What She Found in the Woods

‘Yes, I remember you,’ the librarian replies cautiously. ‘You checked out several survival guides.’

And I read them? I ask myself tentatively. And it all comes back to me.

Just like with writing in my journal, I remember reading every survival book I could get my hands on, now that I think it through. Which means that everything I thought I learned from Bo could have come out of library books I read in bed at night. The crazy thing is, I remember reading about the edible plants, and I remember picking them with Bo. I have no idea what’s real.

‘Can I help you?’ the librarian asks. She looks concerned. It’s been a while since my last dose of meds, and I’m coming down. I feel sweat starting to slick my upper lip, and I can feel how dry my eyeballs are between my shrunken, peeled-back eyelids. I must look manic. I feel manic.

‘Yes,’ I say, trying to pull myself together. ‘I need help with a bit of research. For a book. That I’m writing.’

The librarian gives me a look. My lie sounded as clunky to her as it did to me. I just don’t have the brain-power to make up a convincing lie right now. My artificially enhanced chemistry is flatlining.

‘You’re writing a book?’ Amy asks, sounding surprised.

I skip Amy’s question and get back to the librarian. ‘The book is about assisted suicide. I’m looking into the lives of doctors who have euthanized dying patients.’

‘No way!’ Amy says. ‘Is it a horror novel? I love horror. I will read anything by Stephen King.’

I turn to Amy, impressed. ‘Me too,’ I reply. Back to the librarian. ‘Can you help me? I’m looking into one doctor in particular. His name is Ray Jacobson?’

‘And you’ve tried the Internet?’ the librarian asks drily.

I nod. ‘He disappeared around twenty years ago.’

‘Ah-ha. Before everyone lived online.’ The librarian makes her way to her computer. She’s past the point where she has an opinion about my search and is already diving into this intriguing challenge.

‘Has this person been tried and convicted?’

‘No. He ran,’ I reply. ‘He’s been in hiding.’

‘Then the best place to start would be the FBI Most Wanted list.’

I nod, and she starts typing. Then clicking. Then scrolling. Then refreshing. Then typing some more. Then frowning. Then shaking her head.

‘No Ray Jacobson,’ she says, in that curiously detached way of someone whose mind is several places at once.

‘Are you sure?’ I ask. I sound plaintive. ‘He was an anaesthesiologist.’ The librarian shakes her head.

So that’s it. There was never a Wildboy named Bo who lived in the woods and loved me, even though I am a broken, tainted, shitty excuse for a human being. I made him up.

‘That’s all you wanted to know?’ Amy asks. She takes a little tin of lip balm out of the pocket of her jeans and dabs some across her lips. I get a whiff of the balm’s scent.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, suddenly thrown. That smell. I know that smell. Sage and lavender. Masculine and feminine. It’s Bo’s smell.

‘You don’t know about this?’ Amy says, enthusiastically handing me the tin. ‘It’s the best stuff ever. They’re local, and they have a whole line of lotions and soaps and natural deodorants and bath bombs. They’re amazing.’

I stare at the cover of the tin. A wash of rainbow colours subtly tints the lid. This particular product is called ‘Raven’s Pout’ and the company is called ‘Ray of Sunshine’.

OK. That could be coincidence.

‘I love this balm,’ Amy continues, ‘because it’s actually a lip plumper, but without the drying or the sting. Makes my lips look insane, and it’s totally natural and organic and good for you. Try it. I don’t have cold sores or anything,’ she assures me.

I lift it to my nose. This is Bo’s scent. It was always there in the background when we were together. I loved it.

I could never smell Rachel or David, no matter how clearly I saw their dead bodies displayed in front of me. No matter how vivid a visual hallucination of mine has ever been, I can’t recall there ever having been a smell.

I take out the note I found under the rock and look at the left-slanted writing.

My journal shifted from past to present tense, it even morphed from first person to third as my schizophrenia bloomed like a blood blister under the emotional pressure of Rachel’s suicide, but I never, ever wrote with my left hand.