The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon(6)

Go back to the tree, then. The fallen tree. Stand where you came out from underneath and look straight ahead and that's the direc-tion you want to go in, the direction of the main trail.

But was it? If so, how come she hadn't come to the main trail already?

Tears prickled the corners of her eyes. Trisha blinked them back savagely. If she started to cry, she wouldn't be able to tell herself she wasn't frightened. If she started to cry, anything might happen.

She walked slowly back to the fallen, moss-plated tree, hating to go in the wrong direction even for a few seconds, hating to go back to where she had seen the snake (poison-ous or not, she loathed them), knowing she had to. She spotted the divot in the leaves where she'd been when she saw (and - oh God - felt) the snake, a girl-length smutch on the floor of the forest. It was already filling up with water.

Looking at it, she rubbed a hand dispiritedly down the front of her shirt again - all damp and muddy. That her shirt should be damp and muddy from crawling under a tree was somehow the most alarming thing so far. It suggested that there had been a change of plan... and when the new plan included crawling through soggy hollows under fallen trees, the change was not for the better.

Why had she left the path in the first place? Why had she left sight of the path? Just to pee? To pee when she didn't even need to that badly? If so, she must have been crazy.

And then some further craziness had possessed her, making her think she could walk through the uncharted woods (this was the phrase which occurred to her now) in safety. Well, she had learned something today, indeed she had. She had learned to stay on the path. No matter what you had to do or how bad you had to do it, no matter how much yatata-yatata you had to listen to, it was better to stay on the path.

When you were on the path your Red Sox shirt stayed clean and dry. On the path there was no disturbing little minnow swimming in the hollow place between your chest and your stomach. On the path you were safe.

Safe.

Trisha reached around to the small of her back and felt a ragged hole in her shirt. The stub of branch had punched through, then. She had been hoping it hadn't. And when she brought her fingers back, there were little smears of blood on the tips. Trisha made a sighing, sobbing sound and wiped her fingers on her jeans.

"Relax, at least it wasn't a rusty nail," she said. "Count your blessings." That was one of her mother's sayings, and it didn't help. Trisha had never felt less blessed in her life.

She looked along the length of the tree, even scuffed one sneakered foot through the leaves, but there was no sign of the snake. It probably hadn't been one of the biting kind, anyway, but God, they were so horrible. All legless and slith-31 ery, flipping their nasty tongues in and out. She could hardly stand to think of it, even now - how it had pulsed under her palm like a cold muscle.

Why didn't I wear boots? Trisha thought, looking at her low-topped Reeboks. Why am I out here in a pair of damned sneakers?

The answer, of course, was because sneakers were fine for the path... and the plan had been to stay on the path.

Trisha closed her eyes for a moment. "I'm okay, though,"

she said. "All I have to do is keep my head and not go bazonka. I'll hear people over there in a minute or two, any-way."

This time her voice convinced her a little and she felt bet-ter.

She turned around, placed her feet on either side of the black divot where she had lain, and put her butt against the mossy trunk of the tree. There. Straight ahead. The main trail. Had to be.

Maybe. And maybe I better wait here. Wait for voices. Make sure I'm going the right way.

But she couldn't bear to wait. She wanted to be back on the path and putting these scary ten minutes (or maybe now it was fifteen) behind her as soon as she could. So she slipped her pack over her shoulders again - there was no angry, distracted, but basically nice big brother to check the straps for her this time - and set off again. The minges and noseeums had found her now, so many of them buzzing around her head that her vision seemed to dance with black specks. She waved at them but didn't slap. Slap at mosqui-toes, but it's better just to wave at the little ones, her Mom had told her... perhaps on the same day she had taught Trisha how girls peed in the woods. Quilla Andersen (only then she had still been Quilla McFarland) said that slapping actually seemed to draw the minges and noseeums... and of course it made the slapper increasingly aware of her dis-comfort.

When it comes to bugs in the woods, Trisha's Mom had said, it's better to think like a horse. Pretend you've got a tail to swish em away with.

Standing by the fallen tree, waving at the bugs but not slapping at them, Trisha had fixed her eyes on a tall pine about forty yards away... forty yards north, if she still had her bearings. She walked to this, and once she was standing there with her hand on the big pine's sap-tacky trunk, she looked back at the fallen tree. Straight line? She thought so.

Encouraged, she now sighted on a clump of bushes dot-ted with bright red berries. Her mother had pointed them out on one of their nature-walks, and when Trisha explained they were birdberries and deadly poison - Pepsi Robichaud had told her so - her mother had laughed and said, The famous Pepsi doesn't know everything after all. That's kind of a relief. Those are checkerberries, Trish. They're not a bit poison. They taste like Teaberry gum, the kind that comes in the pink pack. Her mother had tossed a handful of the berries into her mouth, and when she didn't fall down, choking and convulsing, Trisha had tried a few herself. To her they had tasted like gumdrops, the green ones that made your mouth feel kind of tingly.