Page 117 - NS 2024

She could not explain it and was left to think constantly of what it must have been about Charlotte, specifically that left her so stuck.
One other gift that she had been left with, of course, was Drake Woods itself. She would never have found the series of crannies and gaps in the fences behind St. Mary’s parking lot leading to the woods beyond without the help of the craftier Charlotte. After the smoking incident, they had almost exclusively snuck out to these unreachable depths; someplace where the prying eyes of the nuns and fellow orphans would never find them.
Some forests have more life than others. Knowing this, it is worth recognizing that Drake Woods was a hostile environment that intimidated even the most physically competent of adults. It wasn’t hard to see why, either; a single look at the mass of harrowing poplars, maples, birches, and elms was all anyone would need to reconsider intruding on the natural fortress. But intrude Min did, well after Charlotte left. It was the only place she found she could hear her own thoughts. The nunnery was a bubble of everyone else’s identities. Out in the marshy grayness of the foreboding woodland, the only intrusion to her own ethos was the occasional shrieking bird or owl. So, each break, she would wander as far as she could into the dreariness, only dragged back by the obligation she felt to behave for Sister Tonya. Despite the distance that had formed between the two of them since her promotion, the woman had done her best for Min, which was more than it felt most people did for her. It was for this reason that at the end of each break, despite every iota of her mind, body, and spirit meaning to pull her deeper into the woods, Min would squelch her way back through the mud and twigs to the rotting fence behind St. Mary’s. Sometimes she would be a bit late, and for this there may be some small wrist-slap of a punishment, but for the most part there seemed to be only the vaguest concern from the nuns as