The Little Woods by McCormick Templeman

weenies,” Chelsea said, lighting a cigarette. “There’s nothing scary in these woods.”
    “Like hell there isn’t.”
    “Chelsea, dude,” Alex said, adjusting her on his lap so he could look her in the face. “All due respect, but everyone knowsthese woods are straight-up haunted. We do this walk all the time, and there’s always some scary fucking noise that can’t be explained. Ask anyone.”
    “That’s such nonsense. I grew up in these woods. You’re hearing coyotes.”
    “We’re hearing fucking Bigfoot or the yeti or some shit,” Brody said, laughing.
    “I’ll tell you what we’re hearing,” Alex said, leaning in, his voice lowering to a moody whisper. “We’re hearing the lost girls.”
    Helen straightened up. “That’s not funny, Alex. Don’t talk about it.”
    My chest clenched.
    “Oh my God, you guys, Wood doesn’t know,” Pigeon said, getting all flustered and gesticulating haphazardly. “The woods are haunted. These two little girls were murdered out there.”
    I coughed, and the cracker I was eating went spewing all over the glass coffee table.
    “They weren’t murdered,” Noel said, color rising in her cheeks. “They died in a fire.”
    “No.” Pigeon shook her head dramatically. “Seriously, you guys. They wandered off into the woods or whatever, but they were totally murdered.”
    I clenched my teeth and tried to slow my breathing. This was not the turn I’d expected the conversation to take.
    Chelsea stood up and circled the group, leonine, in search of something to pour into her empty glass. “Um, why have I never heard this story?”
    “Because you don’t go to our school,” Brody said, pretending to snarl at her. “Why are you even here, Chelsea Vetiver? Aren’t you supposed to be at Exeter?”
    “The semester hasn’t started yet. Anyway, I call bullshit.”
    “No,” Noel sighed, resigned. She poured more wine into Chelsea’s glass and then into her own. “It’s true. It was before you and your grandparents moved here. One of them was our bio teacher’s daughter.”
    “Yeah,” Freddy said, shaking her head with the appropriate level of detached sympathy. “The little girl and her friend died in a fire out here in the woods. It was incredibly tragic.”
    “So, what,” Chelsea sneered, “they just wandered out into the blazing forest and died? And one of them was your bio teacher’s kid? What the hell?”
    “I know, right?” Pigeon expectorated. “You’d think she’d be, like, all weird, with too many scarves or something, but she’s totally normal. Like nothing ever happened. People only act that innocent when they’re guilty, am I right?”
    Helen raised her eyebrows. “Pigeon, tell me you’re not suggesting that Ms. Snow killed her own child.”
    Noel drew in a sharp breath. “Pigeon.”
    “I assume she set the fire too?” Helen sneered. “Think before you speak, Pigeon.”
    “No, it’s like … suspicious, right? They never found the bodies. How did they just disappear?”
    “Whoa, Pidge,” Alex said. “Watch it.”
    “No. She’s probably right,” Chelsea groaned, draining her glass. “It’s always the parent. Hey, Wood, you okay there? You’re looking a little peaked.”
    I tried to get myself together and smile along with the rest of them.
God, what an idiot
. How naïve of me to think they wouldn’t know about Clare just because she was before their time. Of course a thing like that lingered. It was, I knew, now or never. I would never be able to go back to this moment and say,
Hey, you know, that was my sister who died in that fire. I guess I just forgot to mention that
. If I kept quiet and someone found out later, it would be a disaster. The smartest thing would be to tell them right then and there. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Clare was a part of me I didn’t share.
    I furrowed my brow and cleared my throat. “Doesn’t it seem weird to you guys, though? I mean, I just got here, like, five days ago, and