Ivy of Our Hearts

Five

We stood there for minutes, letting the rain lash our skin, tracing over the letters with our eyes, memorizing their sharp dips and bends.

It was obvious a person had written the poem, our initials-the heart. And while my secret made me aware of why my name had been etched into bark, why Margaret's?

Envy struck me, as hot and as quick as lightning. There wasn't a person who could not notice Margaret's beauty, and while I'd never envied her pale skin over my golden brown, just once I'd wanted someone to not notice how in the sunlight strands of her hair shimmered like threads of gold- she was a faerie's child.

And I was carved from my mother's hips, her spit fire tongue.

"I guess we were right," she said. "Someone is playing a cruel trick on us." She put her hand on her left pocket where her ribbon was, as if to feel if it was still there.

She didn't say it, but I knew she thought who. Who would do such a thing? As we made our way to the sycamore, she grabbed my arm, making me stop. "I bet it's Hunter, Hunter Wright. Remember? He had a thing for you and was upset when you turned him down last year. Or maybe Patrick. I bet he's still upset you saw him wet himself during PE."

She gasped and shook my arm as if I wasn't already listening. "It must be Alice. She didn't like when Jacob asked me out, even though she said it was okay. I bet she staged the whole thing to get even with me." She started ahead, pulling me forward, then stopped. "If someone knows we're here that means our parents must be looking for us." She frowned, and I thought I saw what could have been the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

It wasn't like we didn't know they would be. But standing there in the rain, Margaret reminded me of one of those children who'd been left at the mall. I expected her to say what any child who'd been left behind would say. "I want to go home. I want mommy and daddy." She didn't. Lightning flashed overhead, splitting the sky in two, distracting us from what we couldn't say. When it passed, when our eyes met, all fear had been wiped from her face. Instead, she wore an expression that not even an ax could slice through.

"We shouldn't let them scare us," she said, wiping rain off her face. "They're a bunch of chickens anyway for hiding in the trees."

An image of someone camouflaged in the trees ready to pounce flashed through my mind. "No, we shouldn't let them scare us," I said.

***

Twigs snapped. Grass crunched. Wings flapped. I woke, breathing hard. Sometime during the night, the flashlight had gone out. I couldn't see, but someone lingered in the dark. I felt around in the dirt for the flashlight and my hand closed around Margaret's ankle.

She mumbled in her sleep, "What is it, Ivy?"

There was another snap, but I couldn't tell if the person was walking away or coming towards us. On my knees, I spun, patting the dirt, until I found it. My pulse roared in my ears. I felt for the switch, moved it forward and backwards but nothing happened. "Come on," I said. I heard what sounded like the wings of a monster and felt the tickle of a hundred bugs crawling along my neck.

I held the flashlight against my chest, searching the dark, listening. Something brushed against my leg and I jumped to my feet, wielding the flashlight like it was a sword and I would cut off the privates of any man who tried to harm us. "Le-leave us alone," I said. I swung my arms but hit air. I didn't stop swinging until I couldn't anymore. My arms burned like I'd tried to uproot a tree. I bent over to catch my breath. Other than my own breathing, the only noise came from Margaret stirring in her sleep.

***

"You must have been dreaming," Margaret said the next day when I told her what happened. She popped a piece of her granola bar into her mouth. We had wandered to the brook. The sun had just risen, so except for a few chattering birds, the woods weren't quite awake yet. You couldn't find peacefulness like this anywhere else.