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In the Heart of the Dark Wood
By Billy Coffey Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2014 Billy Coffey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4016-9010-6
CHAPTER 1
December 19
1
Allie Granderson had not cried once in the five hundred forty-two days since everything ended; even as she sat hunched and dying, she vowed not to cry on the five hundred forty-third.
In her mind she saw the class turning to witness her final moments, mouths ajar and eyes wide. All else—the busywork of their ridiculous project, the joy of the coming holiday, the squeak of the gerbil wheel, and the gurgle of the fish tank—would be set aside. Everyone would stare as Allie sloughed off her mortal coil. Lisa Ann Campbell would sob into her sleeve from across the room. Not because Lisa Ann particularly cared for Allie's well-being (or anyone's, for that matter), but because she'd found cause to bawl at least once a day over something since the beginning of the school year. That small eruption would be more than enough to light the larger one in Tommy Robertson's stomach. Tommy sat three seats up from Allie in Miss Howard's classroom and spilled his breakfast nearly as regularly as Lisa Ann spilled her tears. His attacks would commence with a suddenness that defied belief; too often, the only foreshock would be the thrusting up of both hands in a vain attempt to gain the teacher's attention. By then it was too late. "Touchdown Tommy" was what the kids called him. The nickname was neither fair nor entirely accurate, but such things mattered little in sixth grade. This was a fact little Orphan Allie knew well.
The throbbing again—a thousand angry bees swarming in her stomach.
Allie shut her eyes and reached for the broken compass strapped to her left wrist, rubbing it like a worry stone. She drew her legs up and knocked them against the bottom of her desk, scattering both the bottle of Elmer's and the bits of colored paper on top. Her guts were going to explode. She was going to pop like a bubble and ruin Christmas, get her insides all over the posters of the parts of speech and fractions-to-decimals that covered the walls. Lisa Ann would bawl; Tommy would yark. The only thing that made Allie feel better was knowing she wouldn't be embarrassed because she would be dead.
The pain had arrived without warning just after lunch. The Salisbury steak was the most likely culprit—one hunk of gristly meat carved from some poor malnourished beast and drowned in a soupy brown gravy. Zach had warned her not to eat it, but Allie didn't have a choice. She'd barely had enough time to pack her father's lunch that morning, much less fix one for herself.
She folded her arms and hugged herself. The hurt slammed into her like a cold wind. Allie shut her eyes and bit down on the red-and-white checkered scarf around her neck. She leaned down on her desk, feeling the scarf's prickly wool against her tongue, rubbing the compass again. That helped until a ball of notebook paper smacked her cheek.
Zach stared from his seat across the aisle. At some point between Allie eating the Salisbury steak and the Salisbury steak eating her, he'd put on his daddy's old cowboy hat. The library book he'd checked out in second period (something about prehistoric animals of North America; Zach was always into that stuff, and Allie didn't know why—unless of course it was just to impress their stupid teacher) lay on his desk. Resting atop that was Zach's own ornament, nearly complete—he only had to glue the picture of his face onto the elf's body and affix the three cotton balls down the front. He lifted his chin to the note he'd thrown at her. Allie kept her head in place and unfolded it, reading the words sideways:
R U OK?
No, is what Allie wanted to say. No, I am most definitely not okay because God's calling in the mark He put on me, and this is good-bye, Zach—Vaya con Dios, baby.
Allie nodded yes instead. She lifted her face from the desk and peeled off a strip of red construction paper that had stuck to the side of her head. The pain ebbed enough for her to nearly straighten. She tried smiling and thought it came through satisfactory enough.
Zach wasn't swayed. He'd seen Allie's fake smile enough times in the last year and a half; he wasn't fooled now. He raised his ornament and mouthed, Kindergarten stuff. Allie nodded and realized the longer she stared at him, the quicker her lie would crumble. She looked to the front of the room instead, where she found a bigger problem.
Miss Howard was staring straight at her from the cluttered desk in front of the room. looking over those old-lady glasses she liked to wear, thinking they made her look so smart. Allie wondered just how long her teacher had been watching and just how much she'd seen. Probably all dang day. Probably everything.
She slipped Zach's note into her pocket. Miss Howard's chair made a raking sound over the floor as it slid back, breaking the sort of fragile peace that is nearly impossible to maintain the last day before Christmas vacation. Allie refused to watch. She was much more concerned with the invisible fist curling its fingers around her guts.
Zach whispered, "Hey."
Allie looked at him and tried not to see Miss Howard walking past the Christmas tree (the ornaments were molecules fashioned by colored cotton balls and pipe cleaners, the star made of five plastic test tubes glued together) to the far end of the room, where she praised Lisa Ann's ornament enough to stay what tears lay waiting in the little girl's eyes. Zach shifted his ornament to his left hand and pointed to Allie's wrist.
"Gonna lose that."
She turned her hand over. Five hundred and forty-two days of wear had turned the compass's band from bright red to a dull pink. The clasp was nothing more than three raised bumps on one end that inserted into three matching holes on the other. Two of those bumps had been worn away. The last hung only by a thin ridge of plastic. Allie clamped the band down and whispered back, "Thanks." Zach tipped his black hat. He was by far the cutest boy in school, but that didn't stop Allie from thinking that hat looked like a sombrero on anyone but the sheriff. A cough echoed through Zach's smile. The sound came out harsh and scratchy.
Miss Howard had covered the entire first row. She stopped at each desk and pushed her blond hair
(blond from a bottle)
behind her ear, smiling at everyone's stupid decoration, making the girls purr like kittens and the boys coo like babies. It was disgusting. Even more disgusting? It was all for show. Allie knew the only reason Miss Grace Howard had gotten up was so she could make her way to the last desk in the last row—so she could once more stick her nose where it didn't belong.
It would suit things just fine if God killed Allie before Miss Howard got there, even if it meant Zach would have to spend the rest of his life lonesome. Then again, Allie thought that if she really was okay with dying in the next few seconds, it would be just like the Almighty to make her stick around. She reclaimed the bottle of glue and bits of construction paper scattered over her desk and began piecing her project together—green shoes and mittens to red arms and legs, red arms and legs to the green body, the picture of herself on top—just as Her Highness had shown them. As though sixth graders had forgotten how to glue and cut.
Miss Howard reached Zach's desk and pronounced his elf "the cutest thing ever." That may or may not have been true; Allie guessed her teacher really had no way of knowing because Miss Howard hadn't looked at Zach's elf at all. Her eyes were square on Allie now, and that only made Allie's stomach swirl more.
She wiped the excess glue from her ornament. MERRY CHRISTMAS DADDY went diagonally across the elf's swollen belly in pencil. Beneath it and after careful thought, Allie added AND MOMMY. The agony swelled again as she finished the downward stroke of the Y, this time worse than all the others strung together. Her body folded in on itself once more, making a ball. The smell of Miss Howard's fancy perfume filled her nose.
"Allie?"
She couldn't turn her head. The pain hammered her, making her grimace.
"Allie, are you okay?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Miss Howard bent low and placed a hand on Allie's desk, too close for comfort. Allie glanced up to see her teacher staring at the ornament. Miss Howard's lips parted, meaning to say "That's really lovely" maybe, or "Allie Granderson, that belongs in some fancy Paris museum." But there was only silence.
It's that last little bit, Allie thought. The AND MOMMY. And I'll count it to my credit if I go to my grave reminding you of that, you old battle-ax.
"Sweetheart, you don't look well."
Allie felt Zach's eyes—felt everyone's. Tommy Robertson turned around in his seat, hoping it was finally someone else's turn to puke all over everything. A part of Allie, that grown-up part she had yet to realize was there, knew whatever had gone wrong inside her wasn't the Salisbury steak. But it was the little girl she remained that looked into her teacher's eyes just then and wondered why Grace Howard had to be so pretty and so nice, and what Allie had done to warrant the life she'd been handed. No answers came. Allie believed none ever would. That silence filled her with an anger that left her reaching for the compass once more. If God was going to kill her, then she wasn't about to let it happen in front of the boy she didn't want to love but did and the woman she wanted to hate but couldn't. And Allie would. Not. Cry.
"I think I'd very much like to be excused to the bathroom," she whispered. "If it's okay, Ma'am."
Allie spent the next panicked moment of her life wondering if Miss Howard would not only grant that request but demand to tag along.
"Certainly."
Allie didn't wait. She stood and took her griping stomach out of the classroom, brushing Zach's elbow as she left. One small squeeze, one last good-bye.
At least the hall was empty. Allie held her stomach and pressed her right shoulder against the wall as she walked, using it to brace her failing body. She passed the two remaining sixth-grade classrooms. Tiny sets of eyes stared back, wondering what had happened to her now. The bathroom door stood just down the hallway to the right. Allie reached the first stall just before a final wave of agony shot through her. It was all she could do to remain upright. She couldn't even lock the door.
She unbuttoned her jeans and sat. Both seemed right, even if whatever alarms were blaring inside her had nothing to do with toilet business. The cool of the porcelain soothed her. That feeling disappeared when Allie looked down.
Centered in the jumble of denim and cotton bunched just above her pink Chucks was a red blotch the size of a quarter. Allie bent forward, needing but not wanting a closer look. Her head shook no. Slow at first. Then faster.
Allie Granderson would not cry. That was the promise she'd made nearly a year and a half before, because crying meant it was over, and it was a promise she meant to keep. But crying was not the same as screaming, and scream she did. She screamed loud and long and did not stop even when the teacher across the hall burst into the bathroom, wanting to know who was hurt. Allie screamed at her too. She screamed that she was dying. That she was bleeding to death.
2
She didn't look any different, at least according to the mirror. It was still the same brown hair parted down the middle, still the same two pigtails framing the same narrow face. Her clothes still fit. She certainly didn't feel any wiser than she had that morning and felt no sudden interest in purses or makeup. As far as Allie could tell, the only differences between the girl who'd left her bedroom for school that morning and the woman who'd stumbled back in that afternoon were the two things no one could see: angry bees in her stomach, and a disagreeable hunk of smooth gauze the school nurse had instructed her to put in a place where nothing had any business being. She had no idea getting grown-up meant walking around with a grimace on her face and a hitch in her step.
"Wish somebody'd filled me in on that, Sam."
She turned from the mirror to the beagle attached to the thumping tail on the mattress. Allie thought her dog, much like herself, was caught somewhere in the middle place between pup and adult. But that was where their similarities ended. Sam had no center of reference when it came to female afflictions. He raised his floppy ears and barked.
"Dumb old dog."
Allie stepped away from the mirror, pausing to kiss a forefinger and touch the framed picture on her dresser. Her insides still hurt (as did her throat, what with all the hollering she'd done in the bathroom), but her daddy had given her aspirin when they'd gotten home. She scooted Sam away and sat, staring out the bedroom window. A wind gauge stood on the porch just outside. The contraption wasn't much—a small, pink bucket filled with gravel and sand, and a wooden dowel rising from its innards. Two strips of cardboard a foot long and an inch wide had been tacked to the top, forming an X. Fastened to each end was a plastic cup, three blue and one red. Another of Miss Howard's endless classroom projects, this one much more beneficial than the ornament. Aside from needing the cardboard strips and a few of the cups replaced during the past months, the gauge had held up like a marvel of engineering. Allie watched the cups turn in the building wind. She counted the next minute aloud as her fingers tallied how many times the red cup passed.
"Ten. Ten ain't much, is it, Samwise?"
Sam didn't know.
"Nope. Ten ain't much more'n a puff."
It would be a little while before school and work ended. For the moment, the smattering of ranches and Cape Cods along the street stood quiet. All of them bore signs of the season—candles in the windows, bulbs on the trees, lighted icicles hanging from the gutters. Pretty enough, Allie thought, but nothing more than the same-old.
Still, the neighborhood had turned itself into a veritable winter wonderland compared to the Granderson house. The only sign of Christmas there was the leaning pine Allie's father had brought home the week before and plunked down in front of the living room window. The two of them had decorated it in silence; only Sam had commented on the finished product. It was a horrible thing for Allie to endure, having to put all those memories on the tree. That her daddy had to endure it as well only made Allie feel worse. She kept waiting for him to say maybe they should just skip Christmas again, like the town had the year before. But Marshall Granderson had only sat in front of a pile of knotted lights and tinsel, drowning in all that quiet. There in front of the window, Allie considered for the first time that maybe her daddy had been thinking that very same thing. He'd just been wanting Allie to suggest it first—to say that maybe treating Christmas like any other day would make it not hurt so bad.
The only evidence of peace on earth and goodwill to men outside was the Nativity in the front yard. Marshall had hauled the Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus out from the shed the previous Christmas, just before the mayor had announced that everyone's heart was still too heavy for joy. Allie had refused to let him box them up ever since. Her father had bucked about the Nativity still being out there when the new year arrived and the season of the not-Christmas was over. He hollered about it again when the grass turned from brown to green and the church folk went from singing about Jesus being born in a cave to Him walking out of one. But Allie had held fast—the Nativity was going to stay put. The last time Marshall had protested (this the summer just past, right at the time of the first anniversary), Allie told him it wasn't right for a family to be boxed up and separated from each other eleven months of the year. Her father hadn't said much after that.
Sam snorted in her face, wanting to trade melancholy for playtime.
"No, Sam. You just sit."
He did, settling on his haunches beside her. They both stared out at the plastic Mary. Allie felt Sam's tail thump her side. She rubbed his neck, making one of his back paws jitter.
She smiled despite herself and said, "You're a stupid dog, and I don't love you at all."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In the Heart of the Dark Wood by Billy Coffey. Copyright © 2014 Billy Coffey. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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