Page 22 of The Woods

She wants to yell across the lawn that she can hear him. That she thinks he’s underreacting, as he usually does, that he should just go back into his writing studio and drink some more.

“I don’t think she’s overreacting,” she hears Polly say.

“The trail cam is kinda cool,” Quinn adds.

“Okay,” Geoff concedes. “As long as you guys are okay, I’m okay.”

Alice feels guilty for the smug satisfaction she feels about her children defending her to Geoff. She shouldn’t feel good about them taking sides.

“With the trail cam up, at least we’ll know what’s in there,” Quinn says.

“Are we sure we want to?” Polly asks with a laugh.

Quinn

“Did you know that Justine Gordon buried her family in the woods?”

Everyone stops eating their dinner to give Quinn their full attention, which is what he was going for. “I’ve been listening to a podcast about it. One of those true-crime ones,” he explains.

His mom holds up a hand. “That’s enough, Quinn. I really don’t think it’s healthy for us to know the details of the horrible things that happened here.” She takes a sip of her wine. “In fact, I think it should be a house rule that under no circumstances do we go looking for information on the case.”

Quinn throws up his hands. “What? That’s not fair. I still have more episodes to go.”

“Why would you want to inquire about such morbid stuff anyway?” his nana asks. He wishes she’d just keep her big fat nose out of things.

“Once you know something, you can’t unknow it,” his dad adds, probably because he feels like he should side with the other adults in the room. Quinn resists the urge to say, Duh, in response.

“Fine.” Quinn pushes his plate away. Clearly, he’s not going to win this one. He’ll just have to pretend to concede and then sneak the podcast and google searches.

His mother gets up from the table to clear her plate, pointing at him with the hand clutching her dirty napkin. “And I’ll be checking your browser history to make sure you’re not listening to that podcast or searching for more information about it.”

He almost laughs out loud but catches himself. As if he can’t get away with whatever he wants online. She’s clueless.

“Can I go to Jason’s now?” Quinn asks. “I don’t have any homework.” Both his parents give their permission. He can tell they’re glad he has a friend. Little do they know that Jason runs an illegal online gambling site for kids at their school, and that his parents are super rich and so busy there’s no such thing as parental supervision in his house.

Before leaving for Jason’s, Quinn knocks on Polly’s bedroom door. There’s no answer, but when he goes into her room to make sure she’s not there, he sees her through the open bedroom window standing at the side of the house. He goes outside and around the back to find her.

Before taking him to school that morning they’d gone to Starbucks first, and Polly had made him pay for it. He should have known. She never does anything solely out of the goodness of her heart. Merrymont won’t allow a Starbucks into their downtown, so they had to drive to the next town over, twenty minutes away.

“Now will you admit those woods are creepy?” Quinn had said to Polly as they sat in the car in the parking lot of his school, drinking Venti Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Polly insisted on getting hot drinks, even though it’s still hot outside. “Like, those animals were literally torn apart. The bird had no head. The raccoon no eyes, mouth, or nose; the skunk no guts; the rabbit no front or back legs or ears.”

“Yes. Those woods are fucked-up. Okay? But let’s change the topic. Dead-animal talk is making it hard to enjoy my latte. And you need to go to school.”

“I guess I can’t avoid it forever,” he said, but stayed exactly where he was, drinking his irritatingly sweet latte. “Social hell awaits.”

Polly put her drink in the cupholder and then reached for her bag in the backseat and started rummaging through it. “Take this and ask kids if they want to get high. I bet you make friends in no time.”

He looked down at the dab pen in her hand, then pushed it back toward her. “Thanks for the offer, Polls, but that’s okay. With my luck I’d end up suspended and still have no friends.”

She shrugged and put the pen back in her bag. “Your call, little man.” Hearing her use Lucy’s nickname for him didn’t bother him so much this time.

“I think those dead animals really freaked Mom out,” Quinn said, stalling.

“It doesn’t take much these days,” Polly was quick to reply, and they both laughed. Then he finally got out of the car and went into the school.

Quinn had ended up taking her advice. He asked Jason, when they were lab partners, if he liked to get high. Jason said yeah and Quinn promised to bring some weed over that night so that they could get high together. Quinn can’t show up there now empty-handed.

Before rounding the corner of the house, he hears Polly talking. When she comes into view, he expects to find her on the phone but she’s just standing there, alone.