The Forest Read online

  Mr. Angle had a look on his face that Tricia did not like. He was smiling, and not in the smug way he got right before he inevitably got knocked on his huge butt/tiny pants. He was smiling like he actually knew something that Tricia did not know.

  “Uh-oh,” said Alex, so low that no one but she could hear it.

  Mr. Angle stopped right between their two desks. Jerking his thumb at the newcomer, he said, “Meet Sam Jones.”

  Alex nodded. Tricia shrugged and said, “Charmed, you’re sure.”

  Mr. Angle bristled a bit, but the irritation disappeared quickly, swallowed by that supremely disconcerting smile. He turned to Sam. “There is a bench just outside the door. Why don’t you take the books you showed the receptionist outside and show them off for a bit?”

  Sam shrugged. He glanced around the class, as did Tricia and Alex. Again, she knew what Alex was seeing on all the faces, because she saw it herself: confusion, curiosity; a mixture of irritation that none of the other students had been singled out to go outside, and relief for the very same reason.

  She didn’t know what Sam thought when he looked around. Probably something dumb.

  Even after what he said at the door? Dumb?

  Sure. Even a parrot can mimic something smart if it hangs around the right people.

  By the time she had gotten up and followed Sam out of the room, Alex right behind, Mr. Angle was already droning about the actual speed of the tire that had started all this nonsense, and Tricia had convinced herself that the new guy was probably dumb. It would be just like Mr. Angle: can’t keep up with Tricia and Alex, so let’s give them a handicap to keep them at our level.

  But those handicaps never worked out in favor of anyone but her and Alex.

  Alex, as always, appeared to have come to the same conclusions that Tricia had, because as soon as the door closed behind them he said to Sam, “That was a cute sentence in there, it was nonsense.”

  Sam grinned, and the smile was a familiar one: Tricia had seen it on Alex’s face from time to time, and she knew she herself made that expression. It was an “ain’t I funny?” grin with a bit of a “screw you” twist at the corner.

  “I know that,” said Sam. “But no one else in there knew that.” He winked.

  Tricia felt a bit off-balance. This was new, and it was interesting, and only five minutes ago she would have given a lot for new and interesting to walk through the door. Now, she wondered if she had been right to wish for such a thing. “But do you know what about what you said was nonsense…” she began.

  Alex picked up the thread of her sentence, “… or did you just learn… to… say…”

  His voice drifted to silence. That was fine; Tricia wouldn’t have heard anything he said past that anyway.

  9

  (When Alex Had Grown)

  Something touched his skin, and Alex jumped.

  “Just me,” said Trish. Her hand traveled down his arm, and he felt an electric thrill, so like the time before. The time they entered the trees and held hands and kissed for the first time.

  Now where did that come from? We didn’t kiss in the forest. Did we?

  No. It happened here.

  Alex looked out the front windshield. He had stopped the car here on purpose. The point of the trip was to go to the forest, to “face their fears” or whatever psychobabble Coleman had been pushing, but Alex knew it was really for him and Trish to come together again. And where better than in Sundown? In their place of Firsts?

  So he had stopped outside Tina Louise’s Diner. He was kind of amazed that it was still there. It had been there his whole life, and assuming that the eponymous Tina Louise opened it in her thirties or forties, she had to be in her seventies or eighties by now.

  Still, the neon sign was on just like always, blinking day and night. The only thing that had changed was that the paint was a bit more faded, and the “e” in “Diner” flickered off a bit faster than the rest of the letters.

  “Why’d you stop here?” said Trish.

  “You know why,” he said.

  “Firsts,” she said. She even smiled a bit, and he thought he could have lit a fire with the warmth that smile brought.

  She had smiled less and less since they lost Sammy. More recently, she smiled not at all.

  “Firsts,” he said. He smiled, too. It felt good, and for a minute he figured if he could bottle that feeling and sprinkle it on them, they’d both fly away to Neverland.

  But Neverland is a horror. It’s where the little boy never grows up.

  The thought sobered him, and he might not have gotten out at all if Trish hadn’t done so. But she did, so he followed her out and together they entered the diner. Another change: instead of a bell over the door, an electronic tone sounded to announce their entrance.

  “Take a seat,” someone shouted from the kitchen. “Be right there!” Then the person – a woman – said, in quieter tones obviously meant for someone else, “No, you won’t.” A voice responded, too low to be heard, but Alex thought it sounded angry. “Because the timing has to be just right or it’ll happen too early or too late, and then what happens, huh?” Tina Louise barked back at whoever she shared the kitchen with.

  Trish cocked an eyebrow. Alex did, too, wondering what that was about. It sounded serious, and more than a little strange. He was about to say something about it, but something crashed in the kitchen area, followed by the angry murmurs of a muffled back-and-forth argument.

  Alex flinched at the crash, as did Trish, and both did the same thing everyone does in a diner when there’s a loud noise: they looked around to see who did it, who had noticed, and how people would react.

  They couldn’t see who did it. Tina Louise’s was a fifties-style diner. White tile floors, red-vinyl-coated seats. A long bar where you could eat dinner or just have a shake. Whatever had fallen had done so in the back of the diner, behind the bar and the small wall beyond it. Alex saw a flash of movement through the window cut-out that allowed cooks to slide orders through to the waitress, but nothing more than that.

  As to who noticed, and how everyone would react, that was easy to see since Alex and Trish were the only patrons. The place could probably seat fifty in a pinch, but there was no one else in here now.

  Alex hummed the theme from The Twilight Zone. Again, Trish almost laughed. Again, the moment was lost as someone slammed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen.

  It was Tina Louise. No doubt about it, and no one else it could be. Not only did she have her hair done in the same beehive getup she always wore, not only was she wearing the same skirt that was far too short for a woman her age, but she had the same odd-colored hair. It had to be dyed at this point in her life – maybe it always had been dyed – but the hair that curled in sweaty ringlets around her temples and at her neck was an impossible shade of bright red that Alex had never seen on anyone else’s head, before or since.

  “Don’t wait to be seated, folks, this isn’t that kind of place,” she said.

  Alex and Trish made their way to the same place they had sat every time they came here. The booth in the back corner.

  “Firsts,” he murmured again. He turned to see his wife blush a bit.

  Tina Louise trailed them. Alex wondered if he should say her name. Would that be weird? She wouldn’t remember them, surely, among all the tens of thousands of people she had served.

  Or maybe it was only us. Not very crowded in here now, that’s for sure.

  Whether she remembered them or not, Alex definitely remembered her and this place. He and Trish had only come here twice – both wonderful events: the Firsts.

  Then they had come here a third time – or at least driven past it – on the day they lost Sammy. A First of a different, horrible kind.

  Thinking of that almost made Alex leave right then. What were they doing here?

  But Trish was already sitting down. And she looked, not happy, exactly, but better.

  Of course, that might be easier for her. She ha
dn’t seen what happened to Sammy. She was out cold.

  But was that really a mercy? At least he could hear me screaming his name, maybe knowing how much I loved him when he went.

  Either way, Trish was sitting, she was staying. So he would sit, he would stay. Staying together was their only chance, something inside him whisper-screamed.

  As he sat down across from Trish, Tina Louise pulled a white pad from the apron she wore – longer than her skirt, which always cracked Alex up. “What can I getcha folks?” she asked. Her eyes widened. “Aren’t you…” She coughed, as though a huge load of spit had just slid down her windpipe. Turning her head, she got herself under control. With a lopsided grin, she said, “Sorry.” Then she shook her head. “You two those kids I found back here once?”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to blush.

  Tina Louise saw the look, and grinned. It was a strange grin: full of nostalgia and a bit of happiness, sure… but there was also something hiding under the surface. Something dark, rippling, crawling, and more than a little terrifying.

  The look disappeared as fast as it came. Just the smile remained, sincere and happy enough that Alex was sure he’d imagined that other look. “Not many kids have the guts to make out as hard as you two, right out here in front of God and everybody,” she said.

  “Well…” Trish began.

  Her hand snaked across the table to take his. For a moment he was in the past. The moment she took his hand for the first time. Told him she wanted more. The moment he slid off his bench and onto hers. Kissed her.

  It hadn’t been planned, but it happened. And when it did, the floodgates opened wide and he knew they would be together, always and forever, and maybe for longer.

  He lost himself in that young kiss, as did she, and the next thing he knew, a slightly younger-seeming Tina Louise was looming over them so close he was worried he might see up her skirt, telling them if they didn’t cut it out she’d turn a hose on them to cool them both down. “We do the cooking in back, kids,” she’d said. But she winked and brought them a single milkshake with two straws, whispering as she set them down, “You melted this ice cream into liquid, so you might as well drink what you made.”

  It was the day of Firsts. First hand held, first kiss (followed quickly by first very excellent make-out session), first realization she loved him in the same particular, total way that he loved her.

  It was a year to the day after Sam disappeared. The closest they dared to come to the forest since it all happened, and neither of them really knew why they came. They just did, and Alex often wondered if, had they not, they would have ended up together. He had no doubt they would have been friends, but would they have been husband and wife? Would they have made Sammy, and then lost what they had made?

  No answers there.

  Now, the Tina Louise of this place and this time was nodding. “I can see you are.” She put a mock-stern look on her face. “Am I going to have to get the hose?”

  “We’ll be good,” said Trish. “Promise.”

  “Cross my heart,” added Alex.

  “Oh, don’t do that. No need to swear upon death,” said Tina Louise. “Just, a ‘no, we aren’t going to try out for a Playboy photo shoot’ will suffice.”

  Alex and Trish both raised their free hands as though swearing a solemn oath, which made Alex chuckle. Trish did, too, and that made him full-on laugh.

  Tina Louise had been smiling. Now her eyes shifted to look over Alex’s shoulder. “Tim-get-back-in-the-kitchen!” she shouted, the words belted out so fast they melted together like the rat-ta-tat of a machine gun.

  Alex swiveled to see what was happening and caught a glimpse of a young face and bright red hair.

  Tina Louise shook her head as she turned back to them. “Sorry. He’s new in Sundown,” she said, as though this was some explanation that should make sense to anyone who walked in.

  “I was here before you!” came a voice from the back, surprisingly angry.

  Tina Louise spun toward the back of the diner. “That’s not the way I remember it, Tim!” she shouted in a voice every bit as incensed. She turned back around, sighed, and said, “He’s still acclimating.”

  That struck Alex as odd. “Acclimating to what?”

  The smile that flew to Tina Louise’s lips was so rigid it turned her kind face to a mask, a poor parody of confusion. “Sorry, what?” she said.

  “You said he was ‘acclimating,’” said Trish. Her hand, still holding Alex’s, squeezed a bit, silently communicating,”This is weird,” before she said: “Is he your son?”

  “No, my brother,” Tina Louise said automatically.

  “He’s young,” said Alex, then realized – too late – how offensive that statement might be to her.

  “Oh. Um…” Tina Louise visibly struggled to figure out what to say next. “He arrived late. Much later than I would have expected.” She laughed, a bit too boisterously, then said in a lower tone, “Him showing up was a bit of an accident.”

  Trish laughed at that – hesitantly. Alex did the same. Under most circumstances the statement could be construed as sibling rivalry. But the way Tina Louise said it…

  “But enough about him,” she continued. “I’m sure you’re not interested in my weird family history – though I must say it’s an interesting one! Not even sure I could explain it sometimes.” Her index finger drew circles around her ear. “Hard for me to keep it all straight some days, let alone what it all means. That’s one of the blessings of age: I get to be stupid and not have it affect my dance card.”

  She laughed. The laugh was strange and stilted, and again she flicked her eyes toward the kitchen. Then she recovered and her smile grew less stiff, more sincere as she looked back at Alex and Trish and finally answered the original question: “I probably meant I haven’t acclimated. I wasn’t expecting him to show up here when he did. And we don’t get many new folks in Sundown.” She nodded, this time out the window.

  Alex and Trish both looked out, and saw something they remembered well. Sundown had its own sign, just like Sunrise. It even looked like the same designer had been hired for both, because the colors and sizes were the same, even though the mottos and populations were different. Sundown’s sign could be easily seen from the diner:

  Welcome to Sundown:

  Where You Find Yourself At Home!

  Pop. 1985 (And Counting!)

  Like Sunrise’s “Pop. 2067,” Alex knew Sundown’s “Pop. 1985” was a lie. Had to be, statistically.

  “Anywho,” said Tina Louise, “I remember you two certainly… um… found each other.” Before either Trish or Alex could respond to that, she squinted and added, “You came back again once more, didn’t you?”

  “You must have a mind like a steel trap,” said Alex, and meant it. He was aware of how smart he and Trish were – he rarely met anyone smarter, even in a field populated by people who scored off the charts – but he was still surprised from time to time by a person who could outshine him –

  (Like Sam did; like we always hoped Sammy someday would.)

  – in one way or another. For the owner of a diner to remember two people coming in, specifically and with detail, over a period of decades…

  Trish whistled. “That’s impressive,” she said. “For you to remember us both times.”

  A shadow fell across her face, and Alex felt like hitting Tina Louise. Just for an instant. For realizing what Trish had, and for knowing what the proprietor of the diner was likely going to say. She had remembered them making out decades ago. She had remembered them coming in again ten years later. It stood to reason that she remembered why they were there that second time, too: their second major First.

  It’s okay. She won’t remember everything. Just –

  “You were pregnant,” she said quietly. “You showed the ultrasound picture to everyone.”

  Trish mouthed a word: “First.”

  Alex thought another: Last.

  “I was sorry to hear about what happene
d to that boy,” she said. “To Sammy.”

  Tears welled in Trish’s eyes, which Alex barely saw because the same thing was happening to him.

  “How did you…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “It was front page on the Sundown News Gazette, but even if it hadn’t been, we would have known. It happened in our town, so what happened to you happened to all of us.” The smile she gave them wasn’t fake, but wasn’t happy, either. Sadness made the lines in Tina Louise’s face grow deep enough to fracture anything bright. “You two order whatever you want. Birthdays are on the house here.”

  “It’s not our birthday,” said Trish.

  “Hush,” answered Tina Louise. “If you’re back in Sundown, it’s either a birthday or a deathday, and I’d rather think it’s the first.”

  She hurried away, dabbing at her eyes a bit. When she came back, she took their orders. Alex didn’t know what he ordered. He ate it, though it didn’t taste like anything but ash and lost yesterdays.

  Trish held his hand, though. She ate a burger and fries one-handed, and her other clutched his so hard it felt painful. But the pain was good, because it was a pain she had given him. It was a pain that she shared with him, and he would take it gladly.

  Sharing was something they hadn’t done lately.

  Maybe it was good they had come.

  “Are we really going to that place?” Trish said suddenly.

  He didn’t know if she meant to the place where the car rolled, then caught fire, then exploded: or if she meant into the forest, where the first Sam had been lost, a blank spot in their memories given to them in return.

  Either way, the answer was the same: “I don’t know.”

  Trish nodded. She wasn’t crying anymore, but the glimmers of brightness he had seen in her mood were gone, snuffed out by the well-intentioned Tina Louise.