Page 26 of Gothikana

‘So, we’re going to the woods.’ Jax slid a grin her way. ‘Wanna hang?’

‘Where are we hanging?’ Jade’s voice came from the side as she and Troy joined them.

Jax wiggled his eyebrows at her. ‘The woods.’

Corvina saw Jade’s eyes widen slightly. ‘Are you crazy?’ she hissed, slapping Jax’s arm with her hand. ‘We aren’t supposed to go there. It’s dangerous.’

‘Well, your roommate goes there often enough, so I guess she is the crazy one,’ Jax retorted.

Corvina felt her teeth gnash at the word, her skin tightening as something hot and stinging entered her body. Anger. She almost didn’t recognise the emotion because of how foreign it was to her. Corvina had never been an angry person, but that word… that word, so carelessly tossed around, was her trigger.

Before she could say anything, Troy slapped Jax upside the head with a, ‘Watch it, dick.’

Jade pointed a finger at the boys. ‘Don’t talk about her like that. If there’s anyone crazy here, it’s you boys for thinking about going in those woods.’

‘We are going,’ Jax asserted. ‘Question is, are you coming or not?’

Corvina didn’t want to go, not after the crazy comment or how close it hit home. But she also didn’t want them to go toward the ruins. She felt protective of them, for some bizarre reason. She didn’t want anyone finding them, anyone stumbling upon them — not the ruins, the graves, or that old piano covered in a new tarp. She hadn’t realised but she’d already claimed the place in her mind, willing to share it with only one person, one who’d claimed the woods as his solace long before she got there.

That was the only reason she said, ‘Sure.’

Jax gave her a winning grin while Jade sighed, pinching her nose. ‘Fine. But we don’t go too deep. And we get back before the sun goes down.’

‘Deal,’ he assured her. ‘Meet us in front of your tower. I’ll get some stuff.’

Troy gave Corvina a side hug. ‘Thanks, Purple.’

Corvina rolled her eyes, her heart warming at his gesture.

The boys jogged off and Jade gave Corvina a curious look. ‘You go into the woods a lot?’

Corvina shrugged and made her way toward the tower. She had been going into the woods more over the week, early every morning. More specifically, she’d been going to the ruins with some food and her journal. She liked sitting on one of the large stones by the crumbling wall, surrounded by nature taking back what man had once made. She liked that every morning there were more and more crows that came to be fed by her. She liked watching them feast while writing in her journal — observations about people, inferences about herself, and thoughts about one man. She liked putting the words on paper. It made her make sense of everything that went on inside. Journaling wasn’t something she had always done. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of doing it until Dr Detta had suggested it.

The cold wind brushed her face, whipping strands of her hair that had escaped her fishtail braid. The sun was bright but close to the horizon. They had probably an hour or so of daylight left.

She tugged the strap of her sling bag higher over her shoulder as she spied Troy, Jax, Ethan, and two other boys she didn’t know standing by the tower. Five in total.

‘Should we get some girls?’ Jade asked quietly from the side. ‘Not that I don’t trust them. But you don’t know them, and I don’t want you to get uncomfortable.’

Corvina felt her lips tip up in a smile at her friend’s consideration. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry. Thank you.’ She put a hand on her petite shoulder and squeezed.

A few minutes later, the boys, having armed themselves with food and water, looked at Corvina.

‘So, where to, Purple?’ Troy asked, indicating the opening in the forest. ‘You know it best.’

Corvina was no expert in this neck of the woods, but she did know them better than these guys. The ruins to the left and the lake straight forward, both were places she wanted to avoid — the ruins because they were hers, and the lake because of the voice.

She indicated to the right. ‘I haven’t explored that side, so let’s go there.’ Hopefully, there would be nothing but woods.

The group, all seven of them, entered the forest and headed right. Under the thicket, the light was considerably less bright, the shadows longer, the wind cooler.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Jade piped up from her side, her hands fisting the straps of her backpack.

‘We’re just going to go a bit further and then return, okay?’ Troy put his hand around Jade’s smaller shoulders, tucking her in his frame. ‘We wouldn’t have had the balls had it not been for Purple here.’ He nodded at Corvina. ‘She’s been going into the woods so coolly over the last few weeks, we had to see for ourselves, you know? I actually have had a fear of woods and heights for a long time.’

‘Why?’ someone asked, and Corvina listened, curious about Troy’s past.

‘Just one of those things.’ Troy shrugged it off. ‘But I’ve always wanted to explore these woods. Most kids on campus are scared of them.’

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