by Jeff Hale
Then I knew what she was getting at, what she meant by catching him outside my bedroom door. “Oh, God, no, Mom!” I exclaimed, then realized how it had come out. “I mean, yes, I would most definitely have told you, but no, he’s never… touched me… like that.”
Her face relaxed and she nodded absently. “Good, good, I was afraid it might have been too late.”
I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around her seat from the back and hugging her. “I love you, Mom. We’ll be fine. Talk to Gran and Granddad, I’m sure they’ll tell you the same thing.”
She sighed, and I could hear emotion and stress leaving her. “I’m just scared, kiddo. That’s why I want to talk to my mama and papa before I make my decision.”
“You’re braver than you think, Mom.”
“Thanks, sweetie. I know Gary has been an absolute shit to you, but I hoped that well, given time, he might turn into a good father. I guess I was wrong.”
The disappointment in her voice was strong, and I felt very sorry for my mother. I knew she had loved Gary at one point, or at least thought she did. It had to be hard for her to watch that dream crumble.
“But things will be better now. I hope. If I go through with this, then when we get back, you need to pack everything up so we can get out of there as quickly as possible. I don’t know what his reaction will be, I haven’t said anything to him yet. I don’t think he knows anything is wrong.”
“Mom? Gary hasn’t ever, well, done anything to you that he shouldn’t, has he?”
“What? Oh, no, honey, he hasn’t…. Well, I guess it depends upon what you mean by that. We’ve gotten in some nasty arguments, and sometimes he could be real possessive, but no, nothing else.”
I knew she was lying, I could hear it in her voice, but I didn’t want to call her on it, at least not yet. “That’s good, Mom. Wouldn’t want to have to get my whole team together to go whup his ass. Not sure how successful we’d be anyway.” I chuckled, picturing my step-dad lying on the ground with me, Kris and Nate standing over him menacingly. It was a not so nice of me picture, but it was a satisfying feeling.
“Team?”
“Yeah, me and Kris and Nate.”
“Nate? That awful boy on the motorcycle?” Her voice rose in the question, not masking her distaste.
I sighed. “Mo-om. He’s not that bad, you just got off on the wrong foot with him.”
“Well, maybe. I supposed we’ll be seeing more of him around at the new house then?” She sounded resigned.
“No. He’s moving, Mom. Tomorrow, in fact. Besides, he wasn’t my boyfriend or anything, we were just friends.”
“Ah, I see.”
At that she lapsed into silence, as did I, settling into my own little world to try to process this newfound information she had given me. Kris sat quietly next to me, figuring that I would break the silence when I was ready.
My dad died when I was a little baby, under a year old. I don’t remember him at all, but Mom has pictures of him holding me and you can see from the expression on his face that he loved me. He was the love of my mom’s life, and she almost died when he did. The only thing that kept her going was me. For several years it was just me and Mom; she didn’t want to date a lot and bring a lot of ‘uncles’ into my life. Then she met Gary Newall when I was eight.
Gary was a good looking guy, owned his own business, and he swept my mom off her feet. After years of being lonely, I guess she needed someone to make her feel loved again, so after a few months of dating, she married him. He was previously married and divorced, but with no kids of his own.
For a while, things seemed to be okay, but around about the time I hit thirteen, his demeanor toward me changed and I went from being his adored little girl to someone that I got the feeling he honestly could not stand. I could do no right, he was sure I was sleeping with every boy in school—I was still a virgin despite my ruined plans for Prom—and I could be trusted with nothing. That was about the time Mom started drinking heavily too.
My world went from having a loving, always accessible mother and a new loving step-daddy, to one where this man now hated me and my mother was far away and distant even though we lived in the same house. But now, Mom had woken up and all that was going to change.
I stayed in my quite little reverie for the rest of the trip, and Kris let me be. That’s the sign of a good friend, one who knows when you need to not be talked to as well. We pulled into Tillamook shortly after lunch and into Gran and Granddad’s driveway soon after.
Gran greeted us at the door as we came up the steps, her chubby face smiling. It had only been a few weeks, but she still looked like Gran, short and round with a bright smile and fading auburn hair. She gave me and Mom a hug each, and after a brief second to look Kris over, enveloped her in a hug as well.
“This must be Kris who I’ve heard sae much about. My granddaughter would have me think that ye walked on water the way she talks about ye.” Gran beamed at Kris and Kris raised an eyebrow at me. I rolled my eyes.
“Uhm, thanks, Mrs.—” Kris trailed off, not knowing my grandmother’s last name.
“Ach, just call me Gran. Now come on in, ye must be hungry, I’ve lunch waiting.”
Granddad was waiting at the table for us, newspaper in hand. He gave me and Mom a hug, eyeballed Kris, then hugged her as well, and we all settled down for lunch. After, we got our stuff brought in and occupied ourselves watching TV for a bit while they and Mom talked about her marriage to Gary.
The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful. Gran and Granddad took us out to dinner at one of the local restaurants, then we came back to the house and Kris and I watched more television while Mom and my grandparents played cribbage.
By ten p.m. we were both bored, and although Mom was getting ready to go to bed, I was feeling restless and I approached her about borrowing the car. Neither Kris nor I were tired, and a Saturday night out sounded like fun.
“You want to borrow the car? Katelyn, it’s ten o’clock.” Mom didn’t sound all that sure about the whole thing.
“Mom. I stay out later at home, especially on weekends, and besides, I’m eighteen. I mean, come on, it’s Tillamook. Less than five thousand people. What kind of trouble can we get into?”
“Oh, let the lasses go, Roslyn, they’ll be fine,” my Gran said, winking at me.
Mom sighed, looked slightly resigned, then smiled, handing me the keys. “Alright, but be careful… and don’t hurt my car.”
“Thank you, Mom!” I gave her and Gran each a quick kiss and hug. After gathering out coats, a blanket and a boom box, Kris and I left.
We drove through town for a while. I showed Kris some of my old haunts as a kid—I had grown up here until Mom married Gary—then we decided to drive down to the beach. It was late and we figured the beach at night would be fun.
I was familiar with the road and found my way there without any mishap. We pulled into the parking lot that overlooked the beach access. There were only a couple of other cars there and a sleek looking motorcycle. It was only halfway through May, but it was a Saturday night and I hadn’t expected the beach to be empty. It was a small town, so the beach was a general recreation area for the local youth.
With boom box, blanket and flashlight, we walked down the ramp of the beach access onto the sand and stood staring at the dark water as it encroached then receded. There were a couple of camp fires not too far away.
“This way,” I told Kris, gesturing down the beach to the right of the access ramp.
“What’s down that way?” She stared in the direction I had indicated.
“You’ll see.”
We walked along the sand for a good five minutes, then I heard her intake of breath as we got to the cliff wall that I knew she had seen earlier. Now that we were closer and I had the flashlight pointed in the right direction, she could see the tunnel that was carved into and through the cliff.
“You have got to be kidding!” She turned wide eyes to me. “We are not going in there
, are we?” There was fear in her voice, but I thought I heard a bit of excitement too.
“Yup.” I nodded wickedly. “The tunnel goes all the way through to a cove on the other side. Can’t guarantee there won’t be others already over there too, but it’s a fairly big cove.”
“Are there any… bats… in there?”
I laughed. “No, Kris, no bats. But the ceiling is low, so watch your head, and there could be driftwood in there so watch your feet.” She nodded, so I turned and led the way into the tunnel.
It was dark and damp once you got past the concrete that lined the first several feet. I kept my head down, warning Kris if I had to duck my head, and pointing out the few large driftwood logs that we had to skirt around and over.
“How did these logs get in here?” Kris’s voice echoed off the tunnel walls, sounding especially eerie in the dark.
“Storms. They get some bad storms through here and the water fills the tunnel, washes the driftwood in here.” I heard her gasp in apprehension. “Don’t worry, we’re safe, you would know if there was going to be one of those storms.”
After a couple of minutes, we came out of the tunnel opening on the other side, the sky seeming bright after the darkness. I pointed out the somewhat treacherous footholds that led the few feet down to the sand. About a hundred feet out, along the beach, I could see a small fire burning.
I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping to have the place to ourselves, but as I had already warned Kris, the chances of no one being there were slim. I knew that our voices were carrying to those at the fire and as we carefully made our way down to the sand, I felt as though we were being watched. I gestured in a direction that meant for us to head past the fire and Kris nodded at me. As we got closer and started to get past them, I glanced over, feeling embarrassed as I made eye contact with three pairs of eyes staring back at us.
Three of them, all guys, all young, and while they didn’t look particularly dangerous, at least not any more so than most young men, I felt my heartbeat speed up. I knew from the little intake of breath Kris made that she felt it too.
Two of them sat on camp stools while one lounged on the sand. The one on the sand had short dark-blonde hair and wore blue jeans and a black leather bomber jacket over a red t-shirt. He was stereotypically cute, in a way that made me think of puppies. He grinned roguishly at me and winked.
The other two were more serious. Their expressions were somber, as though they both had heavy things weighing on their minds. The closer one had shoulder length, light-brown hair, and extremely pale skin. He wore a loose fitting long sleeved shirt of deep burgundy and tight black leather pants. The coolness of the evening didn’t seem to be affecting him and after the briefest glance at us, he turned his attention back to his companion.
Him. The one whose attention the other two seemed to focus on. A long black leather trench coat draped down the back of the stool onto the sand. His long black hair blended in with the coat, and he wore tight black jeans, black boots, and a black leather vest over a black t-shirt. He had dark piercing eyes in a face that looked partly Native American, partly something else.
My heart skipped a beat as those eyes met mine and I got a distinct feeling of danger from them. Not directed at anything, just in general. I continued to stare, seeing, or feeling something else, some sudden tug on something inside, as though some inner part of me recognized not only him, but the blonde as well. I had felt a strange familiarity with Aerick too, like I had known him all my life, but with these two, it was subtly different. I stumbled a bit in the sand, then kept going, trying to slow my heart, hoping that Kris wasn’t standing there entranced.
“Do you think it’s safe?” The whisper from Kris seemed loud as a gunshot behind me and I cringed. I thought I heard a chuckle coming from the fire behind us.
My mind was muttering nonono, notsafe, but I forced myself to answer her. “I think we’ll be fine. I think they are too preoccupied with other things than to bother us.” I made myself not turn and look at them again, still feeling that tug as well as something new stirring inside me, something that wasn’t the lust I would have expected.
I heard that light laugh again, followed by a low voice muttering “Alex” in a disapproving tone. Then they were well behind us.
By the time we found a spot to lay out the blanket, my heart had calmed down. We’d brought the small CD case from the car and Kris popped one into the boom box, Manson again, Antichrist Superstar. She turned the volume up some and plopped down onto the blanket, staring out at the ocean. I dropped down next to her and we both sat there not talking for a moment or two before she turned to me, raised her shoulders in an exaggerated sigh and expelled a long breath.
“What… the… hell… was that all about?” She glanced meaningfully in the direction of the fire we could still see from our spot.
I shivered, as much from the chilly air that had found its way down the neck of my jacket as from picturing the three boys—no, men—again, wondering if Kris had felt that same strange sensation that I had. “I have no clue. I don’t think they’re going to bother us though.” I paused a second, my heart beginning to thump again. “But…. Oh god! Did you see them?” I was slightly giddy now that the ‘them’ in question was out of range.
“How could I not?” She closed her eyes briefly. “I couldn’t tell which one of them was the better looking, they were all so… so…”
“Yeah, they were. I dunno, I think the tall one, the one with the long coat…”
Kris shivered. “Nuh uh. Oh he’s hot all right, but he’s too, well, scary for my tastes. You always did have your penchant for bad boys.”
“Bad boys?” I stared at her, my mouth open. “You just tell me which one of those three isn’t a bad boy? Well, maybe the blonde, he does kinda look like the ‘boy next door’ type.”
“You’re right. But there’s something, I dunno, dangerous about them. But not to us… at least I hope not, considering that they are between us and the way off the beach…”
The thought was sobering and we both glanced at the firelight again, sitting in silence broken only by the music.
“So, well, Kat…. your mom… that news must have come as quite a shocker?” Kris was trying to change the subject and take our minds off the campfire and its occupants.
I shook my head as though to rattle some cobwebs loose. “Oh, definitely. I did not see that coming, although I can’t say that I’m unhappy about it. At least I won’t have to change schools though. But it would sure be nice not to have to put up with Gary any more so I hope she decides to go through with it.”
“Maybe your mom can quit drinking now. I know that bothers you a lot.”
“Yeah, it does. She’s got her own problems with Gary though, I guess, so it’s her way of dealing with it, but still, it just makes me so upset. She says that he’s never done anything to really hurt her, but I don’t know whether to believe her or not. I mean, would she tell me if he had?”
Kris shrugged. “I doubt it. I wouldn’t in her shoes. But she’s just trying to protect you, I think. At least once we get back, maybe you’ll get to move out and put him behind you.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” I dropped into silence then and Kris and I just sat and watched the waves for a while.
“Ladies.”
I squeaked, the voice at my elbow startling me enough that I ended up halfway in Kris’s lap. Kris’s screech had sounded loud in my ear and we both turned to stare at the young blonde guy who had been sitting on the sand earlier.
He was squatting down next to us, sand still clinging to the denim of his pants, an amused smile on his face. A raindrop plinked down on my nose and I had to stifle the sudden urge to lean as close to him as possible. His eyes met mine briefly, as though he sensed what I was feeling.
He indicated the heavy clouds that had rolled in across the water, that Kris and I had been unaware of in our discussion. Another raindrop landed on my cheek, sliding down my skin.
“I wou
ld consider packing things up and heading out if I were you two.” His voice was mellow, pitched just high enough to be heard over the music, with what could only be either an Australian or Kiwi accent. He looked skyward. “Those clouds don’t look the least bit friendly and it’s already starting to rain.”
“Th-thanks.” Kris stammered the word.
I just nodded as I felt another raindrop land heavily on the top of my head. He stared at us both for a moment, nodded and stood up, making his way back toward the campfire.
We both groaned in embarrassment, myself, especially, over my reaction to him, then gathered up our things, wrapping them in the blanket to protect them from the rain as it began to really come down. As we walked past them at their fire, I noticed that they had made no move to leave, but they watched us as we went by, the blonde inclining his head and smiling again.
The footholds up to the tunnel were slick from the water, but we made it up with little mishap. We didn’t run into any problems until about fifteen feet into the tunnel when I tripped over a rock and the now wet flashlight slipped out of my hand. I heard it hit the tunnel floor with a thud, then the light went out. We both stood there in the utter darkness, not moving, then Kris broke the silence.
“Well, fuck.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it, it bubbled out of me almost hysterically. Finally, I managed to calm down, panting for breath. “Just give it a minute, Kris, let our eyes adjust a little, then we can make our way out.”
“Our eyes adjust? We’re in the middle of a hill and it’s fucking dark. I don’t think it’s gonna make a difference.”
There was fear in her voice and I had to admit that I was scared myself. I took a deep breath, moved a couple steps in the direction that I thought the flashlight had fallen. I cried out as my knee hit a chunk of driftwood and I lost my balance, falling backwards.
Arms came around me from behind, wrapping themselves around me and steadying me, my back now pressed against a hard warm chest. A light shock went through me, almost like static electricity. I hadn’t expected anyone else in the tunnel and my short, high pitched screech of fear echoed off the walls. Kris gave a strangled yelp and I could only assume someone had grabbed her as well. I felt the leather from his trench coat whip around my legs and soft breath in my ear as a husky voice whispered, “I’ve got you, you’re safe.”
