I turn back, picking up the pace, checking my watch. I’ve been gone for only twenty minutes, but it feels like hours. I begin to jog.
What if the path doesn’t lead anywhere? What if it’s a bunch of dead ends? This could be part of some weird trust exercise that classes go through. I picture Gordon bringing a bunch of blindfolded students out here, leaving them to find their way back. I would have screamed.
Nearby something snaps.
I freeze. My chest thrashes. Slowly I turn around.
Gordon isn’t there. No one is. I glance down. A broken twig lies under my right foot. I’m not being followed. I rub my forehead, considering whether to return to the hedge door. I don’t know my way around Wisewood. What kinds of animals live on islands in Maine? What if I get lost and no one can find me? The island seemed pretty big when we were ferrying in.
I walk for another minute, then stop short. Ahead is an old building covered with wooden shingles. It looks like it hasn’t been used in decades. In the movies there would be a grizzly man waiting inside with a hatchet across his lap, his entire family bleeding out on the floor at his feet. Every cell in my body tells me not to go any closer.
I creep down the path, stop in front of the building, and put my hand on the doorknob.
It’s locked.
I exhale, flooded with relief, and begin to circle the building, searching for a window. On the left side I find one. I cup my hands around my eyes. No one’s inside.
It’s an old schoolhouse. Along one wall are short bookshelves filled with dusty tomes. In the center of the room I count three rows of four wooden desks. On some of them lie open textbooks. At the head of the classroom is the teacher’s desk, a blue globe atop it. The chalkboard is filled with frenzied scribblings I can’t read. Above the board is a sepia-toned map of the United States. A broom leans in the corner. The room has a Little House on the Prairie vibe, a feeling that the teacher and pupils will be back any minute.
My insides curdle, pushing me to get away from this place, out of the forest. I pull my phone from my pocket and watch the signal status change from “No Service” to “Searching.” I tap my foot. Back to “No Service.” I check the Wi-Fi options. Nothing. The battery is down to thirteen percent.
I’m so concentrated on my phone that I don’t register the approaching footsteps until they’re right behind me.
A voice growls, deep and pissed.
“Who the hell are you?”
31
MY LIFE CLEAVED in two: before Gabe died and after. After, I chronicled to the police every blunder at the lake: the faulty regulator, the bumbling hands, the inexperienced rescue team. I explained that I had somehow come unclipped from the safety rope, that Gabe had attempted to extricate me. A tragic accident, they determined. Case closed, sympathetic stares.
The Five were not so kind. The day after I was discharged from the hospital, they showed up at my small apartment, not to help me grieve and heal, but to quit. They didn’t know the specifics of what had happened beneath the ice but said a man’s life had been needlessly wasted. They no longer wanted to be part of my mission. They weren’t even sure what the mission was anymore, but they’d dedicated—nay, wasted—more than enough time on a cause that was going nowhere. They said I had used them, manipulated them, made them unwilling accessories to a crime. It was time they moved on. As I lay on my sofa, heartbroken and heaving, they tearfully wished me a good life. I begged them to reconsider but the disgust on their tongues was palpable. Their callousness filled my lungs with cement.
After, I could not bear the simultaneous loss of my five greatest believers plus my only friend. Who but they had ever understood what I was trying to achieve, the revolution around the corner? With Gabe and The Five the dream had been within reach. Without them the load was too heavy.
After, I escaped. With no confidants left in New York, there was little point in my staying. I longed to flee to the most remote place possible, a haven sans memories. For the last decade of her life, my aunt Carol had spent her summers on an island in mid-coast Maine. To my mother’s chagrin and father’s joy, we didn’t hear from Aunt Carol for months at a time; she had strayed as far off the grid as she could. I rented a one-room cabin from the same woman Aunt Carol had.
After, I didn’t leave my new refuge. Why bother when everything reminded me of Gabe? I began keeping score again: ?10 for not eating, ?20 for not sleeping, ?30 whenever it stung to breathe. I passed the days in a half-conscious state, nodding off only to wake to the sound of a man choking on water, gasping for air.
Serves you right.
There weren’t enough points to count all my weaknesses.
* * *
? ? ?
MONTHS AFTER GABE died, his lawyer located me. Gabe had left me everything. I knew his father had bequeathed him a sizable inheritance but was unclear exactly how much. When the lawyer handed me a check for fourteen million dollars, I laughed until I sobbed (?2) and sobbed until I retched (?3). I put the check in the top drawer of the cabin’s rickety dresser.
I waited for the fog to subside, wondering whether it ever would. What if The Five had been right? What if the principles I believed in were all wrong? If I had no wisdom to impart, then what was my reason for being? Why bother sticking around at all? Weeks, then months, then years both flew by and dragged, as though some higher power couldn’t decide how best to punish me. I didn’t believe in such a thing, but in those days I wanted to.
My mother had never forgiven my lack of faith, which even now made me want to throttle her. Didn’t she understand how much easier life would be if I could swallow that a benevolent dictator had everything under control? Did she not appreciate how much less I would suffer if I believed in a magical place called heaven instead of Gabe’s bones withering to dust? Religion was a comfort. To believe was a privilege. Mother could go on insisting that everything happened for a reason until she was blue in the face; that was what believers told themselves, so they wouldn’t have to admit that life was unthinkably cruel in its randomness. I could force myself to trust in a higher power no more than the believers could accept that no one was watching out for them, that there was no grand plan tailor-made for their souls.