Into the Wild(12)

Helicopters whirred overhead, and the reporter clutched at her coat as it fluttered around her. Gas stations did not just sprout trees.

“We have been told that a SWAT team has been ordered on the scene, and police are currently evacuating the surrounding area.”

Boots sauntered into the living room. “Unless you found me a girlfriend, I’m going back to sleep.” He froze mid-stride as the camera panned away from the self-service island across police cars, TV station vans, and a crowd of onlookers held back by police tape.

Looming over the crowd was a thick, dark forest.

“Oh, no,” Boots said.

Julie barreled up the stairs. She grabbed the key from Mom’s jewelry box, and she unlocked her bedroom door. “Please, no. Please,” she said. She dropped beside her bed and yanked up the dust ruffle.

Aside from a few green stains, nothing was there.

This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. She’d had nightmares like this. She flopped her stomach to the floor and crawled under the bed. “Please be here. Please!”

It wasn’t.

Julie wormed back out from under the bed. “No,” she said. “No!” It couldn’t be gone. She looked around her room—nothing under her desk, nothing behind her bookshelf. She opened her closet and shoveled clothes off the closet floor into the center of the room. She pulled the drawers out of her dresser. She searched the drawers in her desk. She ripped the covers off her bed.

Finally, there was no place left to look. She stood in the center of her wrecked room. Somehow, the Wild had escaped. Worse, it had escaped and grown. It wasn’t hidden anymore.

Clapping her hands over her mouth, she ran for the bathroom. She fell in front of the toilet and retched. Government laboratories. TV documentaries. National Enquirer articles. Talk show specials. She’d be branded a freak forever. She’d never be able to have a normal life. The whole world would know she was Rapunzel’s daughter.

Why? Why? WHY? She hadn’t asked for this. She hadn’t asked for a mother with secrets this big. She hadn’t asked for a mother who wasn’t supposed to exist.

She had, in fact, wished her mother wasn’t her mother.

Stomach empty, she sank down on the bath mat. What if . . . Oh, God, could her wish have somehow caused this? Was this her fault? “No, no, no,” she said. “I take it back! I didn’t mean it!”

But she had meant it when she’d said it.

“Please, I take it back!”

How did you undo a wish? The words were out, dissolved in the air. You couldn’t suck them back in. She’d said it; it was done. And now the Wild was free . . .

No. She couldn’t have caused this. She hadn’t wished in the well. Just wishing aloud couldn’t do anything. Hundreds, thousands, millions of people wished all the time, and their wishes didn’t all come true. Look at how often she had wished for her dad. If her wishes had power, it wouldn’t be just her and Mom.

Whatever had happened with the Wild, Mom would know how to fix it. Julie had to call her and tell her the Wild was free. I can’t, she thought. How could she tell Mom that their worst nightmare had come true? How could she face her after what she’d said?

Knees shaking, Julie got to her feet. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth. Laboratories, she reminded herself. National Enquirer. She had to tell Mom.

Julie went downstairs. “As far as can be determined,” she heard the TV say, “it appears the growth began in the vicinity of a local establishment, the Wishing Well Motel.” She missed the last step and landed hard on the heels of her feet. Grandma . . .

She hurried to the phone and dialed the number for Rapunzel’s Hair Salon.

No one answered.





Chapter Six

Behind the Yellow Tape

As Julie coasted into the parking lot of Rapunzel’s Hair Salon, she heard cheesy ’80s music drift out the open door. It sounded so cheerfully normal that for an instant, she thought maybe she was wrong. Maybe the Wild wasn’t growing. Why would Mom be listening to the radio if the Wild was growing? She propped her bike against the bike rack and went inside. “Mom . . .” She halted beside the reception desk.

All the lights were on, and one of the dryers was blowing hot air on a vacant chair. Julie felt her heart drop into her stomach.

The salon was empty.

The salon was never empty.

“Mom?” Her voice came out as a squeak.

“Oh, honey,” she heard. The mirror! She’d forgotten the mirror! The mirror’s smoke-like face drifted across the glass over Julie’s reflection (frizzed hair, red sweater and jeans). “Haven’t you heard?” the mirror said. “The Wild Wood has returned.”