Girlwood by Claire Dean Page A

Jenny overturned the desk drawer. Polly could have told them that the police had already gone through all of Bree's things and so had her mother and father, but her throat felt swollen shut.
    They turned the room inside out, finding nothing, then Jenny stomped to the open window. When she reached into her pocket for a tightly rolled joint, Kate made a grunting noise, like an infant growing hungry in her sleep. Jenny lit the joint and inhaled deeply, then turned her eerie gaze on Polly.
    "Want some?" she asked.
    Polly had been moving away; now she froze. She was shocked, horrified, and strangely, terribly thrilled. How many times had she put her ear to the wall to try to hear them? How many times had she loitered outside Bree's room, hoping
they'd ask her to come in, hang out? They were revolting and fascinating, everything she didn't want to be, yet so daring and indifferent she couldn't help but admire them. If Bree were here, she'd chase Polly out of the room and tell her to get her own life. But Bree was not here. The Fab Five hadn't even asked about her.
    She glanced over her shoulder. Kate watched her with a smirk, as if this were everyday stuff. Another twelve-year-old converted. Polly would never be like Bree, but what harm could it do to take one puff? Just to see what all the fuss was about.
    She watched the smoke rise like a genie out of a bottle and felt her heart hammering in her chest. But the moment she stepped forward, Jenny shrieked. A dragonfly had flown in the open window and buzzed past her lips.
    "My God!" Jenny said, jumping away from the sill. "What is that thing?"
    Kate put her hands over her head as the red-bellied creature whizzed toward her. Maybe it wasn't a dragonfly at all, but a colorful, shapely moth. As it circled Kate's head, Polly saw long, tattered wings and pinprick eyes of blue.
    Polly stepped back, startled, as Jenny flailed her arms. The dragonfly—or whatever it was—pirouetted and flew out the window.
    "Did you see that?" Jenny asked. "It looked almost like..."
    She paused, and Polly held her breath, waiting for her to say it. Waiting for someone cold and cynical to admit that if awful, vile things happened in the world, then magical, wonderful things must happen too. But Jenny merely shook her head, as if shaking off the vision.
    Polly hardly noticed when they left. She stood at the window and drank in the sight of the dragonfly doing loop-the-loops—a showoff if Polly ever saw one, tattered wings and all. Polly gripped the window ledge and thought of how close she'd come to ruining everything. It was too much to believe, which was exactly why she liked it. That was no insect but her sister, come to save
her.
    ***
    Polly was taking an algebra quiz when the first bulldozer rumbled by.
    "Dad got the go-ahead for Mountain Winds," Carly announced to the class.
    Polly stared at her test, but the numbers swam. Her mom must have handed over her environmental impact report, the one that said there was nothing in the woods worth protecting. Polly listened to the slow crawl of heavy equipment and stumbled through the remainder of the test. When the bell rang, she took one look toward her next class and headed the other way.
    Racing out of school toward the forest, she hardly noticed the light sprinkle or the puddles in the streets. Still a quarter mile from the woods, she knew that everything had changed. There, on a giant billboard, the sign had already gone up.
MOUNTAIN WINDS—HEAVEN ON EARTH!
1,000 LUXURY-HOME SITES .
TAKING RESERVATIONS NOW!
    On the edge of the woods, a double-wide trailer had been set up as a construction office, and a rough, new dirt road led into the trees. Polly bent forward, feeling dizzy. In the distance she heard diesel engines, chain saws, the rumbling of bulldozers. A tree shrieked as it fell and thudded against the earth.
    With a lump in her throat, she followed the new road. For a few minutes, the forest looked safe and intact, and she dared to