by Logan Fox
Ugh. If I’m not going to be able to sleep, then I might as well go pee.
I slip out of bed as quietly as I can and tiptoe into the bathroom. I close the door nearly all the way before I turn on the light.
I’m on the toilet, about to wipe, when Haley calls me in a low whisper.
“Candy?”
I flush the toilet the same moment Haley pushes open the bathroom door.
“You okay?” she whispers.
“Just had to pee.” My tone’s harsher than I’d wanted it to be, but that’s because my heart’s pounding a thousand times faster again.
I’m getting a migraine.
“Hey…I’m…I’m really sorry about what happened tonight.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Haley’s chin drops, her eyes going wide.
What the hell did she expect? I told her I wasn’t up to it, and she made me do it.
I squeeze my eyes closed.
You’re the one to blame, no one else. You’re responsible for everything that happens to you.
“I’m just… I’m just really tired,” I say through a sigh. I press my fingers into my temples. “And I’ve got a splitting headache.”
“Want some Vicodin?” she asks.
“Is that like aspirin? Because that shit doesn’t work for me.”
“Hell no. It’s much stronger. Snuck some out of my mom’s handbag when she came to visit.”
“Sure, why not.”
Haley nods and beckons me out of the bathroom with a flip of her hand. There’s a nightstand next to each set of bunk beds. The two drawers correspond with the bunk locations—Haley’s drawer is on top, mine on the bottom. We get to keep them locked, but our lodge parents have their own set of keys anyway.
There’s no such thing as true privacy at Happy Mountain. Just like there was no such thing as true happiness at the Bale house.
Haley gives me a pill, and I down it with a sip of water.
More than ever, I wish there wasn’t just water in this bottle. I stare at the plastic bottle, swirling the colorless liquid inside.
“What did Josiah say to you?”
I look up at Haley. Shrug. “Nothing he hasn’t said before.”
She looks a little surprised. “Oh. He didn’t…?” then she waves away what she’d been about to say and lets out a soft laugh. “Good night.”
I frown at her, catching her hand before she can make it all the way up to the top bunk. “He didn’t what?” I ask.
From across the room, Trinity mutters, “Shut up, you guys.”
Haley pulls at her arm, and then shrugs at me. “Nothing. I didn’t—”
“Haley.” Now I’m not bothering to lower my voice.
Trinity lets out an exasperated sigh. Her bunk creaks as she throws herself onto her other side like a whale.
“Nothing, Cay. He just…I heard he’s getting out the end of the month.”
She’s little more than a shape in the darkness, but I stare at her as if I can read her mind. “He’s what?”
“Maybe.” She shrugs. “It’s just something I heard.”
I let her go, because what’s the point of hearing more? My body weighs a ton when I slide under the covers, and I lie there like a corpse with my hands folded over my sternum. Strangely, the urge to pick at my scabs is gone. Even my headache’s retreating.
Is it the pill Haley gave me, or is it the fact that I’m starting to accept my fate?
Josiah’s always been the perfect son. Me? I’ve never once done anything right. I thought living with the Bales would be different. If I didn’t want for anything, then I could be perfect too. The perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect version of Candace Furey.
I guess I’m just a fuck up after all.
A warm tear trails down my temple and soaks into my hair. Then another. Another.
My physical pain is gone, and thank God for that. But I still wish I had something to take away this mental agony.
Like that delicious, creamy liqueur Mr. Bale used to pour for me.
I close my eyes and picture myself back in his study. We’re playing a game of chess, and I’m winning. Sipping, sipping on that beautiful crystal tumbler. And he’s smiling, his handsome face beaming with pride.
I put down my glass and sit forward on the seat to take my next move.
A large hand closes over mine, stopping me. I look up, and smile. Mr. Bale is beside me. He squeezes harder and harder and harder, until it’s as if my bones are breaking.
I scream, but no sound comes out. I rush to my feet, but then I trip and fall.
And keep falling, falling, falling.
A hand appears from nowhere, grabs my hair, wrenches me up.
Josiah’s face, that same angry look in his eyes that he always has when he sees me.
No…not angry.
Concerned.
Why is he so concerned? He hates me.
There’s pain again, but it’s coming from inside. Deep inside, between my legs. An aching, throbbing, stabbing pain. Josiah’s face morphs into his father’s. The pain changes, becomes something else.
My incorporeal self tenses. Screams transform into groans. Into panting.
I’m so close. Aching. Ready to split open. Bright, beautiful bliss.
Mr. Bale’s face changes, and this time it morphs into Patrick’s.
That hedonistic ecstasy turns to shame.
“Candy!”
My eyes fly open.
The room’s lights are on. My eyes burn like I haven’t slept in weeks. The girls are standing in a circle behind Patrick, Winona less than a pace behind him. A lot of those girls are staring at me, wide eyes glimmering with shock. Some look like they’re smiling, but even they have a manic light in their eyes.
There’s a hard tug on my sleeping shirt. I scramble up, slap away Patrick’s hand with a gasp. My head’s pounding, intense pain flooding my skull.
My shirt had been all the way up to my neck.
“What are you doing?” I yell out in a hoarse voice. He comes for me again, and I fight him.
“Candy, calm down!”
“Don’t you fucking touch me, you sick fuck! Stop! Stop!” I don’t recognize my voice. I can’t believe my own strength. The muscles on Patrick’s arms cord as he tries to restrain me, to—
they saw me touching myself
—hold me down so he can fuck me.
“Winny, bring me some benzo!” Patrick yells.
“No! Stop!”
One of the girls—Dee, I think—starts crying.
“Don’t touch me.” My protests dissolve into banshee-like wails of fury.
My knee connects with Patrick’s jaw. He pushes away from me with a muffled curse, and I’m on my feet a second later. I don’t get very far, though. He runs at me from behind, wrapping his arms over my chest and bearing us both to the ground.
I lose all control.
My teeth sink into his arm. I’m bucking and heaving like a wild horse, screaming. I hear words, but they’re not mine.
Motherfucking dick head piece of shit cunt. I’ll kill you. Cut you open. Touch me again, you fucking cunt, and it’ll be the last.
Then something jabs into my arm. It rips free, but I barely notice that sliver of pain because the only thing I’m feeling right now is Patrick’s dick trying to get inside me.
I yell out, somehow manage to flip around, and knee him as hard as I can in his groin. I rush to my feet, and fumble around my knees for my underwear.
Patrick’s on his side, retching. But his pants aren’t around his knees like I’d thought. He’s cupping his groin, so I can’t see anything, but when I reach up under my shirt, my underwear’s still there.
I didn’t just imagine that. It’s…impossible.
What is? What is!
I lurch to the side as the room takes a slow spin around me. Shit, am I drunk? How?
I giggle, hold out a hand, and manage to grab Trinity’s shoulder. She buckles, and I fall hard on my side. I’
m facing Patrick now. He’s groaning through pale lips, eyes fluttering open.
I stab out a finger, almost catching him in the eye. “You don’t touch me, cunt,” I murmur. The room starts going dark. “Never again. Never again.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Josiah
“Bullshit,” I say, shaking my head.
I grab my toothbrush, but Sylvester snatches it from my hand. He looks worse for wear this morning with those dark smudges under his eyes and his hair standing every which way. He reeks of booze, too. I’m surprised he hasn’t jumped in the shower yet—if Brian or Angie catch him like this, he’ll get a first-class ticket to solo.
“I’m not fucking around,” he tells me.
I sigh, leaning my hip against the basin. “Where the fuck would she have gotten meth from?”
“I dunno,” Sylvester says. “But she had to be smoking something. Trinity says they’ve got her holed up in the sick room, doped up on shit, so she doesn’t try and kill herself.”
I roll my eyes and hold out my hand for my toothbrush. Sylvester gives it back, but with a heavy frown. “You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t care,” I say before getting started on my teeth.
Sylvester shrugs, looking utterly perplexed when he leaves the bathroom. I glare at my reflection as I brush my teeth.
Last night, he tried to drown Candy because he thought he was doing me a favor. That’s how much he understood me to hate her. So why the fuck is he surprised that I wouldn’t give a shit if she’s gone and had some kind of mental breakdown?
I spit, and ram my toothbrush back in its holder.
Thing is, I do care. But not in the way everyone might think. I’m this close to starting to whistle. Here I thought I’d have to concoct some elaborate plan to get Candy holed up at Happy Mountain for eternity.
But I forgot something.
Candy doesn’t need help fucking shit up.
She’s a natural.
I throw on a clean shirt and head out to the lodge’s dining room. The smell of bacon and toast hangs in the air, but the table hasn’t been set. For a moment, my mind scrambles. Was it my turn to do that today? No. Wednesday’s are Tommy’s days. I spot Angie through the archway leading to the kitchen.
“Tommy sick?”
Angie flinches at the sound of my voice. She turns to me and stands there for a moment as if processing what I’ve said.
There’s a big bowl in her arms filled—possibly—with pancake batter.
My gaze darts to the clock on the dining room wall. My skin starts to crawl.
“What’s going on?” I demand as I storm through the dining room toward her.
The mustangs should be halfway through breakfast already, but it looks like Angie’s only just getting started. And where are the rest of the guys? Our lodge feels empty as I rush past her and out the back door.
In the distance, a group of kids huddles outside an isolated face-brick building.
The sick room.
Every hair on the back of my neck stands up.
I start hurrying toward the building, my legs moving faster and faster.
Why am I rushing? This is what I wanted. So what if she’s gone and lost it? I didn’t do it.
Or did you?
I can still feel her body trapped against the tree trunk.
Or did you?
The fear, then the anger.
Did I?
I don’t make it to the sick room, though.
“Josiah!”
I turn mid-run. Brian’s coming toward me. He’s running too.
Shit, how bad is it? Sylvester just said she’d gone ape shit, but judging from Brian’s face…?
Fuck.
My run slows to a heavy jog, then to a final thump that rattles my teeth together. “What happened to her?” is the first thing I can manage to get past my constricted throat. “Is she okay?”
Brian shakes his head. His eyes are glassy, his mouth a tight line. My heart squeezes tight. I turn, ready to bolt to the sick room.
Brian catches my sleeve. I rip it out of his hand. “Josiah, stop! Listen to me!”
I’ll fucking kill them. All of them. They were supposed to make sure she couldn’t hurt herself. Supposed to keep her safe. If she’s—
“Josiah, it’s your sister!”
“Cunt, I know!” I yell back at him.
A big guy, one of the men hired to subdue kids like me, emerges from the shade cast by the sick room’s tin roof. He catches me before I can get close enough to hear what the kids congregating outside that metal door are saying.
They look shocked. Pale. A few of the girls have red-rimmed eyes.
Jesus, fuck.
“Josiah, it’s Emma,” Brian calls out to me.
I laugh. Shake my head. “Candace, you dumb fuck,” I say, pushing the word through my teeth.
Brian slows down, stops. He’s a touch breathless when he speaks. “Your sister, Emma.” He licks his lips and glances at the guy holding me. “Something’s happened.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this confused in my life. “What?” I glance behind me, and then back at Brian.
He shakes his head, waves at the goon who’s still hugging me from behind. I’m released, and I stagger before I can catch myself. “What?” I say again, my voice as breathless and high pitched as Brian’s.
Coming to my side, Brian loops an arm over my shoulder. “Candy’s fine,” he says. “But I have to talk to you about something.”
“Emma,” I say. “What—?”
“Josiah, I’m so sorry.” Brian’s voice catches. “We got a call this morning.”
I stop walking. He tries to urge me along, but I’ve grown roots. “What the fuck?” I say quietly.
“Language,” he murmurs absently, and then runs his hands through hair. “Your sister. Emma. She’s had an accident.”
I laugh. Brian stares. I laugh harder. Other people’s eyes are on me too. Brian’s stare turns into a frown.
“She pissed herself?”
Brian shakes his head. “She’s dead, Josiah. Emma…she drowned.”
I’m still laughing, because now I can’t stop. My legs give out, and I sit down in the dirt.
“Josiah…”
I fall onto my back. There’s only blue sky ahead and a single puffy little cloud that looks outright lost. Somewhere along the line, my laughter fades. Somehow, Brian helps me to my feet.
For some time after, I can’t hear anything but a low whine in my ears.
The light in the room has changed. It’s like I’m waking up, but I wasn’t asleep. An indistinct drone clarifies into words. Sentences.
“…have him back in Indiana before the end of the day.”
“What about his sister?”
“She’s fine.”
“Didn’t look fine to—”
“Haley gave her Vicodin, and it interacted with her Lexapro.”
“Now, will you believe me when I tell you the kids have to know when we put them on shit? This is the third time this year that—”
“I’m not turning this place into a fucking psych ward! Things got out of control. It happens around these kids, you know that.”
I only recognize one of the voices. Brian sounds pissed off as all hell, but so does the woman he’s talking to.
Shouting at.
“How do you expect me to do my job with my hands tied—”
Emma.
I jump to my feet. Brian jerks like he’s forgotten I was in the room, and the woman he was arguing with turns cold eyes to me. Before I can get a word out, she says, “We’re sending you home, Mr. Bale.” She taps a red-lacquered fingernail against a file lying on the desk in front of her. “I doubt you’ll be returning. Your sister, however—”
“Stepsister,” Brian corrects quietly.
What, now he’s on my side?
My lips curl up in disdain, but the blond on the other side of the table doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Then again, she looks like
the kind of person who wouldn’t give a flying fuck about a kid like me. Guess there’ll always be fucked up kids like me around for her to make money off of.
“She’ll need to come straight back after the funeral.” The blond purses her lips and glances at Brian. “Well? Get him out of here.”
Brian stiffens a little at this, but he doesn’t waste any time coming over to me and grabbing my arm. We’re out the door and walking through an obnoxiously bright day before I get a word out.
“Does he know I’m coming home?”
Brian licks his lips, and then lets out a reluctant laugh that sounds anything from merry. “Of course, son. He wasn’t sure it was the right time for you two to come back, but I managed to convince him.”
Convince him? What, to let me attend my own sister’s motherfucking funeral?
I should have been foaming at the mouth, but instead, I feel like the walking dead. “What did you give me?”
“Just something to take the edge off,” Brian says. He glances at me, and then steers me in the direction of our lodge. “Go pack your things.”
“He didn’t want me to come home?”
Brian looks toward the sick room, and then back at me. He shrugs. “He sounded… I assume he’s in shock, like you.”
I’m not in shock. I’m straight up stoned from whatever the fuck tranquilizer he put me on. I head for the lodge, not bothering to say anything else to him.
What’s the fucking point? I got what I wanted—I’m going home. It’s not how I wanted it. Jesus Christ, I would never have wished harm to come to little Emma…but I’m going home.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Candy
Dappled sunlight streams over my eyelids, making them flicker. The car’s window glass is cool against my forehead, the seat beneath me plush yet firm. But although my body is still receptive to touch, I could be cocooned in cotton wool.
