Boy from the Woods (9781311684776) (7 page)

Under the
trees, it was hot, dark and damp. The leaves swished in the wind as
rain still pattered down, bolts of lightning lighting up the woods
every now and then. Julia’s shoes left deep footprints in the muddy
soil that made her slip and almost lose her balance
twice.

Julia
came
to a stop, panting for breath.
Leaning against a thick chestnut tree, she spluttered a curse and
rubbed her ankle. Damn – she’d almost twisted it due to the
slippery mud. What a
stupid
idea it had been to go
running in this dreadful weather. She should have just taken the
bus. By now she could have been home sitting on the couch with dry
clothes on, sipping hot cocoa from her favorite mug. Instead, here
she was, soaking wet, half-shivering, and even somewhat afraid of
the heavy thunderstorm. In the oppressive darkness of the storm,
the trees seemed to surround her like a hostile army, their shadows
towering over her. In fact, the forest looked like it was about to
spit out an evil
Krampus
any moment. This would be
a good time to bump into a mythical woodland creature waving a
magic wand to transport her home, but alas – that wasn’t going to
happen.

Julia patted
the pockets of her jogging pants looking for Gaby’s iPod. Music
would
probably dispel her dark thoughts.
She turned on the player and slowly jogged on in the semi-darkness
as the first sullen tones of ‘A Forest’ by the Cure filled her
ears. Not the most cheerful song imaginable, but the fact that it
was the first song to start playing in shuffle mode was too much of
a coincidence for her to skip it.

Julia wiped the raindrops from her cheeks and
trudged doggedly on. The rhythm of the song spurred her on and made
her run faster, her heart beating wildly in her chest, tapping out
an indeterminate fear.

The singer
droned in her ears.
I’m lost
in a forest, all alone... I’m running towards nothing, again and
again and again
. Her hands clenched into
fists and her eyes squinted against the rain falling from the sky.
Only a few more minutes and she’d be home.

And then
something caught her eye
. She froze. In
the light of a bright lightning strike setting the forest ablaze
with cold fire, she saw someone lying on the ground. The black
stain of a person on the edge of the path. A motorcycle on its
side, smack in the middle of the forest trail.

Julia came to
a standstill, her breath ragged. With trembling, slippery fingers,
she
fumbled with the player to turn off
the music. She’d ended up at her favorite oak tree, the place
suddenly looking sinister in the gloom. Her throat turned dry as
she peered at the unconscious figure on the forest trail. Step by
step, she shuffled forward. Her eyes followed the tire tracks that
the motorcycle had made in the muddy soil. Julia’s heart stopped
when she came even closer and recognized the Honda bike.

No –
thi
s couldn’t be happening. She rushed
the last few yards separating her from the boy on the ground. Julia
fell down on her knees next to his lifeless body, her stomach
filling with dread as she noticed the left side of his face was
covered in blood.
He’d hit his head on a sharp-edged
rock. His head injury looked really, really bad.

“Michael?” she whispered softly, putting a
trembling hand on his forehead. “Can you hear me?”

He lay very
still, his lips almost blue in the macabre light of the
thunderstorm flashing occasionally. If only she could see whether
he was still
breathing! She couldn’t hear
him breathe over the din of the rain and wind in the
woods.

With shaking
hands, she grabbed her cell phone from her jacket pocket,
setting the camera to permanent flash. The
bright light illuminated Michael’s face, and tears welled up in her
eyes. He looked so lifeless… so vulnerable. For just a moment, she
forgot all about the horrible way he’d treated her. She’d wished
for all kinds of nasty things to happen to him, but not
this.

“Michael,”
she
sobbed, her voice breaking.
“Please,
please
wake up.”

Her heart
skipped a beat when he suddenly inhaled sharply. She took his hand.
Very slowly he opened his eyes, green like the forest leaves he was
lying under, his pupils dilated and black like the treacherous
darkness that had caused him to slip and fall in this dangerous
weather.

“Julia,” he
whispered in a soft, yet clear voice.

She swallowed.

Why did he
sound so different?
He pronounced her
name with so much emotion that she could almost believe he was
seeing her for the first time. She blinked
disbelievingly.

“I’ll get
help,” she managed to stutter before his eyes fell shut again, her
words making him smile faintly.

Twenty
minutes later, an ambulance with blue
,
flashing lights trundled up on the bumpy path through the woods.
Julia watched as if in a trance as the paramedics put Michael on
the stretcher.

“Can you tell us where we can reach his
family?” one of the EMTs asked her.

“Uhm, yes,” Julia stammered, whipping her
phone out again to look up the Kolbe family’s home number. “Why? Is
he still unconscious?”

The paramedic
shook his head. “No, he can talk.” He looked at the ambulance with
a worried frown. “But he seems to have lost his memory.”

“T
his is un-be-lie-va-ble,” Gaby
said with a face that spelled complete shock. She’d listened to
Julia’s entire story about Michael’s accident without interrupting.
“And
you
of all people finding him! I mean, how bizarro is
that?”

They were sitting in Julia’s bedroom with the
curtains drawn and New Age music playing in the background. It was
still raining outside.

“He was more
dead than alive,” Julia mumbled, staring at the
Lord of the
Rings
poster on her wall with
unseeing eyes. “That head injury of his… it gave me nightmares last
night.”

“Do you think he’ll ever fully recover? You
said he had amnesia?”

“That’s what
the paramedic said.” Julia shrugged. She was trying to sound
unconcerned, but in reality, the EMT’s diagnosis had kept her mind
whirling since yesterday. The hospital personnel had only been able
to contact Michael’s parents after the accident because
she
happened to have had an obsession with their son. Normally
speaking, she didn’t have every single number of all her
ex-classmates in her address book. Michael had lost his memory – he
hadn’t even been able to recall his own home number, or who his
parents were, let alone his last name.

So why had he
still remembered
her
name?

“Julia,”
he’
d whispered to her in a weak voice.
Had she been more important to him than he’d let on before? The
look in his eyes had been one of joy and recognition. He had
recognized
her
while he didn’t even know himself
anymore.

“You know,
I’m kind of ashamed of myself for saying he could drop dead for all
I cared, that night at the pub,” Gaby admitted, toying with the
rings on her right hand.
“You remember?”

Julia nodded.
“Yeah, he almost
did
drop dead. That paramedic
said he was one lucky bastard to make it out of an accident like
that alive. The blow to his head was devastating, hence the amnesia
and all.”

“Well, I’m
glad. I wasn’t
being serious when I said
that, of course.”

“No, of
course not!
Oh well – for all we know,
Michael will forget about his evil ways forever so he can start a
new life,” Julia said brightly, but she knew she was trying too
hard. There were too many unanswered questions about the situation
that bothered her.

“Would you girls like some lunch?” Julia’s
mother hollered upstairs. “I’m making pancakes.”

“We’re coming,” Julia called back.

“Great.”
Gaby
patted her stomach. “I’m starving. I
haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“I have to go
out after lunch,” Julia announced as they walked down the
stairs.
“I’m up for a job interview at the
bookstore.”

“Ooh, exciting!
Keep me updated.”

They barged
into the kitchen and sat down at the dinner table. Anne was staring
out the window with a pouty face. “Look at the lousy weather,” she
moped. “This way we’ll never get to finish that tree
house.”

“Come on, a bit of rain won’t scare you away,
will it?” Gaby teased the little girl.

“Why don’t you recruit Thorsten to do all the
dirty work?” Julia added with a wink.

Anne looked
sideways. “You ran into him the other day, didn’t you?
Sabine told me.”

“Yeah, I did.”
Julia shoved a big bite of pancake into her
mouth. Her baby sister was watching her like a hawk, and she
couldn’t stop herself from blushing a little.

Anne shrieked. “I
knew
it,” she triumphed.
“I
knew
you’d like him!”

Gaby
gl
ared at Julia from across the
table.
“Hey!
Why am I not
the first one to hear about this?” she demanded.
“Who
the hell is this Thorsten dude?”

“It’s
my
best friend’s brother,” Anne replied
instead of Julia. “Their family just moved here.
And
he’s really cute.” She glanced sideways at her big sister. “He also
talked about Julia with Sabine, you know.”

Julia
flushed a shade deeper. “Uhm – oh,” she
stammered, too flustered to make it sound nonchalant.
“Really?”

Anne gave her
a wide grin that rivaled the Cheshire Cat’s smile in enthusiasm.
“Yes,
really
,” she nodded, sounding
self-congratulatory.

Gaby
kicked
Julia’s shins under the table.
“Don’t hold out on me, girlfriend.
I want more info
ASAP.”

“Yes, Your Highness
Gabriella.
I will see to it.”

After lunch,
Julia and Gaby were wordlessly walking to the bus stop when Julia
decided to break the silence. “Something’s bothering me,” she
mumbled gingerly.

“Spill,” Gaby said.

“When I found
Michael, he opened his eyes and he said my name, but apart from
that, he didn’t remember
anything
else. Isn’t that odd,
him still being able to recall my name? I mean, he has
amnesia.”

Gaby
bit her lip. “Please, Jules. Don’t go there. So
he recognized you before he slipped back into unconsciousness. So
what? It doesn’t mean a thing.”

“But…” Julia
muttered.

“Look, I know
what you want, okay? You want to believe he has more intense
feelings for you than he was letting on before the accident. But
seriously, you
don’t
want to go down this road. He took your V-card
and didn’t even bother to call you back afterwards, and for
that
fact
alone he should be on your shit list forever. Michael doesn’t
deserve you, and you don’t deserve to get your heart crushed by him
all over again.” Slightly out of breath after her tirade, Gaby
grabbed Julia’s hand. “Just forget about him,” she
pleaded.

Julia
sighed.
“Okay.
All right.
You’re right.
I just thought it was
strange.”

“Strange but
true. And now for our next topic: Thorsten.
Who is he?
What does he look like? And when will you see him
again?”

Julia
couldn’t help but laugh. “He’s Sabine’s brother, and they live
across the street. He has black hair
and
blue eyes. As for when I’ll see him again – I have no clue. I only
talked to him for a few minutes.”

“So make sure
they turn into
hours next time,” Gaby
winked.

Julia looked up. “Oh, the bus is coming!
Let’s hurry.”

The two girls
broke into a run to catch the bus to town. Panting and giggling,
they boarded and walked all the way to the back.

“Can I have
my MP3 player back?” Julia asked once they
were sitting down.

Stupidly
enough, she hadn’t felt like listening to Gaby’s music ever since
Michael’s accident. The songs on her friend’s player reminded her
of that strange moment when she found Michael’s lifeless body in
the woods. She couldn’t let it go. Gaby could argue all she wanted,
but the few seconds in which Michael had stared up at her with that
unusual,
intense
look in his green eyes were etched in her
memory.

“I’ll see you
at O’Malley’s tonight,” Gaby said when she got
up to change buses. “Looking forward to hearing about your
interview! Good luck, babe.”

Julia waved
at he
r as the bus drove off again. They
were all meeting at O’Malley’s tonight. Florian had called her and
promised he’d bring Moritz too. The jubilant tone had been evident
in his voice: he was over the moon because of his new lover. Julia
smiled faintly when she thought back to the evening in Shamrock.
She was happy for Flo. It probably wouldn’t take too long before
he’d suggest taking his new boyfriend on the London trip as well.
Moritz had spent his entire childhood in the English capital, after
all, so he would be the perfect tour guide.