Breaking Free

by SM Koz

  I sat opposite him and watched as he tried to tie a knot around a feather and attach it to a hook. Three attempts and two finger sticks later, he finally got it.

  Chris was near her tent doing something to fishing poles as she talked to Jason. Everyone else was in their tents.

  “Can I talk to him while he works?” I yelled across the space.

  “Yes.”

  I focused back on JC. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Making you have to do this.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Still, you wouldn’t be tearing up your fingers if it weren’t for me.”

  He shrugged and concentrated on the thing in front of him.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Fly for fly fishing. Apparently Chris figured I’d enjoy gathering water too much so she taught me how to do this.”

  “Are you enjoying this?”

  “Not at all.”

  “She has a knack for picking out grunt work that is least appealing for each of us.”

  He nodded and added a bead to the hook, but not before impaling his thumb again. “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath.

  “How many of these do you have to do?”

  “Ten.”

  I glanced to the lone fly sitting next to his right leg. “This is only your second one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re slow.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Want a pointer?”

  “You know how to make flies?”

  “No, but I know how to make jewelry and the concept is the same.” Chris walked behind me and laid five fishing poles on the ground. “Can I make suggestions to help him if I don’t actually do the work?” I asked.

  She smiled at us, but not her hoity-toity, you’ll-regret-this-tomorrow smile, more like she was happy we were talking. “That’s fine.”

  “The problem is you’re constantly switching between tools. That’s time consuming. You need to do this like an assembly line. First, go through and tie thread to all eight hooks you have left. Then, add the feather to each hook. Then the bead.”

  “You may be on to something,” he said, organizing the materials in front of him.

  “Of course I am. I’m not a complete idiot.”

  He looked up at me with a frown. “Where’d that come from? I’ve never even said you were a partial idiot.”

  “Well, I’m sure that’s what you and everyone else thinks.”

  “Why don’t you ask me what I think rather than tell me?”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned against a tree while he continued tying thread around the hooks.

  After a few moments, he asked, “Are you really from Malibu?”

  “No. Bel Air.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “About thirty miles from Malibu.”

  He laughed a deep, throaty laugh and then nicked his finger on a hook. “Shit, that one hurt.” After wiping a drop of blood on his pants, he said, “So, basically Malibu?”

  Ignoring him, I asked, “What about you?”

  “Durham, North Carolina. About four hours east of here.”

  “Have you been in these mountains before?”

  “No. My family never had money to take trips.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It didn’t bother me. We had plenty to do in Durham.”

  “Like what? Is there a beach?”

  “No, that’s a few hours away.”

  Before I could ask him what he did, we all heard rustling in Neeky’s tent. It looked like something inside fell against the wall. I craned my neck to see through the half-zipped door, but couldn’t tell what it was. By the size of the bulge, there was a good chance it had to be Neeky, though.

  Chris sighed and motioned for Jason to join her. “We need to do a more thorough search for alcohol now,” she whispered. “Did the Lodge get in touch with his parents last night?”

  The Lodge was the name of the building where we all met the first day. They made it sound like it was some awesome retreat when in reality it was a tiny, worn out shack with an office, a storage loft, a bathroom, and a central gathering area. The whole place smelled like dirt mixed with mold. It wasn’t nice at all.

  “Yes, I just got the message,” Jason answered. “They faxed us permission if you want me to do it.” I spun around, surprised to hear Jason actually speak. He seemed to be a man of very few words.

  Chris nodded. “Let’s see exactly where he’s hiding the rest of the alcohol.”

  My eyes grew huge and my jaw dropped because I was pretty sure Neeky was about to get strip searched. It hadn’t even dawned on me to hide prohibited items beneath my clothes and now I’m glad it didn’t. The embarrassment I had already endured on the trip would have been nothing compared to that.

  Jason approached Neeky’s tent. “Samuel, may I come in?” he asked. “I need to search you and your belongings.”

  “Hell no,” Neeky slurred from inside.

  “Then you’ll have to come with me back to the Lodge.”

  “I’m not going nowhere.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “I need to call my parents. They won’t allow this.”

  “We talked to them last night and they already faxed over permission to address this situation as we see fit. You have one minute to decide what you want to do.”

  I cringed at Jason’s words. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, he was serious.

  Neeky appeared at the door, wobbling on his knees, and narrowed his bloodshot eyes. He threw something on the floor, but opened the rest of the door. Jason entered, zipping it up fully once they were both inside.

  “Maybe that’s your ticket home,” JC said to me. “Got any liquor you can hide under your clothes?”

  “I can’t go home,” I grumbled.

  He looked up from his fly, surprise lighting up his features. “No? Why the change of heart?”

  “My bitch of a stepmom said she’ll send me to military school if I get kicked out of here.”

  He laughed and, despite my annoyance, my lips involuntary curled into a half smile at the sound.

  “The lesser of two evils, huh?” he said.

  “At least this is only thirty days.”

  “What happens when you return home?”

  I drew patterns in the dirt with a stick, not interested in thinking about that and even less interested in answering him. With all my focus on how much I hated this trip, I had done a good job of not reflecting on my past, but I knew that would be impossible when I returned home. There were reminders of what happened everywhere. The guilt would inevitably overwhelm me and I’d pull out my box of razors. It was the only thing that distracted me from the pain.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to get you down,” JC said, tapping my foot with his own.

  “I’m not down,” I lied and pasted a fake smile on my face, but I could already feel myself being pulled into the depths of the very dark place I loathed. I would really be screwed if I couldn’t forget about Jenna while I was in the woods. Without my razors, there was no telling what would happen.

  “You’re lying.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, but all I saw behind my darkened eyelids was Jenna’s face surrounded by a pool of bright red blood. I gasped and my eyes snapped open.

  “Everything okay?”

  I shook my head and placed my hands on the ground behind me, ready to push myself into a standing position.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head again, but before I could get to my feet, JC rested his hand on my ankle.

  “Want me to distract you from whatever you’re thinking about?”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Try me. I’m a pretty good storyteller. At least that’s what Jalen always told me.”

  “Who’s Jalen?”

  “He was my little brother.”

  “Was? What happened?”

  “That
is not a good story. I have a much better one about Prince Jalen who lives in a faraway land where he slays dragons with bolts of electricity from his fingertips and fights off enemies with cannon balls the size of cars.”

  “Sounds like an exciting place.”

  “It is.” As JC started telling me the story, a red-faced Neeky stumbled out of his tent with Jason right behind him, carrying two flasks.

  “These were taped to his legs,” he told Chris, before adding them to the locked storage cabinet.

  I focused back on JC as he continued his tale complete with quick-sand-like pits of gooey green slime and friendly nunchuck-wielding ninjas who came to Prince Jalen’s aid. I imagined the story was pretty awesome to a little kid. Actually, it was pretty entertaining to a sixteen-year old and within a few minutes, my mind had temporarily left Jenna behind so I could follow the adventures of Prince Jalen as he rid the world of evil monsters.

  Chapter 8: August 24

  “What are you smiling about, Señorita Kelsie?” Marta asks, lowering her plate into the sink.

  “Prince Jalen.”

  “His brother?”

  “Yes. JC used to tell him stories. They always ended the same way—Prince Jalen defeating the bad guys and keeping his friends and family safe—but the means to that end were always different and usually pretty creative.”

  “He told you these stories?”

  I nod. “It started on our third day. That was the first time I thought about …” I stop myself. I don’t talk about Jenna with anyone. Well, except JC, but that’s no longer an option. I’m certainly not going to tell Marta about her. “Once I accepted my month of camping and stopped spending so much energy being angry, my mind had time to wander. A wandering mind is never good …” I say evasively.

  “Not when you’ve seen the things you’ve seen.”

  “Or caused the things I’ve caused,” I say without thinking, then snap my head up to see Marta’s reaction. I didn’t mean to go there. I’m usually good at keeping my mouth shut.

  “Pobrecita,” Marta murmurs, turning on the water and scrubbing the plate with a sponge. “So much guilt for someone so young.”

  I lower what’s left of my sandwich and push the plate away, having lost my appetite. No one knows what really happened. Everyone thinks it was an accident, but I know better. Jenna, my best friend since third grade, would still be alive if it weren’t for me.

  It was a Saturday night and we were at her house like usual since her parents always had plans on Saturday nights. They also had a fully stocked liquor cabinet and never seemed to notice when some of it went missing.

  It’s not like we made a habit of getting drunk, but sometimes it was a nice way to forget about a bad day. Or a bad week. It seemed like I was having more and more of those as time went on. As I grew older, I was never the daughter my parents wanted. Although I had a solid B+ grade point average, that wasn’t good enough. Sure, I made it onto the cheerleading squad, but why wasn’t I captain? Sheila’s friend from the country club had a daughter win a national art contest—why didn’t I win anything? It’s like I didn’t provide them with enough bragging rights to keep them in the upper echelon of their circle of friends. I was depressed for months when I finally realized my parents didn’t care about me, only what I could provide for them. That made me even less interested in trying to please them in the future.

  The argument we had the day everything fell apart was over college. Sheila insisted I apply to UCLA because “you never know what might happen.” She thought my dad might be able to pull some strings if he made a large endowment to the university. I told her I didn’t want to get into college with a bribe and my plan was to go to Cal State Long Beach. I had done pretty well on my SAT so I figured I had a good shot there.

  She shook her head in disgust and said, “Don’t be so sanctimonious. You need all the help you can get.”

  As usual, I ran to Jenna afterwards.

  “What’s up, girl?” she asked when I barged into her bedroom. She was sitting on the floor painting her toenails with fluorescent purple polish.

  “Sheila.”

  “Bitch. Do you want to talk about it or forget about it?”

  “Forget about it.”

  “Perfect. Mom and Dad are going out. Let’s have a little soiree tonight!”

  “That sounds like fun. Who should we invite?”

  She shrugged. “Becca, Gabe, Rachel…”

  “Brad?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  She picked up a pillow and threw it at my head. “You’re still after him?”

  “Come on, I think we’d be good together.”

  “You mean you’d have a good time.”

  “No, well maybe, but I think there could be more there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You want a lasting relationship with Bradley Winston? The guy who considers two weeks long-term.”

  “I can change him.”

  “Like you changed Rick and Steve and Travis. Shall I go on?”

  “They weren’t so bad.”

  “They were assholes!”

  “They were just looking for something different than me.”

  “Brad’s an asshole, too.”

  “Don’t you dare talk about my future husband like that,” I said, grinning and throwing the pillow back at her.

  “Omigod. If you two got hitched, I’d be the one standing up and protesting when the minister asked if anyone objected.”

  I smile because I know it’s true. “What would you say?”

  “That you’re a sweet, wonderful person with terrible taste in men. Brad is a useless player who doesn’t deserve you.”

  “Give him a chance.”

  She paused and pointed the polish brush at me. “Okay, I’ll give him tonight to prove me wrong. But you have to promise to forget about him if he doesn’t do anything to dispel his playboy image.”

  “Deal.”

  “Come here,” she said grabbing my ankle and dragging me towards her. “You need a pedicure if you’re seeing your future husband tonight.”

  “I can’t be caught in that awful color.”

  “It’s stylish.”

  “Says who?”

  “Teen Vogue.” She points at the magazine lying on her bed.

  “They said fluorescent purple is in?”

  “Yes. Well, purple.”

  “A dark, deep purple. That’s broody and mysterious. This is clown-like.”

  “Hopefully, Brad likes clowns, then,” she said, finishing my big toe and moving on to the next one.

  “We’re shopping for new nail polish tomorrow,” I said, grabbing the magazine from the bed. “You get no say in the color.”

  She crinkled her nose at me and then swiped the brush on the top of my foot, forming a heart. “Brad and Kelsie, sitting in a tree …”

  “There will be more than k-i-s-s-i-n-g happening tonight.” I raised my eyebrows and she shook her head.

  “Not in my room! You’ll need to do that outside. I don’t want Brad germs in my house.”

  “How about the pool house?”

  “You could use one of the floats,” she said with a smile. “Maybe that one with the hole? Then you could throw it out afterwards.”

  “We could get Sheila’s fancy float from my house.”

  Jenna laughed. “I’d love to see Sheila’s face when you told her you had sex on that thing. You could mention it during one of her parties with all the country club ladies there.”

  “That would be better than the time we put baby powder in her hair dryer.” I laughed, remembering how her entire head, face and all, was coated afterwards. She ended up being at least an hour late for her fundraising event that night.

  “I forgot about that. Man, we’re cruel sometimes,” Jenna said, but couldn’t stop smiling.

  Later that evening, our friends arrived and it didn’t take long before we loosened up thanks to a few drinking games. Throughout the night, I tried to get Jenna to see something positive in Brad, bu
t he didn’t help himself. I even ended up finding myself being less and less attracted to him. The problem was I had a plan and I didn’t want to mess that up.

  “My girl, Kelsie, here thinks you’ve got potential,” Jenna said, narrowing her eyes at Brad. “I’ve got my doubts.”

  He draped his arm across my shoulder. “You’ve got good taste,” he whispered in my ear, but not quietly enough.

  “No, she’s got horrible taste in men! Disaster after disaster and you fit the mold perfectly!”

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said to me. Before I could answer, a techno song reverberated from his pocket. He pulled out his phone and checked the screen.

  Jenna reached over and grabbed it from his hands.

  “Give it back!” he yelled.

  She stumbled over the back of the couch and read the text out loud. “Babe. Where are you? I thought you were coming over tonight. I’m lonely. Stace.”

  “So Stace doesn’t know you’re here putting the moves on another girl? Perhaps I should text her …”

  Brad leaped over the couch, elbowing Rachel and Becca in the progress, and stole his phone back. “We broke up last week. She’s just trying to get me back.” Looking at me he said, “Seriously, there’s nothing going on between us.”

  I nodded, but Jenna shot me an angry glare.

  Brad circled around the sofa and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Let’s go to the beach. Maybe do a little skinny dipping? What do you say?”

  “Umm …”

  “No! The answer is no, Kels!” Jenna yelled from across the room.

  “Come on, it will be fun. Just for a little while.”

  I looked to Jenna who was giving me her serious face. She did not want to go. “Let me talk to Jenna for a sec,” I said, unwinding myself from his arms.

  As soon as I was free from his grip, Jenna grabbed my shoulder and marched me to the half-bath down the hallway. Once the door was closed, she let me have it.

  “He’s an asshole. I gave you one night and he proved me right. We made a deal. It’s time for you to forget about him. Plus, we’ve been drinking.”

  I sat on the closed toilet seat and said, “You’re barely even tipsy. And the night’s not over. We still have one hour. Plus, the beach will be fun. We haven’t been at night in a long time.”