We trudge onward, with eyes like flashlight beams that scope out a clear way to go. Natasha is making too much noise, giggling and falling all over everything. She does not make a very good enchanted elf companion. Jenna is cool, but seems kind of jumpy. She clearly doesn�t want to be here, but I am thrilled. I spread out my arms and spin a little, letting my scarf fly out, smacking obnoxiously into tree limbs and weak-kneed shrubbery.
The moon is out, barely, and I want to howl at it so badly. Instead, though, I run. I didn�t mean to, but it�s so cold and fresh that I feel like I slide through the air smoother. And running is perfect in this air, you feel so like a faun, like a frenetic filly, eh? And my Vans bounce back against the ground and propel me like so many pairs of moon boots I never got for Christmas and Jenna is screaming WAIT and Natasha is just there on the ground, laughing her ass off, laughing like it�s Christmas. I love them all, and I keep running deeper into the woods that present this illusion of forever woods, but really end at the highway a few miles deeper. And I twist my position every time I hit upon a bush that bars the way, and it�s so smooth and perfect until the log rears up out of nowhere and dumps me on my pretty little twill ass.
And the wind is knocked out of me and suddenly all the enchanted ice feelings I had been thrilling through my veins fall with me, coming to a crash like diamond chandeliers, the big one from Phantom of the Opera, remember? Your parents took you all the way to New York City to see that and your strange soft redhead of a mother wore her pearls and a wool trench coat and your father traded his boots for soft leather wingtips and his jeans for a suit, a real one, not the back-Velcroed one you keep imagining it, because he is playing a character. He is playing Well Off Suburban Parent Who Loves His Family, isn�t he? And the music was so nice but midway through intermission your mother just started crying. And you didn�t understand it and you didn�t want to, but your father couldn�t chase after her when she ducked into that taxicab because you were waiting inside, in your big plush seat with the gilded armrest. So he came back inside and gave you a hug you didn�t want or understand and the two of you watched the end of the play together and you were a big girl and didn�t cry when the Phantom was left all alone. And you got out of the crowded theater first and when you showed up at the car your mother was in the front seat, smiling and saying that she felt a little sick so she had to leave, but she was feeling much better now. And you asked for ice cream and the three of you drove to an ice cream place and sat licking, such a happy family.
I am sitting here on the floor slick and dark with leaves when the man reenters, leaning against the tree. He asks in a low and resonant voice where my friends went, and I say that I ran away from them (because, I realize, that is what I did). There�s a thick silence and then he laughs, a strange joyous animal laugh and says that yeah, he ran away from his friends too. Then he takes a step forward into the moonlight and I see that his face is amok with thin scars, and his throat has a gash from ear to ear, like a big smile. There is no way he could have survived that many wounds. He sees the shock on my face and turns back behind the tree, vanishing into leaves and bark faster than I can get up.
So I stand on the filthy leaves, poor filthy me, and I yell �Jenna! Natasha!� like a big old drama queen and they show up eventually, after screaming rubs my throat raw and Jenna says that everyone else left and they were so freaked. And she�ll drive me home now, and why on earth did I run like that? I tell her that I just needed to run for a bit and Jenna being the run run athlete girl that she is nods an endorphin junkie nod and says �You just needed the release, right?� and I say �Yeah, completely. Been so stressed recently,� and Natasha gives us a weird little hop skip wave goodbye and ducks into her cute little Bug to go home.
My parents are both not home and I am not surprised. A microwave burrito makes a swell dinner and I curl up in my big princess bed to go to sleep, wondering about ghosts in the woods.