My Family Abandoned Me in the Woods novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Fifth Bus
Callie takes five buses to the sister's new house and finds a gravel lot, a drone and her fiance laughing on the ridge; they drive off and an engine starts in the trees.
I was scrubbing my last patient's teeth on Thanksgiving morning when my sister posted in the family chat.
"WE MOVED!!! New house, new start. Dinner at four. Everybody be there, Callie especially."
Under it she had dropped a map pin and a row of turkey emojis.
My fiance Trevor sent a thumbs-up within a minute.
My mother wrote, "So proud of my girls. Don't be late, Callie."
I looked at the pin for a long time.
Then I clocked out, took my duffel from my locker, and started the trip.
It took five buses.
The first three were city buses. The fourth was a county shuttle that smelled like wet dog. The fifth was a minivan with a handwritten sign, and the driver was the only person aboard besides me.
"Sable Creek Trailhead," he said at half past three. "You sure this is your stop, miss?"
"My sister's moving in here."
He looked out at the trees and then back at me.
"There's nothing out here but the trail, and the lot closes at dusk."
"It's fine. Thank you."
I stepped down onto gravel.
The van turned around and left.
There was no house.
There was a gravel lot with a gate across the far end and a wooden notice board with a roof of cedar shakes.
Pinned to the board, behind scratched plastic, was a flyer for a missing boy.
The paper had gone the color of weak tea, and the photo had faded to a few gray shapes.
I walked past it without reading it. I had never read it.
My phone showed one bar and eleven percent.
I did not call anyone.
I already knew what this was.
Three weeks earlier I had found a second phone in Trevor's gym bag, and on it a folder called SEASON 2: THE FIANCEE.
It held eight months of clips of me.
Me crying over a burned dinner. Me trying on a ring in a store. Me thanking his mother for a casserole.
Every one of them had been filmed by my sister's camera, from behind a door or a window, or from Trevor's own pocket.
So I had sold my car. I had signed a lease in Missoula, Montana, and accepted a job there that started Monday.
I had come today for one reason.
I wanted to say it to their faces.
A light blinked high up on the ridge above the lot.
It was a drone, hovering, the red light turning.
Then voices came down the slope.
Brooke came first, in a white puffer jacket, holding her phone at arm's length and walking backward so the lens stayed on her own face.
"Hi, my loves! It's Thanksgiving, and look who finally made it!"
Behind her came my mother, and behind my mother came my dad, who didn't meet my eyes.
Last of all came Trevor, with his hands in his pockets and a grin I used to think was kind.
"Surprise," Brooke sang. "Welcome to the new house, Callie. It has a very open floor plan."
My mother laughed into her hand.
Trevor laughed out loud.
He was the one who had texted me at the third bus stop, "Enjoy the trip, babe. Brooke has a surprise."
"Five buses," Brooke told her phone. "Forty thousand of you bet she'd quit by the third. She's the most trusting person alive."
I set my duffel down on the gravel and let her film me.
"Is this where I say I'm hurt?" I asked.
"Oh my God, yes," Brooke said. "Please. Cry a little."
"Trevor."
He lifted his eyebrows at me. "Babe, it's a bit. You know I love you."
I took the ring off my finger.
It left a pale band behind, and the air bit at it right away.
I held it up in front of Brooke's lens.
"I ended it three weeks ago," I said. "I just didn't tell you."
Trevor stopped grinning.
"I found the second phone," I said. "Your folder is very well organized."
For one second, nobody on that gravel said a word.
Then Brooke laughed again, higher this time.
"That's good. Is that part of the bit? Keep that in, Mom."
My mother stared at me.
She did not stare at Trevor.
I set the ring on the ledge of the notice board, under the missing boy's flyer.
"I'm already gone," I said. "You're just the last to know."
Brooke tilted her head to her camera.
"She'll be begging for a ride in an hour," she said. "Come on, everybody. Dinner's in the car."
They walked back up the slope toward the ridge road.
My dad looked over his shoulder once, and kept walking.
Trevor picked up my duffel from the gravel where I had set it down, and carried it off with him.
I did not realize until their engines turned over that it held my wallet and my charger.
Their cars pulled out one by one.
Then the sound faded down the long gravel road, and the lot was empty.
The last bus back to town had gone at three.
It was thirty-four degrees, with snow coming, and my phone said nine percent.
Behind me, in the trees, an engine started up.
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