Ready or Not

Ready or not, here I come!

The girl stood at the edge of the forest, padded jacket wrapped tightly around her body to keep out the late-autumn chill. May hadn’t been here since she was a kid, clothing catching on branches and clumsy feet stumbling over roots dappled by the shade and the sun. The girl turned up her collar, buried her hands in her pockets. Standing in front of it, nearly a decade later, the forest was an alarmingly quiet thing, all dead grays and browns, barren branches knocking together under the decree of the persistent wind. It almost looked haunted.

May shifted, lifting one frozen foot half-way off the ground, hesitating a moment. This was her first time coming to the forest alone. In her childhood, it had always been her and Sebastian. The wonder duo. The inseparable friends. But now she was on her own. It was a little strange. She’d hoped it would be freeing. Instead, it just left her feeling heavy.

After a second longer, May started into the forest, soggy leaves squelching under her boots. It had rained that morning, and a wet haze still hung in the air. The sky was overcast, like it might rain again. She wasn’t too worried about that. Even after all these years, May knew her way through the forest like it was her own. Like she could close her eyes and get to her destination without problem.

When they were kids, May and Sebastian would go racing through the forest, sometimes hand in hand, sometimes shoving the other down as they went. It was a fine line between friendship and rivalry for them. They’d spent almost every day in those woods, just a short walk from their neighborhood. Climbing the big oak trees, splashing in the river, inventing any number of games from their limitless childhood imagination. But there was one game that had always been May’s favorite. Hide and seek.

The forest was a treasure trove of hiding spaces. Thick bushes and shallow caves lay scattered among the crowded trees, offering the perfect places to tuck oneself away out of glaring the summer heat and the scouring eyes of the seekers. It wasn’t uncommon for the other kids in the neighborhood to join them, staking their own hiding spaces out of the expansive woods. The energy of a group was exhilarating, but May never minded when it was just her and Sebastian. When the other children couldn’t join them, they would play hide and seek with just the two of them. And every time without fail, no matter how long it took, they would find each other. Patiently, persistently, they would find each other.

May and Sebastian had always been closer to each other than the other kids in the neighborhood. Most people said it was because they lived right next to one another, and their older siblings were the same age, so of course they’d be friends. May knew it was more than that. She wouldn’t say they’d been cut from the same cloth – there were too many differences between them for that. It was more like they’d been knitted into the same quilt, opposing but complimentary materials stitched together, because it was only natural that they’d be interwoven. Where May was quiet and reserved, Sebastian was outgoing and warm. When Sebastian refused to open up, May sat beside him in silence, waiting for him to speak, reminding him that he wouldn’t be alone as long as she was there.

The empty forest was a chilling place to be. The great oak trunks, like scattered sentinels, stood tall against the wind, thinning its relentless advances and snuffing it out before it reached the heart of the forest. Even so, May could see her breath curling into the air, a white cloud that hovered just beyond her lips and then fell away into nothingness. Twigs cracked under her feet and branches scratched at her red cheeks. May’s hands remained firmly in her pocket, refusing to come to her aid. The stinging against her face kept her alert; a relieving, cooling burn that kept her senses awake against the dulling chill. In her youth, May had never realized just how far it was to her favorite hiding place. Her boundless energy would get her there in an instant, to the spot where time and the elements had carved a hollow space underneath the exposed roots of one of the trees, big enough to hide a child within its sturdy arms. Big enough to hide two, if they were careful and quiet. It was a short distance from the tree to the river, and in her spot under its roots she could hear the gurgling of the water as it passed by, steady and assured and ever-flowing.

Though it had been ages since her last visit to this forest, May could remember with ease the sense of quiet comfort she found within the hollow beneath the tree. It was her own little world, a private paradise for her imagination to unfurl. Some days she was a princess, running away from her duties and the men the king sent after her. Other days she was a fugitive, hands wrapped around some holy grail, holding her breath as her pursuers trampled over the ground above her. Despite the cold that burrowed beneath her flesh and the aching in her unsteady legs, May pushed forward. This would be her last chance to see it. The hiding spot she’d favored as a child. The woods where she’d once spent the entirety of her long childhood days running around with Sebastian, finding trouble to get into and out of together.

It wasn’t May moving houses that had driven her and Sebastian apart. It was only a couple blocks away, not even out of their shared school district. It was everything else. All the mistakes May had made as she grew through her teen years. All the betrayals as she tried and failed to mitigate her growing stress. It hadn’t been intentional, at least not at first. May had spent less time with Sebastian, skipping out on their adventures in favor of studying. He’d offered to study with her, and at first she’d accepted, meeting him at cafes and libraries and poring over her pages of homework in his company. Eventually, though, she’d stopped showing up. It was more effort than it was worth, getting dressed and leaving the house for something she could’ve done at home. Sebastian had suggested he come to her house, instead. She’d declined the offer. And slowly, day by day, the space between them grew.

The worst of it all had been the girl with dark hair and shark-like eyes. She’d reached up to fill the absence that Sebastian left, taking over his spot at May’s lunch table, walking home with her after school. She snuck bottles into school, slipped pills into May’s hand with a smile that promised they’d fix everything. Well, maybe not everything, the girl had said with a dismissive laugh, but you’ll hardly notice what it doesn’t fix. May had taken them without question, swallowed them down with burning alcohol. At first, May could feel everything. The chill left behind in the weight of Sebastian’s shadow, the heaviness in her chest, the dulling lightness behind her eyes. But the girl was right. Eventually she stopped noticing.

They helped in the beginning. The drugs and the alcohol. The thin suture to her ever-gaping wound. May’s parents had high expectations for her, an insistence that she’d make it into the Ivy Leagues and leave their small town behind, carrying them out with her. But when her grades started slipping in high school, she could feel their disappointment growing, the lingering frustration in their eyes when they looked at her. The drugs took the edge off, at the cost of her grades. At the cost of Sebastian, who tried time and again to talk her out of her bad decisions. He reached out for her, and she pulled away, sinking further into the tar-filled pit she’d created for herself.

There was a resounding crack underfoot, and May stopped, breath puffing into the air around her. A pair of birds shot up from one of the nearby bushes, and May stumbled back, following their startled flight as they burst above the trees. Above her, May could see the frayed ends of a split tree branch. She slowly turned her gaze to the ground, lifted her foot from the other end of the branch. It had splintered under her boot, leaving a trace of red on the wood and a searing pain in her foot. She took a moment to work one of the sharp twigs out of the crevice in the sole of her boots, wincing as it tugged against skin. It took longer than it should have. Her bare fingers, red and frozen, were unwilling to cooperate. May stilled her breath and leaned back against one of the trees as her fingers tugged at the wood. In the renewed silence, May was able to hear the murmuring of a stream. She was close now.

With one final tug, the splinter was free, ripped from its burrow in the botSebastian of her shoe. May hissed, dropping the splinter like it was something burning. After taking a second to steady herself, May’s eyes scanned the woods in front of her for the tell-tale signs of her hiding spot. A cluster of bushes sprouting up around the edges of a boulder. An almost barren patch in the heavily forested woods. Despite the chill and the empty forest around her, it felt the same way it did all those years ago. Like it was hers. Except this time there was no one to share it with.

May remembered clearly the last time she’d spoken to Sebastian. It had been a few months ago now, at a graduation party she hadn’t wanted to go to. Most of the party was a blur. The girl had been there, pressing things into May’s hands. She’d accepted them, without word or protest, to try to get the night over with without losing her mind. She’d known Sebastian would be there. He always was, hanging in the corner with his new friends, casting looks at her like he’d meant to talk to her. But that day was the first time he’d spoken to her.

“May,” The voice was muffled under the music and the haze inside of her head. She’d looked up from her trembling hands, clouded eyes staring through Sebastian. At first she wasn’t even sure that it was him. But his warm gaze and his steady hands would solidify the presence of the ghost in front of her. A visitor from the past, come to haunt her one last time.

“May,” he’d repeated, voice firmer in the wake of her silence. “Look at me.” I am, she’d wanted to say, devoid of interest or inflection. But when she thought about it, she wasn’t sure if she was, or if her eyes had settled on some point just beyond him. So she said nothing.

Sebastian brought his hands up to her face, gentle and self-assured, cold against the feverish heat of her skin. He leaned forward, and for a second May was afraid he might kiss her, but instead he rested his forehead against hers, breathing out a sigh that tickled her face.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” he’d told her, voice soft and a little bit sad. She tried, then, to look at him, to truly see him, but it was hard to focus around the glassiness of her eyes. Her tongue felt heavy, reluctant to reply. “You know I’ll always be here for you, May, right? I’m not going anywhere.”

After a moment, she gathered the energy needed to speak. “I’m moving.” Her voice sounded flat, dreadfully apathetic even to her. “I’m taking a gap year and then going to college in California. I’ll be gone by winter.” And then she’d pulled away, removing his hands from her face and disappearing into the crowd before she had to look for too long at his disappointed expression.

It would be winter soon. May’s house was full of boxes, half-packed with whatever things she could afford to live without for the moment. Sebastian had texted her only once since that night, an offer to meet again should she decide she wanted to. May never texted back.

This was her last time visiting these woods. Though California was only a state south of here, May knew that when she left she would never come back. So here she was, playing one final, solitary game of hide and seek before she was out of reach forever. She hadn’t told her parents where she was going, hadn’t even told them she was going out. This moment was hers alone.

The hard ground sloped down before her, and through the thick trees she could catch glimpses of silver water curling off into the distance. Just a little to the south was a set of stepping stones, partially submerged under the rushing water. One summer, Sebastian had slipped going over them and twisted his ankle, and May had half-carried him home, the two of them soaking wet and exhausted and holding onto each other like the earth would fall away if they let go. She almost smiled at the memory.

May picked her way down the hill, feet slipping on the damp leaves and hands grabbing onto low-hanging branches for support. She could see it now, the tree with the exposed roots, bony fingers arching up from the trunk and then burrowing back into the ground a few feet away. The pounding in her chest grew desperate. Though the present had drawn away from her, taking Sebastian with it, she could still have the past. She could still have the memories and the youthful innocence and the bubbling laughter that melted their voices together into one. May wasn’t sure what she’d do if the hollow had been weathered down to a flat, open nothingness. If the past had been torn away from her, too.

But it was still there. May turned sharply to the right, closing the space between her and the tree. The hollow beneath the roots had changed shape, widened out slightly over the passage of time, but nevertheless it persisted to hold its space under the now-brittle roots of the oak tree. May stepped one foot down into the hollow, smiling to herself. She wasn’t a kid anymore. It would be a miracle if she still fit.

It took considerable effort, crawling between the roots and wriggling around so that her body almost fit beneath them. It was more cramped than she was used to, knees pressing against her chest and elbows digging into the hardened ground. Though not entirely comfortable, there was a kind of relief found from being there again, under the tree she’d adored so much as a child, tucked one final time into her favorite hiding place. But the problem with favorite hiding places is that they don’t stay hidden for long.

There was movement above her, a disturbance in the leaves and the branches surrounding her little cove. May shifted into what little extra space the hollow had for her, turning so she could see the trees crowding the gray sky above her. The sound of footsteps, too heavy to be a deer or a fox, rustled over the dewy leaves. The smarter part of May knew she should be afraid, but all she felt was a quiet curiosity.

Shadows shifted above her, painting their darkened tendrils across her face. And then a silhouette rose from the edge of her hiding spot, and May’s breath caught in her throat. Even without seeing his face, she knew who it was that had met her here. The watery sunlight framed his body like a halo, and she could see the traces of a fond, familiar smile glowing on his lips. Sebastian stretched a hand out, reaching down towards her. May hesitated for only a moment, and then she stuck one of her arms out of her hiding space and wrapped her hand around his. Sebastian’s smile grew, and when he spoke it was the most relieving thing she’d ever heard, the sound of her childhood returning to her.

“Found you.”