Hidebehind

Seventeen

There was a dark shadow looking down at me, blocking a bright light above, and my whole body jerked in fear, but then the shadow moved and I saw it was just a man, and he was asking me how I was feeling.

The fluorescent light above buzzed like it was about to go out, and something beeped nearby, but other than that, the only noise was the man's voice.

I blinked a few times and turned my head side to side to see where I was, but when I did that, pain shot up into my neck.

"Just lay still," the man said. He was a doctor. I was in a hospital room. "You're fine," he confirmed, probably having seen questions on my face. "You're just a little dehydrated, and you have some whiplash. Let me get your Great Grandmother."

I didn't want her—I wanted my dad.

When Great Grandma came in, I shut my eyes. Maybe she'd think I was sleeping.

I wasn't too convincing.

"Robbie! It's about time. Had us all worried to death. What in God's good name were you doing out in those woods at night?"

Then it was like a movie turned on in my mind, and I remembered that I'd been in the woods with Chuck and Alex. They'd left me . . . and then . . . then . . . My eyes opened. I knew I'd run from that . . . thing—though now that I thought of it, it seemed strangely unlikely that it had been anything more than shadows and moonlight. I'd been so certain last night. I'd finally run out of the woods and someone had found me—who?—I couldn't recall. But that was all I could tell. I didn't know how I'd gotten to a hospital room.

I wanted my mom. The last person on Earth that I wanted to talk to was Great Grandma.

"Where's Penny?" I grumbled.

The old raisin pinched her mouth, but she didn't say anything. She just got up and left the room; Penny replaced her almost instantaneously.

"Rob, are you okay?" My little sister had some paper dolls in her hands. I noticed one's head was almost ripped off but had been taped what looked to be about five times.

I stared at Penny as she sat down in the chair Great Grandma had pulled over. "I'm fine. Don't you worry about me. But listen, Penny . . . I've been thinking . . ." I lowered my voice to a near-whisper. "We need to leave here. We need to go back home. I think it's time."

Her eyes widened. "Why?"

Some kind of hole threatened to suck my stomach into it, but I swallowed it into submission and said, "You know mom and dad are waiting there for us."

My sister's dark eyes glazed over like ponds in winter. "You think so?"

"I know so."

The pause that followed seemed to last a year.

"Those boys were pretty mean to you last night."

My face felt warm. My eyes watered. "Don't talk about that. Who cares? We need to talk about our plan to go home. We don't fit here. Nobody wants us."

"Great Grandma does."

"No she doesn't; she's crazy."

"And Grandpa . . ."

I sniffled. "Maybe a little, but he's crazy, too."

"And what about Jay? He's your friend."

"I don't have any friends."

Penny nodded almost violently. "Yes you do! He helped you last night! He went to find you, and he did. See? You would have been more hurt if he hadn't come to help you. So there."

A vague memory of running into Jay last night did surface in my mind. "What do you mean? What do you know about it?"

"Well, Jay came by after dinnertime to see if you were home to go out and catch frogs—best frog-catching's at dusk, he said. But you weren't there, and Great Grandma was getting worried anyway, so then Jay told me that he knew you'd gone with some kids from school to see where that boy disappeared all those years back, and he said you should've been back, cause he'd seen Alex on his way to our house. So he rode his bike and I got in the car with Great Grandma, and we went to look for you. He found you right as you got out of the woods, but you fainted right after."

The cheeks warmed again. "I didn't faint."

"Yes, you did. And Great Grandma brought you here, and it's the next morning, now."

A whole night had passed. I was glad of it. I didn't want to see any more shadows for a while.

"What happened?" Penny persisted. "Why did you faint?"

I shrugged and frowned. "I don't know. Maybe because I was tired of trying to get out of the woods. I was lost in there."

"Thank you, Mr. Obvious."

"When did you become such a smart-alek? Hey, listen, Penny—"

I didn't have a chance to finish. Great Grandma came back in. What I had to say to my sister I didn't want her to hear. "Doctor says you can come back home whenever you're ready, Robbie. I—I can wait as long as you need."

Somehow, the look she gave me made me feel more ashamed of myself than I already felt, and I couldn't figure out why. I just scrunched down deeper in my blankets, but I knew I couldn't hide out in the hospital—didn't even want to, really—so I was ready to go within twenty minutes.

Just as I was about to head out of the room and meet my sister and Great Grandma in the waiting area, a tall kid with dark hair rounded through the door, nearly bumping right into me. I fast realized it was pretty much the last person I wanted to see, and I didn't know at all how to react, but he was blocking my escape so I just turned around and went and sat in the nearest chair.

"Oh, are you . . . leaving?" Alex asked.

I didn't look up from the floor. "Yep."

"I . . . you . . ."

He couldn't get any real words together, but I wasn't going to help him, that was for sure. I chewed my tongue, feeling awkward and trying not to think about the other person in the room.

Alex didn't move. He wouldn't get out of the doorway, which was the only thing that I wanted him to do. I wanted to just bolt out of there, but for some reason he was determined to say something. "Rob, look. I just wanted to come say . . . to say I'm sorry. About last night."

My eyes felt like there was a bunch of pressure behind them, like a cap on a shaken-up soda bottle, and I was afraid I was going to start crying if I didn't get out of there quick and just stop thinking about all of it.

"Chuck and I . . . we shouldn't have left you. We were going to come back—really!"

"Liar."

"Huh? Oh . . . well, maybe you're right. I . . . we maybe weren't planning on it. But I didn't think . . . we didn't know you'd . . . get so scared."

My head was on fire.

Alex swallowed audibly, and I looked back to him, suddenly aware of his discomfort. His discomfort.

I couldn't take it. I jumped up from the chair and shoved past him—hard, I hoped—and shuffled down the hall as fast as I could without looking like I was running away from him. I forced the tears back with a huge snuffle that I unsuccessfully tried to mask as a sneeze, but I didn't care anymore, because he was behind me, and I never wanted to see him again.

It was during the drive home that I told Great Grandma I had no intention of going back to that school, ever again. To my surprise, she didn't argue with me or even attempt to convince me to change my mind; she just nodded her head, saying nothing. Penny didn't talk, either. After my declaration, the ride was strangely quiet. I was just focusing my thoughts, trying not to think about what had actually happened in those woods. If I remembered it . . . if I thought about it . . . but I wasn't going to, so it didn't matter.

I just knew I didn't want to be around anybody, ever again. Especially not that jerk, Alex.