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Nova, if you weren’t so good at keeping secrets, you wouldn’t be in the dark maw of the forest now.

Certainly not on the heels of dusk, hugging myself against the biting cold and the prickling unease.

Definitely not after I’d been forbidden by my last remaining parent.

Not once, not twice, but as long as memory.

And considering these are the same woods that stole my father from us seven years ago, Mom has good reason.

But she’s given up hope, and I never will.

I try to make it out here once a week, try to push myself to go an extra step, then fifty feet, then half a mile.

Today I’m the farthest I’ve ever been, but compared to the impossible vastness of Longing Woods, that’s not saying much.

Between school, home, volunteering, and friends, I don’t get to spend much time here.

It’s not nothing , but at this rate, I’ll never find Dad.

And after this long, I’m the only one still looking.

If anyone knew I was doing this, they’d say it was a fool’s hope. A desperate daughter plunging headfirst into danger to find a man everyone else believes to be long dead. Maybe they’re right, but my heart tells me my dad is alive. And if he is…I’m his last hope.

He’s been missing exactly seven years to the day.

The day of our town’s Fall Festival. Today is scarred into us like my parents’ initials carved into the bark of the trees I passed a mile back.

Losing him isn’t something we’ve gotten over or moved past, as though such a thing should even be possible.

One of the people who loved me the most in the world is gone. Nothing about that will ever be okay.

Mom and I have never acknowledged the anniversary of his disappearance, not even once. It hurt and confused me when I was a child, but I get it now. It already tortures Mom enough every other day of the year. The last thing I want is to compound it, but here I am, doing just that.

Is it worth risking Mom’s wrath and being grounded for the rest of my junior year?

Without question.

There are thousands of living things merrily going about their business, completely unconcerned with the fading day and the teenage girl in their midst and the fear nipping at her heart.

I’m the furthest thing from alone out here, but that’s not as comforting as it sounds.

Strange noises always follow me wherever I go.

Something more than the wind rustling dry leaves or crickets calling to each other.

There! There it is again.

Soft crunches surround me. Whisper soft, like careful footfalls trying not to give themselves away. My breath catches. I rub away the prickles on the back of my neck, the insides of my wrists. Steady my breathing the way Dad and, later, my therapist taught me.

It could be anything: Gray squirrels scrambling across brittle September leaves, collecting nuts.

The huffs and grunts of antlered elk. Plump wild turkeys with their dark plumage foraging for seeds and insects, stalking the odd small reptile, too.

I don’t mind the frogs and lizards, but the last thing I want is to run across a snake.

Dad’s stomach wouldn’t be tense with sick dread, but mine definitely is. I might have been raised by a fearless outdoorsman for the first ten years of my life, but I spent the next seven living in the shadow of his disappearance.

I whip around, wild eyes darting.

Nothing there.

And even though I strain my eyes and ears, I can’t hear anything except my own shallow breathing, and even that’s drummed out by the violent ticking in my ears. Blood rushes to the tips of my fingers, and just like that, I’m not cold anymore.

Somehow, I always expect coming here to be easier, but it still takes all my courage to step beyond the tree line that stands as the gateway between the Tennessee mountain town of Prior’s End and the Longing Woods.

I’m about two miles in today, according to the last trail marker I passed.

The way has been uneven in parts but nowhere near as rocky and rambling as it will get if I go deeper.

As much as I want to, I don’t have the gear to keep going. Hiking and camping equipment is expensive, and besides, I have nowhere to hide it at home.

Can’t ask my friends to hang on to it for me, either.

Austin and Caroline would rightfully flip out if they knew what I was doing; they wouldn’t find it easy to keep my stuff…

or my secret. And my forays into the woods have to be a secret, which means I have to be back before sunset.

Before Mom wonders where I am or what I’m doing.

So tonight, this is as far as I go.

Guilt surges in my belly. I was wrong. Two miles is nothing. If Dad was this close to civilization, he would have made it back to us. He would have come across other hikers who could have helped him. Wherever he is, it’s nowhere close.

And on my own, I’m no closer to finding him.

Even if it’s hopeless, I need answers. I need to know his fate. Not to move on, because that’s one thing I will never do. I will love and miss him forever. But I do need to reshape myself around his absence. And I can’t do that if I don’t know what happened out there.

My father, Jules Marwood, was a wilderness survival specialist. He took groups out for overnight excursions, long weekends, even tailored weeklong corporate training designed to promote team building, problem-solving, and leadership.

He and Shane, Austin’s dad, practically spent their childhood in the woods.

The two best friends knew every stump, stone, and stem.

They were the ones who went looking for unprepared folks, not the ones who got lost.

Which is why it’s never made sense to me how Austin’s dad got swallowed up in the Longing Woods, and so, too, did my dad when he went after him.

My rational mind knows that park rangers and volunteer search parties made it deeper than I ever have before they gave up, but my wounded heart fights it like a wild thing in a trap, fierce and doomed.

As I turn back, for a half second, I think I see a dark silhouette moving between the trees.

I don’t dare blink, but it’s gone anyway. If it was ever there at all.

It doesn’t stop me from imagining a flash of a blue backpack, sleeping bag rolled tight and snug at the top.

A man’s dimple sinking into his beard when he catches sight of me, kind eyes crinkling at the corners.

His favorite olive-green belt that had lost so much color over the years.

Socks pulled up high against tanned calves.

The same weathered down jacket he’s had for years, a birthday present from Mom the year they began dating.

He’s the way I remember him, early thirties and a little scruffy.

His smile overtaking his whole face, like he can’t believe it’s really his little Nova, all grown up.

A Super Nova , he’d joke, or at least I think he would.

The passage of time is unforgiving, and memory is dicey.

Austin and I didn’t have our own phones when we were ten to record goofy videos with our dads, to immortalize the grins and good-natured protests when they’d catch us.

Unlike our friend Caroline, all we have are the faded memories that crumble a little more with every year that passes.

What I can be absolutely sure of, however, is that I’m just a girl alone in the woods.

No backup, no true bushcraft supplies. The almost-empty water bottle and trail mix that’s more sugar than nutrition would earn me one of Dad’s expressive eye rolls, a bad habit I inherited along with, evidently, a penchant for bad ideas.

I can almost hear his voice whisper on the wind, What’s the first lesson of wilderness survival that I always tell my students before we head out on the trail, Nova?

My answer is swift, instinctive:

Trust your team. Your partners are your best rescuers in case of any injury, misfortune, or calamity.

The anger is unexpected and immediate.

It was your lesson, Dad. Why did you ignore it?

Silence.

The thorny spikes in my chest snip away one by one.

Being pissed at my dad and missing him are the same thing.

I can never gauge which emotion will hit me first because it’s never considerate enough to face me head-on.

It prefers to assault at all angles, burrowing into the soft parts of me that still hope, and stab that same hope right out of me.

I can’t control it any more than I can control the wetness building behind my eyes.

It’s nonsensical. It’s also normal, according to the grief therapist my mom insisted we go to after that first year of waiting and waiting and waiting.

I do my breathing exercises and wait it out.

I’m good at that. After, I survey my surroundings, digging in my pocket for peanut M&M’s and dried fruit.

It’s been long minutes since the last chirp or a squawk.

It’s an eerie sort of quiet, broken only by the crinkly sounds of my rifling through a Ziploc bag.

Thirty minutes of brisk walking later, I can see a hint of the parking lot peeking through the gaps between tree trunks.

The usual rush of relief is dampened by heavy steps crashing through the woods and some annoyed noises that suggest an argument.

From the left, four hikers join up with the main trail and are about to overtake me, but then they slow instead.

I note that their expressions are grim, lacking the usual triumphant exhilaration hikers wear when they make it out of the Longing Woods.

“Hey,” says a girl with flushed cheeks and blond Heidi braids. There’s a breathless note of relief in her voice. “Oh my god, you have no idea how good it is to see you.”

I don’t know her. Confused, I stand there awkwardly.

“You’re the first person we’ve come across,” explains the boy she’s with, the one holding the map. He’s wearing a hoodie with the mascot of our rival high school. No wonder I don’t know them.