twisted and sharp it was. For some reason, it gave her goosebumps, but she didn’t know why.
And she couldn’t explain why she kept doing it, or how she never knew she was doing it until it was already done. And now there were heaps of drawings on napkins, receipts, and even junk mail. She didn’t want anyone finding them, so she’d tossed them into her truck, but apparently Jordan had seen them.
Wendy’s stomach twisted. She didn’t like that her brain and hands were capable of conjuring things up without her noticing. Wendy grabbed her hoodie and threw it over the drawings so she didn’t have to see them out of the corner of her eye. When she got home, she’d throw them into the trash can. The last thing she needed was another reason for people to think she was strange. That she was a bad omen, if not cursed.
Wendy was starting to think they might be right.
* * *
Astoria was just a small outcropping of land surrounded by water, and the woods were a large inkblot of green spilled on a map, cutting them off from neighboring towns. Williamsport Road—or Dump Road, as the locals called it—twisted right through the woods to the far edge of town, where Wendy lived. Nestled against the hills, it was a road that only locals took. Several tire-worn logging roads splintered off from the asphalt street. They crisscrossed through the trees and looped back on themselves, and some just ended in the middle of the woods. Tourists constantly got lost on them and parents were always warning their kids to stay away, but they never listened. While she hated driving through the woods, especially at night, it got her home faster than the main streets.
For as long as Wendy could remember, all the kids in Astoria had been warned to never go down those paths. They were told the woods were dangerous, and to stay out of them. Wendy’s parents had forbidden her and her brothers to explore the logging roads even though they ran right through the woods behind their house.
After what happened, Wendy became a cautionary tale.
The truck’s engine roared as Wendy pushed it as fast as she dared. The faster she went, the sooner she’d be out of the woods. The branches of overgrown trees and shrubs reached out, occasionally swiping the passenger window even though she hugged the yellow centerline. Her gray eyes, wide and alert, directed furtive glances at the trees. Her fingers, dry and cracked, flexed on the steering wheel with blanched knuckles. The keychain hanging from the ignition thumped rhythmically against the dashboard.
She just wanted to get home, maybe read a book for a while, and then go to bed so her birthday would be over. Wendy glanced over at her bag on the passenger seat as it bounced with the movement of the truck. It had a blue ink stain on the bottom corner from a pen that had leaked and the adjustable buckle had turned from its once-shiny brass to a dull gray. But she loved the thing because her brothers had hand-picked it for her and had used their own money. It was the first and last birthday present they had ever gotten her.
Stuffed inside the bag were more drawings of Peter Pan and the mysterious tree.
It was a hot night and the cab was stuffy, but the air conditioner in her beat-up truck hadn’t worked since probably before she was born and Wendy didn’t want to roll down the windows. A trickle of sweat ran down her back as she leaned forward. Music would be a nice distraction. She would even take the whiny drone of one of the several country stations if it meant keeping her mind from wandering. She turned on the radio and a voice cut through the crackling speakers.
“An AMBER Alert has been issued in Clatsop County for eight-year-old Ashley Ford, who went missing from her home at twelve forty-five p.m. today—”
Wendy fumbled with the radio to change the station. It wasn’t that she didn’t care—she cared a lot—but she just didn’t think she could handle all of this. Not today, not now. Wendy could already feel the quaking in her chest and it was taking all of her concentration to keep it at bay.
She just wanted to get out of the woods and into her house. Wendy punched another preset on her radio but the same voice came through the speakers again.