The seed shape in the middle stares back at me, no longer a seed, but the pupil of a cat’s eye. I draw a third circle above the first two, overlapping. It bisects the cat’s eye. Inside the third circle, I write BODY. The three of us share a space, the bisected cat’s eye, and it is small, but there’s still room to write.
I wriggle my hand into my pocket for my phone and click on Paula Papademetriou’s live feed. I’m too impatient to listen to her, though her perfect aubergine lipstick transfixes me for a second. Besides, I’m a faster reader than listener. In the transcripted story below, I scan for the word pit, but it’s not there. In Ionian Greek, the word zagre means a “pit for the capture of live animals.” The important word here is live. You can debate back and forth whether it’s better to be killed or kept, but either way, a body popping up in the Sheepfold means old Zagreus was tweaking the mythology.
Liv is alive. I am alive. The body is irrelevant, Liv would say.
At the bottom of the page, I write PROBABILITY.
The probability of Liv and me stumbling across a deranged maniac in the woods was low: 1 out of 347,000. And stranger abductions are the most improbable, at 24% of all abductions, versus 49% by family members and 27% by acquaintances. So Liv’s right when she insists what happened in the woods was a fluke, just a forgettable, little thing.
But if Paula Papademetriou is right, and Donald Jessup killed before? That makes us part of a big thing.
After PROBABILITY, I add a question mark.
TWO
354 Days After the Woods
I am disappointing naked.
Since the woods, kids stare at my naked body parts, hoping to spot scars that will reveal the things Donald Jessup did to me. In gym, they stare at my arms and legs. I imagine it’s a letdown that the marks aren’t visible. But the real reason I prefer to dress in Sherpa layers is what I call cold-avoidance. For me, cold—the kind that slips down your collar and swirls down your spine like a frosty helix—is unstoppable. It sends me right back to the woods, and that can be inconvenient during, well, everything. In my first ten weeks back at school, I’ve concocted some excellent excuses to avoid changing into my standard-issue gym shorts and tee. Today, Ms. Dean isn’t having it, possibly because today’s excuse, Kuru disease, is found only among cannibals in remote New Guinea.
Liv warned me that my crazy clothes only fuel the gossip. Gossip, I will add, that doesn’t seem to plague Liv. You’d think she’d get her share of stares, though I guess because she never took a break from school, and maybe because she wasn’t actually abducted, she never generated my brand of buzz.
Lucky for me, something else has everyone’s attention.
A bustle near the bleachers. Kellan MacDougall is getting shoved by his hockey pals into a pretty freshman. He shoves them back. The girl giggles, knuckles pressed against her upper lip. Kellan barely makes eye contact with her, twisting the toe of his sneaker like he’s grinding something into the parquet. She puffs her chest and tips her chin, spilling flat-ironed hair down her back. Her cheek is the color of a pink apple. Kellan’s a player; he even hooked up with Liv at a party the weekend before the woods, then never spoke to her again. It had to be awkward for him when his detective dad was assigned our case.
Kellan spies me as I end my walk to the door marked GIRLS. I hold his stare, making my eyes vacant. Apple Face follows his gaze, her eyes lashy Os. He’s probably thinking we have some connection because his dad captured my abductor. Those days were smeary. I didn’t deny myself hits off the morphine pump meant for my ankle. By the time my head cleared, I was settled in my ivory tower on Mount Greylock, and Detective MacDougall had made his career by locking up Donald Jessup. I wonder how he felt when Donald Jessup killed himself by swallowing a pen spring in jail.
I lean my shoulder against the door with the GIRLS sign. GIRLS are flouncing creatures with satin bows in their hair who circle maypoles and use their eyelashes to charm—a luxury for people who assume other people won’t hurt them. I have let my charm shrivel. GIRLS are weightless, without black things in their bellies that coil and spring. Apple Face is a GIRL. Somehow, Liv is still a GIRL.
The door moves beneath my shoulder. I fall into Liv, pulling the door open from inside.
“I’ve been looking for you!” she says, stepping back and tugging her shirt down over her flat belly.
“Just giving the fans something to stare at,” I say, righting myself.
“You skipped lunch.”