Chapter 8 - The Girl in Green

I headed to the dining hall to wait for Mom. The double doors opened into the foyer, and I found a table in view of the front door. Ava sauntered over with a cup of coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other. She plopped down in the chair next to me. She had a nest of bedroom hair, but I noted that she’d managed to get her eyeliner on. I leaned close.

“I’m going to need my phone back,” I whispered.

“Leaving us so soon?” Ava drawled.

“My mom is coming to pick me up today.”

“Hmmmmm,” Ava said.

Kenzie came over with a bowl of oatmeal and sat across from Ava.

“I can’t believe you went for a hike on your first day,” Kenzie said brightly. “How did you even know there was a morning hike?”

Ava leaned over the table and smiled sleepily.

“Jess didn’t know about the hike,” Ava said. “She was trying to make a run for it.”

I was alarmed at how quickly Ava had gotten inside my skull. I had been on my way out the door. I would have been most of the way down the mountain by now if Barlow hadn’t stopped me.

“I’m sure Jess wasn’t trying to escape,” Kenzie said.

“No,” I replied. “Ava is right. I was trying to bail.”

“Oh,” Kenzie said. She seemed taken aback.

“I enjoyed the hike,” I said quickly.

That was the truth. It was interesting to see the statue from above, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that noise in the fog. Thinking about that moment—completely alone, stalked by an unseen animal—gave me an involuntary shiver. “But there was something in the woods.”

“In the woods?” Kenzie said. “What do you mean?”

“Something was stalking me,” I said. “Like maybe a bear?”

Even as I said this, I knew it hadn’t been a bear. I didn’t know much about bears, but I thought they made a lot of noise. Whatever was in the forest cried softly, but was otherwise silent.

“There are bears around,” Kenzie said. “Mostly they’re black bears, and they tend to be shy around people.”

“Maybe it was Bigfoot,” Ava said.

“Bigfoot?” I said. “Are you serious?”

“West Virginia is cryptid central. Bigfoot, the Mothman, the Wampus Cat—every town has its own local legend. West Virginia is almost all mountains,” Ava said, as if mountains automatically equaled monsters.

I thought back to the diner and Tree. She’d told us the story of a girl wandering the mountainside, crying for a lost love. She also acted like it was a big joke.

Whatever had been in the woods was no sad girl looking for a missing boyfriend. It felt menacing. And Barlow felt it too. I was sure of that.

“So, what do you think it was?” I asked.

“Burton,” Ava whispered harshly. “Heading this way.”

I turned in my chair. Ms. Burton steamed toward us, her smooth pageboy swinging purposefully. She was wearing tan pants like jodhpurs, a tailored silk shirt, and a different pair of boots. Mentally, I placed a riding crop in her hand.

She stood over us as she locked eyes on me. I shivered.

“How did you sleep, Jess?” Ms. Burton said.

“Fine,” I said reflexively. It wasn’t a real question, and it didn’t deserve more than a moment of thought, but I did think about it. I’d slept pretty well—better than usual, honestly.

“Good. I’m glad that you—”

“Where’s my mom?” I interrupted. “She was supposed to come by.”

I’d broken Burton’s cardinal rule and interrupted her, but I didn’t care. Mom was coming, and there was no way I was spending another night here. Once I told Mom about Burton telling me to pick up the letter opener and stab her, we’d be out of here. Mom and I never talked about the whole Oliver situation, but I knew she felt guilty about bringing him into the house.

I knew she didn’t bring me here to hone my stabbing skills.

Ms. Burton smiled tightly and slid into the chair next to mine. It’s never a good sign when a teacher or administrator slides into a nearby seat. It means they are formulating a casual response to a difficult question. Buying time.

“I wanted to tell you. Your mother came by for her car. She left early this morning,” Ms. Burton said.

A sour wave of shock swept over me. My skin turned clammy. Sweat from the hike turned to ice. I was in disbelief. It wasn’t like my mother to leave without saying goodbye. I’d expected her to arrive at nine, to tell me to pack up—we were going home—once she sobered up and realized that Burton had played her.

At the very least, I’d expected her to plead with me to give it a chance. To bribe me with a holiday visit to Chicago on the new boyfriend’s dime.

She’d never just . . . left.

“No,” I replied. “Mom wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.”

My voice sounded sad, which I hated.

Kenzie looked down at her pretty hands folded in front of her. Even Ava pretended to be super interested in peeling back cracked pink nail polish from her index finger. They were embarrassed for me. It stung.

I imagined this scene played out in the dining hall the same way for other students, time and time again. She wouldn’t just leave me. . . .

“I encouraged her to go ahead and leave,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier to let a student get settled in that way.”

“When did she go?” I couldn’t wrap my head around Mom getting up before the crack of dawn, tiptoeing away before I noticed.

“She did say that she had a very long drive to Chicago ahead of her,” Burton said. “Her artist friend had a gallery opening and she wanted to make it in time.”

How long had Mom been planning to meet up with Clear? She’d never said anything about an exhibition of his work. It must have been something she’d been looking forward to.

Ms. Burton patted my hand softly, a simulacrum of human kindness. The hair on my arm stood on end as a wave of jittery revulsion spread over me. It took every ounce of will not to pull my hand away.

“You’ll see your mom soon enough,” Ms. Burton said. “The time will fly by and I’m sure she’ll be back for winter vacation.”

Ms. Burton stood and walked away briskly.

“If she lasts that long,” I muttered.

Mom burned through people fast. They either got charred from basking in her limelight for too long, or she got bored.

I felt sorry for the people Mom got bored of. I wondered if I was one of them. Maybe being a parent was inherently tedious and filled with mind-numbing detail work like accounting or data entry.

I resolved once again never to have children. Let the chaos end with Mom and me—a genetic Thelma and Louise act.

Kenzie reached across the table, grabbed my hand, and squeezed.

“I’m sorry, Jess.”

“Guess you’re stuck with us,” Ava said.

* * *

Kimber appeared at the end of breakfast to give me a small hand-filled notecard with my schedule. I had Algebra II first. Ms. Grant, my algebra teacher, all bowl-cut bangs and math optimism, apologized for a pre-test she gave me.

“I want to see where your skillset is,” she said. “No pressure, just do what you can.”

What I could do was not much.

The only math I seemed to be able to manage was a mental calculation of the growing distance between me and my mother.

If Mom left at eight thirty, and now it was ten thirty, she would be at least a hundred miles away, given the winding roads and the foggy driving conditions. By noon she would most certainly be in the next state over—whatever that state was. Ohio? Indiana?

I had no idea.

My next class was English with Dr. Jacobsen. The class was on the third floor in a cozy room filled with two slouchy couches, a bunch of armchairs, and one ancient rocking chair. Along one wall was a row of desks with dividers between.

Dr. Jacobsen motioned me to his desk.

“Hi, Jess,” he said. “Let me give you a syllabus. You’re only a few days behind the class, but I think you can catch up.”

He held out two dog-eared paperbacks.

“We’re reading The Odyssey right now,” he said. “Most days, we spend the first half of the class reading and the second half in discussion. I suggest you skip out on the discussion today and just read. You’ll catch up.”

I stared at the books. I’d been out of school for a while, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d read a book.

“I’m dyslexic,” I said. “No way I can read that fast.”

Dr. Jacobsen opened a drawer in a nearby desk and handed me an e-reader with an audio function and a pair of earbuds. I turned the e-reader on, hungry for news of the outside world.

“No internet connection,” Dr. Jacobsen said with a knowing smile.

Ava had said there was a signal jammer on campus. I’d been hoping that wasn’t true. No such luck.

I took my e-reader to one of the armchairs by the windows and settled in to listen. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I spied Barlow across the room, stretched out in a chair, legs crossed in front of him. He was reading, the book obscuring most of his face, but I knew it was him.

The hike in the fog felt like it had been days, not hours ago. I thought of the knife in his pocket, a wicked-looking foldable hunting blade with a wooden grip. I’d been glad for his knife in the forest, but now the thought of it unsettled me.

Everything about this place was unsettling. He was no different.