The Woods

by Vanessa Savage

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Two girls went down to the woods...

But only one came back.

There's a lot from Tess's childhood that she would rather forget. The family who moved next door and brought chaos to their quiet lives. The two girls who were murdered, their killer never found. But the only thing she can't remember is the one thing she wishes she could.

Ten years ago, Tess's older sister died. Ruled a tragic accident, the only witness was Tess herself, but she has never been able to remember what happened that night in the woods.

Now living in London, Tess has resolved to put the trauma behind her. But an emergency call from her father forces her back to the family home, back to where her sister's body was found, and to the memories she thought were lost forever...

Release date: August 25, 2020

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 313

Sample

Chapter 1

February 2018

“Wake up, Tess.” Sophie leans in closer to me. “Stealth approach, two o’clock.”

I blink and pull myself back into the present, glancing over my shoulder to see two men approaching our table, creased shirts and red faces a sure sign they’ve been here a while. Not bad-looking, but neither does anything for me.

“Are you interested?”

Sophie pulls a face and shakes her head.

I grin. “Okay—so who am I?”

Sophie looks at me. “You’re…Tanya Nibbington, a tree surgeon from Norfolk, here visiting a friend, celebrating graduating from tree surgeon college.”

My smile widens. “There’s a tree surgeon college? In Norfolk?”

She shrugs. “What am I?”

“Maeve Larson, undercover detective over from Sweden. Working on a case.”

She drains her drink. “Nice.”

“Or…” They’re almost through the crowd to our table. “Or we could just tell them to buzz off and enjoy our girls’ night.”

“Is that what you want? If you want to go somewhere quieter and talk…?” She says it quietly and seriously and it makes me aware of how off I’ve been tonight.

I’m not being fair. We play this game a lot. We come to this pub a lot. It’s full of city boys, looking for a pickup. I’m rarely interested, but since Sophie turned thirty she’s become keener than ever to “meet the one” and we’re here for her. But I don’t think he’s going to be here, in a sweaty shirt, five pints down on a Tuesday night.

I squeeze her hand. “Don’t be daft. I’m fine, and we don’t want to miss the chance of finding your Prince Charming, do we?”

“It’s all right for you, Tess, you’re twenty-six. Oceans of time before you’re old and wrinkled and on the shelf like me.”

I laugh at her. Sophie looks about twenty-two.

“But really?” I say, nodding toward the approaching sharks.

She sighs. “You’re right, you’re right. We should be going anyway—I’ve got twelfth graders first thing in the morning and I won’t survive the class with a hangover.”

“Ladies…” Creased shirt number one has reached the table. He crouches down, drapes his arms across our chairs. He smells of beer and sweat.

“Did you want our table?” I ask. “We’re just leaving.”

I stand up just as creased shirt number two arrives and manage to bump into him.

“Ah—don’t go. We wanted to buy you a drink.”

Creased shirt number one has said something to make Sophie laugh and I roll my eyes.

“Come on, Maeve Larson,” I say, pulling on her arm. “We’ve got school in the morning.”

“School?” This is from creased shirt number two, sounding alarmed. “You two are still in school?”

I swallow the urge to laugh. The lighting isn’t that dim in here—how much have they had to drink?

“That’s right,” I say. “We’re both fifteen. Still want to buy us that drink?”

“You are such a cow,” Sophie says after they’ve fled, stumbling over chairs in their haste to get away from us. “He wasn’t bad close up.”

“Oh, please—you would have hated yourself in the morning. And he would never have called again.”

“But I wanted to be Maeve Larson, top detective with fourteen brothers and sisters. And you—I would have called you Nibs as a nickname and you could have told them all about your charmed life as…”

“A single, broke woman. Living in a one-bedroom flat. Who has to be up for school in the morning to teach five classes of snarky teenagers.”

“Ugh. The truth does not make for a sexy story. Although do I really want fourteen brothers and sisters? Sometimes I wish I was an only child. My brother is twenty-five going on twelve and a total pain in the ass most of the time.”

I pause by the door to stare at a blond girl walking away from me. It’s another game I play a lot—the pounding heart, the twist in my gut when I see a blond girl in skinny jeans, or hear a laugh that sounds familiar, the tilt of a head. Sometimes I make myself look away. Sometimes I follow her, just to check, just to see…

Of course it can’t be her. Could never have been my sister.

“Shit,” Sophie mutters, going pale and touching my arm. “Sorry, Tess. I didn’t think—my crass remark about wanting to be an only child…”

I sometimes wish I’d never told Sophie about Bella—it’s such a tragic mess. It’s easier to be what I pretend to be to the rest of the world, my own permanent version of our games: an only child, a city girl with a nice flat and a good job.

“Oh God, I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” Sophie says as we walk toward the bus stop.

I laugh and tuck my arm in hers. “A sentiment echoed by every kid we’re teaching tomorrow.”

“At least we get paid for it, I suppose. And I do love it most of the time.”

“Do you? Really love teaching?”

“Of course.” She sounds surprised. “Why on earth would I put myself through all the crap bits if I didn’t love it for the good bits?”

Do I love it? Even the good bits? Have I ever loved teaching, like properly “it’s-my-vocation” loved it? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself too often lately.

“Do you want to stay at my place tonight?” I say as I see a bus heading toward us. “It’s not late—we can be sensible and drink tea, but continue the evening.”

I’m feeling…melancholy. Flat. None of the night-out buzz I felt earlier, getting ready for two-for-one happy hour with my best friend.

“Aw, Tess, I can’t. I haven’t got any of my stuff with me and I can’t go to school tomorrow dressed like this.” She gestures down at her sequined skirt.

I smile. I laughed when she turned up earlier in sequins and high heels. If it’s over the top for a Tuesday night in town, it’s definitely over the top for teaching. “That’s fine. It was just a thought.”

“Are you okay? You’ve been a bit down tonight.”

“Things are…I’ve been having bad dreams. Bad thoughts that keep creeping in and…” Sophie frowns and I shake my head. “No, don’t worry. I shouldn’t have had gin-based cocktails, that’s all. Gin makes me maudlin.”

“But it’s not only tonight…” Her voice trails off and she sighs. “No, sorry. Not the time. But let’s catch up tomorrow, okay?”

She gets on her bus and I wave as it signals to pull away.

“Good night, Maeve Larson—I love you and your fourteen brothers and sisters!” I shout, and I see her laugh and blow a kiss through the window as the bus accelerates away.

My smile fades and I pull my coat closed as I wait at the empty shelter for my own bus and the bad thoughts crowd in around me to keep me company. I’m lucky, I tell myself. I have a good job—a great job. I have amazing friends. A flat of my own. My life is good. It is. All I need to do is believe it.

 

Chapter 2

I’m late. I’m bloody late. I took forever to fall asleep last night and when I did my slumber was filled with tangled fragments of dark dreams that kept jerking me awake.

My phone buzzes—a message from Sophie: Where are u? Not still sleeping off the cocktails?????!

I call her. “I overslept! Can you—shit!” I bang my leg on the table and lean down to rub my calf through my trousers. “Can you cover for me?”

“Again? Oh Christ, Tess…I’ll try.”

Eight forty. Shit. It’s the third time this term I’ve been late and we’re only five weeks in. Sophie’s got her own class to teach—I can’t expect her to keep this from the head of the department for me.

The anxious knot in my stomach grows as I wait at the bus stop and it passes nine o’clock. There are going to be twenty-three teenagers waiting at school for their English lesson and I’m still fifteen minutes away. I’ve already had one verbal warning; this time it’s going to be a written one, a permanent warning on my record. I’m tempted to call in sick, pretend I was too ill to phone earlier, but I’ve already done that twice this term. Two missed days, three late days in less than half a term. I can’t lose this job. I can’t.

The bus comes and, despite my anxiety, I’m tempted to let it drive by. Same route to work, same walk at the other end. Every day, the same. I get this urge every so often to get on a different bus, ride it to the end of the route and see where I end up. Walk away from the school and the sick feeling I get in my gut when I sit in front of my first class, feeling like a fraud. What am I doing? That’s what I think on those days.

On the bus, I close my eyes and feel myself drifting, jerking awake with a start as my phone starts ringing at the bottom of my bag, a harsh interruption that has my fellow passengers staring at me. I fumble for it, hunched over, pausing before answering when I see it’s my dad.

“Tess?” His voice is faint, muffled.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” I know he’s not ringing for a casual chat. That’s our Sunday-night routine, ten minutes of talking where we fill the silence but say nothing at all.

“It’s…Julia. She’s home.”

There’s too long a silence as my brain scrabbles to make sense of his words. “Home? She’s better?”

His turn for silence. “No…there’s nothing more they can do. She wants to die at home.”

Breath gone, I lean back in the seat. It shouldn’t be a shock. Julia has been slowly dying for the past year. I’ve seen it on my too-infrequent visits to see her in the hospital. Less Julia, more shadow each time. But still…had I thought she would go on fighting forever? Maybe I had—she’s always been so bright and alive. All my most vivid memories of her from the beginning are of her bringing our house back to life—against our will at first. Well, mine and Bella’s at least. The three of us, after my mother died, were drifting along living a half-life, then along came Julia, so vibrant, a whirl of glaring color impossible to ignore or freeze out and, God, Bella and I resented that. We were so horribly hostile toward her at the beginning, but she never gave up trying, our so very not-wicked stepmother.

“Will you come home?”

Home? My throat closes at the thought. Go back to the house, to the village, to that fishbowl where everyone knows me and everyone knows what happened to Bella? I can’t be anonymous there, can’t be safe and invisible like I am here. If I go back home, will they all be there—Sean and Jack and Max and Lena? I can’t. Christ, what a reunion that would be. I can’t do it—can’t gather round Dad and Julia to watch Julia die when the last time we were all together was to watch them get married. The gap where Bella should be would be too huge and glaring. I just can’t.

“I…I can’t. I have work. It’s midway through the term and…”

“Please, Tess, she has no one else. Come for a weekend, at least. You haven’t been back here in so long. Jack and Sean…they won’t return my calls. I even tried tracking Greg down but no one seems to have any idea where he is. I’ve left messages for Max and Lena—their parents can’t get back from Spain until next month and that might be…I don’t want her to die alone.”

Jack and Sean—no, of course they wouldn’t bother, not even with their mother dying.

“Dad, I…” My voice trails off. What excuse can I possibly give?

“The doctor says she has weeks at the most.”

He doesn’t need to say anything else. Last chance, last chance for all of us to say goodbye, to say anything. What would I give for a last chance with Bella? With my mother? A last chance to say all the things I never got to say because I thought I had forever to say them.

I glance up. We’re approaching my stop. “Dad, I have to go. I’m already late.”

“But Tess…”

“I’ll call you later, okay?”

I end the call and drop the phone into my bag, getting up as the bus stops. God, I want to run back to my flat, climb into bed, still dressed, and pull the covers over my head. I force myself to take deep, slow breaths, pushing away the panic Dad’s call has elicited. Stupid to be scared of a place. My fear is irrational, but it invades my dreams at night. Not the house, but the woods, that’s where my dreams relentlessly take me. Back to West Dean, back to the woods, back to Bella’s body.

I have a tenth-grade class first. By the time I get to school, the class is almost over. I rush in, apologizing to Sophie, who’s struggling to make herself heard over the noise. Half the class are on their phones, the other half talking among themselves. Not a single one of them has their textbook open. Sorry, I mouth to Sophie, who raises her eyebrows and leans in toward me.

“You’re lucky. I had twelfth graders first thing—I’ve left them with revision.”

Lucky. Yes, that’s me. I think of Dad’s call and shake my head. I might have gotten away with it this time, but I can’t ask for time off now, not when I’m sailing so close to the wind. Julia would understand.

Sophie comes over as I’m pouring a coffee in the staffroom at break time.

“What’s going on, Tess? You look…”

A mess. I know I look a mess. Curls wild, eyes dark-circled, my shirt as creased as the ones those guys from last night were wearing. I stayed up way too late, putting off this morning and avoiding sleep.

“My stepmother’s home. There’s nothing more they can do.”

“Oh God, I’m sorry.”

I told Sophie about Julia’s cancer on another melancholy gin night.

“Dad wants me to go home.”

“Of course. Of course you should go home.”

“How can I? I was late again this morning. Karen will be gunning for me if I ask for more time off.”

“But it’s Friday the day after tomorrow. You could go home for the weekend, couldn’t you? It’s not that far.”

It is, though. Way too far. Not in physical distance. That’s easy enough to travel.

Sophie doesn’t understand. Because I haven’t told her enough about Bella—how it happened, what happened. Or the wedding. Or Julia’s family.

“I can’t go back,” I say, draining my coffee. “I have a mountain of marking to catch up on over the weekend. Lesson plans as well.”

“But…”

The buzzer goes off, signaling the end of break. “Back to class,” I say, walking away from Sophie.

She doesn’t get it. I can’t go back.

 

Chapter 3

 

Wake up

That night I wake with a gasp, a shout echoing in my head. What was it? Was it the dream again—the abandoned house, Bella, the night before the wedding? I haven’t had that dream in a while. Lately my dreams have been filled with Julia and school and…the woods. All my nightmares seem to end up there.

I’ve always slept so well here, in the city. In the stifling confines of the flat I live in, I’ve felt safe, the bad dreams held at bay. Boxed in, I can sleep, knowing there is no expanse of trees and emptiness outside, just more flats and houses, light and people everywhere. But recently…What’s woken me again tonight? Is it worrying about work? About Julia?

It’s two a.m. I came to bed after midnight, so I’ve slept for an hour or so. I think I slipped into a dream. It was the night before Dad and Julia’s wedding again; Bella and I were in a garden…

I push the covers aside and get up. I have to distance myself from the dream before I can try to sleep again. The floorboards are cold. I curl my toes and grope under the bed for the slippers I kicked off only a couple of hours ago.

I make tea, taking comfort in the familiar steps: cup, milk, teabag. With my back to the window, sipping my tea, I can pretend it’s day. That everyone around me is awake and I’m not alone.

When I turn, though, I spill it, my hand slipping as I see I’m not alone at all. Bella is there, silent and smiling. My breathing was too loud; the kettle boiling was too loud. I didn’t hear her come in. Not awake then. This is still a dream. I look down at my wrist, stinging and red from the tea spill. A very vivid dream.

“Bella?” I whisper it, but in the dead of night it sounds as if I’m shouting.

She glances behind her at the dark window and then looks back at me. Her smile fades and I wonder if she sees it, the changes the years have wrought. When we were kids, Bella used to pinch my cheeks, laughing at how red they’d glow and stay glowing. Apple cheeks, wild curls, and freckles. That was me. She was the pale one, the skinny one, the one they always said should be a model with her blond hair and killer cheekbones. Now, ten years later, I know I look like a wild-haired imitation, a hollow, dried-up copy.

“God, I’ve missed you,” I say, and my eyes burn.

“You’re the one who left,” Bella says, lifting a cigarette I didn’t see her holding. She inhales, blows out a smoke ring. She’s leaning against the windowsill, looking the same as she always did back then, skinny jeans and a tank top, bare feet, even though it’s February and below zero. She grins and holds up the cigarette packet.

“Want one?”

I haven’t smoked since I was sixteen but I can taste it. I want to. I want to stand in the kitchen of my flat at two in the morning smoking with my sister, pretend it was something we did together even though I never used to because I was the good girl.

“Couldn’t you sleep?” she asks, and I shake my head, frowning.

This dream is too real. Are you awake or asleep? my mind whispers. Of course I’m asleep. How could Bella be here otherwise? All my dreams of Bella since the accident…they’ve always been about after, nightmares: I’ve never dreamed her alive, never talked to her. The longing to hold her again, not let her go, is fierce, a physical pang.

“Remember when we were kids?” she says, stubbing her cigarette out in a plant pot. I don’t say anything—the plant’s fake anyway. I don’t like fake plants, don’t see the point, but I inherited it with the flat. Here are your keys and a fake plant to welcome you. Like half of my day-to-day life, it’s just there, existing unseen in the corner of my eye until now.

“Remember how you could never sleep until I came home?”

“I used to worry,” I say. “I liked to stay awake until I heard you come in. Until I knew you were safe.” I wipe a tear off my cheek as she sighs.

“Dad would go off to bed, trusting everything would be fine, but I’d stay awake and watch the minutes ticking away and wait. I’d imagine so many awful things happening as every minute past midnight ticked away.”

“You always were an old woman for worrying,” she says.

“I was right to worry, though, wasn’t I?” I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Funny, all these years I’d never realized how angry I am. I’m angry at how irresponsible she was.

“Are you still waiting?” she asks, and I frown.

“What do you mean?”

She leans in. I can smell cigarette smoke in her hair. I can hear her breathing, her breath overlapping mine. “Is that why you can’t sleep now?”

I exhale, release it and reach out a hand, wishing I could touch her. It’s Dad’s phone call doing this. Calling me home. Making me remember.

I don’t want to remember.

“You never came home,” I say. “I waited and waited but you never came home. You know I can’t sleep until you come home.” Stupid tears won’t stop now; they’re filling my eyes so I can’t see her properly. There are smudges on her tank top, dark mud on the knees of her torn jeans. They weren’t there a minute ago. Her hair looks less smooth, it’s tangled, leaves caught in it. A drop of blood trickles down her cheek. Wrong. I close my eyes and shake my head. I don’t want to see her like this—I’ve spent years trying to erase that image. This is the way I last saw her, but I don’t want to remember her like this. I open my eyes and she’s bright, shining Bella again; beautiful, eighteen-year-old Bella.

“I’m sorry I died,” she says. “I’m sorry I never came home.”

I rub my eyes and press my hands to my aching head, touching the old scar on my forehead. She’ll disappear again in a minute, fade away like she always does in dreams. “You never came home. How am I supposed to ever get to sleep again?”

“You can’t,” she says. “Not yet. Promises to keep, miles to go—like that poem, remember?” She steps closer and whispers her next words. “And Tess? Remember this as well. It wasn’t an accident.”

I wake with a gasp and sit bolt upright. My hand flies to my wrist, expecting the sting of a burn. I sniff the air and, for a second, swear I can smell cigarette smoke. I lurch out of bed, looking at the clock. It’s two—same time as in the dream. There’s no Bella in my flat, not even a sense of her. I shake myself. Of course there isn’t.

I falter, though, when I go through to the kitchen to get a glass of water. There’s a mug on the side, half-full of tea. When I touch it, it’s warm and my wrist throbs with a remembered sting.

Not real, of course it wasn’t real. But…it was so vivid. Was I sleepwalking? Talking out loud to a dream of my sister’s ghost? I must have been.

I shiver, remembering her words. It wasn’t an accident.

Why am I doing this to myself? Talking to Dad, thinking about the others, it’s made me remember the aftermath of Bella’s death, how I insisted something sinister must have happened, that it would take more than a stupid accident to kill my sister. Months of denial right up until the inquest findings. I’ve projected my own long-buried fears onto a figment of my imagination. Of course it was an accident. Of course it was.

 

Chapter 4

“Right—let’s get straight on with it. Poetry today.” I turn the pages in my poetry book to the page I’ve bookmarked. “This poem is called ‘Sold,’ by Paul Henry.”

Someone in the front row actually yawns and I grip the book harder to resist the urge to chuck the damned thing at him. I barely slept after last night’s dream, or hallucination, or whatever it was. And now I’m supposed to enthuse this eleventh-grade class about poetry?

I start reading the short poem and my throat gets tight halfway through. I’ve read this poem before, taught classes extracting every meaning and emotion from the poignant lines about a life embedded in the walls of a house, but today in my exhausted state the words stir up too many memories and thoughts of home, of Bella. My eyes are burning and I blink. When I look up, my voice trails off completely and I wonder if I’m so tired I’ve actually drifted into sleep, because for a split second the yawning boy turns into Bella sitting at the front of the class, leaves and twigs from the woods on the desk and an open poetry book in front of her. Come home, Tess, her voice whispers in my mind. I’ll wait for you in the woods. I rub my eyes and shake my head but she won’t stop. She won’t shut up.

It wasn’t an accident, she says. Over and over. The world spins and I lean forward, elbows on my desk, head in my hands.

“Um…Miss? Miss Cooper?”

I open my eyes and Bella’s gone. Someone in the class giggles, someone else is on their feet.

“Are you okay, Miss?” It’s Rebecca Martin asking, and there’s laughter in her voice, a hint of glee as her teacher goes gaga. Don’t they all long for this, some sign of weakness they can get their hooks into? Rebecca most of all.

I grit my teeth. “Sorry, I just…lost my train of thought for a second.”

Rebecca laughs again, loud, derisive, joined by more of the class this time. Gotcha, her laughter says. “A second? You’ve been sitting with your head in your hands for, like, ages.”

I stare at her, paralyzed. It would be Rebecca Martin, of course, with her sly smile, the whole class laughing now as she sets off again.

“Think you need a break, Miss—get yourself a Red Bull. Had a few too many last night, did you? Or was it this morning even?” Laugher rolls again through the classroom.

Suddenly, she’s not Rebecca Martin and I’m not Miss Cooper, she’s Lena and Nicole, she’s every one of Bella’s bitchy friends who’d laugh at me, make her embarrassed by me; all those girls who made my sister a stranger. I’m sixteen again, too fat in my school uniform, and there is Bella, dripping blood on her desk. I’m not going to let them do this to me again. I will not sit by quietly this time.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” I say to Rebecca/Lena/Nicole.

There’s a gasp from someone.

“Excuse me?” Rebecca says half laughing, half shocked. I can only partly hear her through the buzzing in my head.

“Shut the fuck up, I said.” I get up, my chair scraping across the floor. My head spins and I can feel Bella urging me on. Go on, Tess, show them. Tell them. “You have no idea what’s going on in my life and you don’t even care, do you? All I want is for you to give me a break and do your bloody work. And maybe, for once—just shut your damned mouth.”

There’s total silence now. I look down at the poetry book in my shaking hand but then Rebecca fucking Martin laughs again and my control snaps.

I march over to her desk and she gets up, as tall as me, taller than I was at sixteen. But her bravado is all fake as I grab hold of her stupid short tie and pull her forward until our foreheads are nearly touching.

“Seriously? You’re still laughing? Will you still be laughing if I throw you through the fucking window?” I shove her backward and she falls, her chair clattering to the floor.

The silence is broken by someone shouting, “Miss has gone rabid!” It’s a boy’s voice, jubilant and scared all at once and it brings me back and Rebecca Martin isn’t Lena or Nicole anymore, she’s a scared-looking kid with tears in her eyes sprawled on the floor. Bella is gone from the desk next to her. Of course she is. She was never bloody there.

The door flies open and Sophie runs in, white-faced as she takes in the scene.

She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Tess?”

I reach out a hand to help Rebecca up, but she scrabbles away from me, fury and fear on her face, her cheeks burning red.

Sophie grips my shoulder harder and pulls me away. “What have you done, Tess?”

Oh God.

What have I done?

I go straight to Karen, my head of department, trying for damage limitation before the whole of the eleventh grade gets here with their own exaggerated versions, but I’m made to wait outside while Rebecca and Sophie are brought in before me.

“I’m so sorry…I didn’t sleep well last night,” I say as soon as I’m called in. “I had a call from my dad about my stepmother. She’s…she’s dying.”

Karen stands behind the desk, her hands gripping the edge. The way she looks at me makes me aware of the shadows under my eyes I can’t cover with makeup, my unwashed hair.

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

Why did it have to be Rebecca Martin? She sits at the front of the class, all hostile eyes, challenging everything I say, criticizing me with a look every time I fumble over a lesson or forget where we are in a book. The sick feeling is back, rising higher until it’s difficult to breathe. Rebecca Martin, whose parents come storming in here every time their precious daughter gets into trouble, always blaming someone else, insisting on an investigation into whoever was unfortunate enough to give her a detention this time.

Karen looks nearly as upset as I know I should be. “Tess, this goes beyond an apology. This is not you sleeping through your alarm or missing the bus or losing coursework. You assaulted a pupil in full view of the class. Jesus Christ—Sophie told me she heard you threatening to throw Rebecca through the window.”

“That was just words. I never would have done it. She wasn’t hurt. I—”

“And thank God she wasn’t injured or the police would be here right now. As it is, I can’t guarantee that her parents won’t want to press charges. We’ve had to call them. They’re on their way in. Jesus, Tess—why did it have to be Rebecca Martin?”

“You know she’s had it in for me since…”

“Since what? Since you stole her phone last term?”

“I didn’t steal it. She had it out in class—I saw the pictures she was flashing around. I was trying to help her.”

“You took her phone out of her bag and called the damned police.” Karen shakes her head. “You should have come to me. We could have had a word with her, spoken to her parents.”

“She’s a kid—a child.”