What Waits in the Woods Read online

  He offered his hand. She blew out a sigh, told herself to stop being such a wuss, and took it. Once outside, she shoved her feet into her flip-flops, which she’d left on the ground, and immediately began to shiver. It was cold—welcome to the mountains in August—and there was no denying that she was scared. Jeremy put his arm around her.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw something move—a huge mass swinging from a nearby tree—and she flinched. But it was just the nylon bag full of their food, which Lissa had tied up to keep the bears from getting at it.

  Bears. Yay. So not what she wanted to think about right now.

  “You okay?” Jeremy asked.

  Callie exhaled. If she didn’t have a heart attack before this trip was over, it would be a miracle.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered at a whisper. “Should we tell them we’re going?”

  “Nah. Don’t wake them. We won’t even be out of sight of the tents.”

  Callie zipped up the tent door and felt along the length of the braid she’d worked into her hair before bed. It felt like it was mostly intact. Then she quickly smoothed her sweatshirt down, wiped under her eyes for excess mascara, and pressed her lips together to bring some color into them, all before turning around again.

  “Ready,” she said with a smile. She pulled her headlamp off over her head and flicked it on, holding it like a flashlight.

  “Look up.”

  Jeremy touched beneath her chin with one finger and nudged her gaze skyward. The view took Callie’s breath away. Stars. There seemed to be more stars than sky.

  “Okay. This was a good idea.”

  “Sweet. Go me,” Jeremy said, rising up on his toes adorably.

  Their footsteps crunched on pebbles and twigs as they strolled toward the lake. Callie leaned her cheek into the side of his arm. In the trees around them the cicadas’ hum was punctuated by the chirp of crickets. Off in the distance, an owl hooted, and Callie felt the sound inside her chest, comforting somehow. Maybe there wasn’t a blood-lusting psychopath waiting fifty yards away. Maybe they were only surrounded by peaceful, happy little animals, like the cast of some old Disney cartoon.

  A girl could dream.

  “Let’s lay the blanket out over there,” Callie said, pointing to a large, flat outcropping of rock near the water’s edge.

  Jeremy whipped the blanket out and let it flutter to the ground, then held out a hand.

  “After you.”

  “Why, thank you, sir,” Callie joked.

  She sat down, laying her headlamp aside, and the coldness of the rock seeped through the blanket and her clothes. It was amazing how swiftly and completely the temperature dropped after the sun went down. Jeremy sat right next to her, and she instantly felt warmer. They smiled shyly, sharing a little thrill over being alone together in the dark. When Jeremy leaned in to kiss her, her heart did the happy dance it executed every time their lips touched. Then Jeremy pulled back and gazed at her.

  “How great is this?” he said quietly, his breath warm on her lips.

  “Pretty darn great,” she replied.

  Then they both lay down flat on the rock, side by side.

  “Whoa,” Callie said.

  “I second that whoa,” Jeremy replied.

  Every inch of Callie’s vision was filled with stars. A million tiny pinpricks of light, everywhere. It was like they were lying under a dome sprinkled with glowing sand.

  Callie turned her head and found Jeremy staring at her. She was so surprised her pulse skipped.

  “Why are you looking at me? You should be looking at that!” she said, gesturing at the sky.

  “Nah. You’re way more interesting.”

  Callie blushed deeply. “You’re gonna give me an ego.”

  Jeremy pushed himself up on his elbow. “You deserve to have an ego. You’re smart, you’re sweet, you’re creative, you’re loyal—”

  “Loyal?” she laughed. “Like a dog?”

  “No. I just mean it was cool of you to come on this trip with your friends. I know it’s not easy for you.”

  Callie looked down at her hands, which were folded across her chest. The pink polish on her nails was chipping and black dirt made crescent moons under a few of them. She curled up her hands so Jeremy couldn’t see.

  “Just because I got a little lost on my pee break—”

  “No, I just mean you’re out of your comfort zone for five whole days. Not everyone would do that for their friends,” he said with a shrug. He reached for her arm, tugged her hand out, and traced a circle in her palm with his fingertip. It tickled in the best possible way and she forgot about how hideous her fingers were. “I know you’re hoping to bond with them or whatever, and I just wanted you to know … a) I think it’s going well and b) if it doesn’t … I’ve got your back.”

  Callie’s chest expanded. “Thanks, Jeremy.”

  He smiled. “Anytime.”

  She lifted herself up onto one elbow as well, the better to face him. His long bangs had fallen sideways, making his face seem more open. Even in the dim light she could see the tiny gold and green flecks in his brown eyes. Jeremy had spent most of his summer volunteering at the half-day summer camp run by their town, playing hot potato with a bunch of first graders and patiently helping them learn to dog-paddle at the town pool. She’d visited him once on one of the pool days and he was having so much fun he looked like a big kid himself.

  There was something so uninhibited about him. She admired that. And she loved how much he cared about people—his family, his friends, those kids in his camp group. He unapologetically cared, when most guys her age pretended not to care about anything.

  He cared about her.

  “Can I ask you something?” she ventured.

  “Shoot,” he said.

  “Why did you kiss me that day on the bus?” she asked.

  Jeremy laughed. “Um, victory high?”

  Callie laughed, too. It had happened back in February, on the way back from an Academic Decathlon meet, where Callie had helped Mission Hills High beat Woodside for the first time in ten years. She and Jeremy were sitting side by side in the back of the bus—she hadn’t given it too much thought when he’d sat down beside her, even though she had always found him cute. The team and their fans—mostly parents and siblings—had been shouting their way through the Mission Hills fight song when Jeremy had suddenly pulled her to him and kissed her. Luckily their moms had both been looking the other way, engaged in some deep conversation about the PTA and funding for the sciences, because that would have been super awkward. But a few of their teammates spotted them and cheered. Callie and Jeremy had been together ever since.

  “So that was it? I answered that question about the theory of relativity and you couldn’t resist me?” she joked.

  Jeremy looked down at the slab of rock that peeked out from beneath the blanket. The rock was striated from years of weather erosion, shot through with all shades of gray and blue and black. Beautiful.

  “Actually, I wanted to kiss you the first time I saw you.”

  “Really?” Her breath caught. “When was that?”

  “Your first day at Mission Hills. You were wearing that black sweater and those big sparkly earrings that come all the way to your shoulders. You walked into calc and smiled at Mr. Finster—who no one ever smiles at, by the way—and that was it. It just took me a month and an adrenaline rush to get up the guts.”

  “Wow,” Callie said, tingling from head to toe. “I had no idea.”

  Jeremy finally looked her in the eye. “Why did you kiss me back?”

  “Honestly? I’d never met a mathlete science genius who also held the school record in shot put. I think my need to find a successful, testosterone-y mate kicked in.”

  “Ha ha. You’re hilarious, you know that?” Jeremy said, pushing her shoulder. Callie inched closer to him and smiled.

  “I just liked you, Jeremy. That’s why I kissed you back. And,” she added, feeling brave, “I like you more every day
.”

  She leaned toward him, but just when their lips were about to touch, Jeremy pulled back and averted his eyes. “Cal, there’s something I have to tell you—”

  Callie’s heart thunked with foreboding. She was on the verge of asking what was wrong when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. A shadow the height of a tall man, but stooped, like someone trying to make himself smaller. There was the tiniest flash—some kind of reflector catching the light off her headlamp. Callie gasped and scrambled back on her hands and knees.

  “What?” Jeremy sat up, alarmed. “What is it?”

  “I saw someone. In the trees,” she said, trying to catch her breath and failing miserably. Her skull felt weightless, like she’d just been dropped from an airplane at ten thousand feet. “There’s someone out there.”

  Jeremy stood up and trained his flashlight on the tree line. “I don’t see anything.”

  Callie sat up and brushed silt off her hands. “There was something there, I swear.”

  The flashlight beam moved back and forth across the trees as Jeremy searched. Callie stared hard at the spot where she’d seen the shadow, but the more she stared, the more her vision blurred. She’d see something move, but in the next second realize it was a trick of the eye. But still, she was certain they were not alone.

  “Well. Whatever it was, it’s gone now,” Jeremy said. He had this tone in his voice like he was humoring her. “So as I was saying …”

  As he started to sit down again, Callie reached for her headlamp and got up.

  “I’m going back to the tent.”

  Maybe she was new to this, and maybe because of that she was a tad more skittish than her friends, but that didn’t mean she was seeing things. Or that she was making stuff up. Or that she was crazy.

  Which, exactly, did Jeremy think it was?

  “Okay,” he said, reaching for her. “Let’s go.”

  She let him put his arm around her, and they made their way back to the camp. It was slow going, however, because Callie kept looking over her shoulder, scanning the trees.

  There was someone out there. She knew what she had seen.

  I will not apologize for my keen sense of observation. It was clear, at the end of that night, that the girl had no backbone, no right to be in my woods. She was worse than a novice. She was a dissenter. The way she hugged herself away from that fire, the desperate, furtive looks she cast at her friends. She didn’t want to be there, didn’t care about the beauty around her. The majesty. The danger. What she wanted was to be close to that boy. She wanted him to take care of her. It was obvious by the way she kept retreating to his side, huddling under his arm.

  That girl needed to be taught a lesson. Or two. Or three.

  A lesson in survival. A lesson in inner strength. A lesson in knowing your place.

  “Okay, kiddies. Time to turn off our phones,” Lissa said, walking backward up the trail.

  It was midmorning, and Callie was exhausted from a night of broken sleep, her eyes itchy and dry. Meanwhile, her boots were turning on her again, gnawing away on her pinkie toes as if the Band-Aids she’d painstakingly applied that morning weren’t even there. Every step brought a twinge of pain. And just to make matters worse, she’d offered to carry Lissa’s backpack today—the heaviest of the four—which was filled with not only Lissa’s stuff, but all their food and supplies, the compass and map. After yesterday and all the teasing, she wanted to show her friends that she was tough, that she could handle anything, that they could trust her.

  Now she was regretting her hubris, big time.

  “I’m sorry, what?” she asked, the weight of her phone in her front pocket suddenly conspicuous.

  “Lissa’s right,” Jeremy said. “We should shut them down and preserve the batteries, just in case.” He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his cargo shorts. “It’s not like we’re going to be able to charge them out here.”

  “Just in case of what?” Callie asked timidly.

  Lissa rolled her big blue eyes. She was always rolling her eyes. “In case we actually need them later. No one needs to look at TMZ every five minutes, right, Pen?” she said, holding out her hand as if to take Penelope’s phone.

  Penelope looked up from her screen, which she’d been scrolling over since breakfast. She pressed the device to her chest as if it were her precious firstborn. “No way.”

  “Yeah. What if my dad tries to call me?” Callie asked. She’d never been away from both her parents for this long, which was hard enough, but to be cut off entirely?

  “So text him and tell him we’re going radio silent,” Lissa said, shrugging. “It’s no big deal. I do it all the time when I’m out here. By midday today we’ll probably be out of range anyway.”

  Great. It would have been nice if someone had told her that. Reluctantly, Callie dug out her phone, texted her dad, and turned it off. She handed it to Lissa, and Jeremy quickly did the same. Lissa shoved both phones into the monster pack on Callie’s back, then reached for Penelope’s.

  “Oh no. I’ll turn it off, but you’re not taking it away from me,” Penelope said, holding the phone above her head.

  “You’re such a freak about your phone,” Lissa grumbled, but she backed off. It was one of the very few times Callie had ever seen her accept defeat.

  Lissa looked down at her own phone and laughed. “Zach has texted me fifty-two times since last night. Could that guy be any more possessive?”

  “I think it’s nice that you have someone who cares about you,” Penelope said.

  Lissa pressed her thumb down on the off button without replying to Zach’s messages. “Yeah, but there’s such a thing as caring too much,” she said. “I think this time apart will be good for him.”

  “Whatever you say.” Penelope sighed, snapping her phone into a hard plastic box that looked like an eyeglass case before shoving it into her deepest pocket.

  “What’s that for?” Callie asked.

  “It’s an indestructible case,” Penelope said proudly. “Waterproof, weight resistant up to two hundred pounds. Nothing’s getting past that sucker. We could all fall into a ravine right now and my phone would survive.”

  “A ravine?” Callie whispered.

  “She’s just being dramatic,” Jeremy said, kneading Callie’s shoulders from behind.

  “No. She’s not,” Lissa said over her shoulder. “Anything can happen out here, Callie. You’d better make sure you’re prepared.”

  Jeremy stopped walking, so Callie did, too. The straps on the unwieldy bag cut into her shoulders, and there was an ill-placed bar across the bottom that kept knocking against her butt with every step. She was going to have a butt bruise when this was over. An actual bruised butt.

  “Was that really necessary?” Jeremy snapped at Lissa. “I swear it’s like you’re trying to freak her out.”

  “Don’t get all flustered, Science Boy,” Lissa said. “I just want her to be ready.”

  Then she continued up the trail, her thick blond ponytail swinging behind her. The girl wasn’t even speed-walking, just keeping her normal pace, but within two seconds she’d disappeared around a bend and was gone.

  Jeremy put his hands on his hips, his chest heaving under the Star Trek emblem on his black T-shirt. “I know she didn’t exactly want me to come with you guys, but does she have to mock my very existence?”

  Before Callie or Penelope could answer, he shook his head and took off after Lissa.

  “Well.” Penelope paused and tore a little white bloom off a low-hanging branch. “This could be a very long trip.”

  “Seriously,” Callie replied.

  It’s already been long enough for me, she added silently. Just three more nights. One down, three to go.

  She couldn’t wait to get to the airport and see her mom. Even though she understood why her mother had to go to São Paulo for the summer, she didn’t have to like it. Callie’s Uncle Marco—her mom’s brother—was a widower with three little kids who had brok
en his leg in a motorcycle accident, so Callie’s mother had volunteered to help out for a couple of months. It was nice of her. Selfless. But Callie and her mom were like best friends. Even with Skype calls and emails, not seeing her for eight straight weeks was a serious challenge.

  “Well. At least it’s a beautiful day.”

  Penelope tucked the white bloom behind Callie’s ear and smiled. As much as she would never admit it, Callie relished the rare moments she got alone with Penelope. Lissa’s constant presence could be a tad intense. She always had a plan to exact or a “helpful” suggestion to make or an outright snide criticism to share. When it was just Pen, Callie could breathe.

  “Yeah. As long as you’re a big fan of humidity and burning sun.”

  Penelope laughed. “Exactly.”

  They started walking again, much slower than the others, and Callie enjoyed the change in pace—the bar hit her butt much less frequently and more softly now. Penelope and Lissa were both on the varsity basketball team—the only sophomores to make the squad—and they both participated in other sports as well. But while athleticism seemed to be a way of life for Lissa, for Pen it was more of a pastime.

  As they came around the bend, Penelope reached down and tugged a set of earbuds out of her pocket, placing only one in her right ear—the ear farther from Callie—so she could listen to music and still talk.

  “Is that attached to your phone?” Callie asked.

  Pen shook her head. “I brought my iPod, too. Don’t tell Lissa.”

  Callie smiled, surprised that Penelope would ever share something with her that she hadn’t with her BFF. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  They walked a few more steps, Callie considering what she wanted to say very carefully. She wanted to be a good friend to Penelope, but she also didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. Especially not Lissa’s.

  “You know, Pen, you don’t always have to take Lissa’s word on everything,” she said finally.

  Penelope flinched. It was so small it was almost imperceptible. “What do you mean?”

  “Like, the thing with your hair last night,” Callie said slowly. Today, Penelope’s hair was hanging in soft waves around her shoulders. “Did you really never wear it in a braid just because she said it made your head look too small?”