The bark of the pine is rough, jagged, gnawed like a sheet of rusted metal. Gluey sap trails from the knotholes. If I press against it, it will rip out strands of my long hair.

The tree doesn’t want me here. It would like to scratch me, sting me. It would like me not to be so close. The woods want me gone.

I peer out from around the trunk.

There’s enough moonlight pushing through the hazy sky that I can see everything. The woods. The lawn. The low, shingled house. I can see his bedroom window.

It’s on the very end of the house, the only window in the short stretch of wall. There are curtains, gray ones, but they’re almost never closed. On quiet nights I can hear him practicing. Composing. Fractured bones of music tumbling through the window.

There’s no music now.

First he’ll shower. Sometimes he’ll eat, if his mother talks him into it. Then he’ll head to his room. He’ll pet his cat. He doesn’t always turn the lights on. But I know when he’s there.

I shift my foot on the thick pine needles. Inch forward for a better view.

The woods watch us both.

A crunch of tires. Voices in the trees. Car doors slam.

Someone has parked on the shoulder of the road, out of sight of the Thorsons’ house. I can hear them, two, three, four of them, their running feet on the pine needles as light as a family of deer.

Gold limbs and sleek brown hair flashing past me. Frankie. Her friends scamper in the trees to my right. One of them holds up a glass bottle, threatening to splash it. All of them laughing. The woods hold their breath.

I crouch beside the big pine. They don’t notice me.

Frankie flits to the bedroom window. I watch her climb onto a stump, tap at the glass. A second later the window rises.

Anders stands inside. I can see the outlines of his face, moon-blue planes and shadows.

I can’t hear their words. They don’t talk long.

No, I think. Anders. Don’t go. Don’t go.

Frankie leaps off the stump. She runs back into the trees, where someone else is shrieking, “Stop it, you lunatic!” and laughing.

“Let’s go,” says Frankie’s voice. “I want to drive around for a while.”

I take a breath. He’s not leaving.

“What, am I just your chauffeur?” says a guy’s voice.

“Not just my chauffeur,” says Frankie. “Come on.”

Someone else laughs. Voices evaporating. Slam of car doors. Tires whirring away, away, until the road is quiet and empty again, and the woods come back to life.

They lean closer now. They whisper to the long, low house. They stroke it with their shadows.

I keep my eyes fixed on the window.

Then it starts.

The music.

Nothing is born already finished. Already perfect. Nothing should be.

But this is. Every time.

I hold my breath.

They’re here. The dark things.

No one is around to watch me, to notice what happens to my eyes when I let myself see. No one to notice how they burn.