by Ward, Steve
“So you want it rough, huh? Okay. I like a little fight.” He slapped her across the face and knocked her to the floor. Then he reached down, grabbed a hand full of nightshirt and ripped it off in one motion.
Rolling onto her belly, she felt ashamed, totally defenseless.
“Got your choice. Either go with the flow, or I’ll beat the living shit out of ya. Either way, I’ll get what I want.”
She cowered on the floor it the fetal position, turning her back to him. He grabbed her by the neck with both hands, picked her up and slammed her hard against the wall. Air departed her lungs, and her extremities went limp below his grasp. The blood from his hand ran down the length of her naked body. She was choking, gasping for air.
“Now that’s better. You just take ‘er easy, and we’ll have ourselves a real good time.” He pinned her against the wall with one huge hand and reached down with the other to unbuckle his pants.
Figuring she was about to die, Jessica gasped for breath and fought as hard as she could, kicking and slapping at him. In response, he just tightened his grip until she couldn’t breathe. He squeezed harder and her eyes bulged. It felt as though her head would explode. She continued to struggle, but it was no use. She had only seconds.
Somehow the horrid violence seemed to fade into a peaceful calm. Her whole body tingled. It was a welcome feeling. I’d rather die, she thought. First, there were bright speckles of light and then nothing. Sounds seemed to move to some far away place, and images came in slow motion. She could barely hear his evil chortle as her mind’s eye fell into a black abyss.
* * *
“Let her go!” yelled Heather from the broken doorway. She was shocked by the scene.
Christina jumped in behind the big brute and rammed the butt of the shotgun hard into his shoulder blades. Pitts dropped his victim to the floor and turned. Christina dropped back and leveled her 410 at his face.
Heather stepped up and strained to lift the huge pistol. She glanced over at Christina. It was a face she had never seen before, the face of a wild savage. Her nostrils flared, eyes bugged in a chilling expression that made her shiver with fear. It was the face of a killer. Heather’s knees began to shake. She was sure Christina was going to murder the man. She was so scared, she could hardly breathe. When she saw the blood all over Jessica, she almost fainted.
Pitts roared, “Oh goody! Gonna have me some fun now. Got me three little teenyboppers.”
“You don’t have shit, Roy. You’re gonna die,” Christina barked. “Jessica, grab a gown out of your closet and move behind me.”
Coughing profusely, Jessica started coming to. Dazed, she scrambled to comply.
Roy hesitated, with confusion. He was standing there alone with no shirt, pants unbuckled. His back was to the wall and blood continued to pour from his hand in pulsing squirts.
Heather didn’t know what to do. She felt the presence of an evil force emanating from her best friend.
“Drop those pants!” Christina commanded.
What the hell is she going to do? Heather wondered. She remembered Christina’s dream, and she was trembling.
Roy smiled and said, “No problem. Ya wanna see what I got?” He dropped his pants to the floor, pulled down his underwear and stood there naked as a jaybird with a big grin. “How ya like it?” he grabbed himself roughly. “You little gals wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man in his own home, would ya? You know they’d string ya up fer that.” Reaching out a bloody hand he said, “Here, give me those before ya hurt yoself.”
Christina didn’t move. Heather gasped when she saw her pull back the safety. A vision of the man’s head being blown off at close range made her gag. Christina’s fingers started to curl around both triggers at the same time.
“No!” wailed Heather. She flung her arm up and hit the grip of the shotgun from underneath just as Christina discharged both barrels. A thunderclap drove him back as the wall exploded behind him. Double-zero buckshot tore through sheetrock, wood and siding. Smoke and dust filled the room. The earsplitting explosion blew his hair back, and Roy fell to the floor in a heap.
With both hands over her eyes, Heather asked, “Did you kill him?”
“No such luck. Thanks to you, I think he just fainted.”
“You were going to kill him, weren’t you?”
“Don’t you think he deserves it?” She broke the shotgun down and popped out the shells.
Christina ripped out a long telephone cord and hogtied the huge man while he was out cold.
Heather was frozen with fear as she watched her calmly walk over to the camera and erase the last few seconds of video. She turned to look at Heather and said, “Well. . .what the hell are you waiting for? Call the cops.”
Chapter Five
Christina was quite nervous about delivering the valedictorian address. Lewis and Clark was a huge high school with 837 seniors. The thought of standing in front of thousands of people and speaking into a microphone made her break out in a cold sweat.
“What do you think my speech should be about?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Jessica answered. “Sports is always a good theme.”
“Screw sports.” Heather jumped in. “Aren’t you two dikes sick of sports? Everybody does that. Why don’t you talk about your dreams, flying in space?”
“Great idea, Heather,” Jessica leaned back yawning. “That way we can all get in a good nap during the ceremony.” She started snoring.
“So, what do you think, Dopey?” Christina asked.
“Oh, that’s easy,” Jessica answered. “Start with kissing mommy and daddy goodbye and going off to party-land. Then move right on to safe sex, weed, and responsible drinking.”
Heather teased, “You could cover the medical benefits of cocaine. You’ll get a standing ovation.”
“I got it,” Jessica went on, “how about the three best ways to forge a driver’s license.”
The girls roared, but Christina didn’t laugh. She felt a sharp stab of panic.
“Please, ladies. I gotta come up with something fast. By the way, what are you two tarts doing afterwards?”
Heather and Jessica looked at each other with a blank stare.
“Don’t know,” Jessica said. “Promised my mom I wouldn’t drive.”
“Billy and I are broken up. . .for good,” Heather confessed.
“No, no girls, that won’t do.” Christina protested. “We gotta do something. How about that party at the lake? Probably a couple of hundred kids there with God knows how many kegs.”
“Yipeee!” Jessica squealed. “You drive.”
* * *
The ceremony took place at night in the football stadium, packed with well-wishers. Waiting her turn, Christina sat on the stage building a good case of nerves. A shooting star streaked across the black firmament, and she smiled at the thought of a good omen. Finally, she was introduced by the principal, Mr. Goldberg.
“And now we’ll hear from our Valedictorian. This young lady holds the honor of completing her studies with the highest grade point ever achieved at this school. I am quite pleased and honored to introduce this accomplished scholar. Captain of the girl’s volleyball team and one of our star basketball players, I give you Miss Christina Matthews!”
She walked up to the podium to a pattering of applause. . .petrified. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her mouth was full of cotton. “Hunnngh,” she cleared her throat. “Hunnngh,” she wanted to run for cover when she saw people shifting nervously in their seats. What if I can’t do it? A few words came to mind, and she squeaked, “Dear friends. . .” She thought she heard a whisper in a familiar tone. You can do it. . .you can. Finally, she got going, her tone growing stronger with each sentence.
Dear friends of Lewis and Clark High School. On this very special evening, it is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I have the privilege of standing before you for the last time.
Today we embark into a new millennium. Our future is so bright that no o
ne dares predict what great things will happen over the next 1,000 years. We, the high school graduates of today, will determine what the twenty-first century holds for generations to come. We will be the pioneers of a day that defies imagination.
“Yeah! You tell ’em Amazon,” one of the seniors yelled. There was nervous laughter.
Take just a moment to travel with me in my time machine. All you have to do is look up at the dimmest stars in the sky. You will see light which was sent our way billions of years ago, a window on the ancient past. Now look to the Moon. It represents the ancient history of Earth, evidence that our planet was impacted by a giant asteroid over four-billion years ago. Without the erosion of an atmosphere, the rocks on the Moon, those gathered by Apollo crews, are unaltered from their original state when Earth was formed.
Now look around at your parents and friends. Those people represent our most recent past. The generations of the 20th century gave us all the great inventions that paved the way to our modern world of technology.
Finally, look at the graduate next to you. Look at your friends, and you will zoom right through the present, on to the future.
She raised her voice, “My friends, WE are the future!”
Students erupted in response, “Hell yeah!”
One last time, I ask you all to look up, right in the center of the heavens, she lifted her arm, pointing.
Just beside the moon you will see a bright, red star. As a matter of fact, it’s not a star at all, but a destination. Today, before God and my friends, I am committing to my personal life goal. I plan to follow in the footsteps of Eileen Collins, NASA’s first female space Commander. I want to be first human to step on that red planet. My friends, we must go to Mars!
More wild screaming. The students were getting into it. She raised her hands to quiet the audience.
In the great words of a beloved songwriter, Paul Simon, of all that ‘crap we learned in high school,’ let us take at least one thing away. Let us capture the adventurous spirit of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, along with the courageous fortitude of their female advisor, Sacagawea. Dare to imagine what you can be. We, the graduates of Lewis and Clark High, we will launch a new generation of explorers into the cosmos.
Finally, I’d like to say. . . farewell.
Christina stepped off the podium and returned to her seat. There was an awkward silence that seemed to last forever. Everyone on the stage was staring like her hair was on fire. She could feel her face hot with embarrassment. Her breath caught in her throat. What’s wrong, she thought. After years of being the social outcaste, it was like a needle in the voo-doo doll. She had had the audacity to make her life a success, and now they were getting even. All she could do was look down at her shoes.
Suddenly there was a single clap. . .then another. The audience came to their feet and erupted in applause so deafening it caught her off guard. The ovation went on and on. She stood dumbfounded. Her dad didn’t seem to care what anybody thought. He marched right up on the stage and gave her a huge bear-hug.
Engulfed in a roar of acceptance and snug in her father’s arms, Christina could only think of that whisper. She felt her mother’s presence and longed to hold her. How could she die so young? She wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. Beneath the thunderous applause, the whisper returned.
Follow your destiny. . .your destiny. . .destiny.
Chapter Six
Giddy about her good fortune, Jesica thought, Gold, real gold! She had gold fever, Spanish gold. She couldn’t wait to show Christina and Heather what she had done.
Every summer in June, Heather’s parents invited the girls to join them in Key West. The beautiful Southern style mansion with huge verandas overlooked the pristine shallows of a turquoise Gulf. It was a perfect setting for treasure hunting and the daily tradition of toasting the setting sun.
On their last day in the Keys, Heather talked her parents into getting the girls a bottle of Dom Perignon. During their sunset ritual on the veranda, Jessica was feeling like a real treasure hunter when she gave her two best friends a very special gift.
Second only to New Orleans, Key West was well known as the fun capital of the South. Island life was a Jimmy Buffet bash. The girls sunbathed, mingled with the tourists on the strip and partied. Heather’s dad sponsored diving lessons for all three and, in the course of those vacations, they became certified scuba-divers.
With a long seeded yen for the “mother lode,” Jessica studied the Spanish galleons that went down in the area and always led their excursions. Over three summers they had explored four sites without luck. This time they chartered a guide-boat to take them out to the better known wrecks. Probably the most famous was the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. That Spanish galleon, found 30 miles off Key West, yielded tons of treasure to the notorious salvaging team of Mel Fisher. After twelve years it was still being worked and off limits to amateurs. Jessica picked another site nearby which contained remnants of the galleon, Santa Margarita.
After several days of hard diving, Jessica moved a large chunk of dead coral and saw something shiny in the silt. Waving her hand over the spot, she sucked at her mouthpiece when she saw a definite glimmer. Digging like a dog burying a bone, she found three small coins, ancient relics called “escudos.” Because of her research, she knew the “one-half escudo” pieces contained twenty-seven grams of 22 karat gold minted in Spain in 1620. She waved in her friends, and they searched the spot for two more days but found nothing more.
On the veranda just before sunset, Jessica could hardly stop giggling when she let her friends in on the secret.
“What’s this? Christina asked. “Oh my God, you had them mounted.”
Heather joined in, “Oooo, sooo beautiful.”
“Three coins, three necklaces and Three Amigos,” Jessica laughed. “Where’s the booze?”
“I’ll get it,” Heather retrieved the bottle and three glasses.
Jessica held the treasure high. Against the setting sun, bright orange colors glittered off the Spanish gold. Carefully hanging the necklaces on Christina and Heather and then around her own neck, she pledged, “These three coins bind us together as long as we shall live. We shall wear this bounty always to crystallize our everlasting loyalty.” Thinking of her rescue from Roy Pitts and remembering a line from The Three Musketeers, she added another pledge, “All for one, and one for all. On this day we shall swear our solemn bond as blood sisters.”
Heather and Christina looked at each other then back at Jessica chanting, “All for one, and one for all.”
“All for one, and one for all,” they said in unison downing their grog like sailors.
“Jessica, I love you,” Heather said, in complete awe of such a special gift. She poured each girl another glass.
“I think we should toast Jessica for finding the loot,” Christina offered.
“Yeah,” Heather agreed as they held their glasses together.
“Here’s to the best damned treasure hunter I know,” Christina said. “Jessica Ward, may you one day find the mother lode.”
The girls emptied their glasses again.
Jessica was sky high. Finding those tiny coins meant more to her than the state championship. Her chest heaved with pride.
Heather poured another round and gave a toast of her own, “To Jessica, future marine biologist and aquanaut.”
The champagne began to take its effect, and they started getting silly.
“Here, here,” said Christina grabbing the bottle for more.
“What adventurous friends I have,” Heather said. “One will explore the sea, and the other the cosmos. . .an aquanaut and an astronaut. So what does that leave for me?”
“You can be our little agrinaut,” quipped Jessica. She formed her hands over Heather’s tummy like a pregnant woman. “You’ll marry a wealthy landowner and have lots of rug-rats.”
They all started giggling.
“Thanks a lot! While you two are out conquering new worlds, I’ll be ho
me humping a farmer and breast feeding? No fair!”
“Well, hell,” Christina slurred loudly, “somebody’s gotta do it!”
“Shut up,” Heather whined.
Jessica and Christina laughed hysterically as they hugged their pouting friend. Heather’s magnificent body was bulging out of her bright orange bikini. Christina backed away, looked her over and declared the obvious, “Well, my little chick-a-dee, at least you’ve got the right stuff.”
