“Of course,” I said, lifting her up and handing her to Catherine.
She held the cat in her arms and rocked it, as though it were a baby.
“Come on, it’s time to go,” said Rachel, appearing in the doorway wearing her coat.
It was one I hadn’t seen before, made of fur, which I guessed was fake. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost eleven.
“Go where?” I asked.
She pointed at me, smiled, and started to sing.
“If you go down to the woods tonight, you’re sure of a big surprise.”
“I don’t want to go to the woods. It’s late and cold and—”
Rachel ignored me, and pointed at Catherine instead while singing the next line.
“If you go down to the woods tonight, you’d better go in disguise!”
Zoe and Helen appeared behind her and all three started laughing.
The woods never scared me during the day, but at night they seemed to change into something different when I was a child. Somewhere dark and dangerous, where bad things might happen. It was meant to be my birthday party, but it was clear that what I did or didn’t want to do was irrelevant. Rachel took my mother’s flashlight off the hook by the door in the kitchen, and led the way. There was a path from my backyard that led straight into the woods, and she knew it as well as I did by then.
I remember the sound of us all walking over a carpet of dead leaves.
I remember the cold.
And I remember seeing four men sitting on makeshift log benches, in what I thought was our secret, private place. They had lit a small fire in the middle, surrounded by white stones. It flickered and hissed and spat.
They all smiled when they saw us.
I didn’t recognize the men. Even after what happened, I could never describe their faces. In my broken memory of that night they all looked the same: skinny with brown hair, four sets of small black eyes with dark shadows beneath them. They were much older than us, late twenties or early thirties maybe, and they were drinking beer. Lots of it. There was a pattern of crushed cans around their feet.
I was scared at first, but Rachel clearly knew them, as did Helen and Zoe. They went straight over and sat on the men’s laps.
“This is Anna. She’s new and she’s sweet sixteen at last. Aren’t you going to wish her a happy birthday?” Rachel said.
“Happy birthday, Anna,” the men replied with strange smiles on their faces.
They seemed to be amused by something.
Rachel draped an arm around my shoulder, and I noticed her fur coat again. Perhaps because I was so cold in the skimpy dress she had made me wear.
“Do you like my new coat?” she asked. “Zoe made it for me.”
Zoe was always making things for her friends: pencil cases, cushion covers, tiny little dresses. She bought the most interesting material she could find in markets, and borrowed her mother’s sewing machine to make her creations, but I’d never seen anything as elaborate as a coat before. It looked so real. I couldn’t stop staring at the fur.
“I’ll let you borrow it if you come and say hello to our new friends,” Rachel said. “They’ve been waiting to meet you.”
She took me by the hand, and led me to the nearest man. Then she told me to sit down on the fallen tree trunk next to him. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to be rude either. So I sat down next to the stranger, who stank of body odor and beer. When I started to shiver, he rubbed my bare leg with his big ugly hand, saying it would help me warm up.
Catherine Kelly sat down next to me, and looked as frightened as I felt.
A bottle of vodka was passed around, along with strange-smelling cigarettes. More logs were added to the fire, and dance music was played. Which seemed odd to me, given nobody was dancing. I thought the men must have owed Rachel some money, because they all took out their wallets and gave her a handful of notes. I thought it might have been for the pills she took out of her purse, but that wasn’t all the men were paying for.
“Take one,” she said, coming over to Catherine and me.
There were two little white shapes in her hand. They looked like mints, but I knew enough to know that they weren’t.
“No, thank you,” said Catherine, and I shook my head too.
“You do want to be in our gang, don’t you, Catherine?” Rachel asked.
The girl stared up at her. Then she took the pill, washing it down with vodka straight from the bottle.
“And you don’t want to be the new odd one out, do you?” Rachel asked, looking at me.
I took one too. She smiled, then kissed me in front of all the others. She stuck her tongue deep inside my mouth, and afterward I wondered whether it was just to make sure I’d swallowed the pill. The men clapped and cheered while they watched.