Leaving Woodvale Prologue

Xander, age 5

The day I met Abigail Sterling, she gave me the first safe place I’d ever known.

I was five years old, barefoot, and unsupervised, and my sole concern that evening was to save a grasshopper from an almost certain death. “Hey, buddy,” I whispered to him, crouching in the gravel at the edge of my yard. “Don’t go into the road.”

The tiny grasshopper watched me from the edge of a muddy tire rut at the end of the long driveway, his shiny green body perfectly still. I slowly lowered my finger toward him, but the second I touched him, he hopped away.

“Hey! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m nice.” I followed him, squat-walking over the gravel as he hopped again, right into the middle of the road. What a dumb little thing. I stood and hurried after the bug, trying to cup my hands around him before he got squished by a car.

I was still crouched near the middle of the road when Dad’s voice carried all the way from the house.

“...always making excuses!”

A door slammed somewhere inside, the bang loud enough to make me jump to my feet. Sometimes I worried Grandma and Grandpa could hear the fighting from their cabin just down the road, past the little patch of woods. It only took a couple of minutes to run there if I went as fast as I could. I’d often show up on their porch out of breath, never once telling them who or what I was running from. They weren’t supposed to know.

I hated secrets.

Some secrets were fun and silly, like when Grandpa and I snuck warm chocolate chip cookies off the cooling rack while Grandma was outside hanging sheets on the clothesline. He’d wink and call it “our little secret,” but Grandma spotted the crumbs on the counter as soon as she came inside. She’d point a finger right at us in shame, though her eyes crinkled up and she’d begin to laugh. 

But the secrets about my dad felt different. They made my stomach hurt the same way it did when I drank too much fizzy pop. Mom warned me to never tell anyone about the things he did when he was angry, because if I did, a stranger could come and take me away.  I didn’t know where strangers took kids or what happened to them afterward–I only knew I wouldn’t be able to live here anymore. I wouldn’t be able to catch frogs in the creek or run down the road to my grandparents’ cabin whenever I wanted. So I kept the secret. 

The grasshopper had made it even farther into the road while I was listening for another slammed door in the house. I crouched again and tried to guide him back toward the grass. There was mud packed under my fingernails, but maybe I could wash my hands with the hose before Dad saw. Tomorrow would be my first day of kindergarten, and I was supposed to look nice and clean.

And I definitely didn’t want a bruised butt.

I was normally careful about listening for cars when I played near the road, so when I glanced up and saw a shiny black van creeping toward me, my whole body jolted. I must have been so distracted by the grasshopper and the sounds inside the house that I hadn’t heard it approach.

The van slowed and pulled into the grass next to the cornfield on the opposite side of the road. My throat tightened as a woman opened the door and climbed out.

Maybe someone had heard the yelling. 

Maybe she was the stranger Mom had warned me about.

“I was trying to save a grasshopper,” I said before she could ask, like I needed to explain myself. The woman had orangey-red hair pulled into a ponytail, and she used one hand to block the sun from her eyes as she walked over. I nervously tugged on the bottom of my shirt. “I didn’t want him to get hit by a car.”

The woman came right up to me and touched my back, nudging me into my yard in a gentle sort of way. “And I don’t want you to get hit by a car, sweetheart,” she said, leaving her hand on my back. “People speed down this road sometimes, and it’s not safe.”

I tilted my head back to look up at her face. She was squinting at my house, like she was trying to figure something out. My dad wasn’t yelling anymore, but he could explode again at any minute.

“Are you out here alone, buddy?” 

For some reason, I told a lie. “My mom had to go inside to get a drink. She was playing with me a minute ago.”

The lady looked down at my dirty toes, and then she looked over her shoulder at the van, where a little girl opened the sliding door and hopped out into the road. She had reddish hair just like her mom’s, and she wore a yellow dress.

“Abigail, I told you to stay put.”

The little girl crossed her arms with a frown. “Michael just called me a dingus.”

“I’ll deal with that in a second,” the lady said, letting out this little sigh like she was annoyed. “Get back in the van, please. You–”

But Abigail looked both ways and crossed the road toward us anyway, and that was when I noticed all the freckles on her face. I’d never seen so many in my life. 

“I was trying to save a baby grasshopper,” I told her when she got close.

Abigail glanced all around the ground, her hair falling over her eyes. “Where’d he go?”

“I lost him.”

Her mom took her hand off my back, flipped open her cell phone, and quickly tapped a bunch of buttons. Then she put it in her back pocket. “What’s your name, buddy?” she asked.

“Xander.”

“And how old are you?”

“Five.”

Abigail studied my face, pushing her messy hair out of her eyes.  “I’m five, too.”

“Are you going to start kindergarten tomorrow?” I asked her, and she nodded. “My teacher’s gonna be Mrs. Bell.”

Her mom gasped, putting her hands on her hips. “Well, look at that. You two are going to be in the same class. And we live just down the road, so I bet you’ll ride the same bus, too.”

I nodded, noticing the way Abigail’s hand slipped into her mom’s. She leaned against her legs, giving me a shy smile like she was nervous all of a sudden. 

“Abigail’s been a little worried about getting on the bus with all the big kids in the morning,” her mom said.

I wiped my hands on my pants, looking into Abigail’s eyes, which were greener than the cornfield behind her. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure none of the big kids are mean to you.”

Abigail scrunched up her face like she’d just tasted something sour. “The meanest ones will be my dumb brothers.”

Over in the van, I could just barely see two boys sitting in the middle seat playing rock, paper, scissors. I bet they picked on Abigail a lot. I was the only kid in my house, but I’d watched a lot of movies where big brothers were mean for no good reason. Abigail’s brothers were bigger than me, but I knew a lot of cuss words that could prove how tough I was. I’d make sure they didn’t lay a finger on Abigail on the bus. 

“You can sit with me in the morning,” I said. 

She eyed my dirty hands and feet like she wasn’t really sure about me, but she still said, “Okay.”

Her mom smiled at us, crossing her arms. “That’s great! I’m so glad Abigail already has a friend for her first day of school!”

Abigail’s smile grew, and it made my whole body feel warm. 

I’d never had a friend before.

Her mom cleared her throat, looking over at my house again. “Xander, it’s going to be dark soon. I want you to stop playing in the road and head inside, okay? We’ll see you at the bus stop in the morning. Would you like us to bring you a blueberry muffin?”

I didn’t think I liked blueberries, but I shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess.” 

Abigail waved goodbye, and I watched her mom hold her hand as they crossed the road to get back in the van. And when they went all the way down the road to the blue house on the corner with all the sunflowers, I felt like I missed them already. But that didn’t make sense at all. How can you miss someone you just met?

That night, I made sure to scrub my fingernails really good in the bathtub. I scrubbed and scrubbed until my dad yelled for me to get my ass out of the bath. My mom lay down in my bed with me, but she was too sad and tired to read me a book that night. I was too busy thinking about my new friend, anyway.

The next morning, Abigail’s mom stood with us at the bus stop, and she gave me a warm muffin wrapped in a paper towel. I liked blueberries, after all. “I’m thinking of making cinnamon sugar muffins tomorrow. Would you like one of those?” her mom asked.

I nodded, my mouth too full to speak. 

On the way to school, Abigail cried so quietly the bus driver didn’t even notice. I didn’t know what to do, so I just held her hand and told her how I’d made a muddy racetrack for my matchbox cars in my yard. I talked about it some more during recess, and again when we sat on the rainbow rug in our classroom, until Mrs. Bell told me to zip my lips for the third time.

After school, Abigail came down the road to catch grasshoppers and check out the racetrack with me while her mom watched us with her hands on her hips. And that was how every afternoon went for a little while, until I started playing down in Abigail’s yard instead, where there was a sandbox and a tire swing. Her mom watched us from their back porch, always reading books and drinking iced tea.

Sometimes, Abigail’s dad came outside to push us on the tire swing. He’d push us higher and higher until his wife told him to be more careful, and he’d laugh and give us one final big push. He yelled at Abigail’s brothers sometimes, but they usually had it coming. And nobody got their butts whipped down at their house. When Mr. Sterling came home from work, nobody hid or panicked. Instead, they’d run out to his car for a hug, and he’d always hug them back, even when he looked tired. 

My stomach never hurt when I played down at the Sterlings’ house. 

It wasn’t until Abigail and I were a little older that we were allowed to play in the woods that stretched from my house to hers. Nobody knew about our special meeting place–a rusty, overturned washtub halfway between our houses, back behind my grandparents’ cabin. Abigail always liked to pretend the tub was the checkout counter at a bookstore, and I imagined it was a drum.

She knew all my secrets. She understood why I sometimes flinched at loud noises and never wanted to go home. We’d play until one of her parents called her name to come inside, and that was the only sound in the world I dreaded as much as the heavy footsteps of an angry man.

Because when Abigail left, the woods didn’t feel as safe, and I had nowhere else to go but home.