Alone in the Woods Read online

  * * *

  We weren’t trying to walk quietly through the forest, and that was a good thing, because flip-flops and water shoes make a ton of noise, slapping and squeaking with every step. We also weren’t moving carefully at all, blazing our own trail of snapped branches and jostled leaf piles and crunched wildflowers behind us. I felt really bad about those crunched flowers—thinking of all the “Please protect plants and wildlife by staying on the trails” signs I’d seen on hikes in the university arboretum back home, at Devil’s Lake State Park, and every other natural place I’d ever visited. Now I was in the national forest—a superspecial and protected environment—and I was stomping all over it.

  I was also slightly wary of the green leaves and plant tendrils that brushed against our limbs as we moved, because the forests of the Northwoods are home to plenty of dangerous and irritating plants, like poison ivy, poison sumac, and wild parsnip—which sounds like something you might even want to eat, but it actually creates severe blisters if it so much as touches your skin. I wondered why the person who named that plant didn’t go with poison parsnip or something even more descriptive, like DANGER DANGER BLISTER WEED, to make it abundantly clear that you should look, not touch. Unless you’re wearing thick gloves and long pants.

  There’s a reason the hiking-clothes section at sporting goods stores is full of shoes with thick treads, quick-drying pants, and breathable layers. They don’t sell slippery thin soccer shorts and regular swimsuits, and definitely not skimpy two-pieces and loose caftans like Alex was wearing. We were reminded of this as soon as we started hiking in search of the river.

  I tried to maneuver around the branches and twigs, but it was hard to avoid them in the overgrown, untouched forest. They tickled and poked my arms and legs, which soon became covered in a pattern of angry red scratches. At least my clothes stayed pretty close to my body, though. Alex’s flowy cover-up was like a magnet for bare branches.

  “Ow!” she squealed.

  I turned to see her stopped short, her body still leaning forward into a stride but her cover-up holding her back. She tugged to pull it loose, but it wasn’t budging. “I’m caught on this stupid pine tree!”

  I dropped the inner tube—gladly, because it was starting to feel really heavy, and gripping the handles made my palms sore and sweaty. I bent next to the branch where the cover-up’s thin fabric had caught. “I have no idea how this is so stuck in here,” I said. Gentle tugs did nothing to loosen it. The fabric was covered in bead patterns, and one beaded flower was snared in the branch. “Is it okay if I rip it? Otherwise, I think the only way you’re going to get free is by wiggling out and leaving it here.” To be honest, the cover-up was so flimsy that I don’t know how much protection it was really giving Alex from the elements. If it was only going to keep getting caught, she might be better off without it. “You could wear your beach towel,” I suggested.

  “I’m not leaving this in the woods! Laura loves it.”

  “It’s hers?”

  Alex nodded, wiping sweat off her forehead but leaving behind a line of dirt. “I borrowed it for the cabin. Because, you know, I thought I’d be, like, relaxing by the lake. Good photo op.” She smoothed the fabric on her arm. “It’s Laura’s favorite, but she loaned it to me anyway because she’s that nice—and these are my colors. I’m a summer palette.” Alex pointed to the swirls of peach and turquoise blue. “I promised her I’d take care of it.” There was a waver in her voice, like she knew now that she would most likely be breaking that promise. And I felt a little bad for Alex, because I know how it feels to be scared of making a friend mad at you or of doing something to make her not want to be your friend anymore.

  I really know how that feels.

  I tugged again. The beading was stuck tight. “I’m going to have to rip it, but I’ll be as gentle as possible.”

  Alex let out a deep sigh and braced herself. “Okay.”

  I pulled, and she winced as the fabric made a tearing sound. “You’re free now,” I said, examining the part that had been stuck. Beads had fallen off, but the damage was minor—definitely something that could be mended. That made me feel less guilty because part of me had secretly enjoyed shredding Laura’s clothing, even just a tiny bit.

  “Ready to keep moving?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Alex sighed. “How much farther?”

  Like I know. We’d been walking for fifteen, maybe twenty minutes? The only thing that could help us tell the passage of time was the light and the temperature. It couldn’t be that late in the day, because the sun was pretty high in the sky and the forest was still warm-ish. But for daytime in August, it was surprisingly chilly in the woods. The shade and dampness kept things really cool. “Ten minutes, maybe?” I guessed. If we were heading in the right direction, toward the river, we couldn’t be more than ten minutes away.

  We kept on walking, only now Alex was protectively clutching the fabric of her cover-up with one hand. Around us, the trees and plants grew tight. Scarily dense, like it might be impossible to escape their maze of branches. I felt a tug on my hair and let out a yelp, throwing my free hand up to feel if something was now on my head. Possibly something from one of the spiderwebs. My fingers landed on the prickly spines of…a burr. I yanked it out of my hair and threw it onto the ground. I ran my hand over my head again, picking off two more.

  It was getting harder and harder to walk in my water shoes. The elastic edges dug into my skin, which had been rubbed raw. I wanted so badly to pull the shoes off, even for a few steps. But walking with bare feet would be risking injury, and probably even more painful. I couldn’t believe how much the shoes already hurt. We hadn’t been out of the water for that long.

  Like she could hear me thinking, Alex whined, “How much longer?”

  My spine prickled with annoyance. You just asked me that. “How should I know?” Was she turning into Nolan? I felt like my mom when we’re in the car and Nolan asks every five minutes, “Are we there yet?” But I stopped to wait for Alex to catch up. My right foot pulsed, and I scrunched up my toes inside the water shoe, giving my sore heel a moment of relief.

  I heard the slap-slap of her flip-flops as Alex, huffing, came up next to me. I’d felt so superior earlier, not having worn sandals for the tubing trip. But now I eyed hers with envy. Sure, she had a few scratches, and her feet were completely covered in mud, but Alex didn’t have throbbing blisters on the backs of her heels. Who was the smart one now?

  “I need a freaking break,” she said, shading her eyes. “Where is a rock or a log or something we can sit on?”

  “Why do you keep asking me where everything is?” I sniped. “It’s not like I’m in charge.”

  “Oh, really? It’s because of you that we’re wandering the woods.”

  Wait, what? That was 100 percent her fault. Alex had been the one to dive out of the tube to rescue her phone. She’d been the one to insist we head off on an unknown trail instead of staying put in the cove. And she had also been the one to keep plowing forward in the forest when the trail disappeared, without telling me that she no longer knew where she was going but was educated guessing. All I’d done had been giving the tube one tiny, frustrated bounce. And I was pretty sure she wasn’t aware I’d done that.

  “Um, this is not my fault. I don’t want to get into blaming or whatever, but you were in the lead, and you didn’t notice when we went off the path.”

  “But you’re the nature lover! With your whole talented-and-gifted project on this dumb forest.” When she said “talented-and-gifted project,” she adopted a mocking British accent. “I thought you knew everything about it.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I told her.

  “Whatever. You’re the one who wanted to come on this trip.” Then Alex muttered something, and I could only pick out a few words: boring, rather, Madison, Laura, parents, no.

  “What did you say?” I asked, uncertain
I wanted her to repeat it, because when I strung those overheard words together in my head, the sentences I made up were not things I wanted to hear. Other than “no” and “Laura.”

  “Nothing.” Alex brushed a bunch of leaves into a pile on top of some green plants and then plopped down on it. “I’m sitting here and taking a break. By myself. I’ll let you know when I’m done.” She stared at her phone, like if she just gazed at it long enough, and with healing love in her eyes, then it might come back to life.

  I blinked a few times, then moved to sit on top of a large, moss-covered log a few feet away. For a moment or two, my anger still ran hot enough that I wondered why I’d ever felt bad in the first place about what had been going on with Alex this summer. The blip. The shift. The…friendship breakup?

  Because I’d felt really bad. There’d been an ache in my chest ever since I saw Alex the day she’d come home from camp, waiting in line at Michael’s Frozen Custard with Laura. She’d lied to me when she’d texted that she was too tired for the pool. Even though I’d been counting the days. I’d written her letters. I’d even skipped swimming in solidarity—and two of those days, it had hit ninety degrees! I’d thought the sacrifice was worth it because Alex was my best friend. But am I still hers? That question felt scary enough to swallow me whole.

  Maybe because the temperature was dropping in the shady woods, my anger cooled fast. Then I just felt lonely, even more alone than on registration day, when I’d stood in that bright fluorescent hallway all by myself. Lonely, even though my once-if-not-future best friend was barely an eagle’s wingspan away from me.

  Alex

  The Dog Days of Summer

  I silently panicked the whole ride from Michael’s Frozen Custard to my house, and it wasn’t because of Zack’s driving. As soon as I got out of the car, I texted Jocelyn. Before I even walked inside. Then I pressed to call her.

  It didn’t go straight to voicemail, so I knew the flip phone wasn’t turned off. She was ignoring me. Or she’d given the phone back to her mom.

  Next, I tried her landline. “Hi, is Joss there?”

  There was a muffled pause, and I could hear her mom’s ring smacking the phone as she covered the mouthpiece to mute it. “She’s…busy right now, Alex—um, in the shower.” The satisfaction in her voice, for quickly thinking of an excuse, told me she was lying. “Can I have her call you back?”

  My stomach was dropping like I was on one of the bungee thrill rides that line the tourist strip in Wisconsin Dells. “Yes, please. Thanks.”

  It wasn’t until late that Joss actually called me back, and that was after I texted her a different emoji about every forty-five seconds, even though I didn’t know if she still had the flip phone with her anymore and whether it can actually show a full range of emojis. I took a deep breath and pressed to answer her call.

  “Hey, Jallard!” Nicknames always show you’re trying to be friendly, right?

  “What’s up,” she said, her voice totally flat.

  “I’m super sorry I didn’t call earlier. There’s, like, so much I need to catch you up on, but for starters, Laura Longbottom ended up being my cabinmate. That’s wild, right? And she needed to…run some important errands after being stuck at camp for so long. I thought that since you were doing yard work anyway, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to quickly help her out, once we got back.” I crossed my fingers because of the white lies embedded in my explanation.

  “Wow, important errands like eating frozen custard.” She paused, waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t have a response to that. She was right. Joss continued, “I was waiting for you, waiting to go to the pool. You knew that from my texts. But you told me you were too tired. Not that you were running errands.” Her voice sounded strained from being so mad. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I…” I squeezed my eyes shut, struggling to think of an excuse. There really wasn’t one? I sighed. “I made a mistake. And I’m sorry. It was just a lot, the end of camp and the bus ride back and everything. I guess I needed a minute for…recalculating.” Like the GPS in the car always says it’s doing when someone takes an unplanned turn.

  Joss was quiet for so long, I wondered if she’d hung up. I cleared my throat. “Anyway—wanna have First Day at the Pool tomorrow?”

  “No,” she said, her voice clipped. “It’s not the first day anymore.” My eyebrows scrunched. Jocelyn had a right to be mad, but now she was just being petty. Cutting off her nose to spite her face, like the saying my dad always uses.

  Then she let out a sigh. “But I’d like to hang out tomorrow. If you’re free.” Her tone was softening. “Maybe ride bikes or something?”

  I picked up on the smallest nervous tremor in her voice. So subtle that if I weren’t her best friend, I never would’ve noticed. “Yeah! Definitely. I’ll be over by eleven.”

  “Okay,” she said. Another awkward pause. “Welcome home.”

  “Thanks.” I flopped back on my bed, reassured. Things were going back to normal. Other than the texts from Laura that had been buzzing in my ear the whole time Joss and I were talking.

  * * *

  Afterward, Joss and I settled into a routine of seeing each other a few times a week—but not every day. That was a huge change from every other summer. She never asked what I’d been up to when we weren’t together, and I definitely never admitted that I’d been hanging out with Laura, who became like an elephant in the room—because if I’d mention something cool that Laura wore, Joss would shoot me a judgy look that made me feel bad for liking it. Or I’d start to tell her a story from camp, and even if I stopped myself, Joss would stiffen up. Like she could tell it would’ve been about an experience Laura and I had shared, and she was jealous.

  Still, some days it felt like nothing had changed. In the evenings, we sat on my porch in the glow of my phone and her school tablet, listening to Mateo and the younger kids on the cul-de-sac playing Ghost in the Graveyard. The way Jocelyn stared at their flashlights bobbing through the yards, I could tell she wanted to join in. And honestly, I did too. But neither of us actually suggested it. We were too old, and it kind of seemed like the days of “Team Alexelyn”—what we’d always called ourselves when playing neighborhood games like that—were past.

  Jocelyn had become a different person since I came back from camp. Or maybe that’s not the right way to put it. She was exactly the same, but I was different, and so the way I saw her had changed. Sometimes it felt like I was inhabiting Laura’s body and seeing Jocelyn through her eyes instead of my own. Laura would think Joss’s T-shirts were all so baggy, her shorts so long. Sometimes I considered offering to do her hair before we left the house, but I didn’t want to make her, like, self-conscious. Joss never wore a stitch of makeup, not even lip gloss, and when I suggested maybe going to the beauty store for makeovers on a rainy day, she rolled her eyes in a way she never used to. I mean, that kind of girly stuff—makeup, hair braiding, masks—had always been part of our sleepovers. I almost always suggested it, but it’s not like Jocelyn hated it. But now if I said I wanted to go buy some sheet masks, her mouth would twist up into this angry little frown and she’d come up with some reason why that wasn’t a great idea.

  We’d gone from being two peas in a pod to two peas in a low-key food fight. We couldn’t even agree on where to pedal off to on our bikes. Two weeks before registration day, Laura was visiting her grandmother in Milwaukee, so it was the second afternoon in a row that Joss and I had hung out. I could tell she was in a great mood by the twirl she did on her bike as she pulled up to my house. For once, I was ready, waiting on my front steps with my legs stretched out and my bike propped up next to me. I stood, slung my bag over my shoulder, and walked my bike to meet her at the curb.

  “Look, I got us some reading material.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a glossy magazine.

  “Back-to-school stories? Don’t remind me,” Joss pointed to t
he “Back to School, Back to Wardrobe Basics” cover line.

  “Whatever—you know you love school.” Jocelyn is: a straight-A student; a teacher’s pet; an overachiever; D, all of the above. “I’m the one who should be dreading it.” Last year, I struggled for all my B’s. The extra credit that gives Joss pluses on her report card just keeps me above water.

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but I like summer more. Being outside and all.”

  “Me too. I’m not ready for fall. Among other things, I still haven’t gotten rid of my racerback tan lines.” Something Laura—who was maybe a little obsessed with her tan—often pointed out.

  “Tanning is horribly unhealthy, you know.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. Actually, Joss sounded like her mom, who was constantly coming at us with a bottle of SPF One Million and a lecture. Probably because she works at a dermatologist’s office. “So where should we go? There’s a nail-polish color I saw in here”—I flipped to one of the folded-down pages of the magazine—“that I really want. Maybe the drugstore has it.”

  Before I could show her, Jocelyn blurted out, “I don’t feel like shopping.” She never did anymore. So how could she blame me for going to the mall with Laura? “But we haven’t been to the zoo all summer.”

  That’s because there isn’t anything to do at the zoo. Sure, the red pandas are ridiculously cute, and the lions and tiger are cool, when they’re not sleeping. But they’re all usually sleeping.

  I had plans to see Laura the next day, and I wanted to get the new polish so if we went for pedicures, I could use it. But I couldn’t tell Jocelyn that. I sneaked a glance at her outfit for the day. She was wearing a faded gray T-shirt that read SAVE THE EARTH, IT’S THE ONLY PLANET WITH CHOCOLATE and shorts with tiny dolphins embroidered on them. Which were cute, but they also reminded me of Shark Boy and his Great White button-down at the dance. I was wearing a new fitted tank and the shortest shorts my mom would allow, both of which I’d picked out with Laura when we hit up the Fourth of July sales. We’d run into a few kids that day, friends of Laura’s, and for the first time, I’d gotten to be in her spotlight-of-sunshine around people we knew from Walden. It was so unlike when I’d be out with Jocelyn and we ran into classmates—unless they were Houa and Kate, we either pretended not to see them or were ourselves ignored.