What She Found in the Woods

‘Strange perfect,’ I reply.

He rubs a strand of my hair between his finger and thumb. ‘Yesterday, when I couldn’t see you, I kep

t telling myself there was no way you were real,’ he says. He tilts his head so he can see my face. ‘Where do you work, by the way?’

‘At a women’s shelter,’ I say. ‘I volunteer there.’

‘The one for addicts?’ Bo asks.

‘You know it?’

He nods, his forehead creasing with troubled thoughts. ‘It’s one of my father’s favourite examples of the failings of Western medicine,’ he says.

I lift my head and prop myself up on his chest. ‘I don’t see the connection.’

‘A lot of the women there started on pain pills. Prescription drugs lead to addiction.’

Technically true, but an oversimplification. ‘Your dad knows they have addicts in the East too, right?’

Bo laughs, his eyes sparkling. ‘You should tell him that.’

We both stop laughing. ‘You want me to meet your dad?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘I want you to meet my whole family. Is that OK?’

I nod and rest my head on his chest again. I fall asleep.

I wake alone.

‘Bo?’ I say, looking around, but I already know he’s not here. I can feel that he’s gone. It’s an unnerving thing to fall asleep with someone and then wake up alone. It’s like there’s a hole in your day – a swath of time where you know something important happened, but you can’t remember what it was. I hate that feeling.

As I start packing up my stuff, the initial surprise I felt at his absence turns to anger. Just as I’m working myself up into the thought of never seeing him again, I find a torn-out page from my notebook with blocky, masculine handwriting on it.

I tried to wake you up, but you were sleeping too deeply. I had to go. See you tomorrow?

Though the page he used to write on is from my journal, I know he didn’t peek at my writing while I was asleep – that’s not what worries me. Bo has too much respect for others and for himself to trespass in such an underhanded way. What worries me is that I can’t see him tomorrow. And now I’m imagining him waiting here for me and me never showing. I imagine his anticipation turning to worry turning to disappointment, and it actually hurts me to think of him being hurt. I tear out a fresh piece of paper and write,

I can’t tomorrow. The day after?

I leave the slip of paper under a river rock, right where I usually put my blanket. That’s when I notice that he’s left me the bow, arm-guard, and a few arrows. I smile, thinking how awesome it would be if I practised non-stop and became amazing enough to impress him.

I put on the arm-guard and nock an arrow. I pull back in the long, drawing motion he taught me. My feet are planted. My breathing is steady. I think I’m actually better at this when he isn’t with me. I’m calmer. Everything is still. I close my eyes and just hold fast, letting the posture sink in. Letting the wilderness teach me to do something wild.

I hear a rustling in the underbrush and turn to it. I don’t think. I don’t feel. I loose the arrow.

Something shrieks. The ferns twist in circles as something I can’t see struggles among them.

‘Oh shit,’ I whisper.

I realize I’m frozen to the spot. I drop the bow, wrench my numb feet into action, and blunder into the ferns. All I can hear is Bo’s voice that first time I met him, when he fell on me, chasing the wounded deer. He said, ‘I can’t leave her like that,’ and the words echo in me until they become all.

Whatever it is I hit, I can’t leave it to suffer, but how am I going to kill it? I don’t have a knife.

A rock. I’ll use a rock.

I find a sizeable rock and clutch it tightly in one hand as I push the ferns back with other. There’s blood. A lot of blood. This isn’t a rabbit. I picture a fawn, and my stomach heaves. I try to follow the path of blood. The poor creature must have been running in circles.

Whatever it was, it was big. It looks like there are buckets of blood smeared on leaves and ferns, enough so that it’s transferred to my clothes as I’ve been circling. And then – nothing. I double back and try to find a few drops trailing in a new direction, but I can’t see anything. I start stamping down the ferns so I can see more clearly where I’ve been. I can’t find the trail.