Girl in the Woods Read online

  I asked her what the small silver device she’d mailed me was.

  “Oh good!” she answered. She explained that it was a portable GPS from R.E.I. She’d already unboxed it, put lithium batteries in for me, and had Daddy upload into it all the maps I would need. “Now you can know where you are,” she said. She told me that, now on, when I called every night, I had to read her my latitude and longitude coordinates. My exact global place.

  I examined the device, its silvery plastic. Even its small bulk felt excessive. I didn’t need the extra weight. I pushed the black rubber button on its side, watching the slate black screen flash to green. It played a twinkling tune, like a carnival game, a dozen black plus signs appearing, swirling, multiplying to form the black, block-letter words LOCATING SATELLITES.

  I told her, “I don’t want it.” I asked her if she wanted me to give it away or mail it back.

  “Wherever you camp,” she said, as if she didn’t hear me. “Look at the latitude and longitude. Read the numbers off and I’ll write them down and read them back.”

  Nightly I would call to report to her my GPS coordinates. All I had to do was call and read to them where I was. No matter what. It was her and Daddy’s only requirement. If I wanted them to support this walk, I had to.

  The boys were drinking. Edison tossed his sweat-grayed shirt off and lay back on the carpet, took a swig. His ribs showed like a greyhound’s. My mother was still talking, I said “Uh-huh” to her and slipped out into the cabin’s bathroom. In the frosted mirror my face and arms were darkened by dirt and too much sun. I could see that I was somewhat thinner. I dragged my hand over my abdomen, up and down the inside of my thigh—I felt the pulse—my body already slimming—and felt pride. I stepped up on the beige plastic scale to see my weight.

  The scale’s hand swung and stopped abruptly, surprisingly shortly. The number it hovered on struck me. It was what I’d weighed at the start of college. Before Junior. I had made a choice and had in just six days lost all my post-rape pounds. Look at me. My body was just what it had been. This change felt impossibly quick. It felt amazing. Standing in late-day’s light, looking in the bathroom mirror, my mother on the line with me, I realized in a sweet rush that I’d already finished walking one hundred miles.

  My mother repeated her statement in my ear. Finally, I said, “Okay.” A GPS and a satellite phone, making my pack heavy, connecting me to the outside world. Things I now needed to keep on me, safe. I had to bear the burden of her love.

  Back in the bedroom Edison lay, pink lips parted, a smear of liquor glistening on his chubby cheek. On the whole slim longness of him, only his cheeks carried pudge. He passed me the big bottle of yellow-brown alcohol, I didn’t know what kind it was. I took a full gulp. It tasted dizzyingly synthetic. My mother was saying, “I love you Doll Girl.” She told me to enjoy sleeping in a bed tonight.

  I was drunk already.

  I feared sleeping. I looked at the tidy bed. I felt angry, drunken hatred burned me. I was wrong for this world; the world wanted me to be purer—a virgin—to hate the body I was given and be thinner, and also be at ease in my body, I couldn’t—fuck them. I’d fled to wilderness to hide, but even here I was made to feel unlovable, to question the integrity of my body after my rape. Even on the faraway Pacific Crest I had to confront ignorant men’s judgments of me. It was fucking Edison. I would show him.

  Edison and Icecap changed. I kept my clothes on. We stepped out into electric blue dusk to go find the resort’s thermal swimming pool. Evening’s air was chilled. Soon it would darken. The pool was a glassy ground of black ripples. Sodium lamps lit the wet asphalt in gold Os, like fallen suns. I swayed, unsteady. I grasped at a shining ring of yellowed light. The pool was surrounded in every direction by waterless desert floor.

  Pure fantastic hatred possessed me. Edison was not seeing me, he was trapping me. I was trying to find a way to shed the skin I was enveloped in—that obscured me. It was men’s vision that was ensnaring me. I was exhausted of having to negotiate myself around people’s judgment, hated it, had had enough. I wanted to strip these boys of the power they tried to claim with smug eyes watching, assessing, deciding. Deciding rape was my fault, my shame.

  Dizzy with liquor, I decided to shock their eyes, smash flat wrong-boxes Edison and other men had placed on me—retaliate. I pulled off my salt-stiff brown T-shirt, unhooked my sweat-stained bra, letting it fall to the rough wet gleaming concrete, shedding everything. The boys stood on the pale concrete, watching. It was not a clothing optional pool.

  I closed my eyes, inhaled through my nose, and felt high and wonderfully wild. The rings of sodium lights illuminated my dry body, lighting my form before Icecap and Edison, and anybody else who happened to be there. Icecap and Edison stood in their shorts, not getting in, not sure what I was doing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been naked in front of strangers. It was uncomfortable, but in my passionate frustration felt somehow necessary.

  I shivered and slid into the pool, joining the black water. The strangers around me shifted. Silky water struck me like an awakening. I’d become lucid again, sobered, as if I’d just awoken in the middle of a dream to find I was, in fact, exposed in public. I didn’t feel powerful now. I felt panicked. I was in water with strangers, and my vulnerability frightened me.

  A fat man spun and drifted slowly, like a redirected ship, and stared at my nude body. I was hugging my breasts with my forearms, covering them—mortified. The big man had no hair. He floated over to me.

  “You the lifeguard?” he asked. He had a buoyant Southern drawl and no eyebrows. I shivered in the hot water. “No,” I whispered. “No. I—sorry. I’m not.”

  He nodded.

  In hindsight, the big bald man had been making a joke. His hairlessness was likely from chemotherapy, and he was passing his final time in these desert hot springs.

  I floated in a trancelike state. I felt wrong in my nudity, no longer secure or powerful, or even stable—or safe.

  I wanted Edison and Icecap to finally see how very exposed I was, even with my thin skin of dirty girl’s clothing. How unformed. I was terrified. My sexuality made me uncomfortable, and I’d lost control of it, and I flailed to reclaim it.

  The boys had to see.

  They slipped into the pool but stayed in the far corner, shadowed, away from me.

  CHAPTER 9

  WILD DREAMS

  “You wanted cock up you bad last night,” Edison said, and I stiffened, my body rigid under a threadbare sheet. He was lying on the floor, his eyes rock gray and lifeless. He detailed how I’d stripped down naked at the swimming pool for no reason. He told me I’d acted like a slut and like a fool. His eyes were unflinching. “You’re a slutty drunk.”

  I winced, stared blank at Icecap’s feet. They hung huge and white over the edge of his bed. I watched them shift, he rolled over to face me.

  “You drink too much,” he said. “You should learn your limits by now, actually.”

  I let my eyes close again. His words seared my entire chest like a splash of acidic paint marking me—they betrayed me. In the redness of my dark vision I relived what I had done the night before. I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning’s somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me.

  I didn’t want Edison near me anymore. I was sick, nauseated with shame. I had awoken in a bed and there they were, spitting wrong words at me, they hurt, and I had to get away. I hated Edison purely. In that sun-hot new day’s hostile shut-eyed darkness, I wished I could hit him right there, make him feel what I was feeling.

  But I had been looking for respect from someone I myself didn’t respect. Edison was not worthy of it. On the floor, he was sprawled out like a spill of water, the left side of his face and his left arm were intestine pink, imprinted with the shag texture of the carpet. He panted softly, even in his stillness.
So terribly snug in bed, sober once again, I saw for the first time that I could stop giving people the power to make me feel disrespected. In my anger I began to see the absurdity of allowing this boy to shame me.

  I tried to meet Icecap’s eyes, pleading—needing to have a better interaction—but his pupils were glassy, lightless. I felt let down by Icecap, just as I had back at Eagle Rock, when I’d revealed that I’d been raped, and Edison was cruel and backward and Icecap had done nothing. Again he wasn’t sticking up for me. I wondered if I’d feel differently about nakedness if these boys weren’t here to tell me to feel ashamed.

  I couldn’t continue walking with them.

  That afternoon, Icecap, Edison, and I hiked out of Warner Springs. Yet we were not together anymore, not in the same innocent, intense new-best-friends way. Climbing the steep hill out of town with Icecap and Edison, melancholy and breathing hard, I replayed in my head how on the night we missed Kickoff I had leaned toward Icecap, my folded body only inches from pressing into his. I had felt his eyes holding me again exactly as intently as they had back at Lake Morena—determined. Bent with me in the little tent, our arms and legs made heat. I could smell his sweat and sunscreen, feel his breathing, the hard hip of the boy beside me, stirring me. I remembered tingling air between our arms. I’d felt seen by a boy who believed that I was worth noticing. I’d wanted him to memorize my face and not ever forget it. I wanted him to touch my cheek and tell me I was lovely.

  His hip shifted into mine, we had been subtly and fully touching, and I’d looked at him finally. In the line of his eyes, I had believed—I was beautiful.

  I had wanted him to love me.

  I sadly knew now he didn’t see me the way I wished he would.

  He hadn’t treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn’t found it yet, but I would find it soon.

  I was beginning to feel compassion for myself.

  Ascending up relentless switchbacks out of town, I felt awkward in my skin when Icecap stepped too close, restless; his body now repelled me. My eyes bounced quickly from his when they accidentally met. Icecap hadn’t talked to me all morning.

  In the first ten miles out of town we gained fifteen hundred feet of elevation and entered a deep forest. I was wounded but climbing hard, ascending toward the high ridge above the desert. The guys were trailing me, jogging to keep my pace; Edison stopped to retie his shoelace; Icecap stopped and waited. I kept hiking, faster. We crossed Agua Caliente Creek—dry—the boys were like black commas far below me—and then, four miles north, crossed another fork of the creek, burbling sweetly, silver in the sun. Icecap and Edison caught up and collapsed to the ground to drink. I filled my bottles, standing, slipped them in my slung-on pack, and ran. With no goodbye.

  I crossed Lost Valley Road—a note written in the dirt read: Not Our Trail—and another old dirt road—no sign but I knew better. I ran, upset and hurt and wishing I hadn’t told these boys about why I was walking. Icecap and Edison being a mile behind me was the same as them not existing. On this trail, you can walk and persist and remain a mile from someone moving north at the identical rate you are, and never see him again. I was on my own here. Coulter pines closed in, thick trunks that smelled of vanilla cream, football-size cones like stones littering the trail, hard and dense and five pounds each, the largest “seed” of any tree in the world. I kicked one and hurt my toe.

  I was making miles. I was making progress. But after some hours I thoughtlessly slowed my pace to watch the buttercream sky flare rose pink, and fade. From somewhere behind me, Icecap yelled out, “Wild Child!”—I sped up to get away. I didn’t want him anymore; he’d ruined it. But then he sped up too and I was absolutely exhausted and let up, and he caught me. He wasn’t with Edison.

  “You have a good pace,” Icecap said. He was being very nice. “You’re a good hiker.” His face looked lean and sculpted, slick with sweat. He smelled like silty water, like wet sediment. Not like a frat boy, sweating liquor, sharp with Axe. He stood close to me, though out here we had infinite space.

  “I have to run to catch up with you.” He patted my shoulder too hard, like I was his teammate. He knew he’d done something wrong.

  I wanted to be angry but instead I felt touched that he had run to reach me. Already I’d forgotten what I wanted. My rage and shame from the past few days lessened. Nothing he’d failed to say or do in my defense outweighed my attraction to him. I turned away and started walking so he wouldn’t see me smile.

  He followed me silently. I knew he knew he’d hurt me. I kept on walking, my back to him, not saying anything to reveal my joy. I noticed the pain—my toe was still throbbing from the cone I’d kicked.

  “Let’s run away from Edison,” I proposed, surprising myself.

  He said nothing back to that, but we walked together. He tried to walk beside me rather than out front or behind me, though the trail was narrow. He asked if I had been a high school cheerleader, his intonation was hopeful. I told him no, but I’d been athletic. I had raced cross-country and had been diligent and good, but then the summer between my freshman and sophomore years I’d sprouted hips and breasts—gained fifteen pounds—and my times slowed. I was kicked down to the junior varsity team. I feigned injury and then altogether stopped showing up.

  Icecap told me stories from the years when he’d professionally raced bicycles down mountains. It sounded cool to me. It sounded terrifying. He’d been second fastest in the seventeen-to-nineteen-year-old age class in Switzerland until he crashed badly and had a concussion and was never as fast after. He was no longer fearless. He was skittish now—an imperceptible hesitation when the bike jumped and he felt out of control. He said he didn’t feel it; he wasn’t any different. He insisted. But he couldn’t ease off the brakes. One by one he lost his sponsors. After a dozen disappointing races, he chose to retire.

  I couldn’t imagine the heartbreak. Icecap had found his passion—as Jacob had—decided what it was he wanted, worked so hard to get it—to have it slip out of his grip. We talked about racing and how good it felt to be fit, to be your fittest, to beat your fastest time, to win. Walking with Icecap in the silence that followed sunset that chilling evening, I made mental lists of things I wanted to accomplish.

  I started to imagine what it was I wanted to find in my life beyond the Pacific Crest Trail’s dimming horizon. I imagined myself elected Colorado College Class of 2012 President, being loved there. But in truth, in August the new fall semester would begin, and I wasn’t even signed up for classes. I was no longer even enrolled.

  My dreams grew wild. I saw myself on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, discussing my new book about women and achievement. I saw myself having tea with Salman Rushdie at a sun-worn café table in New York. I saw my face on the cover of Interview Magazine—a gorgeous head shot of me in contact lenses and professional makeup, looking beautiful, like no one but Jacob could see me. My book release party would be on the Pacific Coast of San Francisco, with big glass walls and a dizzying cliff-top view. I would publish a “Personal History” essay in The New Yorker. Everyone from Newton South High School would hear about it. I saw myself as a woman with beauty and poise, an acclaimed writer known for potent tales that did good in the world. I saw: I had always wanted to be a writer.

  But the vast terrain before those destinations still seemed pathless and tremendously wild. Through all my confusion and needless walking to an arbitrary signpost among pines—there was nothing waiting for me in the woodlands of southernmost British Columbia—all I knew was that I wanted to write stories. I wanted to speak without interruption. I wanted to be heard.

  Inwardly I smiled. Finally, instead of making lists of Things I Couldn’t Do and didn’t believe I was capable of, I was describing paths I hoped to follow towards a life I wished for after I reached the place in the forest where the Pacific Crest Trail would inevitably end.

  I looked into Icecap’s distant eyes and sa
w him newly. It was heartbreaking not to be as fast as he had been, to lose his chance to improve—and win—so young. I understood. I told Icecap about my brother, how proud I was of Jacob for defying chance and making it to the Mets. How Icecap reminded me of him a little bit. Then I realized the difference and said, “I’m sorry.” I pinched his swinging forearm. “But maybe you’ll get better?”

  His gait sped a little, and I had to jog to stay with him. He didn’t seem angry, but I sensed his thoughts had shifted. His pupils were pinpoints—competitive.

  We walked into a patch of copper evergreens, dead and dried. Icecap passed me and sped, faster. I called after him, trying to tease him, “Are we racing?”

  Night fell over us. We didn’t slow. We walked arms out first, like zombies, through the spiderwebs that appear across the trail with astonishing quickness after the sun’s set. They were sticky and annoying, nothing frightening. I found my headlamp in my knapsack and clicked it on, stumbled forward over the rocks and roots. The webs shimmered in my light. Then we heard something—a stick snap?—and a shrill voice. We both stopped short.

  Edison stepped into our lights, squinting, breathing loud. “Shit,” he said. He’d confided in us early on that he’d never slept outside alone, and now he declared that he wasn’t about to start “out in this shithole.” Desert people are creeps, he said, you never know.

  It was obvious he was absolutely terrified.

  I looked at him. I’d assumed Icecap had finally spoken and explained that he was leaving him to walk with me now—but maybe he hadn’t. I was done with Edison, finally I’d escaped, and fuck—I just couldn’t cleanly ditch him. Some other woman might have yelled, told him in rage to leave, that she never wanted to see him ever again, but I felt no energy for that kind of anger, I felt almost nothing for him at all. And so I looked blankly at him. I was fed up and I was ready. Prepared to talk back, to tell him what an idiot I thought he was, to show him I’d had enough and so to him I was untouchable. I hoped he would cower and realize my strength—how he was wrong about me. Steely, I was finally ready to fight.