look away. I need a way to mark this for the police – there's no service out here, no way to get help. I'm not sure my woods would bring me back here, especially not if I'm leading other people.  

      Three seconds. That's how long I allow myself to close my eyes, breathe in, breathe out.  

      There are the blue synthetic fibers on the body, and the boots, and the braces. Together, they should be enough to identify whoever this is, lost and decayed in the forest.  

      It’s a lonely thing, a sad thing, to be out here all alone as your body returns to the dirt. An even worse thing if you’re not meant to be alone; if you’re not meant to be dead. I’ve spent my whole life hearing about murder victims getting discovered by errant hikers, but I never thought I’d be one of the people doing the discovering. I always thought my forest would protect me from that. 

      Apparently, I thought wrong. 

      The vines shift, settling under the body, returning to dormancy – and something flashes gold. Despite my fear, I lean in to investigate. Looped around the remains of vertebrae, there's a thin, gold chain. The body is wearing a necklace. 

      I don't want to disturb the crime scene. Both of my parents drilled this into me. I crouch a safe distance away, ignoring the grinning skull, and try to get a closer look. 

      The pendant on the chain is a Star of David, nestled against a sliver of a moon. A chill runs down my spine. The vine slips off my hand and down to the forest floor, leaving me alone with the realization. 

      I know who this body is.  

# 

There are cases, and then there is The Case.  

      All over again, I'm nine, and my dad is going out and there's an AMBER alert and the TV's are all talking about disappearances and kidnappings and keep-your-girls-inside. I'm thirteen, sitting on the couch with my mom across from me, campaign button still on her blazer, and dad stands by the door and doesn't look at me. I'm on Papa's couch while he and Dad move Dad's stuff in and make the things that used to be ours into the things that are his. Because in the background of all of this, from the late nights when the fights started to that election and the next, there was one name coming from every single TV in every house in Carter County, Pennsylvania. 

      Miriam Galinsky.  

      I stare at the empty-eyed skull. It stares back, necklace winking in the sunlight. If I look through her bones, maybe I'd find her wallet, or identification, or something that can confirm – but I don't need the confirmation. I know about the necklace. After all, my dad, the detective on the case seven years ago, told me about it himself. 

      There’s a moment when I’m just standing there, staring at the eye sockets, frozen. I’m not sure what to do – I know the protocol for finding a body, but I can’t do anything other than stand here and stare. 

      My eyes trace down, over her bones. One arm is missing, probably taken by animals. Bits stick up from the soil. She must’ve been buried, I suspect, but not very deep. This far into the woods, no one would come looking for her. We’re miles from where her car was recovered; there would be no reason for the dogs to come searching this way.  

      There’s a friendship bracelet tied around the remains of a wrist that I can see. It’s worn, but I can just barely make out the pattern: alternating red and blue lines, with gold every few rows.  

      Hannah Galinsky wears a matching bracelet. I saw it on her earlier today.  

      I’m not scared. I think I should be, looking at a body stripped away like this, literally bared. I think I should be terrified, or sick. But I’m just sad. And seeing the bracelet, placing it into my daily life, makes me feel even worse. 

      I didn’t think Miriam was alive – no one did – but seeing her like this, alone after all of these years, strikes something within me. I want to turn away and leave her here, undisturbed; I want to shout until someone comes to find me. 

      I don’t want to remember the bare eye sockets or the brackish rotted space under her bones, where her flesh and blood was absorbed by the earth, but I’m not going to forget. I’m not afraid, but I am haunted. 

      Hands shaking, I take out my English folder. I don't like to take many things back home from school, so I really only have some tape and a few graded papers from yesterday plus my book, but it has to be enough. 

      "Take me home," I whisper. A vine stirs under my feet, ferns rustling in a wind that isn't there. The vines lead the way. The saplings bend to my palm and arc away when I reach out. Moss scatters and ferns bend and it's my wood, still my wood, but I keep tasting bile, and I'm looping ripped pieces of paper through trees and praying that it stays. It's my wood but it just brought me to a dead body and, more than anything, I want to throw up. 

      I leave the body behind, creating a trail of torn paper like some fucked up Hansel and Gretel.  

      I'm panicking, or I should be panicking, but I'm thinking that it's nearly six and I'm supposed to have dinner with Papa and Dad at their house tonight, and I'm going to be late. I should be thinking about braces and golden necklaces and bones but I'm sweating and thinking that they'll be worried; that I usually call if I'm going to be late. And then I'm thinking of Hannah Galinsky and my palms are sweating and the forest is going to swallow me whole. 

      A breath. It will not swallow me. As if to answer, a sapling bends to caress the top of my hair, running branches through it, snagging on the red curls like my mother's fingers used to. 

      Another breath. 

I don't know how long I've been walking, following the vines, but the forest is thinning now. I recognize that boulder and that tree, and if I squint, I think I can see the edge of the pavement up ahead.  There, chained to a rack at the end of the park road is my bike, and I've never been so happy to see it before. I break into a run, gasping for air, trailing paper behind me as fast as I can tear it. 

      At my bike, I double over, sucking in mouthfuls of air and trying very hard not to cry. When I close my eyes, she's still there. And I'm terrified that when I go to sleep tonight – if I go to sleep tonight – she's all I'll be able to think about. 

# 

The first thing I do is call Dad. 

      I know Mom is going to be pissed I called him first, but really, when discovering a body it feels instrumental to call the police immediately. It just so happens that Dad is the police. 

      "Sweetheart," he says, sounding like the culmination of all those cigarettes I've been trying to get him to stop smoking. He stopped when I was born but started all over again after the divorce and hasn't broken the habit since. "I'm in the middle of a case – if this is about dinner, tell Papa that I'll be home soon." 

      His voice is such a relief that it takes me a moment to get my words together. "Dad. It's not – I need – I need your help." 

      Instantly, he's cool and smooth and in situation mode. "Are you in trouble? Where are you? What's going on?" 

      My mouth is dry. Trying to swallow feels like I'm forcing a golf ball down my throat. "I. Well. I think I found a body. In the woods. Can you come?" 

      Of course he can, and he is, and, "I'll be there in five minutes," he says after I thoroughly describe my location. He doesn't ask if I'm okay because I'm his daughter and that means of course I am. 

# 

Papa is waiting by his truck when the cop car pulls up in front of the station. Dad is still back at the scene, waiting for the coroner. He didn't say anything about the torn strips of paper or how deep the body was in the woods – which meant that's how deep I was in the woods – but his mouth pressed into a thinner and thinner line until we got to the body, and then he didn't say anything to me. He just had a rookie take my statement and then escort me and my bike back to town. 

      Now, the line of Papa's mouth is pressed just as thin as Dad's. Like this, they're nearly identical, despite the twenty-odd years that separate them. 

      He comes to help the rookie get my bike and loads it into the bed of his truck. I lever myself up into the front seat and wait for him to join me.  

      "Long day, peanut?" he asks as he slides into the driver's side. 

      "It's been a weird one," I say. 

      Papa nods. He's not going to say it first, not going to ask about the body or how I found it until I tell him myself. I think that's a leftover reaction to him being in the military. He definitely doesn't want anyone asking him about his war stories, so he's not going to ask me. It's one of the many ways we're alike. I'm the most boring sixteen-year-old in Carter County, no doubt: I can't drive (Dad says he's seen too many young kids wrap themselves around trees that way and there's no way in hell I'll be one of them), I don't go out anywhere (district attorney mom and cop dad, remember?), and my two best friends are my grandfather and a sometimes sentient forest. 

      He also doesn't say anything about dinner, which I've certainly ruined. Or the fact that Dad has already worked overtime this week and now he'll have to put in more.  

      Papa breaks the silence. "Did you talk to your mother?" 

      "Kind of," I say. I flip down the sun visor and slide the mirror open. There are twigs and leaves tangled in my red braid. I pull the elastic out and work through the curls. 

      "You should call her," Papa says, but he doesn't sound convinced. Mom hasn't picked up on the if-I-don't-bring-it-up-I-don't-want-to-discuss-it thing. If she wants to know information, she'll prod until she gets it. It's why she's such a good lawyer. She finds out the truth – and if it doesn't work for her, she finds a way around it. 

      Maybe that's why I'm afraid to call her. Maybe she'll ask the wrong questions and it will all come unraveled. 

      "I'll see her tonight," I say, because even though I want to hide out in my room in Dad and Papa's house, the court deems me legally obligated to spend weeknights at Mom's house. It's the custody arrangement we've had since the beginning.  

      "Mmph." 

      We drive through town, towards Papa's house. Maple Creek is not a large town – not big enough to be listed on most maps, even. It's an afterthought of a place. The last exit before the highway turns into a toll road, the second-to-last town before crossing into West Virginia. Papa passes the funeral home, the gas station, the McDonald's. Cars clutter parking lots of the only two restaurants in town, and I’m sure the news is spreading through them, like thick sap through a tree.  

      Papa reaches out and squeezes my hand. I wonder if he notices that my fingers are stained green with chlorophyll.  

      "Well," he says finally, we pass through town limits and back into the farmlands. "Thank God that family has some peace now. If anything, they deserve that." 

      He's right. They do. 

      Miriam Galinsky was the second daughter of four. Her sister, Hannah, is in my grade. They live outside town the other direction in a beautiful, sprawling farmhouse that Mr. and Mrs. Galinsky bought after they had their youngest daughter.

      I was in first grade when Hannah came storming through the door wearing her pout, even back then, and milkmaid braids pinned around her head. She was snappy and mercurial and she didn't want to be anyone's friend. It's no surprise that now, everyone looks at her like they're afraid – but really, I think they want to be her. I think we all do. 

      Papa pulls into the driveway and turns off the truck. The house he shares with Dad is pale blue with black shutters. Small. It's a farmhouse, built in the 1800's and barely updated since.  

      Inside, it smells like peppers and herbs. Papa made stuffed peppers for dinner, and the pan of them sits on the stovetop, covered in foil so the cat can't get in.

      "Go ahead and fix yourself a plate," he says, moving past me into the living room. I stay in the kitchen, hands braced on the counter, wishing I could force the image of Miriam Galinsky's body out of my head. I think of her boots, laced so carefully. She tied them the morning she died, just like any other morning. She put on her necklace; she put the bracelet around her wrist. She brushed her teeth and did her hair and chose an outfit and had no idea that it would be what she died in. That it would be what I’d find her in, years and years later, rotted to nothing.  

      In the other room, Papa switches on the TV. I get a plate out of the cupboard. The newscaster is giving the weather, talking about weekend rain and how it could affect local high school games. The news is talking about football and an hour ago, I was looking into Miriam Galinsky's empty eye sockets. 

      The plate slips out of my hands, hits the ground, shatters. Blue and white shards scatter across the linoleum. 

      "Drew?" Papa calls. "You okay?" 

      "Yeah," I say, even though I'm not, I can't be, but I'm the girl who has to be okay. I've been told about grisly murders for as long as I can remember. I've accidentally seen crime scene photos at both of my parents' jobs, and later, not-so-accidentally found them on the internet.  

      But this is different, because when I think of Miriam's braces I think of her smile. And her eye sockets remind me of the dark brown of her eyes, and her sister's.  

      And, of course, the news decides that now is the time to break the story. 

      I'm sweeping the plate shards from the floor when the newscaster announces, "Police were called to a forested area of Maple Creek earlier this afternoon. A statement just released by Police Chief Shawn Reynolds reveals that there was a body discovered in the woods." 

      I don't need to be watching the TV to know what it’s showing: sweep overs of the dense forest; B-roll footage of the creek and crime scene tape surrounding the area. Reynolds' voice comes next, stiff and measured with unspoken answers. 

      "We responded to a call from a hiker in a densely wooded area and indeed found what appears to be human remains. The coroner is making his report, and we are unable to release any more information until that is finished." 

      "Do you have any idea who the body could be?" 

      A hesitation. It's enough. It's so, so enough. Of course they know the body is Miriam's, just as much as I do. Evidence will confirm it; dental records will make it undeniable. 

      "We can't comment on that at this time," Reynolds says. 

      This is going to be spun and respun and reframed, and in my mother's office, she's probably already pulling the case files, and Maple Creek Daily journalists are probably competing for this story right now as I'm throwing the shards of plate away and wiping a line of blood off of my palm. 

      He switches off the news when I come and settle in, like he's trying to protect me. As if I'm not the one who discovered the body in the first place. 

      I push the pepper around my plate, dragging my fork through the pinkish juice that leaks from the bottom. I don't need to look at Papa to know he's watching me. On the screen, everyone on the round of Jeopardy! gets the answer wrong.  

      "It gets better," Papa says, and he's talking about the body, and my stomach twists. "It gets better." 

      But he's wrong, and we both know it. Maybe I'll forget the horror and the image and the braces and boots, but it's not going to get better. It's about to get much, much worse.