In the Woods
By Mary Grimm
Jordan was my friend, except when she decided she hated me, and right now was one of those times. I had told her that I would not under any circumstances go with her to Kroger to shoplift. For one thing, it was illegal, and for another, if you were going to shoplift, there were better places than Kroger.
Jordan explained that Kroger was all that was possible on the day because that was where her mother was going and had said she could bring a friend, which was me. “I’m horrified,” Jordan said. “Literally filled with horror. If you don’t, I’ll tell Brady that you like him.”
I didn’t care because I didn’t like him. I liked Todd, who was radically uncool and so no one could know. His house was behind our house but on a different road, and sometimes we met in the woods between. He had given me a book of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, who was a dead writer who wrote about tombs and decaying bodies. Edgar knew more about being horrified than Jordan could ever know if she lived her whole life in a cemetery.
I agreed to go although I said I wouldn’t steal anything because there was nothing at Kroger that I wanted. Jordan pointed out that I loved their doughnuts, and I pointed out that you just didn’t shoplift food. No one did that.
In the car on the way there, Jordan’s mother interrogated us about school, even though it was summer and we hadn’t been there for weeks. I made up some things because I knew she wasn’t really listening, and Jordan pretended to be mad at me. Out the window the fields and trees were so green. So green you wanted to die.
At Kroger, Jordan’s mother told us to find something we wanted. “My treat,” she said, like we were six. Jordan had already swiped a fruit leather, which was sticking out of her shorts pocket. “Come on,” she said and we ran down the produce aisles, dodging between the bins of apples and pears and strange bumpy fruit that no one ever bought. It was fun, I’ll admit.
In the school supplies aisle, Jordan got some colored pencils and a notebook with a shiny cover. Her pockets were bulging. “You have to get something,” she said. “Or Brady. I mean it.” There’s no use going against Jordan when she gets like that so I took a pack of erasers shaped like dinosaurs, which Jordan said were lame. Then we had to find something else that Jordan’s mother could buy for our treat.
In the car on the way home, I thought about Todd. We never talked to each other at school or even looked at each other. His mother was dead and his father was supposed to be an old drunk. When we were little, I had sometimes given him part of my lunch, but everyone would notice if I did that now. Todd always wore the same jeans and sometimes they were dirty. His hair was long and I thought he probably cut it himself because it looked raggedy on the ends.
“I’m going to tell Brady that you like dinosaur erasers,” Jordan said, but I wasn’t listening to her.
When Todd and I met in the dark of the woods, it was like being out of the world, like we didn’t exist anymore. Our bodies were invisible, but we could still touch. We could feel the rough bark of the trees and the leaves that crackled under us. His eyes looking down at me. The way he said my name.
Jordan claimed that she was named after an almond, but actually it was after her aunt who had died during a war – I couldn’t remember which one – even though she wasn’t in the army or any of the armed services. She just died, for no reason.
THE END
Author Bio: Mary Grimm has had two books published, “Left to Themselves” (novel) and “Stealing Time” (story collection) - both by Random House, and a number of flash pieces in places like Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a YA thriller. She teaches fiction writing at Case Western Reserve University.