SORROW WOODS (3 page)

You might be taking a mother away from its babies!”

He makes a face and scratches the back of his neck. “They’re just birds.”

“They’re not just birds! They have families and they live in the trees. How would you like it if

the birds shot at you?”

I turn to see that Elodie’s face has turned bright red with anger. I place my hand on her

shoulder, warning her to calm down.

“This is bizarre,” he laughs. “What school do you go to if you live all the way out here?”

“We don’t go to school,” says Elodie, almost crying. “And we don’t shoot birds.”

His eyes widen in his head. “You don’t go to school?”

We shake our heads.

“Then how do you know stuff? How do you know this is a gun?” He holds it up to us again.

“We read lots of books that have pictures and our Mother teaches us.”

“Elodie,” I hiss, “stop telling him things.”

She blinks. “Why? Do you think he’s gonna shoot us?”

“I won’t hurt you,” he says seriously. “I just want to talk to you.”

The sun breaks through the trees and bathes him in a pale yellow glow. He looks like an

angel and all I want to do is to touch him to make sure he’s real. As my eyes scan over him, I notice for the first time that he has some type of multi-coloured ink all over his left arm. Why would he draw on himself like that? Maybe they’re maps. Maybe he doesn’t know the woods like we do and

needs to be able to find his way out.

“What are those drawings on your arm?” I hear myself ask.

He rolls his eyes. “They’re tattoos, not drawings.”

I’ve heard of tattoos. I know that they’re pictures or writing that are put onto the skin with a

needle. I don’t think you can get them off once you have them on. Some of the boys in the books

that I read have tattoos. They’re usually not very nice people. I turn to Elodie and grab her hand.

“We need to go.”

“Don’t go,” he says. He’s moved from the light and he’s now so close that I can see his long,

black lashes moving up and down when he blinks. “Let’s just talk some more.”

“I don’t think we should be talking to you at all.”

“Why not?”

“Mother says we shouldn’t talk to strangers,” I tell him.

“I’m not a stranger anymore, am I? You know my name and I know yours.”

I shake my head.

“We’ve never seen another person before,” admits Elodie. “We’re not supposed to talk to

anyone else.”

He bursts out laughing and looks down at Elodie who frowns at him. “Are you being

serious?”

She nods. “It’s just us and our Mamma.”

“Always?”

We nod.

He sighs and sits down on a fallen tree trunk, looking confused. He also looks like he has

thousands of questions and doesn’t know what to do with them. “How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen,” I say, “and Elodie is six.”

“When were you sixteen?”

“A while ago. I’m nearly seventeen.”

He shakes his head. “When are you seventeen? What day is your birthday?”

“May the fifth.”

“May?” he repeats. “The fifth of May.”

“When is your birthday, Kaiden-the-bird-shooter?” Elodie asks, stepping out from behind

me.

He looks up at her and frowns. “Christmas Day.”

Elodie seems to forget that he’s upset her and smiles at him. “That’s cool.”

He shrugs. “I don’t get double the presents though.”

“We don’t get presents at all,” she says.

He looks up and blinks. “That’s too bad.”

I shrug. We’ve never had presents at Christmas. Mamma always says that Father Christmas

can’t find our little house out here and we don’t need presents anyway because we have the Earth.

Both Elodie and I still would have liked to wake up on Christmas morning to a room full of presents like we’ve read about over the years. Elodie even has a picture pinned to her wall near her bed that she ripped from a picture book when she was three years old, showing what a room looks like on

Christmas morning.

“Haven’t you ever been anywhere else other than these woods?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, “we’ve been to the Lake after the rains, and we go up the mountains almost

every single day.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t mean that.”

Oh.
Why doesn’t he just say what he really means then?

“I mean, haven’t you ever been to the city?”

I shake my head. “We’ve never been in the truck. Mamma always goes to the city.”

“What does she do in the city?”

Elodie steps forward and sits on the ground opposite him, crossing her legs. I stay where I

am. “She gets supplies.”

“What sort of supplies?”

“Water, food, and sometimes books, newspapers, and clothes.” I shrug. “Those sorts of

things really.”

He nods.

I’m about to ask him more. I want to know where in the woods he lives but we hear another

ear-splitting bang. Elodie jumps.

“Home,” I order.

Neither of us says anything more to the boy. We just turn and run home and this time we

don’t stop, not even when Kaiden shouts for us to wait. We run until our legs and lungs feel like they’re gonna give up on us, and don’t stop until we get back to the house.

About an hour later, I crawl up the steps and collapse onto the top of the veranda. I can’t decide what part of me is aching the most. My legs feel as if they’re disconnected from my hips and my

lungs feel as if they exploded out of my chest a long time ago. I turn over and lie on my back until I feel like I can breathe properly again. Elodie joins me, but instead of panting like me, she starts to laugh.

I frown at her. “What’s so funny?”

“Today. It’s been fun.”

Fun? I don’t for one second think Mamma will agree when we tell her we were talking to a

stranger in our woods that had a gun. Mamma will be furious.

She sits up and shields her eyes with her hand. “Do you think he followed us?”

“No,” I say, sitting up and leaning back against the wooden post that supports the roof

above us. “He couldn’t run as fast as us and he won’t know our part of the woods like we do.”

“That’s a shame,” she says. “He could have been our friend if he didn’t hurt animals. That

upset me.”

“I don’t think he’d make a very good friend.”

She turns to me and grins. “I think I liked him. Did you?”

I shake my head. “He had tattoos and a gun, and he didn’t speak to us right. He was probably

very bad.”

Elodie turns to me and rolls her eyes with a playful grin on her face. “He didn’t shoot us

though, did he?”

I shrug. “I guess not.”

Kaiden

How can two young girls run so fast? I tried to keep up so I could follow them, but lost sight about twenty minutes ago. They run like the wind. I stumble over the rough ground and fallen trees that they ran over like it was smooth grass and crash into yet another tree trunk. When I look up, I see that I’m at the edge of the forest near some sort of partially-hidden clearing. I can hear water

trickling close by, but I can’t see the source of it. I’m miles away from my Father, his friends, and their truck, but I couldn’t just ignore the two girls. I had to follow them.

I sigh with relief when I spot the two of them. I lean back against a tree, watching as they

lounge on what looks to be a make-shift veranda. It seems to be wrapped around a small wooden

structure that’s clearly nothing more than an over-sized shed. If this is their home, then how the hell do they do anything? There can’t be electricity or running water all the way out here.

I stare at Serena and her wavy, long blonde hair that falls all the way down her back. If I

close my eyes, I can still see her bright green eyes and her soft, tanned skin. I shake my head to try and force away the image of her. I can’t afford to let her innocent but strikingly beautiful face get in the way of how I really feel about her.

I sigh and pull my phone out of my pocket, blinking at it in shock when I realise that I actually have a signal out here. This place reminds me of the outback, so I didn’t think I’d have any chance of getting reception on my phone. I tap a few buttons and mark the GPS signal as coordinates. I might not be able to find my way back to my Father, but at least I’ll be able to find my way back here. The two of them suddenly sit up, forcing me to crouch back behind the tree as their eyes scan the

horizon.

After a few tense minutes, I notice Serena smiling at something that Elodie must have said

and then I hear her laugh. The noise floats through the breezeless air towards me, reminding me of the opera music that my Dad listens to when he thinks no one else is in the house.

When I first saw them, the shock of seeing two young girls out in the woods stunned me. I

couldn’t speak and I didn’t dare move. The look of fear in their eyes told me that they weren’t

expecting to see me either.

When my eyes fell onto Serena, that’s when I really noticed her. She was like nothing I’ve ever

seen before. She looked wild, unkempt, and frightened. Her hair needed brushing, her clothes were filthy and her legs were hairy, but she had instantly become the prettiest and the most intriguing girl I had ever seen in my life. She was prettier than Tiffany Wise at school and until today, I’d never before seen a girl my age that was more beautiful than Tiffany.

I hadn’t followed her just because I thought she was attractive though. The reason I chased

her is because I know her. I’ve seen her face a thousand times before. Her face has bored, intrigued, and damn-near annoyed me over the years. It’s not exactly the same, of course it was never going to be the same, but I know it’s her. It has to be.

I hear more gun shots in the distance and turn my eyes back to the girls, who scramble in

fear to the safety of their wooden shack. They don’t need to fear my Father and his friends with their guns, but I know they will, based on their reaction to me.

It’s been two hours now and I haven’t moved from the safety of the tree trunk. Serena has

come outside and filled a metal tub with water that she retrieved from a small outhouse building.

She bathes her sister from head to toe, and when Elodie gets out, she flaps her arms and runs across the grass to get dry. Do they not even have towels?

I can’t stop myself from watching the way Serena’s taut muscles stretch across her stomach as

she yanks the little black crop top free from her body, forcing her breasts to escape and bounce back down on the top of her chest. I was expecting a bra. I shouldn’t be looking, but I carry on anyway and don’t stop, not even when she peels her shorts and knickers down her legs. She stands completely

naked and stock still for a moment, staring at the water. I’m assuming its cold and expect her to carefully put a toe in or something, but she just climbs right in and begins to wash herself with a cloth.

After her body has been covered with white bubbles, she dunks her whole body under before

thrashing back out of the water and rubbing her hair with more bubbles. Elodie disappears back into the shack and comes out wearing a vest and a pair of shorts. At least they look a little like pyjamas.

I wonder where it is their Mother gets the money from to get supplies. I have my suspicions

that it doesn’t come from the same place that Elodie and Serena think it does. They clearly have no inclination of what’s actually happening here.

After ten minutes, Serena climbs out of the tub and dunks the discarded clothes that were

lying on the ground into the water. She rubs them vigorously and dunks them a few more times

before hanging them over a thin wire that runs between the shack and the outhouse. She walks back to the tub and empties the water onto the grass. Afterwards, she stands naked and completely still for a moment, turning her face up to the sun before simply walking back into the shack and

slamming the door behind her.

I can’t believe this is how they live. Watching Serena bathe in an outdoor tub and hand-

washing their dirty clothes in the dirty water, it’s like I’ve stepped back in time. I can’t believe how easy this is going to be for me. It’s almost laughable.

What must they have thought of me? They claim they’ve never seen another person and, as

ridiculous as that sounds in this day and age, I believe them with everything I have. I look down at my phone and notice the time. The sun will be setting in an hour or two and I can’t be out here in the dark. I take one last look at the shack and turn around.

My Father and his friends are all crowded around the back of the truck looking at a map when I

finally reach them.

“Kaiden Matthews,” he growls, “where the hell have you been all day?” He screws the map

up, nods at his friends, and throws it into the front seat.

I huff and throw my gun into the back of my Dad’s black truck. “I got lost.” I thirstily grab a

bottle of water and take a big swig.

My Father turns back to me and sighs. “I told you to keep to the path.”

Path? There is no path in these woods. He knows that. “I’m back now.”

“Get in.”

I do as I’m told and climb into the front cab. I can’t get Serena or Elodie out of my head, but I decide to not tell my Father. Not yet anyway. He climbs into the seat beside me and pulls a black ball cap over his sweaty, black hair.

Everyone says I look like my Father and I have to admit that there are several similarities in

our appearances, but I’m not like him as a person. My Father is a good man. He built his business up from a young age and made a small fortune on the stock market a few years ago. He was brought up

with manners, respect for women, and a need to prove his own Father wrong after he told him he

was a waste of space at the age of sixteen. I’m proud of him, but I hate how he makes me feel, as if I should be ashamed of myself for not being anything like him.

My older brothers are all success stories, with degrees from Harvard and businesses of their