Page 5 of What Lies in the Woods

“Are you okay?” I asked quietly when the door was shut. If I was a mess, I couldn’t imagine how Liv was holding up. “Have you talked to Cassidy?”

“A little. She texted. I haven’t… I wanted to talk to you first,” Liv said carefully.

“About Stahl?” I asked.

“No. Not exactly.” She took a steadying breath. “I did something.”

“Liv, you’re kind of freaking me out,” I told her. “What do you mean, you did something? What did you do?”

Her words sank through me, sharp and unforgiving. “I found Persephone.”

I hadn’t opened the box in years. Through several moves, assorted boyfriends and girlfriends, and three therapists, the box had remained in the back of one closet and then another, collecting stains and dents.

The corner of the lid had split, and my fingers came away dusty when I opened it. Most of the box was taken up with the quilt that the school had delivered to me in the hospital—a square of fabric from each of my fellow students and teachers, signed with get-well wishes. It smelled faintly of disinfectant, and there was a blood splotch dried to dull brown at one edge.

I am sorry you got murdered,Kayla Wilkerson had written.Almostwas added in with a little caret.

There were cards, too. Some from the same classmates, some from locals, most from total strangers. They’d filled many more boxes than this, but after years of guiltily hanging on to all of them, I’d grabbed a fistful to keep and shoved the rest into trash bags, holding my breath the whole time.

Below the cards was the binder. I paged through, not really reading any of the articles. I knew them all by heart. There were photos, too, of me in the hospital and after. Some were snapshots, others professional, and in none of them did I recognize myself, even knowing it was me.

Toward the back was a photo of the three of us. It must have been on one of the days of the trial, given the somber way the other two were dressed: Cassidy in her polished Mary Janes and Liv in a dress with alace collar—the same one she wore to church. I was wearing a faded Bugs Bunny T-shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. That meant that it was early on. Not long after, someone had pulled my dad aside and told him some of the money that had been flowing in—donations, money from the few interviews I did and the many my dad did—better go to getting me decent clothes. Cassidy’s dad, Big Jim, was the one who made sure that it all got collected up in a trust, ensuring it went to my care and medical bills rather than Dad’s twin habits of drinking and collecting broken junk.

We were smiling. Someone must have told us to, because I couldn’t imagine us doing it spontaneously. Cassidy had the bright, practiced smile of the mayor’s daughter, used to being photographed. Liv’s smile was barely a tug at the corners of her mouth, her hands knotted together and her feet crossed at the ankle. She always had a vague look in the photos around that time. In the weeks after the attack she’d gone into her first major spiral, but they were still scrambling for a diagnosis and the meds weren’t right yet, leaving her disconnected from herself.

And of course my smile was pitiable. My cheek was still bandaged up—presumably not from the original wound, but from one of the surgeries to attempt a repair to the damaged nerves and muscles, which had been at best semisuccessful. The downward pull of one side of my face had only served to make me seem more sympathetic. So did the wheelchair, which it would take me a few more months to go without consistently, mostly due to pain and sheer exhaustion.

Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I still counted them. Seventeen scars. Seventeen times the knife had plunged into me and slid back out again. I still could not understand how I had survived. People had told me over the years that I’d been blessed, brave, determined, fierce. I hadn’t felt like any of those things. Survival had never even crossed my mind as a possibility or a concept. I’d crawled across the forest floor because in my blood loss–addled brain, I was trying to get away from the pain, like I could leave it behind if I got far enough.

One of the stab wounds had nicked the side of my heart, not quite puncturing the atrial wall. If it had been a millimeter deeper or farther to the right, I would have escaped the pain after all.

The door opened. Mitch crept in with a hangdog shuffle. “I’m sorry,” he said, sinking down cross-legged beside me on the carpet. “You’re right. I’m an asshole. Completely useless. Can you forgive me?”

“Okay,” I said, and then I flashed him a quick smile. If I sounded half-hearted, he’d keep up thePlease forgive megroveling as long as it took. “You’re not useless, and you’re not an asshole.”

“Yes, I am. I’m a horrible boyfriend.” He leaned his head against my shoulder. I sagged. I didn’t have the energy to make him feel better right now, but if I didn’t he would keep this up all night, berating himself for his supposed failures.

“It’s okay,” I soothed. “You’re so stressed out, and I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. His fingertips trailed down my arm and played across my palm, and I shut my eyes. What was wrong with me? Mitch loved me. He wanted the best for me. Why couldn’t I love him like I used to? “Who’s Persephone?” Mitch asked.

I jerked, startled, and realized that Mitch was looking at my hand—at the bracelet wrapped around my fingers. It had been in the bottom of the box. I hadn’t even known that I’d picked it up. It was simple: a discolored nylon string, knotted into a loop and strung with plastic alphabet beads that had faded and chipped until the letters were almost unreadable. But not quite.

“No one,” I said. I tossed the bracelet back in the box, disturbed that I’d picked it up without noticing.I can’t tell you more. Not over the phone,Liv had said.

“Then why do you have her bracelet?” he asked with a little laugh. “Let me guess. Elementary school crush. Your BFF. Your babysitter.”

“I don’t even know why that thing is in there,” I said. I should have gotten rid of it a long time ago. I crammed the binder and the cards and the quilt back in the box. The things in that box were the very lastpossessions I’d taken with me when I left Chester. “Maybe I should throw it all out. Move on.”

“You know, I don’t think I’ve told you how fucking amazing you are,” Mitch said. “You were eleven years old and you put a serial killer away. They had jack shit on Stahl without your testimony. You were a pint-sized badass, and I think holding on to things that celebrate that isn’t a bad thing at all.”

I shook my head. I hadn’t been brave, just obedient—and terrified. Not of Stahl, but of failing. The police and the prosecutors and everyone else told me over and over again that Ihadto do it, that it was all on me.

We’d all identified Stahl, but there were questions about witness contamination with Liv and Cass. They’d given general descriptions right away, but they’d seen Stahl on the news before the official ID. I’d been unconscious during the televised arrest, untainted. So while all three of us testified, my words counted the most. Ihadto do it. Otherwise none of his victims would have justice, and he was an evil, evil man, and did I want him going free?

“I’m going to go home for a while,” I said. I hadn’t been certain until I spoke the words out loud.

---