The Chickadee Girl

The Edge of Bathwick Forest

"Week was a B flat!"

"Shut up, Daphne!" Cass trumpeted back, annoyed and also thrilled.

From down the hall, the sound of a keyboard being lightly struck.

"And "Daph-ne" was a C sharp to D."

"Stop listening to conversations you haven't been invited into!" 

A distant laugh. "You invite everyone into your conversations, Cass. Your words ring. You're a slutty conversationalist."

Isa giggled, and lowered the blanket. A goddess appeared in the door, natural hair fanning out around her face.

Headmaster Harris hated Daphne's hair, and it clearly cost him a lot not to mention it. Daphne knew it, and smiled full in his face when she saw him, eyes daring him to comment. He'd never spoken her name aloud – any group that Daphne was part of, Harris would choose another student to address while using his eyes to shave Daphne bald. The black halo of hair made her a nameless thing, in his eyes, and Isa despised him for it. 

"You're a pain in my ass, Daphne." Cass rose from her chair. "But I bought your damn mango juice anyway. Don't ask me why."

She retrieved a large bottle from a violet canvas bag that she'd tossed on her bed, and handed it to Daphne, who came across the room to meet her halfway. Their hands touched as Cass handed it over, and Isa saw them both blink.

Daphne raised the bottle at Isa and Cass in turn, removed the lid, and tipped half of it down her throat. Cass made a scandalized squealing sound. Isa laughed.

Daphne wiped a trickle of mango juice from her chin, and raised her eyebrows at Isa.

"You still in bed, Piper?"

Isa sat up and stretched. Shrugged. Saturday.

Daphne continued to stare at her. "You ok?"

The question annoyed her. "Yes. Are you?"

"I'm fine. YOU have claw marks all over your arms." Daphne crossed to Isa, and ran her fingers down her arm. Isa looked down, and saw for the first time that she must have been digging her nails into her arms as she lay in bed. She hadn't felt it. She looked up, and met Daphne's eyes. Her friend's fingertips had come to rest lightly on her shoulder.

Daphne was the owner of the house's best poker face. Her eyes were honey-coloured, but betrayed little emotion, as she cocked her head at Isa. 

"I'm fine, Daphne."

"Yeah."

Isa clambered out of bed. Cass, oblivious, had bored of the conversation and buried her face in the textbook on her desk. Daphne perched on the end of Isa's bed, and pulled her long legs up that her chin rested on her knees. Isa felt her friend's eyes following her around the room.

***

She slept soundly, her head resting on the dog's haunches. When she woke in the morning it was because he had risen and was staring at her meaningfully. This was a look which even she, a new dog owner, could immediately interpret. Glancing around carefully, she again released him out the front door of Peyman, where he gratefully relieved himself and barked a threat to some birds perched in a tree overlooking the yard. She had to smile - he wasn't the least bit concerned about being heard, clearly, and she allowed that thought to cheer her: they were leaving today. 

Stagger, whatever he was, had not appeared again. Perhaps he had been scared off by the presence of the dog. The more she turned this idea over in her head, the more likely it seemed to her that this was the case.

They set out perhaps a half hour later, Isa having appropriated a camping-sized backpack from Kate Caldwell's closet. Much too large to use for books, it was clearly intended only for serious hiking, and was therefore in absolutely pristine condition. Isa tried to conjure up a picture of Kate venturing out to any destination more ambitious than a Scandanavian spa, and couldn't. 

She examined herself in the bathroom mirror. She was clad in Daphne's jeans; she herself didn't own any. Her mother considered them something that teen girls wore shortly before they got pregnant and dropped out. Isa had layered a thicker sweatshirt of her own over a t-shirt of Cass's, and thrown a jacket into the backpack, in case she was still in the woods when night fell. The very thought of this was enough to chill her, but she needed to be prepared in case Midas proved an ineffective guide, or the distance to the farms was further than it looked on the map.

The remnants of the map were left strewn on Cass's desk - it had begun the night in two pieces, and ended up in eight. The oil from Isa's strolling fingers had permanently stained the surface of the paper -- each path was now visible only as a wandering line of softly translucent digit-marks. As they left her room, Isa pulled the door shut behind them, and locked it with a key she had found in Alcott's desk the night before. She wasn't sure why she bothered to do this - but if Stagger was still around... she felt she owed that to her absent friend to keep him out of their sanctuary.

Because, at this point, she'd accepted that there was at least a possibility that Cass was dead, along with Daphne and the Alcotts' children and everyone else on campus. It was possible. If this had been a prank, they would all have grown tired of their game and returned long ago. If there had been some sort of disaster nearby and they'd all been evacuated, someone official would have come back looking for survivors, or she would have seen planes or helicopters overhead. None of it made any sense, even still.

They entered the woods at the official trail entrance. The hacked-apart remains of a dark grey boulder stood at the entrance to Bathwick Forest, the left-behind piece of the rock that now served as the altar in the chapel. The enormous rock had been split in two, and the more attractive half carted off to be polished and shaped. The remaining piece, which jutted out naked and exposed, made Isa sad in a way she didn't quite understand.