5. Wednesday, September 6, 2023 #3
“Just one I hope,” Polly replies. “This place better not start to feel like a prison.” Alice notices Polly eyeing the camera, then looking toward the side of the house that her bedroom is on, then back again.
“Why? Do you have things to hide?” Alice asks, half-joking, half-curious.
Polly takes a final bite of her apple and throws it into the woods. “If I did, I wouldn’t be telling you about it now, would I?” She flips her long brown hair over her shoulder. “Guess who got a job.”
“You,” Quinn replies flatly.
“What?” Alice exclaims. “That’s great, Polly. I’m so proud of you.” She stops there, again reminding herself to temper the excitement. Polly hates it even more than Quinn.
“Anywhere good? Like, can we get free stuff from you?” Quinn asks.
“Maybe a couple of day-old donuts,” Polly says. “It’s a job at the coffee shop on the main street, Merry Cups. Stupid name but the other people who work there seem okay and the hours aren’t bad.”
Alice is so relieved, she could cry. Polly has a job and Quinn made a friend.
She doesn’t even care anymore that they’re standing under a trail cam that she bought because dead animals littered the property earlier this morning.
Today both kids came home doing better than they were when they left. That’s all she wants. Ever.
“I think this calls for a celebration,” Alice says. “A new friend for Quinn and a new job for Polly. Let’s get takeout. You guys get to pick.”
“My God, Mom,” Polly says with an eye-roll. “You’ll find any reason to celebrate.” Alice can tell that it’s fake annoyance. Polly loves being celebrated; she just pretends to hate it.
“I’m really proud of you both,” Alice says.
The door to Geoff’s writing studio opens and he steps out, looking like he just woke up. The sight of him sends prickles of annoyance through her.
“What’s everyone doing out here?” he asks, raising his arms to stretch.
“Mom and I put up a trail cam,” Quinn answers.
“Because of all those dead, dismembered animals this morning,” Alice reminds him.
He does that little laugh. The condescending one that says, You’re so stupid. “Is that really necessary?” he asks. “I mean, it could just be a one-off.”
“It can’t hurt,” Alice replies dryly. “Like calling Animal Control. Because we have a dog and children.” He huffs and rolls his eyes at her, and she immediately regrets saying it.
“Either way, a trail cam will be fun to have.” She forces her voice to sound nonpartisan and cheery.
“We can see what animals are in the woods. Also, we’re getting takeout to celebrate Quinn’s and Polly’s big news,” she calls out over her shoulder.
“Big news?”
The kids can tell him, she thinks. The less time she spends around him these days, the better. And she doesn’t want to ruin the high she’s on.
She sits down in one of the chairs on the back deck and taps the app on her phone that’s connected to the trail cam. A clear image pops up of the lawn and the path that leads into the woods. She should be able to see if anything comes out of there and onto the property.
The audio is pretty good as well. She can hear clear as day when Geoff says to the kids, “Don’t let your mom’s overreaction about the dead animals scare you. It’s honestly not that big a deal. I think the trail cam’s a bit over-the-top, but if it makes her feel better then we’ll leave it up.”
She wants to yell across the lawn that she can hear him. That she thinks he’s underreacting, as he usually does, that he should just go back into his writing studio and drink some more.
“I don’t think she’s overreacting,” she hears Polly say.
“The trail cam is kinda cool,” Quinn adds.
“Okay,” Geoff concedes. “As long as you guys are okay, I’m okay.”
Alice feels guilty for the smug satisfaction she feels about her children defending her to Geoff. She shouldn’t feel good about them taking sides.
“With the trail cam up, at least we’ll know what’s in there,” Quinn says.
“Are we sure we want to?” Polly asks with a laugh.
Quinn
“Did you know that Justine Gordon buried her family in the woods?”
Everyone stops eating their dinner to give Quinn their full attention, which is what he was going for. “I’ve been listening to a podcast about it. One of those true-crime ones,” he explains.
His mom holds up a hand. “That’s enough, Quinn.
I really don’t think it’s healthy for us to know the details of the horrible things that happened here.
” She takes a sip of her wine. “In fact, I think it should be a house rule that under no circumstances do we go looking for information on the case.”
Quinn throws up his hands. “What? That’s not fair. I still have more episodes to go.”
“Why would you want to inquire about such morbid stuff anyway?” his nana asks. He wishes she’d just keep her big fat nose out of things.
“Once you know something, you can’t unknow it,” his dad adds, probably because he feels like he should side with the other adults in the room. Quinn resists the urge to say, Duh, in response.
“Fine.” Quinn pushes his plate away. Clearly, he’s not going to win this one. He’ll just have to pretend to concede and then sneak the podcast and google searches.
His mother gets up from the table to clear her plate, pointing at him with the hand clutching her dirty napkin. “And I’ll be checking your browser history to make sure you’re not listening to that podcast or searching for more information about it.”
He almost laughs out loud but catches himself. As if he can’t get away with whatever he wants online. She’s clueless.
“Can I go to Jason’s now?” Quinn asks. “I don’t have any homework.
” Both his parents give their permission.
He can tell they’re glad he has a friend.
Little do they know that Jason runs an illegal online gambling site for kids at their school, and that his parents are super rich and so busy there’s no such thing as parental supervision in his house.
Before leaving for Jason’s, Quinn knocks on Polly’s bedroom door. There’s no answer, but when he goes into her room to make sure she’s not there, he sees her through the open bedroom window standing at the side of the house. He goes outside and around the back to find her.
Before taking him to school that morning they’d gone to Starbucks first, and Polly had made him pay for it.
He should have known. She never does anything solely out of the goodness of her heart.
Merrymont won’t allow a Starbucks into their downtown, so they had to drive to the next town over, twenty minutes away.
“Now will you admit those woods are creepy?” Quinn had said to Polly as they sat in the car in the parking lot of his school, drinking Venti Pumpkin Spice Lattes.
Polly insisted on getting hot drinks, even though it’s still hot outside.
“Like, those animals were literally torn apart. The bird had no head. The raccoon no eyes, mouth, or nose; the skunk no guts; the rabbit no front or back legs or ears.”
“Yes. Those woods are fucked-up. Okay? But let’s change the topic. Dead-animal talk is making it hard to enjoy my latte. And you need to go to school.”
“I guess I can’t avoid it forever,” he said, but stayed exactly where he was, drinking his irritatingly sweet latte. “Social hell awaits.”
Polly put her drink in the cupholder and then reached for her bag in the backseat and started rummaging through it. “Take this and ask kids if they want to get high. I bet you make friends in no time.”
He looked down at the dab pen in her hand, then pushed it back toward her. “Thanks for the offer, Polls, but that’s okay. With my luck I’d end up suspended and still have no friends.”
She shrugged and put the pen back in her bag. “Your call, little man.” Hearing her use Lucy’s nickname for him didn’t bother him so much this time.
“I think those dead animals really freaked Mom out,” Quinn said, stalling.
“It doesn’t take much these days,” Polly was quick to reply, and they both laughed. Then he finally got out of the car and went into the school.
Quinn had ended up taking her advice. He asked Jason, when they were lab partners, if he liked to get high. Jason said yeah and Quinn promised to bring some weed over that night so that they could get high together. Quinn can’t show up there now empty-handed.
Before rounding the corner of the house, he hears Polly talking. When she comes into view, he expects to find her on the phone but she’s just standing there, alone.
“Hey,” he says, and she jumps. “Who are you talking to?”
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” she snaps back, glaring at him, holding a freshly lit joint aloft in one hand. “I was talking to—” She turns toward the woods that line this side of the house and then stops.
Quinn follows her gaze but sees nothing but trees. “Talking to?”
She shakes her head, still staring into the woods. “Forget it. Nobody.”
“Would I be able to get a joint from you? I took your advice for making friends and offered to get this guy Jason high tonight. I think that’s the only reason he sat with me on the bus and invited me over.”
“Aww, buddy,” Polly says, looking authentically touched that Quinn took her advice.
“I’m so happy that I could help.” She hands over the joint she was smoking, which has gone out.
“Take this one. And let him smoke most of it and you take it easy. You don’t want to green out or get all paranoid.
Then he might not want to hang out with you again. ”
“Thanks, Polls,” he says, thinking how different she and Lucy are—were. Lucy would be telling him not to smoke any of it.
“No problem. Have fun.” She turns away from him to peer into the trees like she’s looking for something.
Polly
She has no idea where Gray went. He disappeared as soon as Quinn arrived. She would have introduced them. She’s just about to go back into her room, annoyed at her brother for scaring Gray off, when she hears him call out.
“Hey.”
Polly spins around, working to tame her elation. “Where did you go?”