What She Found in the Woods

I’m just outside Bo’s camp when I hear the screaming.

I don’t run towards it, but rather, I slow down. Legs numb, I recognize the voice of a girl. She’s screaming, but not in pain or fear. She’s screaming accusations. Like I screamed about myself once.

‘You can lie as much as you want, but I know you’re a murderer,’ she howls.

‘Calm down! You’re going to make yourself sick, Sol,’ Bo is yelling back. His voice I know, although now it sounds so harsh, it’s nearly foreign to me.

‘I saw it!’

‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’ His voice is low and dangerous.

I stay in the cover of the thick brush just outside their camp and peer in.

‘You keep saying I don’t understand, but I saw you kill her,’ Sol screams, pointing a finger at Bo. Her voice is hoarse, like they’ve been screaming at each other for hours. ‘You killed that druggie townie girl and dumped her body in the river! I saw you do it!’

‘You don’t know what you saw,’ he says, with a tired shrug. He turns to his father, who is standing just behind them. ‘Dad,’ he says, fed up. ‘You should have explained this to her by now.’

‘Sol,’ Ray says, reaching out a tempering hand. ‘Try to understand.’

‘There’s nothing to understand!’ she rages. ‘I saw them struggling, but he didn’t stop until she was dead! I heard her scream! I saw the blood! I saw her die! I saw him throw her in the river!’

Sol runs away, hysterical. She hurls herself up a ladder and into one of the dormitories, loudly slamming the door behind her.

Bo turns to his father, and they bend their heads together. Conspiring. There’s a buddy-buddy feeling between them. I can’t hear their words, but whatever it is, they’re in it together.

And then it hits me. Twenty years of sleep, and now blood. Because there are two of them. I can’t breathe. I can’t miss a single word, a single gesture, but my eyes are blurring with tears, and my pulse is pounding in my ears.

Bo stresses something important to his father, and Ray looks up at the dormitory that Sol has barricaded. Bo turns and stares up at it, too. They exchange a few more words, and then Ray claps Bo on the shoulder. Like everything is peachy keen. And then Bo pulls his long knife out of a nearby stump, sheaths it in his thigh-guard, and stalks off.

I stumble downhill for a while and then sit in the underbrush, leaves folding over me. The world is just paint, and now it’s smeared.

There are two killers. One clean. One bloody. Ray and Bo. Dr Goodnight and his son.

Rob stands over me. He’s offering me his hand. I stare at it until he grabs me and hauls me to my feet.

We don’

t speak.

It’s past sunset. I stand in the entrance of my grandparents’ house. Rob is saying something quietly to my grandparents. Then he takes me upstairs to my bedroom.

‘Sit here,’ he says, placing me on the edge of my bed. ‘Your grandparents said you take medication?’

I look up at him. He’s so worried. I nod and gesture to my bathroom. I can’t speak.

Rob disappears into my bathroom, and I hear him rummaging around in there. Opening doors and bumping around, not really knowing what he’s looking for or where to look for it. I hear him shake out a few pills, pour some tap water into the glass I keep on the sink. He comes back out and puts a pile of pills in one of my hands and the glass of water in the other.

He stands in front of me. ‘Take them.’

I gulp them down, not caring to look at what I’m swallowing.

‘When did you stop taking your medication?’ Rob asks quietly. ‘Before or after I left?’

I shake my head to clear it. I can’t remember. I open my mouth to speak, and nothing comes out.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to say anything right now.’

Rob goes back into the bathroom and returns with a wet washcloth. He kneels down in front of me and takes off my hiking sandals before cleaning my feet. A few more trips to the sink to rinse off the washcloth, and he cleans my face and hands as well. Then he pulls the covers back and tucks me in. He shuts off the light and sits down at my desk.