theories – she picked up her pace and headed straight for the entrance to the woods, as the dog’s barking faded.
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Caleb looked up slightly, taking note of Binny winding her way through the path into the woods. Binny storming past him wasn’t exactly a new sight. Caleb was used to giving people their privacy, and Caleb knew very well that Binny liked hers. He kept working, never missing a stroke in digging out a root that was threatening to upturn one of his raised wooden paths. Binny’s parents used to take walks in the woods with all three kids when they were younger. On particularly lazy days the Jordans would pause their walk and chat with Caleb. Binny’s mother Julie, would try and talk baseball with Caleb sometimes. Periodically he would bounce Cassie on his knee, gently reciting nursery rhymes they hadn’t heard of before. When the family continued on their trek, Caleb would return to his seemingly never ending list of horticultural tasks.
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It wasn’t that Binny didn’t like Caleb. She did. Everyone did. But Binny didn’t come to the woods for companionship. Especially not today, when the whole world seemed to be against her. People didn’t listen. And they didn’t do what they should. And the people that were supposed to tell them to follow the rules weren’t doing their job either. Who did you call when the people in charge weren’t being in charge properly? Binny’s accelerated pace took her quickly past the spot where Caleb was working. He hadn’t seemed to notice her, lost in some task of his. There were multiple paths through the Madrona woods. Despite how windy and confusing they could be, Binny knew them all. Binny liked how the woods could swallow you up. As she branched off a couple of times onto lesser and lesser known tracks, the branches of nearby trees seemed to intertwine and create a sort of canopy for her, almost a tunnel. Binny could still make out the shimmer of the lake through the trees to the east, but the sights and sounds of the houses past the edges of the woods were now gone. She’d arrived at her destination. To the casual observer, usually an adult observer, Binny had arrived at an old rusted out shell of a car. In fact, some adults might see this as less a car than a guaranteed trip to the hospital with its numerous rusty pieces of metal sticking out at various spots. But to Binny, this 1946 Chevrolet was a treasure – a secret hideout. The path Binny used to get here had petered out to the point where it was probably only her footsteps that kept it from completely disappearing into the forest floor. And the car itself was not much more visible. The vegetation was thick here and had enveloped one entire side of the car. A tree had grown inside it, coming up through the floor and growing through the window behind where the driver had sat. The forest had claimed the car just as Binny claimed this part of the forest. The car’s front seats were gone, as was the windshield and all the glass for that matter. The radio, the steering wheel, the mirrors – all gone. Anything that could be removed, had been. The back seat remained in place but pretty much all the fabric had been removed or destroyed by the elements many years earlier. What remained was really a car-shaped shell with a rusty roof. How the car got here Binny didn’t know, but she was pretty sure Caleb hadn’t made it too far in this direction yet or he would have cleaned it up. Maybe not the car itself, but certainly the pieces of junk Binny had dragged over to complete her sanctuary. She had laid two wooden boards across the springs of the back seat, making it a reasonable place to sit. An old tire made for a good place to rest Binny’s feet or lay her skateboard on when she had it with her. It was at this point that Binny would usually take a long sweeping look around her to make sure that she hadn’t been followed. What was the point of having a secret place if someone else found out where