“Are you scared?” Den is annoying me. “That’s just a tiny runnel!”
He’s scratching his bare knee and grinning looking at the rest of the forest on the other side. It is lit with the afternoon sun that helps to create that particular pleasant view of a magic forest with bowing trees and slowly falling leaves twirling in the air still unsure where to fall.
“Let’s go back! I want to return!” Nick is sniveling again.
“The log seems rotten to walk on it,” reasoning his twin sister Anna who secretly despises her whining and permanently joy killer brother. She doesn’t honour him by looking where the miserable creature stands and wipes his running nose. Disgusting.
“It’s fine! Look!” Den is checking the only log “bridge” across a tiny forest runnel, “Not so broad or deep here.”
I have a look at my new shoes. Mom will kill me if I drench or tear them. She didn’t want me to wear a new pair for a picnic, but I insisted promising her to take care of them, and if anything happened I swore my heart to wear them till I’m old. I wanted to impress Anna with a new cool purchase, and parade them around Den and a sissy.
“So who’s going to be the first?” Anna was finally convinced by Den. I see my friend standing with her stick arms on the hips like a superhero ready to save a planet or maybe two.
“I will be the first,” says Den languidly, touching his chin with the index finger and the thumb.
“No, I’ll do it!” I stubbornly break into their conversation.
It was his cunning plan: not to show his obvious weakness before twins and provoke some sort of spirit of rivalry out of me. I noticed a sly move in the coroner of his lips. Den is demonstratively shrugging his shoulders as if saying: “As you wish. I don’t care.”
I look at the misty green meadow: wickedly watching ravens’ eyes of true lover’s knots are gazing at me from behind the thin bushes. Though we were forbidden to go far away from the place we stayed, I was not scared to be scolded or get in trouble. It was like a perfect adventure.
“I want to stay here!”
“Oh, shut up!” Anna and Den hiss at Nick almost synchronically. He starts crying. What a pussy! I don’t want to look at his red face and gingerly step on the log. It really seems fine. I undertake some hasty moves and jump on the opposite side. When I turn around I shudder: instead of my friends there is a thick stakes of tremendously tall pine trees.
“Hey! Guys! Guys?” I scream at the top of my lungs. No response: useless air rending. Did I get into the wormhole? I’ve read something about it in a science fiction book, but I remembered not so much information about it: traveling to remotest stars and planets but not to the dim forest. I sigh: Anna and Den are always calling me “our personal nerd”. And I hate it. Well, when Anna says that, it’s not so bad...
Shall I stay and wait for help or try to find a light gap between the walls of trees? Minutes are running and I’m getting nervous, for it’s getting darker, and I’m alone for the first time in my life. Not that alone when you are in your room or class, but alone-alone.
Maybe I’m just dreaming and will wake up soon? No, the forest’s smell and dry rustling sounds are real enough to believe.
I hear something. I don’t see it but hear distinctly. My hair stand on end. I understand now what does the expression “animal fear” means. And I run (hearing my own sobbing) the direction my eyes mention.
I stumble... no, not stumble! Something has grabbed my leg. It seemed then as if an old man’s knotted and crooked fingers are holding me tightly.
I didn’t know how many hours I had been waiting and struggling. When she released me I was too scared to thank her or ask for help. I was pathetic. I heard her laughing at me while I was stumbling and obviously making fool of myself. Just like Anna’s twin brother.
Her joyful laughter and “she thinks I’m a coward” is drumming and thumping inside my head.
“Are you Sylvester, son?” a huge police officer is asking me, trying to be friendly.
I nod, picturing him to be a villain in disguise.
“I found him...” he’s talking on the radio with someone while I’m blushing.
***
In no time I was surrounded with uniformed people; some of them were having dogs. I didn’t remember that night clearly, just some glimpses and flashbacks: somebody was asking me questions. I saw my parents’ faces for the first time after my adventure: that weird expression when they want to hug me and box my ears at the same time.
Den called me next day. Of course, he wanted to know everything, especially the part with cops. Den’s voice was excited: I was so happy he believed me.
Mom insisted on my staying at home for at least one more day for my “mental safety” as she called it. In fact, she and Dad just wanted me to be at home hidden behind seven locks. Only now I realize how ashamed they were talking to cops and explaining why they left eight year old child play alone in the forest while they were enjoying picnic (drinking wine and gossiping with Den’s and twins’ parents. The latter were rich and my folks as well as Den’s parents tried to pitch into the rich and get influential “friends”).
My free day I spent drawing the forest girl’s face to show the image to Den and twins. Surely, she looked terrific in the picture, terrifically bad. The fact that both of my parents are artists and work at the gallery didn’t make me good at arts in general (Marina would draw a perfect sketch of the she-elf without blink an eye, but hide it immediately in embarrassment).
I couldn’t wait to come to school and share my forest experience with my friends, but when I stepped into the class, I sustained strange glances of my fellow classmates. It was my big mistake to have trusted Den. He told everybody that in the forest I ran wild and did some crazy things:
“He said he heard monsters. Psycho!”
“No, not monsters, elves something!”
“I heard he’s visiting psychiatrist...”
Whispers, giggles, and jokes became the part of my everyday life and the fertile ground for Den to flourish and bloom. He became the king of the hill: popular and funny. I tried to struggle but all in vain: the crowd is a ruthless machine that is terminating you. Who’s going to stop it when everybody is so happy to have a laughingstock? I became “popular” even among other classes. A mascot of my own group.
I was going deeper into the darkness, and I thought it would absorb me sooner or later like a shadow in obscurity, but then Marina came into my class and my life. She became my lamp in the dark, a beam in the realm of shadows. I know, it sounds so dramatic, but that was the way I felt her.
She would sit next me and smile timidly looking dreamy and shy. Like a porcupine I prepared all my weapons to strike back, but she noticed my doodles on a sheet of paper. We started talking heedfully at first then easily and naturally. Possessing perfect acumen that enables her to find what’s what, Marina was not persuaded by most people. And it worked for me: the simple the best. She became the sweetheart of our class, and I was her devoted minion and loved her tenderly but never in love.
If we had met in other circumstances, I would have been horribly in love with her. But I didn’t want to ruin our friendship that became everything for me. Even if I summon the courage to ask Marina out, I would probably be rejected. A lot of guys hotter than I tried to flirt with her, but she has always been a little bit detached and dreamy to understand their intentions and her charm and charisma with plenty of shyness that made her so magnetic.
Girls wanted to be in her company: she has never been mean to them (though never let them use her) and genuinely indifferent to gossips; boys wanted to conquer her heart and virginity, but for Marina they were like ghosts, transparent apparitions for muggles, as well as Den.
No doubt, he tried to struggle back like a toxic virus that has already infected the body of the class, but soon nobody paid attention to him as if he has never existed; Den was thrown from the hill and melted in the fog of tedious schooldays. A crowd had a new mistress.
I have not seen Anna in a while. I met her when I was a third year student. She was still pretty (it’s strange to say “still” as if we have not met for ages) though the girl has already lost all her delightful immediacy and spontaneity I loved so much when I was a child.
She was talking nonstop about her future plans and our schoolmates. I did not listen, for I was not into her anymore. Unexpectedly, Anna mentioned Den... Den. Well, well. I have not heard about the person (who almost ruined my school life) in years. I started nodding like a bloody roly-poly toy as if I was interested in her adult life bullshit. I smiled decently but was imagining Marina pretending to “throw up” with one of her fingers pointing at her pretty pink tongue. Having thought it was she who made me smile, Anna continued with greater vigor scattering spicy details about Den.
“Dating him?” I asked directly.
“No, not really,” she was perplexed. “He’s always trying to impress me, but he’s so strange, you know. Do you think I should give him a chance?” She is looking at me with her big cow eyes, kind and full of hopes to get married as soon as possible, give birth to, at least, ten lovely children, and attend all parents’ meetings. God bless her!
An hour later we are in her room, and I’m trying to do my best, imagining the face of my forest girl, while rhythmically moving in Anna, annoyed with her pathetic screams of pleasure.
I’ve never had sex to revenge somebody. But didn’t I feel shame, for it was not Anna’s first time. I clearly remembered when she took Den’s side before Marina’s epiphany to our class. Then she pretended to be a good girl when power changed hands. I knew Den loved her (if he’s capable of loving).
I dumped her two days later. Marina was furious having known about it; she stubbornly keeps staying in touch with Anna.
I truly tried to build normal relations, but every time I saw a young woman, I saw her face. My obsession with the forest girl was growing. Firstly, as a kid I was enchanted with her magical appearance: elf ears, big almond eyes, green like a poplar’s young leaves, and, of course, her ability to govern plants!
Later, her face was haunting me in my dreams evoking unknown feelings. Every girl seems dull in comparison with her. When I kissed somebody, I was thinking how her kiss would taste; when I was in bed with a girlfriend, I closed my eyes wondering how sweet it would be to touch her body. I was blessed no one could read my thoughts.
I knew it must come to an end or I’ll lose my mind. So I started dating her exact opposite to suppress her image: high-heeled blonds with long hair, girly girls. One day I woke up feeling released from her ghost and my obsession with her imaginary character. I convinced myself I was cured, I was fine. Then I saw her again at the pond...
She must be forty something now, but the girl looks as fresh and gorgeously badass as I met her when I was eight. I was feverishly thinking about it having forgotten about the beast.
“A milksop,” I remembered a female voice I heard many years ago, and it woke me up.
Dragging drenched Marina home, I was preaching to myself: “it’s not she; it’s not she” or “you are crazy; you are crazy.” Even when my best friend was telling me about the existence of supernatural, I was stubborn as an ass. When I was shown the door, I left Marina and headed to the pond again.
***
“You have not changed!” I gasped. “Just as I saw you years ago!” I desire her eyes upon me, transparently green as if you look at a frozen baby leaf. But she won’t.
“Close the door, moron!” snaps Doris, looking angrily at me. She continued looking for something in the swarm of red bugs.
The bugs’ flight is getting more languid; they are bumping into each other and disappearing in the air leaving sparkling Tinker Bell magic dust. I catch one of them, but it dissolves in my palm like a soap bubble.
Doris stops her excavations and hits herself on the forehead.
“I’m such an idiot! Call Marina!”
“Don’t you have her number?” I ask stupidly, still unaware of what is going on.
“Just call her!” The pond girl commands and I hear the bubbling of the cooler: water is running from hot and cold taps with pressure. Juni covers her face and turns to the window.
“Ok, ok!” I’m trying to call her, but can’t get a hold of Marina.
Doris is nervously gnawing at her lips:
“Do you know any of her friends she could be with now?”
“Not sure. Anna, maybe,” I hardly pronounce her name.
“What are you waiting for? Move on, find her number and call Anna,” Doris is drilling me with her angry eyes.
“I don’t think she takes this call,” I’m at a loss.
“Then give it to me!” She breaks into my phone and scrolls my contacts, “this Anna? No? This one?” she finally finds her and calls.
“Hello, my name is Doris. I’m Marina’s... friend. Is she with you? I and Sylvester can’t reach for her... Yes, it’s important...Ok....Alright... I totally agree... Thank you so much. Have a good day.”
She throws my phone back to me.
“We are lucky. She saw her two hours ago entered one of the mansions in the center. I know the address. It is in front of the Nervosa cafe.”
“Fine, Marina has entered a building. So what? Why should we worry about her?” I don’t understand their panic, but feel I am about to panic myself.
“Anna wanted you to know that you are a bloody man slut,” she smiled maliciously.
“Who cares what she thinks?” I look straight into her eyes. I’m not a fan of her, but admit her strong will and the fact that she is the reason I can see the forest girl again.
She smirks and leaves the room. Juni is following her.
This time I’m not gonna run away.
***
“Where are you going? The old city is that way. Let’s take my car.”
It already dark, but the streetlights have not been switched on yet.
“Are we going to take him with us?” Juni is asking Doris as if I don’t exist.
“Marina is his friend. Unfortunately, we have to...”
“Show me the proper tree.”
Doris nods, takes her hand, and shows her the way to one of the backyards. I recognize this place: that’s where I was reading a stupid tabloid. It has not changed; even the rusty swings. The place has Freddie Krueger vibes: I’m sure to see creepy little girls in white dresses.
“Here is the tree,” Doris points at an old birch.
But Juni has already noticed it.
“We found a tree! What’s next? Let’s find a black cat or a see-saw!”
They left me behind stepping over the empty flower beds that were made of old tires. What a cursed place!
Juni takes Doris hand, makes a move into the tree. And they both disappear, leaving me alone on a spooky playground.
“Ok. They will never return,” I put my cold and sweaty hands into the pockets, hoping they’ll stop trembling.
I’m like a ghost in the middle of nowhere.
Crunch!
A long hand like a delicate tree branch appears from the bark. Without thinking I take it and step into the tree.
“I’m not insane. I’m not insane.”
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