Nicki

Nicki is the manin character in a novel I'm working on called Swallow.  This is a scene that happens near the end of the book (although I haven't even written the middle of the book yet!).  It might end up being the prologue.  Who knows.  As usual, I don't know where my Outsider Girls will end up.  I just let them speak.

Nicki:  I know this place.  I know the woods we’re entering. 

I know them in spring, when white flowers bloom in clusters among yellow-green leaves.  I know the woods in summer, when the foliage is lush and thick, and you have to know these woods like I do to navigate them.  In spring and summer, these trees -- this woods -- means a private picnic… a time to rest from the sun, lie on the cool moss and be peaceful and alone. It's a happy place.
In the fall I've scooped leaves fallen from these trees.  Penny and I have rolled down this hill.  I've laughed here, in the fall.

I’ve also been at this edge of the woods in winter a thousand times at least, climbing the hill I’m being made to climb right now.  Every winter when I was a kid, I climbed this hill, trudging up the snowy slope, dragging my inner tube or sled or toboggan or whatever came for Christmas that year.

I’ve seen these trees so many times I know the way one tree grows at an angle, toward the right, oddly away from the sun – the little sun that remains on this bitter afternoon.

     The trees I know so well are bare.  Gray stalks with spidery branches.  Familiar.  
     Focusing on the trees calms me down enough so that I can breathe.  I’m scared, but not so scared to death like I was in the car, because I know this place.  It has always been friendly to me.

     Stumbling, I land hard on the frozen ground.

     Lisa grabs me and pulls me up, and her fingernails dig into my arm, but I can’t feel it because I’m too cold.

     “Why are you doing this to me?” I want to know.  I sound like a baby, but who cares?

     “Just keep moving, bitch,” Lisa says.