Of the Trees Read online

“Clear out everyone!” Mr. McLean, their assistant principal, shouted. Tall and thin, he resembled a living scarecrow, waving his spindly arms toward the front door. The crowd didn’t shift though, a low murmur pulsing through. Cassie saw the twins, Sara and Stephanie, ahead and she pushed past a group of underclassmen to stand next to them.

  “What’s up guys?” she said, looping her arm casually around Sara’s shoulder.

  “Oh, hey Captain,” Sara returned brightly. “Not much, admiring the artwork.” Cassie’s attention was drawn to the side of their school before she could correct the younger girl for calling her Captain. In dark red, a large set of eyes had been painted with surprising skill for graffiti. The brows were heavy and oppressive over the eyelids, the irises shaded and multi-faceted in separate tones of red. They stared in a way that caught your attention, forced you to look, and get drawn closer. Under the leering orbs was a hastily scrawled message. The paint was still drying, looked tacky in places, and a large red glop dripped down from the exclamation point.

  Join us!

  “Join who?” Cassie asked, getting knocked forward as Laney finally fought her way through the crowd to stand behind Cassie. She could feel the grasp of Laney’s fingers on her arm as Laney stood on tiptoe to look over her shoulder. Cassie winced as her friend’s fingers found the fading bruises Ryan had marked her with at the carnival. The spots were yellowing now under her sleeve. Stephanie shrugged.

  “No one seems to know,” she said before lowering her voice to a whisper. “We think it’s freaking out Mr. McLean. Like he thinks it’s a gang thing or something.”

  Sara snorted. “Yeah, a gang. What should we call ourselves? The back-woods, one-stoplight, dirt-road thugs?”

  “I vote for the Hicks,” Stephanie said with a grin. “Simple, direct, really gets to the heart of who we are around here.”

  “True, but it doesn’t pay homage to our stop light,” Sara argued. “Do we get to pick a color, too? I vote for teal.”

  “Oh, yeah, teal!” Stephanie scoffed. “The color that strikes fear into the fuzziest of caterpillars!”

  “The eyes are pretty,” Cassie interrupted, turning for the first time to look at Laney. She was staring up at the graffiti, frowning. “Don’t you think?”

  “They’re creepy,” Stephanie said. “It looks like they’re watching me.”

  Cassie tilted her head, squinting up at the eyes. She tilted her head the opposite way. They did seem to follow her. Even painted, they looked deep, shadowed in dimension. They reminded her of the eyes she found carved into the tree on her hike with Ryan and a sensation like cold fingers skittered down her spine.

  “What do you think it’s painted with?” Laney said in a slow, small voice.

  “What? Like what kind of brush?” Sara asked, turning to see Laney for the first time. Laney shook her head, but before she could clarify, Mr. McLean started shouting again, and a flash of blue and red lights pulsated over the small crowd.

  “Now really, you have to go!” Mr. McLean yelled, waving his detention slip book high in the air. “You, Mr. Nass and you, Miss Brooks, to class now!”

  He shouted out the various surnames of students he recognized, waving blank slips at them. The students shuffled along slowly, heading in a group toward the door. Cassie saw her father at the front door. He was herding the group along, his briefcase still in hand, and he frowned in her direction when he saw she was among them. She grinned and shrugged, letting the warmth of the hallway engulf her as the surge of students swept her forward. The twins took off down the junior’s hallway. She and Laney just got to their lockers as the first warning bell rang.

  Cassie didn’t see Ryan until their first class together. She felt a fluttering in her chest and her face heating up as he made eye contact from the doorway. Ryan strolled in just as he would have done any other day, sat at the desk next to her, and casually asked, “Did you get the homework done for Benson?”

  “Who?” Cassie asked, her brow wrinkled as she regarded Ryan. He flipped through the drama book, not looking at her.

  “Mr. Benson,” he answered calmly. “You know, our teacher. Didn’t we have to start A Midsummer’s Night Dream last night?”

  “The play?” she asked stupidly, and it wasn’t until then that he looked up.

  “Um, yeah,” he said. “Wasn’t that due?”

  “Not sure,” she answered just as Mr. Benson started class. He shrugged and turned his face back to his book. She tried several times through Mr. Benson’s lecture and ensuing dramatic reading from the Shakespeare play to catch Ryan’s eye, but he didn’t glance her way. He even offered to read a part when Mr. Benson asked for volunteers. Cassie was so frustrated with how aloof he was being, as though she had imagined the kiss last night, that she could barely pay attention in class. She was called on twice and had to stutter out a few vague answers that barely made sense. Still, Ryan only regarded her with the typical polite, friendly smile. She could feel her forehead wrinkle as she looked at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “See you at lunch?” he asked, just after the bell rang. She nodded dumbly, too annoyed to formulate a better response. He offered a wry half-smile before walking toward the door.

  Cassie was unable to dwell on her frustration. Her next class started with a surprise, pop quiz. She finished it and then waited impatiently for the period to end, deciding to take the short cut by the front office to get to lunch. It ran right by the gym, and Ryan was there for class. Maybe if they talked without the presence of a full classroom or packed cafeteria surrounding them, he might be more inclined to mention last night.

  The halls were less crowded on this side of the building. The lights of the police cars were still splashing red and blue through the windows and all the way onto the walls of the main office. The office was separated from the hall by a half wall with a glass partition. From the way the secretaries were turned away from the desk, some with hands shielding their eyes, Cassie could tell the lights had been non-stop since that morning. Just as she passed the front door, it burst open, a rush of cold air swirling into the hallway. Cassie recoiled, knocking into the glass door of the office. She could feel the glare of the secretaries behind her.

  “So, you say there’s been more,” a soft-spoken voice asked. A small man with fine bone structure in a beige officer’s uniform followed Cassie’s stocky principal in through the front door.

  “In the lavatories,” Mr. Rossi admitted in a low voice. Cassie froze, keeping her body still and pressed to the glass door behind her. Something made her pause, made her want to hear what her principal would say next.

  “Which way?” the officer asked, his gentle manner incongruous with his starched, formal uniform, his shiny black belt loaded with heavy paraphernalia, most notably a gun. Mr. Rossi gestured down the hall to Cassie’s left.

  “It’s the same thing, I thought it was paint, but … Miss Harris!” Cassie jumped again, looking at her principal. He was unnaturally sweaty, especially for having just come inside from a brisk fall morning. “Where are you supposed to be?”

  “Oh, ah,” Cassie hesitated, the bell for class cutting her off. “Just getting something for my dad.”

  It was her old standby. Anytime she was anywhere in the school she wasn’t supposed to be, she dropped her dad’s name, said she was on an errand, and she was off the hook. Truthfully, he had asked her to get him things on occasion. As expected, Mr. Rossi gave a curt nod and flicked his wrist in a get-on-with-it motion that sent her backing into the office. She could always check her dad’s mailbox, pretend she found something to get him.

  Miss Keller looked up from the front desk, the false smile she usually wore slipping as soon as she realized it was Cassie coming in. The officer and her principal were already halfway down the hall, their footsteps echoing through the slam of classroom doors.

  “A little early to be picking up your dad’s mail, isn’t it?” Jane Keller asked, grinning over the counter at Cassie.<
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  “Yeah, well, The Penguin had me cornered,” Cassie said. Her principal’s short stature and rotund waist had earned him the nickname before the first day he worked was even over. It had stuck over the years. Miss Keller, though she worked for the school, wasn’t that much older than most of the students. She knew the nickname and Cassie had even heard her use it once or twice under her breath. She laughed now as Cassie leaned around the counter to watch her principal bounce down the hall. “He’s all bent out of shape over a bit of paint, isn’t he?”

  Cassie looked up to find Miss Keller strangely quiet. The knowing conspiratorial grin had slipped from her features, and something altogether more puzzling had replaced it. Cassie opened her mouth to ask, but one of the other secretaries—an older woman with steel gray hair—was striding to the front desk.

  “Yes, Miss Harris, can we help you?” she asked in clipped tones.

  “Sorry, no,” Cassie answered, grabbing at the late pass that Miss Keller slid hastily across the countertop even though she was headed to lunch and wouldn’t technically need it. “All set, thanks.”

  By the time she got into the cafeteria and bought herself a sandwich, the warning bell rung. Cassie would have no time to talk to Ryan. She barely had enough time to find a seat at his table to hastily chew through her lunch. Cassie winced in apology as Ryan smirked at her from the opposite end of the rectangular table.

  The rest of the day passed in a blur. Several of the girls’ lavatories were closed off, some with police tape covering the doorways. No one said why, though Cassie figured it had something to do with what Mr. Rossi had needed to show the police officer. They had stayed outside and in the halls for a long time, pacing quietly from place to place around the school, questioning teachers between classes. As far as Cassie knew, no one had approached any of the students, and there was no talk about closing the school down. None of her classmates knew why the graffiti was such a big deal. It was large, intricate, and a little weird, but not threatening, and not even subversive really.

  Still, the police stayed for quite some time, past lunch and through the class Cassie had right afterward before they finally packed up and left. Mr. Rossi paced the front of the school, redirecting anyone who was trying to leave through the main doors to the side entrance down the social studies hall. It would cause a swarm down that hall when the final bell rang, but it would also keep most of the students away from the front of the building, away from the eyes that glared seven feet wide and the words that dripped red when Cassie first read them.

  Join us!

  She wanted to see them again, felt strangely drawn to them. Though maybe that was just because the police and her principal were making such a big deal out of this, making it seem more dangerous than it was. After all, they were inanimate smears of paint, not real, and not actually watching anyone.

  Cassie found herself more and more concerned with cornering Ryan as the day wore on. She hadn’t had the chance to have one uninterrupted, private conversation with him all day. She wanted to pin him down, at least long enough to ask him to hang out with her after school while she waited for Laney to finish her meeting. Maybe when the rush of school and the constant sweep of moving students were out of the way, she’d have a chance to figure out what he meant by kissing her last night. She still couldn’t wrap her brain around it. Was he just being overly friendly? Did he like it? Did he want to do it again, maybe after dinner, or a movie, or even during said movie?

  Cassie didn’t know, didn’t know where she was supposed to go from here, and the uncertainty left her with a churning stomach. Her thoughts were jangled and scattered, and always came back to the moment when his lips pressed softly against hers.

  Her father caught up with her just as she was about to enter her last class of the day. Her teacher was waiting to close the door when Patrick Harris grabbed his daughter’s arm. “I’m going to pick you up after class, drive you home today, okay?”

  “Actually, Dad, Laney—” Cassie started, but her father broke in quickly.

  “Not today, Cass,” he murmured. “And tell Laney to keep her meeting short and get home, too, okay?”

  “All right, Dad,” Cassie said through a frown. She sighed as her vision of cornering Ryan imploded. She turned and hurried to her seat, shrugging at Laney’s quizzical expression.

  “Maybe I should just cancel today anyway,” Laney muttered. She flipped her textbook open, thumbing through the pages to find the one their teacher was writing on the board. “Everyone is freaked out.”

  “It’s just some graffiti,” Cassie whispered, exasperated. “We paint that stupid bridge every time any team wins a game, and no one cares. So what?”

  Laney shrugged, but her expression held that same tightness that Miss Keller’s had. Before Cassie had the chance to ask though, class started.

  Her father was waiting for her right outside her classroom door, whisking her away and repeating his warning to Laney. “Get home soon, okay? Call Cass when you get in.”

  Laney nodded, her brow furrowed as she watched Cassie get frog-marched toward the exit.

  “Okay, Dad,” Cassie started after she was seated safely in the passenger seat of her dad’s Volvo. The buckled snapped into place just as his door slammed closed. “What’s up?”

  “What?” Patrick grunted, pulling ahead of the long line of students streaming from the high school. “I drive you home all the time.”

  “Jane was freaked out this morning,” Cassie continued. “I mean, I get it when The Penguin freaks—”

  “Don’t call him that.”

  “—it’s pretty much expected by now. But you should have seen Jane’s face! I’ve never seen her that serious.”

  “It’s Miss Keller to you, Cassie,” her father huffed. She pursed her lips and stared him down, watching him squirm behind the wheel. “How about we splurge? Grab dinner somewhere?”

  “Sure,” she agreed, settling back into her seat. “And then you can tell me what’s going on.”

  Her dad pulled into the local pizza place. There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot. It was impossible to find the place empty. Someone was always gathering there. It was the usual hotspot for the town’s volunteer firemen and ambulance personnel. Their respective stations were less than a mile away, and so it must have been the easiest place to pull into. Even as Cassie was unbuckling, the ambulance pulled alongside them. Three guys and one girl, all dressed in navy blue, jumped from the various doors. A collective groan went up as their radios chimed, a voice cutting through the static to dispatch them to their next call.

  “I’ll run in and pay,” one of the younger guys said, dashing through the door that Cassie’s dad held open for him. He thanked him as he went through, throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the counter with a rushed, “Keep the change!”

  Cassie stood to the side, letting the young EMT with the swinging, brown paper bag rush past her. The rest were already in the ambulance, waiting to pull out. Just as the man holding the bag of grinders pulled the ambulance door open, a female voice sighed before saying, “Just once I’m gonna eat this sandwich when it’s still hot,” and then the door slammed shut. The ambulance pulled out, lights flashing and the slow whine of the siren warming up. The noise started as a single tone—a high pitch squeal—that sang out and then tumbled over itself into a rhythmic alarm.

  “Poor guys,” Patrick murmured, waving at the retreating vehicle.

  “Poor whoever they’re going to see,” Cassie added. The sirens petered off in the distance, muffled completely when Cassie let the door to the restaurant swing shut behind her.

  They ordered slices from the ready-made pies, and Cassie let her father finish his first slice, mushroom and pepperoni, before she started.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Cassie asked bluntly. He picked up his next slice of pizza, folded the crust between his fingers, and took a bite. Patrick chewed slowly, not looking across the table at his daughter until he had
swallowed. He looked around, his voice low when he finally answered.

  “The eyes on the side of the school,” he started, faltering when Cassie caught his eye. He paused again, looking hesitant.

  “Dad, c’mon,” Cassie urged. He gritted his teeth and put his pizza back on the greasy, paper plate in front of him.

  “It wasn’t paint, Cass,” he murmured. “It was blood.”

  Everyone knew by the next morning. A low current of excitement and fear pulsed through the school. Whispers sprang from the corners.

  “Pig’s blood.”

  “No, I heard sheep!”

  “Real, human blood. My cousin told me a Red Cross was broken into.”

  The speculations were wild and endless, but the strangest thing was that no one seemed to know who had done it.

  In a small town like theirs, it was hard to keep secrets. Everybody knew everybody, and that included the little old ladies in the corner market and the elementary school kids playing kickball in the park. If you messed up, someone saw, and that person typically already had your mom on speed dial and knew what time would be best to get a hold of her.

  Even the more subversive acts—the vandalism or teenage drinking, even the occasional baggie of pot that got hidden in the lockers, even the things no one wanted the parents to know—your peers knew anyway. They may not rat you out or get you in trouble, but someone always knew who was behind it.

  Cassie knew about the time Aaron Phillips had freaked out, shoving his lunch bag (containing his experimentation with pot brownies) into his best friend’s gym locker because he heard there may be locker checks. Will Nonken had smelled like chocolaty pot all afternoon, and everyone knew why, but no one told on Aaron. When Lessie Madison got drunk before last year’s prom, showing up with blood-shot eyes, Miss Browning shoved sunglasses at her and told her firmly to keep them in place that night. Everyone knew; no one cared.

  But no one knew who the local artist was. A few people had been asked. Ami Henderson would have been a safe bet—she was an amazing artist, and her bag was always spattered with fresh paint—but Cassie heard her asked in the halls. She had denied it, shaking her head and shrugging in confusion when asked who she thought it was.