By starting at the north end of town, they had ironically given him access back into Perfect Girl Julie’s house down in the south end. He stopped there to pick up food and whatever else he could find that would be of use. Though he had lived there just yesterday, the house seemed as if it could have been abandoned for a thousand years. Everything looked different, even the pictures on the walls. He felt as if he was seeing it through a stranger’s eyes. He grabbed some food, an extra pair of clothes, and a fork (the best weapon he could find and a poor one at that) all in a bag made of a blanket decorated with rodeo cowboys.
He looked around a moment from the door, wanting to say goodbye somehow. It was no good though. What he wanted to say goodbye to was already gone.
The distance between the last of the Perfect’s houses and the edge of the woods was less than a ten minute walk. It would have been so easy for the Rejected to go after the Perfects in their houses, especially since they didn’t have locks. Spencer wondered what kept them from coming into the town. He thought that maybe Smiling Jack had cast a spell on the town to protect it, though the idea seemed somehow childish.
He stood there at the edge of the woods, a blanket over one shoulder and a fork in his hand, staring into the tangled dead trees and trying to catch any glimpse of movement. What was in front of him was more frightening than what was behind him. Behind him was a fear he knew, before him were shadows and hints of monsters only glimpsed at.
But behind him there was no hope, the forest held a slim chance. And he had a plan. So he started moving, ducking under the low branches and trying to make as little noise as possible.
If Smiling Jack’s army followed him into the woods, Spencer didn’t know it. He had gone pretty deep, and found that you really didn’t need to go that deep at all to hide. Getting lost would have been a major problem if not for the sun and moon, but as it was he didn’t need to worry. With the false sky as low as it was, the stationary sun would only move in relation to oneself. Since the woods surrounded the town, and the sun was over the center of town, from inside the woods the sun always pointed directly towards the edge of the woods. A navigation point even more accurate than the real sun. Spencer figured Indian trackers like in the movies could follow his trail, but he didn’t really think Jack could. Especially considering the forest was almost entirely dead, no vegetation to disturb. Dead bushes, dead trees, dry logs. Winter without the cold or snow.
He didn’t see any of the monsters, which both relieved and worried him. He didn’t really want to see one of them ever, but if he was going to run into one he would definitely prefer to do it in the daylight rather than the dark. He wandered for hours, making his way west according to the plan and frequently stopping to rest his foot.
The whole plan for survival rested on one big guess, but it was a pretty good one. It was a guess that the monsters in the woods needed to eat, and that the food they ate had something to do with that bone pile in back of Nanny Gurdy’s. They must feed on the bodies of Jack’s failed experiments, which Spencer figured was just about all of them considering how few Perfects there were. The rest of the plan made assumptions too, but they were obvious enough not to be called a guess. While living with Julie he had had plenty of time to think it through. The fact was they would never stop looking for him until he was dead.
So he had to die.
Soon it grew dark, and Spencer was exhausted. He’d had little exercise in his time with Julie, and discovered traveling through the deep woods was much harder work than he was used to. A few hours into the night he found a fallen log and made a place for himself underneath it, as well concealed as he could manage. He spread the blanket on the ground and wrapped himself in it, nibbling on a few pieces of bread that he hoped to make last as long as possible. The ground was cold and hard. No more Julie and her soft bed and warm body. He thought about her standing there in her underwear, trying to imagine what she had wanted to do, wondering if it was like in the movies that he wasn’t supposed to watch. He thought about her and their time together and felt guilty about what happened to her, whispering an apology to her in the darkness.
But he didn’t think about her for long. He thought about Smiling Jack, just like he used to do every night before falling asleep. He thought about what would happen if Jack found him in the night. Thought about waking up to that Smiling face. He fell asleep trying to keep his eyes open.
Living with his parents, sitting on the couch watching TV every day, Spencer couldn’t help but feel like the must be something better he could be doing. He’d climb the tree in the backyard sometimes, noticing how his muscles were getting stronger despite the sedentary lifestyle. Probably because of the better nutrition. And rarely he would try and look through a book, remembering how to read. But overall, if it had been a summer vacation he would have felt he was wasting it.
It wasn’t like he didn’t ever leave the house though. His mom kept making token attempts. Bringing him to the grocery store or on other errands. It made him feel paranoid and claustrophobic to be around the people, as if someone was going to make a move on him. Unknown to her he carried one of the smaller kitchen knives with him wherever he went, often clutching it in his pocket when he got nervous. He was glad he didn’t really own anything else to carry around, because the damn thing had stabbed a hole in every pocket of every pair of his new pants.
Eventually after a few weeks his mom got the idea to take him and Baby Suzie to a movie. At first Spencer had been excited, even though it was a little kids movie. He didn’t like the idea of being around people, but in a movie no one was going to be paying attention to him. Plus he figured if TV was as good as he remembered, movies would be too. It was all going fine, almost like old times.
Until the lights went out.
Once that happened he realized he might as well have been in a giant closet. The theatre was all dark corners and dark faces. The light of the screen somehow made it even worse, blinding you. He tried to ignore it, to tell himself he was safe and to enjoy the movie.
Surely Jack can’t just show up in any dark room he wants, he thought. It couldn’t work that way. There’s got to be more limits than that.
But as the movie wore on the fear just got worse. He’d see forms slinking out of the shadows. See Jack’s face on people in the rows behind him, smiling down at him. He only made it half way through the movie before he couldn’t take it. He ran for it, stumbling out of the theatre to the relative light of the lobby.
He stood there, waiting. He was content to wait, didn’t mind waiting for his mom and Baby Suzie to finish watching the movie. But she came out anyway, dragging a crying Suzie behind her.
“It’s all right Spencer, we can see it another time,” she said half heartedly. He could barely hear her over Suzie’s wailing. Wailing which continued all the way home, driving Spencer to a simmering and barely controlled rage.
Several hours later Suzie was still in rare form. She’d skipped her nap and was basically throwing one marathon hours-long tantrum, still complaining about the movie in her garbled gibberish way (which Spencer figured was a new record in her attention span for anything). Spencer’s mom was loosing her cool, and Spencer himself was far beyond that point. His dad was working late, which he could tell was also contributing to his mom’s anger and the general bad temperament of the whole house.