Page 15 of The Art of Us

Because he’d stopped paying attention to the trail due to the attention he was giving to his internal battle, he caught a branch wrong, and it scratched the side of his face and across his ear. He bit back a yelp. If he was smart, he would go back. But how could he possibly go back now when Ireland was wandering through the woods by herself? She was doing something. And he needed to know what.

Blood trickled from the new wound in his cheek. He pulled the collar of his shirt up higher to apply pressure so the bleeding would stop. Stupid branch had got him good. He’d be lucky if it didn’t scar. But maybe the scar would make him look more adventurous? He scoffed at that. A musician with a scar. How much more clichéd could he get?

Kal finally came to a place where the trail seemed to open, not a lot, but enough that he didn’t feel like he was battling trees. And suddenly there was a building.

Well, “building” might have been an exaggeration. It was more of a cinder block shed. Careful not to snap any branches or twigs, he ducked behind some shrubbery and watched because Ireland had stopped. She glanced around and licked her lips and then rubbed them together. She disappeared inside the shed with the pizza boxes but came right back out without them.

She glanced around again and then went to a nearby tree and untied a rope he hadn’t noticed was there until she called attention to it by tugging on the knot. She balanced herself against a rock and started to lower whatever had been tied up in the tree. For the first time, it occurred to Kal to worry that maybe, of the two of them,shewas the serial killer. Maybe shewas the one hiding bodies out in the woods, and he had suddenly come across an evil plot he didn’t really want to be involved in. Especially when the thing that lowered from the tree line was a large duffel bag. It was big enough to hold a body, easy.

Stop that, he chided himself. Because really, what could a girl have out here in a duffel bag in the woods that she’d be willing to carry a bunch of pizza boxes to? If there was a dead body in that duffel, she wouldn’t have taken a picnic to it. Even so, Ireland clearly was up to something, or she wouldn’t look so nervous. So guilty.

Ireland untied the duffel bag from the rope and hefted it to the door of the shed. It was then that Kal noticed the door had a worn-out, sun-faded sign indicating a male and female. A bathroom?

She opened the door and went inside with her duffel bag. She closed the door behind her, and he heard the distinct sound of a lock clicking into place. What? A light flicked on through the small windows at the top of the bathroom. He waited for several moments, thinking she was just using the restroom before she continued on with wherever she was going. But she never came back out.

He crept closer, being careful not to step on anything that could snap or crack and give him away.

He could hear muttering from inside, a voice bouncing off the cinder blocks. She sounded like she was cussing someone out. Then he could hear water running. Still, she didn’t come back out. Was she going to stay there all night?

And then realization hit him like getting punched in the face. This is where she was sleeping. This is where Ireland Raine wasliving. Alone. In the woods. Totally vulnerable. This was why she sneaked pizza off of plates. This was why she ghosted through the school.

Ireland Raine was homeless. And he was pretty sure nobody but him knew it.

He stood there for a long time, unsure of what to do. Did he knock on the door and say, “Hey. I know your secret. Do you want to crash at my place for a night or two or three while we figure this out?” He couldn’t leave her there, could he? How safe was it for a teenage girl to be out on her own in the woods? And it’s not like he watched the news, but he heard enough about what was going on in the world to know that human trafficking was real, and for someone looking to exploit the vulnerable, Ireland had definitely put herself in a position to be of interest. He didn’t know what to do.

Kal pulled his phone out several times, intending to call someone, but he could never figure out who he was supposed to call. The police? His mom? One of Ireland’s friends? But as far as he was aware, she didn’t have any friends. It wasn’t just that she didn’t talk to him, but that Ireland didn’t talk toanybody.

He now felt like he understood why. She didn’t make those connections because she didn’t want anyone to know her secret.

He could respect that, which was why he put his phone back in his pocket. At the very beginning of this new friendship with her, he was not in a position to betray her secret. After all, shehadlocked the door. She was probably safe for now. Obviously, she’d been doing this for a while, so she could probably make it through the weekend. That would give him time to think of what he should do. There had to be something.

He carefully picked his way back to the trail that had brought him to Ireland’s little shed. As soon as he’d moved away far enough to be sure Ireland wouldn’t see it, Kal pulled out his phone and switched on his flashlight app so that he could see his way back to the Lutheran church where they had started. The last thing he wanted was to get lost in the woods. Ireland might know where she was at, but he really didn’t. He was new enoughto the town that becoming disoriented in a maze of redwood and shrubbery sent a visceral shiver through him. Coming from the desert meant that there hadn’t been a lot of woods for him to get lost in growing up.

His brain worked furiously on the situation that was Ireland. He wanted to tell an adult. Hadn’t he always been taught that when something happened, you tell an adult? But did that count for when it was something that happened to someone else? Probably. But maybe not. He desperately wanted to do the right thing.

Helping Ireland doesn’t bringherback, he thought to himself. Until that thought came to him, Kal hadn’t realized what he’d been thinking: that maybe by saving one girl, he could save the other. But the other girl was far out of his reach. Out of anyone’s reach. She was buried under a headstone with horses carved into the granite. And there was nothing he could do about it. But maybe he could keepthisgirl from being lost in the same way his friend was lost. Couldn’t he?

Kal tripped over a branch that had been just barely sticking up out of the soft earth. He landed on his hands and knees and cursed. His mom and dad would have no idea what had happened to him when he showed up bleeding and scratched with dirty clothes. What would he say to them? How could he explain it without revealing the secret? The following Ireland into the forest part of the secret was his. Surely it was okay to tell that part. But wait; he couldn’t, right? How could he tell one part without revealing all of it? He picked himself up off the ground and rubbed his hands together to remove the dirt, small rocks, and leaves that had tried to embed themselves into his palms.

He worked to pay better attention to the trail even as he placed one foot in front of the other in a way that kept his trail as small and unnoticeable as possible. Kal didn’t want to lead some sleaze to Ireland’s shed and put her in danger.

Scary people existed in the world. No one knew that better than Kal. And he was not about to lose another friend to the scary people of the world. At the very least, he could make sure she had food. That was something in his power. He could figure out a way to get her shelf-stable groceries. Protein bars, cereal, apples, carrots. Stuff that would provide her good nutrition without her needing a fridge.

Of course, maybe she had a fridge. Maybe she had a full luxury studio apartment going on in there. How was he to know?

But then, that duffel bag didn’t look big enough to hold a fridge. No. She was trying to hide her presence. She wouldn’t have that place tricked out like it was her living space during the day while she was away. Why else would she hide the duffel in the tree?

He had to give her credit. The entire idea of her living situation was sort of ingenious in aBoxcar Childrenkind of way. Kal’s grandma had read him those books when he was a kid.

There was a part of him that wanted to say Ireland was living the dream. She had no parents to tell her what to do. No adults giving her rules and regulations. But the logical part of him understood it wasn’t a dream but more of a nightmare. There was also no security. No protection. No one to talk to. No love. No reminders to brush your teeth. No mom to insist on hugs and to scowl at you as you pretended you didn’t want them.

He felt a burn at the back of his throat and in his eyelids. Ridiculous. He was ridiculous. Crying over imagined hugs? Who did that?

At least there were no witnesses.

Kal released a noisy sigh of relief when the cross that topped the church came into view. He wasn’t going to get lost in the woods today after all. If he was in some sort of old-school Scouting program, they’d give him a merit badge for ...something. He didn’t know the merit badges well enough to know what he would get. Explorer? Adventurer?

More likely he would get a merit badge for Stalker.

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