Midnight Lily(9)

"Oh, so you know him," Ryan said sarcastically.

I breathed out a small laugh. "Hey, you know, so, why don't you come over sometime? We could watch a game. And it would give my parents someone else to fall all over."

Ryan looked like he might be just a little bit mad about the offer, but then he shrugged. "Maybe. Hey, this is my street. I gotta go."

"Okay," I called after him as he walked away. "See you tomorrow then."

He didn't turn, but I heard him mutter, "See you tomorrow."



I woke up with Ryan's name on my lips. I sat up abruptly and groaned at the pain that throbbed in my head. I was sprawled on the couch in the living room, the morning sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I'd fallen asleep at dawn so I couldn't have been asleep for long. But I'd dreamed. For the first time in a really long time. I lay back down. Something about the dream niggled at my brain, but I couldn't figure it out. Something felt off. But it'd left a lingering feeling of . . . happiness. That was it—I'd had the first happy memory of Ryan. I laughed softly to myself. Maybe there was something to this feng shui after all. And maybe, just maybe, I'd venture out into the woods again to look for my ghost. Something in me was having a hard time believing she didn't exist—I'd seen her. Besides, what the f*ck else did I have to do? Wild boars be damned.





CHAPTER FIVE


Holden



Late that afternoon as I sat outside in the fresh mountain air, drinking a steaming mug of coffee, I felt a little more alive. I'd taken a pill—just one. Just to take the edge off. I'd woken from my dream . . . hopeful I guess, and I'd tried to go without today, but the nausea was just too severe. I'd wean myself off . . . I'd take fewer and fewer until . . . I let out a long sigh. I'd tried that before and it hadn't worked. But maybe up here it'd be different. You have to be the one to make the choice . . .

The girl . . . if she was out there, what was she doing right now? Was she in those woods? Alone? She must be well equipped to take care of herself, which made me feel even more lame for having let a pig put the fear of the devil into me. Hadn't I been fearless once upon a time? Hadn't I? Why had I run? I couldn’t remember now. But then again, I couldn't remember a lot these days.

Sitting there on the deck, staring into the forest, the vague hint of hope coursing through me, I made a decision. I was going back in those woods today, I was going to find her, and I was going to solve the mystery of who she was.

An hour later, feeling that same excited resolve I'd felt when I'd first set out to find her, I entered the woods.

The day was mild and the forest floor was cool and misty under the thick canopy of trees. I walked what I thought was the same path I'd walked the last time. Determined to shake off the strangeness and the fear of my last trip into these woods, I made a concerted effort to appreciate the wild beauty around me, bending to look at hollowed-out logs and clusters of wild mushrooms.

For a Midwestern boy like me, these woods were all new and different and for the first several hours, I was again caught in that lost place of boyhood adventure. As a kid I would have loved this forest—building forts out of rocks and sticks, pretending to be an explorer. I'd been filled with life and hope and excitement once, hadn't I? I must have—I couldn't grasp the feeling now, but I knew I had been a happy kid, a boy who’d dreamed anything was possible and found joy in simple things. Maybe even a boy who should be mourned, because he was gone now, replaced by the wastrel of a man I'd become.

I called out for the girl but with a little less enthusiasm. It'd been hours and I was starting to doubt myself again.

I walked for a while longer, before I finally decided to give up and go back. I was getting cold despite the mild weather outside this thick forest, and I hadn't brought the proper layers, underestimating the temperature drop as the day wore into evening. And I was feeling sick again. I needed a fix. My ears were ringing slightly, and my skin felt strange like it did when I hadn't taken a pill for a while: pulsing and electric. I hated it. And I was disappointed, depressed even. I hadn't even seen a whisper of the girl.

I started back the way I'd come but suddenly realized I'd been walking over flat ground for a while—not uphill like I'd done the other day. Then it had been easy enough to get a feel for direction, because I'd simply returned downhill. But now, looking around, worry began fluttering through my gut. A crack of thunder cut through the trees. "Fuck," I muttered. Surely I wasn't lost. I started walking back the way I thought I'd come, but I felt turned around, unsure, my heart now pounding out a staccato beat in my chest. Branches swayed in the mounting wind and a sudden bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, for a brief instant lighting the forest an eerie, glimmering white.

And then the rain came.

The muted light shining through the trees dimmed even more as dark clouds moved across the twilight sky, casting the forest in silvery shades of gray.

I pulled out my cell phone, trying to get a signal, but it was useless. Of course there wouldn't be service up here in the midst of this thick forest. "You're in the middle of f*cking nowhere, idiot," I mumbled to myself. Walking again, I moved more quickly, fighting brambles that seemed to reach out and grab me, twisting away from branches that snagged my clothes, tripping over things I could no longer see at my feet, falling once and feeling sharp pine needles and pieces of fallen bark dig into the flesh of my hands.