After the Woods by Kim Savage

Author:Kim Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374300562
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

EIGHT

360 Days After the Woods

Shane refuses to acknowledge my glare across the hospital waiting room, his pale eyes fixed on the high-mounted TV. I search for guilt in his mouth, the angle of his shoulders, the set of his cheeks with their spray of rosacea bumps, but there is nothing. Eventually, he tosses his chin, remembering I am Julia Spunk and he’s known me since he was little, or, more likely, that I have a murky relation to the girl he’s hooking up with.

Beside me, a teenage sister and brother text nonstop while their mother cries into a tissue. A guy with a new baby and a toddler tries to jostle the baby while interesting the toddler in an aquarium built into the wall. On TV, a woman with saggy chins is told to pack her knives and leave a reality cooking show. The baby shrieks like a cat. Over the din, I hear Deborah’s tinkly laugh, followed by her struggling to push an empty wheelchair alongside a jacked orderly who resolves the problem by kicking up the chair’s metal feet.

Deborah stops short and coos, “Why, it’s Shane Cuthbert! And Julia!” oozing charm in front of the handsome orderly with the pipes. “You’re a little late for a visit. Liv is about to be discharged. It was just a touch of mono.” She looks pointedly at Shane. “No flowers?”

Shane, low in his seat, lolls his head to one side. “No, ma’am.”

Deborah looks up at the orderly. “Everyone has been so worried about Liv. Popular girl, you can imagine. Well, this works out perfectly. You two can keep Liv busy while I sign the discharge papers. First door on the left.”

Shane rises and slinks down the hall. I follow at a distance. He stands at the doorway, as if to say, Me or you?

“You go,” I say roughly.

Hands jammed into the pockets of his shredded jeans, he sways his hips and gives me a once-over.

“What are you looking at?” I say, so sharp it slices the air.

He nods, smirking, and slides into her room. I sink to the corridor floor and wrap my hands around my knees as Liv calls out, “Shane, oh my God. Thank you for coming. I’m already discharged, believe it or not. I would have told you…”

The door closes partway. “You didn’t answer my texts,” Shane says.

I scramble to the door and place my ear flush to the crack.

“The service in here is very spotty,” Liv says.

“I’ve been worried,” he says, hangdog. “I love you, Liv.”

“Oh, Shane. That’s so sweet. I don’t deserve you.” A creak, the sound of her shifting in her bed. “You know what I learned? The incubation period for mono is four to six weeks. You might want to get checked.”

“When did you start feeling sick?” he says, suspicion threading his voice. I can hear the gears in his head turning, see the bubble over his head that says, We starting screwing around on this date … Even Shane is capable of mental math.

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