Page 42 of Poison Wood

“We’ll see, Rita. That’s up to Dom. Have you talked to him?”

I lean back against the pillow. “Yes,” I say. “Has Erin learned anything else about Laura?”

He pauses just long enough.

“We are on the same team, Carl.”

“There’ll be time to talk about that later, Rita. For now, Erin’s got it. I just wanted you to know we might be in your backyard soon. I’ll be in touch.”

He ends the call, and I try to control my breathing. His voice was curt and professional. None of our typical sarcasm and joking. The ripple effects of my decisions.

I crawl under the sheets without caring what time it is. I’m exhausted. But as I lie still in the quiet room, a voice fills my head. Summer’s voice saying “Heather’s gone.”

It wasn’t until the following day we learned how gone she was. The police descended on Johnny’s cottage in a wave of blue and brownuniforms. We watched from our dorm window as they escorted him to a waiting cruiser and drove off.

We slept with our door locked and barricaded. My father showed up to get me the next afternoon. He grabbed me and looked me over as if I had physical wounds, but my wounds from that night had already burrowed deep into sinew and bones. There was nothing to see.

Over Thanksgiving break in 2002, the four of us, Heather, me, Summer, and Kat, had stayed behind for the week with a skeleton crew consisting of one teacher, a cook, and the maintenance man, Johnny Adair. Heather’s aunt and uncle were visiting their daughter in Michigan. My dad’s brother had a medical emergency in West Texas, and he’d had to go help out. Summer’s and Kat’s parents were traveling together abroad in Gstaad or some such ridiculous place. So the four of us were left to our own devices at Poison Wood, bored but on edge after what had happened there the month before.

I roll over and fish the drawing my father made earlier today from my tote. I study the cross-sectional diagram. The width of the drain.Someone could have been pushed in here,he said, pointing to it. I shut my eyes.

It wouldn’t have been the first time someone was accused of being pushed at Poison Wood.

Poison Wood Therapeutic Academy for Girls

Kisatchie National Forest

October 31, 2001

Ivy

Dear Diary,

All the girls are talking about tonight. Wait, I don’t think I’ve ever told you about Halloween.

So, we all have to go out to this old graveyard and B.O.—I seriously still can’t even write that without laughing and now you know who is asking what I’m laughing about. I tell her nothing. I’m propped up in bed with this journal hidden in my science textbook against my knees. So anyway B.O. plays a story about the lady who died in the school’s basement on a record player. On. A. Record. Player. Sounds stupid but it’s actually kind of creepy. Only seniors and freshmen go out. The seniors hide in the trees of the oaks thatoverhang the cemetery and B.O. leads the freshmen out and then the seniors scare the shit of them.

This year, we’re juniors.

But, we may have a little prank up our sleeves. Shhhh, don’t tell Baldy. HAHA!

Jasmine

Dear Diary,

I know I’m going to get blamed for this.

Meadow

Dear Diary,

Ohmygod I’m freaking out. Something bad happened. Something really really really bad happened.

Natchitoches Gazette

By Robert Sevier

November 1, 2001