“Busy.” Meredith sighs. “The ACTs are in three weeks. I need you, Win. I got a nineteen on my last practice test.”
“I can’t tonight, but we’ll study all through lunch tomorrow and I promise I’m all yours this weekend.”
She stares at the tessellated floor, brown and pitted from past chemical spills. “My parents’ll kill me if I have to go to community college.”
I swing my backpack over my shoulder and put my arm around her as we head toward the door. “You’re not going to community college. Your GPA’s not bad, and you’re on student council. You’ll be fine if we can just nudge your score up a few points.”
“Easy for you to say. What’d you get on your last practice test? A thirty?”
Thirty-two, actually, but I don’t say this. It’s not like it matters anyway. I can’t go to college. I already know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life, and it doesn’t require a four-year degree. The only reason I’m even taking the test is to make Mom feel better, to make it seem like I have options when I really don’t.
We push our way through the congested hall. A couple of guys throw a football back and forth over our heads, holding up the stampede and nearly braining every single person between them. Meredith shouts at them to knock it off, but in a teasing, flirty voice that gets her nowhere.
“Make us,” one of the guys says, tossing the ball back to his buddy.
The next time it zooms over our heads, I catch it one-handed.
Both guys stare at me, dumbfounded.
“Mine,” I growl, tucking the football underneath my arm.
“See?” Mer says as the guys skulk away, darting pissed-off looks in my direction. “Scary.”
I roll my eyes. “So you wanted to get smacked in the face with a football?”
“No, but that isn’t the point.” She pauses at the door to my French class, sighing like she can’t believe a person could actually be this clueless. “You sure you can’t come over? Mom’s ordering Chinese.”
I wish I could, but it’s dangerous enough to take the afternoon off from the wood on a regular day, let alone on a day that falls between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, when the veil thins and the roads between worlds are easier to travel.
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
She stares at me, her mouth hanging open slightly. She wants to ask me something, but she stops herself. It’s not the first time the question has hovered in the air between us, an unspoken conversation that’s practically written in our eyes.
Why do you keep secrets from me? she seems to say.
I have to.
Does it have to do with your dad?
Yes.
I could help.
You’d get hurt.
I don’t understand.
You’re not supposed to.
It’s a gap in our friendship that’s been widening lately, but we never actually talk about it. It’s made even worse by the fact that I can’t even tell her what really happened to Dad. As far as Mer and every other outsider know, he walked out on us. It’s the worst sort of lie, because no matter how bad things got for him, Dad would never voluntarily leave us. But Mom didn’t want people thinking he died, just in case. If he does come back someday—hope swells in my heart just thinking about it, but hope is dangerous, and I crush it the moment it tries to poison me—it’ll be a lot easier to tell people he and Mom are working on their marriage than to convince everyone he’s back from the dead.
Mer watches me a moment longer, debating something, then says, “Okay. I’ll save you a fortune cookie.”
“Thanks.”
She walks across the hall and ducks into her classroom just as the bell rings.
I take a seat in the back and nibble on a protein bar when the teacher isn’t looking.
VI
It doesn’t happen until I’ve been in the wood for an hour, walking the paths that never end, flicking Dad’s Swiss Army knife open and closed.
But it’s inevitable. A traveler always comes.
The sound of footsteps behind me starts as a whisper, a shuffling. A sound that could be explained away as something normal if I were still in my world—a squirrel skittering across a path, leaves rustling overhead. But this sound is neither of those things. I stop, my body rigid, as it draws closer.
Thud-thud-thud. Boots pounding against packed earth.
This traveler is running, which makes him unusual. Most stumble their way onto the paths without meaning to. They walk in circles, their breathing labored as they try not to panic. I’ve found some cradled in the fetal position on the ground, crying to go home. I’ve found others trying so hard to keep it together that they refuse to look at me. They think I’m a figment of their imagination. They don’t know I’m more real than they are.
Running is rare. Running implies fear. Implies purpose. This one is either desperate to be found, or desperate to escape. Either way, desperation makes for a dangerous traveler. Speed and a poor sense of direction can lead to a traveler falling through one of the many thresholds that hide between the trees, and then they’ll be lost. In another time, another place. Somewhere I can’t follow. I have to stop him now, before it’s too late.
I wait until I hear rushed breathing over the footsteps, the faint rustling of leaves as arms swing past overgrowth, and then I turn and run toward the intersection behind me.
He comes out of nowhere, but so do I. He doesn’t even notice me until my arms are already wrapped around his body. He hits the ground hard. I scramble on top of him, my knees pinning his arms at his sides. He struggles against me. He’s strong, and he’s got at least forty pounds on me, judging by the solid wall of corded muscles trying to throw me off. Swearing, I pull my knife out of my back pocket and press the blade against his throat.
Two scuffles in less than twenty-four hours. Either these travelers are getting feistier, or I’m becoming crotchety in my old age.
“From whence do you come?” I ask him. Blue veins swell against the paper-white skin of his neck as he bucks against me. I dig the knife in deeper in case he gets any ideas, just enough to dent his flesh. He won’t be able to move now without seriously injuring himself. I ask the question again, this time in Latin.
“Off with you, woman,” he spits. English, then.
“Not until you answer the question.”
I usually try to have more tact than this. The last thing I want to do is frighten someone who’s already losing his mind, but he’s not afraid, at least not of the wood. I’ve seen what it looks like to be afraid of this place, in the faces of travelers who have begun to give up hope, and in my dad’s face toward the end, when he had finally given up hope, as well.
This guy wants to be here. He stares up at me. He’s young—seventeen, maybe eighteen. His dark blond hair hangs low in his eyes, which are the same color as the shaded grass surrounding him. “I will not return.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” I decide to take a different route. “What year is it?”
He laughs, a mocking sound that rumbles through my chest. “You cannot fool me with that, Madam. Time is of little consequence here.”