Girlwood (17 page)

"What's going on?" Polly asked.

Still in Joe Meyer's football jersey, Carly Leyland leaned against Baba's tree to keep from falling down drunk. She held up her red plastic cup in greeting. "S-swamp Girl's here! Everybody? Say hello to Swam' Girl." Carly stumbled and broke a branch off Baba's tree. Polly saw Bridget pushing her way through the crowd.

"Swamp Girl, guess what?" Carly went on. "We're here to christen the place. My dad's going to put the community pool right here. Isn't that great? Who needs a fire pit when you've got a hot tub? We'll make these trees into deck chairs!"

She might have been drunk, but when she flung her cup at the larch, she hit it squarely. From the corner of her eye, Polly noticed Bridget reaching out for her, but by then it was too late. Polly was already charging. She was done being good.

Nettle has long been used in the production of paper, sugar, starch, and as a substitute for cotton.
Warning!
The stems and leaves are covered with thousands of tiny hairs that eject venom like mini hypodermic needles. Cook the plant thoroughly to neutralize the toxicity. Once past the sting, nettle is delicious and nutritious, high in iron, calcium, potassium, and vitamins A, C, and D.

Bridget caught up to her. "Polly," she said. "Listen."

Polly's ears were ringing. She'd just spotted Mandy holding a red plastic cup while the girls around her flung their beers at the trees.

"They just showed up," Bridget said. "I guess this place was no secret after what happened with the wolves. They must have followed our tracks."

It was amazing how much stuff they'd lugged up here—not only a beer keg and plastic cups, but a stereo, CDs, even a few plastic chairs. But none of that bothered Polly as much as the sight of Carly aiming a second cup at Baba's tree.

Polly darted around Bridget and slapped the cup out of Carly's hand. For a moment, Polly thought Carly was too drunk to fight back, then she felt a painful jab in her knee.

Carly narrowed her eyes and kicked her again. "This isn't your party, Swamp Girl. We're celebrating our new pool. My dad said he might even put in a water slide."

Polly clutched her knee while everyone looked at her as if she were crazy. Only Swamp Girl would choose a few dumb trees over a water slide. Crystal and Joy showed the others where the pool would go, and when even Bridget and Mandy couldn't hide their interest, Polly's heart sank. If the girls of Girlwood didn't understand, there was no way anyone else would either. It wasn't just a few dumb trees; it was a refuge. An enchanted forest. Cut down the trees, and Bree would never come back.

"I want you out," Polly said, her voice echoing through the grove. Someone had turned off the radio. Conversations about the pool tapered off.

"Is that so?" Carly said. "We're supposed to take orders from Swamp Girl now? These aren't your woods, you know. They're mine. They belong to my father."

She pulled back her foot and Polly braced herself, but Carly merely kicked snow at her feet. With a nasty smile, she
did it again. The high-schoolers laughed, and it took only a moment for Polly to recognize the remaining members of Bree's Fab Five.

Polly kicked the snow off her shoes. Her knee hurt but, strangely, not as much as the rest of her. She had shooting pains in her shoulders, a throbbing ache in her temples and in the small of her back.

"The woods don't belong to anyone," she said.

Carly smirked. "Oh yeah?"

Carly stroked the bark of the nearest tree. "Then why is this little gem going to be my coffee table next year?" She tapped another larch, wrinkling her nose. "This one looks too rotten to be anything but pulp."

Polly's eyes burned with unshed tears. Baba had always told her that you didn't have to like everyone, just as they didn't have to like you, but every creature deserved respect. Bree used to call statements like that Babaisms and said that they were total bullshit. Some people are slime, Bree had said, and can't be trusted. They'll hurt you the first chance they get.

Polly grabbed Baba's tree for support and pressed her cheek against the bark.

Carly laughed out loud. "What are you doing, Swamp Girl?" she asked. "Talking to the trees?"

Joe Meyer stepped from the crowd, wearing only jeans and a polo shirt. Like the other boys, he was pretending he wasn't cold even though his teeth were chattering.

"L-let's go, Carly," he said.

Carly ignored him. "Hello?" she said, and banged her fist against the larch she'd slated for pulp. "Mr. Tree? Anybody home?"

She kept rapping on the trunk so hard she should have gotten splinters.

"Swamp Girl," she said, "it's not answering. How rude."

The girls who'd been drinking straight from the beer keg found that hysterical, and found their own trunks to pound. Polly felt dizzy, as if the thumping were coming from inside her own chest.

"Kn-knock it off," Joe said, but none of the girls listened. Carly raised her fist to thwack another trunk, but at the last minute dropped her hand.

"Did you see that?" she said, glancing over her shoulder. "That tree just..."

She shook her head and stepped away from the larch. Polly stared at the weathered trunk and saw nothing out of the ordinary, yet Carly had gone pale.

"The loser woods," Carly said shakily. "That's what we should call it." She looked warily around the grove as if she were seeing ghosts instead of tree trunks, a face where a gnarled old knot ought to be.

"This is so lame," Carly continued. "Let's go to my house. It's warm inside and my parents are out for the night."

After some discussion, everyone agreed to move the party to Carly's. Someone folded up the lawn chairs while two boys rolled the beer keg toward the opening. "Why the hell did we carry this all the way up here?" one of them asked.

As they crawled out one by one, Polly walked to the boulder where Bridget's oxeye daisies still lay in a heap. Mandy and Bridget stayed behind to pick up plastic cups.

"I'm really sorry, Polly," Mandy said.

Polly nodded. "I know."

***

After they'd all gone, Polly took a deep breath. It was another of those illogical things: it was only when she was alone that she stopped feeling alone. Even the larches seemed to agree, giving off a bright white glow and suddenly swaying, like girls who dance only when they're by themselves. If it was weird to love trees this much, then she was weird. She didn't mind it. Like Polly, the larches were outcasts—a conifer that drops its needles, like a cedar but a whole different species. Spectacular, but strange, too.

Polly moved to Baba's tree and sat against the trunk. The ground was bare there; even without its needles, the massive canopy of branches offered protection when it snowed. Leyland Corporation would bring their bulldozers in the spring
to carve out their swimming pool; her mother was probably reading Polly's note right now and getting furious all over again; Bree could be miles away or not in the woods at all. But all of that was out there, beyond the span of the larch boughs, beyond the magic of the grove.

Polly closed her eyes, and this time when she opened them she didn't doubt the vision. It was as real as the bristly trunk at her back, as real as the frozen soil beneath her feet. As real, she knew, as she wanted it to be.

The fairy stood by the fire, her wings as red as hot coals. She was Bree, but not Bree. All her beautiful hair had been cut off, her once skull-like features replaced with round cheeks and ruddy skin. She wore a shirt woven of stinging nettles, the prickliest things in the woods, as if she'd wanted to pierce and harden every inch of herself. Beneath the shirt, Polly saw a solid lump the size of a small watermelon where Bree's thin waist had been.

Polly didn't speak. It was like a dream where you can't run or say a word without ruining it. Then she felt a tickle along her shoulder blades, the stroke of a feather across the back of her neck. Something soft but powerful beat against her back, and all the air in the woods seemed to rush in beneath her. Polly felt so dreamy she almost didn't realize what was happening until she lifted off the forest floor, drawn skyward by two slender green wings.

She hovered and gasped for air, hardly believing it. When she stretched her legs and didn't touch the ground, she thought her heart would burst from happiness. She whooped loud enough to startle the forest, but her sister never looked her way. Bree gathered the oxeye daisies, looking plump and sleepy, like a bear ready to bed down for winter. She tucked the leaves against her chest and walked out of the grove.

"Bree!" Polly called, but her sister didn't turn.

This time, Polly wasn't about to let her go. She reached out and all at once she was flying—flitting over the tips of the bare-leafed huckleberry shrubs, up through the black rigging of the larches. Up, up, up to the tops of the trees, where the deep purple sky was just unveiling its stars, and the air was so cold and clean she breathed it in like a mint.

Her heart and wings beat furiously, filling her head with thunder and stirring up windstorms across the crowns of the trees. She saw all the things that were usually hidden, from a raccoon slumbering on a strong branch to a golden eagle's aerie to her sister walking away.

"Bree!" Polly shouted again, but her sister kept walking. Polly feared that she couldn't follow, that once across the border of Girlwood, she would fall from the sky. Her wings quivered, her mouth went dry, but there was only one thing left to do.

She took a deep breath and leaped from the trees. With a
hawklike cry, she spread her wings and flew out of the grove, dodging owls and bats, skimming the highest boughs. Her sister was gone, but in the distance Polly saw a red glow moving through the trees, then floating up to the arms of a fir tree. It paused there for a moment, then winked out, like an eye closing for a long winter's sleep.

Polly hovered in midair, making a choice. Choosing to believe.

"Good night, Bree," she said and beat her wings until she climbed again, soaring up toward Battlecreek Peak. From the ground, she would look like nothing more than a strange cloud or a figment of someone's imagination. "Sleep tight."

***

When Polly woke it was pitch-black, and she was alone at the base of Baba's tree. The oxeye daisies were gone, the fire out. She reached behind her and felt only shoulder blades and skin, yet she wasn't disappointed. She still felt light as air.

She walked home under the new-moon sky—huge, black, and crowded with stars. The energy around the trees was white and slowly pulsing, like cold breaths, like sleep.

When she got home, she found her mother on the couch in the living room, Polly's note on the table in front of her. She didn't look panicked or irate, but Polly stayed by the front door, just in case.

Her mom said nothing. Polly's dad was long gone now, and her mom had washed off her makeup. She wore yoga pants and one of Bree's shirts.

Polly felt like a pendulum, swinging one way and then coming back. Growing up, then shrinking to girl size again. Flying away, then flying home. Her mother opened and closed a fist; maybe she felt the same way. Old, then young; mother, then daughter. Dead as winter, then almost shocked when things started growing inside her again.

"Did you see her?" her mom asked.

Polly knew her story would sound like a foolish, childish dream. Like she'd fallen asleep and only imagined her sister there. Of course she hadn't really flown—that was impossible. There were no such things as fairies.

And that's when Polly realized that the hardest thing in the world might very well be to stand alone and believe in something no one else does.

"I saw her," she said. "She took the daisy leaves and left."

Her mother held her gaze, and then began to cry. Not the agonized cries she'd made in Bree's room, but cries of relief.

"Oh, Polly," she said, and Polly raced across the room and into her arms.

In Siberian mythology, the larch takes the place of the ash as the World-tree, and burning larch is said to ward off evil spirits. The spring sap can be boiled into a syrup to soothe sore throats, the resin used for bruises and cuts, and the needles and stems are an antiseptic. An extract from the needles and bark helps emaciated people gain weight.

Just after dawn, Polly opened her eyes, unsure about what had woken her. She listened a while, and had almost fallen back to sleep when she heard footsteps outside, cracking the ice. She prayed for Bree, but when she ran to her window, she saw something almost as satisfying. Baba was up again, scattering seeds across the snow.

Polly opened her window. "Baba, what are you doing?"

Her grandmother emptied the last of the seeds from her
pockets and looked up smiling. "Just a little gardening," she said. "You won't know this place in spring."

Polly smiled too, but when her grandmother headed back toward the creek, the grin faded. Baba's rainbow was stunning, but her body looked tiny and frail. She leaned wearily against a tree when she reached the path in the woods.

"Why don't you come in?" Polly called to her. "Say hi to Mom."

But Baba just shook her head and the colors around her shimmered. "I think it's time for me to go home," she said. "Your mother will know I was here."

Polly watched her until she'd disappeared, then headed downstairs. Her mom hadn't cooked much lately, but she was already up making pancakes. Polly didn't give away Baba's secret but sat in the dining room, where the sun streamed in in long, dusty lines. The pancakes were delicious, and as Polly took a second helping, her mom reached into her pocket and took out the lock of charred hair Polly had found in the grove all those months ago.

"The police never tested it," her mother said. "They didn't think it was worthwhile. So I found a lab on my own."

Polly set down her fork, stunned and proud of her mom for risking another heartbreak. She was finally living up to her name: Faith.

"It's hers," her mom said softly. "At least, within the lab's
margin of error, it's Bree's hair. And that's enough for me."