#jemy

It’s not just moving unexpectedly in the summer when none of her friends are around to say goodbye, or that her junior year will be at a completely new school where people genuinely care about football, but that it’s fucking Cottonwood. To put it simply, Jessica is trapped in a purgatory between pissed and bored out of her mind. And that’s in the middle of a “party”, too.

Hypothetically, it’s her dad’s way of celebrating her being there, except she has not a single memory of any of these distant relatives and all the food contains gelatin, cool whip, or both. She tries a vegetable tray, thinking that there’s no way to mess that up, just to find everything coated in sugar. One of her supposed uncles is wearing a MAGA hat, and it’s taking every ounce of her self control not to physically combust every time she has the misfortune of looking at him. She’s only holding herself back because her dad is really, really trying and she knows it, so she’ll have to just talk to him about it once everyone’s cleared out. Not that that’s a huge comfort. It was at least 90° out and humid, her phone was at 9%, and nobody’s showing any signs of slowing down.

She stares at the edge of the woods. Everyone’s clumped in the part of the backyard that’s under the shade of some very flimsy tents, the rest of the space made up of a plain of dried, cracking grass and a few kids climbers that she hadn’t even used when she was six, caked with dirt and falling apart in a corner. It looks post-apocalyptic, except for the  group of aunts behind her talking about some gossip so boring that it fades into the background with everything else.

 It would be easy, to just walk out into the trees, she thinks without meaning to and suddenly the idea won’t go away. They look cool, and quiet, and like she won’t be forced to eat bits of pretzel in watermelon jello once she’s in there. She can disappear into the woods for an hour or two. She can disappear. 

Jessica grabs her boots, the heavy ones that have been caked in mud so much that she doesn’t remember what color they were when she bought them, lacing them up as tight as they’ll go. She leaves the tents and the strangers and the questions behind, walking across the crunching grass and into the trees. As the crab-grass fades into leaves and little plants, she thinks that she was right: it’s much cooler in here. 

There isn’t a path, obviously, but as long as she just keeps walking straight, she’ll be fine. Stopping now doesn’t even seem like an option, not when there’s so much deeper to go, now that she’s taken the first steps. Moss clings to the sides of rocks and fungi grows from dead logs, sunlight falls from between the branches, tinted green and splattering over everything. She thinks that she can hear the burble of a stream from somewhere just a little farther, and Jessica wants to find it. Somehow, though there’s no difference between where her feet fall and the rest of the ground, it feels like she’s on a trail anyway, outlined between the trees.

So maybe she loses track of time, and badly, but time isn’t real during the summer anyway. But that doesn’t keep the sunlight from getting thinner and the woods grayer. Maybe she should’ve turned back way sooner, but Jessica swears, every time she pushes back a branch or climbs over a boulder that the creek must be behind it, over and over and over until, finally, it is. But the water isn’t alone.

 She rounds a corner in the not-path and finds her feet at the edge of mud and, past that, a church. Or something that used to be a church. The wood is faded, some of it splintered and falling apart, with gaps in the walls and plaster-dust coating the floor in the parts of the inside she can see. It’s a big, ancient-looking building, like it’s rotted here in the woods as long as there have been trees, but really it probably isn’t more than 20 years old.

 Jessica takes a few steps closer to the creek but doesn’t cross it, walking back and forth along the edge to see more instead.  It looks like parts of it are burned, just odd patches crumbling into ash, the roof caved in over one part, and through a busted-up gap in the wall she can see a few plastic chairs scattered on their sides over a rotted carpet. There’s a cross above the door closest to her, the golden paint on it chipped around the center but still shiny in the slanted evening light. The building goes on and there’s plenty left to explore, but Jessica stops at the edge, her feet just starting to sink into the mud.

 Look, she’s not a superstitious person, she considers herself down-to-earth and reasonable, but as much as she hates to say it, she’s got a feeling. Except it’s not really her feeling, but one that this place owns, hanging over everything; it’s something like dread but quieter. Silent. Nothing moves but her own lungs and ribs, a standstill between her and the empty church. But something, a presence or a feeling or terror, rises, looming like a wave coming from the inside out, about to crash, and for a half second there’s the feeling of light, a pinprick of it in her spine where her back meets her neck-- 

Fuck that, Jessica thinks, grabbing a solid branch from next to her and turning to sprint back into the woods. Of course there isn’t any real danger, the logical part of her brain reminds her, but there’s also no one around to see her running away. Not that booking it fixes the problem. It really just makes her feel like prey, and she holds onto her stick tighter.

Now time’s really gone sideways, and it feels like forever or just a moment before she’s at the edge of the trees again. It’s really dark now, her legs ache, and it takes a long, long time for breathing not to hurt, but it felt like just a few steps to get her here. She knows that it took hours to get that far in. Jessica also knows that she’s lost.  

It’s definitely not her dad’s, cramped, badly-painted house in front of her, but something much bigger and much nicer, something that doesn’t remotely belong in her neighborhood. Shit, shit, shit. She’ll just have to find out where she is and call her dad to pick her up, she thinks, heading towards the street--

“Who’s there?” Comes a hesitant voice from in front of her, towards the house, and she freezes, watching a flashlight beam dance over the ground. 

The grass here is actually green and well kept, too, so definitely not anywhere close to her street. But she’s in Alabama, rich neighborhood or not, so there’s probably someone around here keeps a shotgun for the sole purpose of anyone on their property. Jessica crosses her fingers.

“Uh, hey, I think I’m lost?” She calls, still holding onto her stick because she’s not stupid. 

The beam of light approaches, revealing everything around it, and she immediately decides that she’s safe because she can totally take the guy holding the flashlight. He looks right around her age, scrawny and kinda pale, with big eyes looking at her cautiously out from under a hat. She lets the stick hang down by her side.

“Why--what were you doing in the woods? I thought you were a murderer,” Not-a-Threat explains, and she raises an eyebrow.

“You thought a murderer was coming out of the woods and you go towards them?” He looks guilty, scratching at the back of his neck and failing to come up with a good explanation, so she plows on.

 “I just got lost and came out at the wrong spot and my dad’s probably totally worried about me, can you drive?” Her phone is completely dead, so the sooner she gets home the less grounded she’ll be. 

“Uhhh, not really, but I have a friend who can?” Jessica sighs, more exasperated now than actually shaken, and nods. 

She stands in the dark grass while Not-a-Threat calls his friend who can drive, looking up at the light leaking out from the windows of the big house and listening to the roar of the cicadas. As they go around to the street to wait, she feels stupid. Not just for getting lost in the woods but for genuinely getting scared enough to run out of them like that, like there’s anything to worry about. Sure, an abandoned church in the woods at night is something only an idiot in a horror movie would explore, but she could’ve just walked back and maybe then actually gotten back to her own house.

 “So uh, I’m Jay,” says the guy, shifting the flashlight to his other hand so he can offer the right one, and she takes it.

“Jessica.” They stand under the streetlight for a long time after that until an old, beat-up van pulls up, the edges faded purple, a guy waving out the window at them. He’s looks a little bit scruffy but mostly just tired, with the most actual sideburns she’s ever seen on a teenager in her life, but her first instinct is that he’s good. Still, she brings her stick with her into the back of the car, and borrows Jay’s phone so she can call her dad and let her know the situation. He’s kind of mad but mostly relieved, and guilt tangles in her stomach.

Jay’s friend is named Tim and he is in fact a good guy, clearly making an effort to chat with her as the streetlights come in and out of view beside them. He doesn’t seem surprised when Jessica explains that Jay was going to try and talk to a stranger shuffling out of the woods at night, just laughs and shakes his head. She explains that she’s just moved from Montgomery and gets an adequate amount of sympathy for her situation, and it turns out that they’re going to the same high school in the fall, though, thankfully, neither Jay nor Tim seem like they care about football even a little bit. They give her pointers for which teachers are incompetent and which classmates to avoid, and rehash some of last year’s drama to someone who hasn’t heard it all a billion times.

 It’s the usual stuff that comes with stupid horny teenagers getting stuck with each other for nine months, and by the time they’re pulling into her driveway, Jay’s finishing up a rambling story of two seniors who went at it in the teacher’s lounge and their literature teacher’s dramatic tale of her walking in on it, and she feels more like a real person again. Through the window, she sees her dad stop pacing, running his hands through his hair, and she hurries to get out before the car’s even fully stopped.

 “Jessie, you’re okay!” He’s hugging her, too tightly, but she doesn’t mind. Still, she untangles him after a moment, hyper-aware of Jay and Tim still in the car. 

“I’m sorry dad, I uh, I just wanted to go for a hike and I got lost?” It sounds pathetic as far as excuses go, even if it’s actually what happened, but her dad seems content to chew her out later.

“You’re back in one piece, that’s what matters. Just never, ever do that again. Now, who helped you get here?” He asks, and she immediately knows, dreads, what’s coming. 

“You boys, come on out here, I need to thank you.”They awkwardly get out of the car and stand in front of her dad, Jay picking at a loose thread in his jacket and Tim standing up way too straight, like he’s expecting to be judged on his posture. Instead, her dad just ruffles their hair in the most dad-like and embarrassing way possible, beaming.

 “Thank you so much for bringing my daughter home safely. I worry a lot about these younger generations, but you’re two fine young gentlemen, thank you for proving me wrong. Would you like to come over for lunch tomorrow as a reward?” He offers, and they share a look, mumbling and eventually sort of agreeing out of obligation, but by that point she’s got a hand over her eyes in exasperation. 

She looks up, though, when she hears Tim scrambling around in the back of the car for something, coming back out with the stick she’d left there.“Uh, you want this?” He drawls, and she laughs, taking it. Her dad insists that they come over one more time before letting them go and hugs he one more time before letting her stumble back into the house and up to the bedroom that had been hers when she visited as a kid but is still unfamiliar, and she’s suddenly exhausted.