Our Crooked Hearts(77)

Beneath the tree’s summer crown I pressed my hands to its bark, breathing its good green breath and feeling the rootless pieces inside of me settle. All the Ivys I was or used to be. Marion was so close I saw the hard arc of the light she carried, but it didn’t penetrate the circle of the tree. My tree, that had called out to me in dreams when I was ten. Seven years ago my mother and I untangled it from a piece of bad work some other witch had woven; now it would protect me. I palmed its trunk and closed my eyes and heard Marion run right past us.

When she was gone, I said my thanks and set off again.

I’m Nobody. See me not.

I fell into a rhythm of words and the tattoo of my toughened feet. I felt my path corrected by an awareness of the moon, and tasted like sugar in my molars the places where human things cut through the trees. I followed that ache back to the road.

Don’t see me, I thought, as I dashed onto black asphalt.

And screamed.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN



The suburbs

Right now

The car that almost hit me swerved madly but stayed off the grass, coming to a halt about thirty yards away. Somebody kicked open the driver’s door and stepped out.

“Ivy, what the fuck!”

Nate’s eyes were moon-size, one of them circled by a yellowing patch of bruise. I could hear Haim spilling out of his car radio.

“Nate.” I thanked, kind of, whatever forces had sent him my way. “I need a ride.”

He stalked over and gripped my arm, fingers digging in above the elbow.

“Are you insane? Is there a cult of naked effing forest women in this town? And you’re all trying to get me locked up for vehicular manslaughter?”

Then he yanked his hand away with a yelp. I wasn’t sure what I’d done, but my temples throbbed and I knew it was something. I stepped forward. He took half a step back.

“Don’t grab me again. Ever.”

“Okay,” he said dazedly, looking between me and his fingers. “Sure.”

I darted a glance back at the woods. “Look, I really need a ride. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

He gave a short nod and I followed him up the road. There was a girl in his car, gaping at me. A sophomore, I was pretty sure, with a dark red bob and this spare Charlotte Gainsbourg kind of beauty.

“Hi,” I said, climbing in, then turned to scan the woods. As Nate took the car out of park, Marion broke through. Low to the ground, like she’d been creeping.

“Hey,” the sophomore said thinly. “Do you see that?”

“Drive,” I said. “Drive.”

Marion was up now, watching from the shoulder. It was awful to see her and worse when she was out of sight.

I perched between their two seats, watching the road. The thin spits of white line soothed me, issuing at intervals like pages from a printer.

“Um.” The girl shifted, not quite looking at me. “I’ve got workout clothes in my bag. They’re not clean, but…”

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t care if they’re clean.”

She passed back a wad of black activewear and I wriggled in. Just being clothed helped. Not with my modesty, which I seemed to have left in my life before the golden box, but with that skinned, raggedy feeling of muchness.

“Was that the same girl from the other night?” Nate’s voice was tight, abrupt.

“Yeah,” I said. “That was her.”

A long pause. “So she did know you.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand it,” he said quietly, to himself. Then, “Are you gonna be okay?”

He asked it in the way people do when they want you to say, Yeah, of course, so I met his eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “Yeah. Of course.”

He was driving toward my house, but I couldn’t go there. Marion would be right behind me. I didn’t want to imagine what she’d do to my dad if she had to go through him to get to me. Nowhere seemed safe enough, but I knew where I wanted to go, so I told Nate, “Drop me up there.”

He stopped beside a grassy, moon-gray hill that unrolled to meet a row of fenced backyards. “I can go another couple blocks. You don’t want me to drop you off at your house?”

I pointed at the back of Billy’s place. Big yard with a rambling vegetable plot, and a badass tree house he helped his dad build the year after they moved in. I’d spent hours in that tree house. “I’m going there.”

“Billy Paxton’s house.” He almost managed to say it neutrally.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said as I climbed out, and meant it.

“No problem. But hey, Ivy.”

I looked back at him, his solemn fringed eyes and the blood-bruise stipple over his pretty mouth.

“I won’t tell anyone about this. I promise.”

“You probably will, but that’s okay.” I smiled at the sophomore. “Thanks for the clothes. I’ll get them back to you.”

“They’re yours,” she said, in a tone that reminded me I was striped with welling scratches and rank with sweat and chlorine.

I could hear Nate’s music switch back on as I walked away. The mystery of me, all my naked panic and the slithering girl who’d followed me from the trees, was already fading from their sight. Soon I’d just be a startling shared interval in their predictable suburban night. I smiled to myself and ran toward Billy.