by Rik Johnston
CHAPTER FOUR
I
THE TORMENTORS
By the time that Tuesday had finished up with her toast she realized that it was nearly time for the bus to arrive outside to take her to school. She remembered seeing herself on the school bus as it passed by the scene of the accident, and tried really hard to recall what she was wearing. And who was that boy who was with her? She didn’t know him, and she only got a really quick look at him, all she could really remember about him was what he was feeling, which was concern and confusion. She didn’t know, but she was certain that she would find out. Sooner or later, she would find out.
But this was not the time to dwell on the identity of a boy, it was time to walk outside to the bus stop. She picked up her backpack from the table and slung it over one shoulder, walking quickly from the kitchen, through the living room and to the front door. She pulled the curtain aside and peeked outside to see if the bus was out there yet, but all she saw were other kids waiting as well. Tuesday made a sour face as she realized that the Jackson twins were out there, ready to give her another verbal lashing for the day. Upon seeing them she realized that she really didn’t want to have to face them on this particular morning, especially after witnessing the events her nightmare.
The Jackson Twins, Serina and Jessica, were Tuesday’s archenemies. It seemed that these two little psychopaths were the architects of most of the problems she had with everyone in Cadence Falls. When they were all very young, they attended a slumber party for a mutual friend, one that had met with disastrous results. The true nature of these events was a secret that Tuesday kept closely guarded and didn’t talk to anyone about, not even the collection of therapists she had visited over the years. However, it was the point of view of the Jackson Twins that earned most of the ears of the local area. Their family was rich and influential, so they could say whatever they wanted about Tuesday, or anyone else for that matter. Their father owned the casino, hotel and ski lodge in Cadence Falls. Somewhere down the family line, a relative who was a retired Civil War colonel founded Cadence Falls as a retreat from his experiences in the war.
During the Civil War, Lance Jackson served under the banner of the North, and its President, Abraham Lincoln. After a few years of witnessing the horror and the bloodshed of the war, he planned and plotted his escape, eventually taking a few other men and going AWOL. He traveled to the north, but was soon recaptured and sent back to the frontlines of the very terror he was trying to leave behind. Again, he tried to flee, and again was captured, and this time they imprisoned him in a Union military camp. While he was imprisoned, he began to hear about the expansion to the West, which intrigued him. After a few months, the war ended and the prisoners were released and pardoned by President Grant. For a time, he found some work with the railroad, which carried him as far south as St. Louis. It was here that Lance met with some like-minded people whose minds had been scarred by the horrors and atrocities of the war. They decided that in order to recover they would need to find a place that was untouched by war and politics. With the expansion to the West, Jackson decided that it would be the perfect time to reach out and find something completely new. A new world.
After some misadventures along the way, chief among them a bank robbery and a jewel heist in which one of his companions lost his life, they eventually found their way north and into the Oregon Territories. He crossed the Columbia River and continued north until he came upon a beautiful site. It was a peak in the large range of mountains, with a hidden valley with a waterfall nestled into it. It was here that what was left of his ragtag troop set down roots, and formed the community known as Cadence Falls. The valley opened out into a plain, which had a lake and some very lush woodland around. The money they had stolen was buried under the foundation of Lance’s home, left for his heirs, and never spoken of for years.
Many years later, on his deathbed, Lance Jackson did in fact bequeath the secret of the hidden treasure to his favorite great grandson as a child. For many years after Lance’s death, this information as kept secret until he could recover the wealth on his own. Lance Jackson’s great grandson tore up the original Jackson house and found the fortune, which had veiled below the residence for so long. Being that the money was no longer in use and was from the Civil War era made it instantly worth much more than its face value. The jewels were sold off at an auction, and this is how twenty-five-year-old Thomas Jackson earned his fortune and became the favored son of Cadence Falls. His son, Thomas Jackson Jr., having been born into wealth and privilege, invested in the natural surroundings and realized that tourism would do well, thus building Cadence Falls into its current state. Cadence Falls became a center for tourism year around, with its abundance of hiking trails and outdoor activities in the summer, and a nearby premiere ski location in the winter.
Thomas Jackson Jr. also created an international import/export corporation called The Jackson Consortium, which he operated from The Devil’s City, the city that neighbored Cadence Falls. The business had made the Jackson family obscenely wealthy, and The Jackson Consortium had repeatedly landed in the Forbes Top 100 for many consecutive years. Certainly, Thomas Jackson had the power to accomplish anything that he would ever desire to, and few in the area had the power or courage to oppose him. In 1977, Thomas Jackson married Alicia Scott, and began planning a family, the first being their twin girls, who were born in 1981.
Needless to say, Serina and Jessica Jackson had everything handed to them. They were the girls that the spoiled kids called spoiled, and when the two of them said something, everyone listened. They created the trends for the kids in school. If the Jackson Twins didn’t do it or didn’t like it, then it wasn’t cool. For example, when the two of them told jokes that weren’t that funny, everyone laughed anyway, trying to gain favor with them. It seemed to Tuesday that this was a kind of an old west mentality. The Jackson girls weren’t nearly as bright, or clever, or as funny as they thought they were. Tuesday liked to think that everyone knew that, but nobody, save her, was brave enough say it.
“If I had known they were riding the bus today,” Tuesday said to Winston, the disdain in her voice as obvious as print on a newspaper, “I wouldn’t have eaten. No point in throwing up perfectly good coffee and toast.” If Winston could have laughed, he would have done so, uproariously.
Tuesday paused for a moment, resting her head against the door almost as if she were saying a silent prayer to herself. She then exhaled sharply “Okay, Faith.” She whispered to herself and turned the knob and let the door swing wide open before her.
She stepped out into the cool autumn morning, the cold rush of air waking her fully from her morning routine. She turned and locked the locks on the door and placed the keys back into her pocket, then began her trek to the bus stop, and to inevitable confrontation with Serina and Jessica Jackson.
II
AN UNEVEN FIGHT
Tuesday seemed to be making good progress at first toward the bus stop, but each step seemed to become more and more laborious. Each step brought a more heightened sense of fear, not of the spoiled twins, but of the nightmare itself. Soon she had slowed to a complete stop and it felt to her that her feet had become rooted into the ground. Each step resounded the question louder into her head. “What if today is the day?” Finally, she just couldn’t go on; she was completely paralyzed with fear.
Serina Jackson, who was standing at the bus stop, only twenty feet away noticed her first and immediately began taunting her.
“Yeah, you can wait for the next ride.” Serina called out to Tuesday, who was trying to talk herself out of looking stupid in front of the other kids. Then Jessica turned around to see whom her sister was talking to. Tuesday was too busy trying to snap herself out of the trance to notice them at first.
“C’mon feet, move.” Tuesday whispered under her breath. “Don’t want to get grounded after all.” But still her feet refused to move.
“Yeah freak-girl.” J
essica teased with a sneer on her face, “We don’t want you on our bus anyway.”
“Freak-girl?” That snapped Tuesday back to reality quicker than anything she could have come up with on her own. She hated being called that, and the Jackson girls knew it. She wasn’t overly fond of the name her mother had chosen for her, and she had gotten teased badly enough for it, let alone for other things. Tuesday had assumed that her name was given to her because she had been born on a Tuesday and her middle name was May, which just happened to coincide with the month she had been born in. She had always wished that her mother had put more thought and effort into her name, but in true Megan Moxley fashion, she had committed to the minimal effort, per her usual pattern of doing things. But she preferred her real name far more than she did “Freak-Girl”. Her attention instantaneously focused from her feet to the two little snobs waiting for her as she began to plot verbal comebacks in her mind. “I didn’t think that this day could get any worse.”
Having regained control over her feet, Tuesday briskly continued onward to the bus stop, where the other girls were pointing and laughing at her lack of school spirit displayed by her clothing. They said nothing, but kept pointing and giggling, which was making Tuesday angry, but she decided to ignore it and turned away from them. A moment later, Jessica snatched Winston from Tuesday’s backpack and tossed him over into a pile of raked up leaves. Wide-eyed, Tuesday turned around and looked at Jessica and then at Winston, whose legs were all that was sticking out of the pile of colorful, dried up foliage. Then she clenched her fists up and yelled in directly in Jessica’s face.
“You got a problem?” growled Tuesday in an unexpectedly loud tone that sent Serina and Jessica both stepping back and into defensive positions. The two of them began cackling like witches on Halloween night at a bonfire, as Tuesday went to rescue Winston from his would-be leafy fate.
“Yeah, you.” Jessica responded not too kindly, snickering to herself. “Just stay away from me freak-girl, or else.” She said letting her voice trail off as the “or else” part came out, insinuating a veiled threat. It was a threat that Tuesday considered to be a challenge. She scooped Winston up and brushed the debris from him, placing him back into his pouch. Tuesday set the backpack down, narrowing her eyes into slits and positioning herself into an offensive position, ready to defend the honor of her teddy bear.
“Or else what?” Tuesday returned the challenge, as if she were spiking the ball over the net in a heated verbal volleyball match. Then Serina walked up next to Jessica to back her sister up.
“Or else we’ll give you a nightmare you won’t wake up from.” Returned Serina, full of fire in her voice.
“Oh yeah?” Tuesday shot back, taunting the would-be tormentors. “You want to put the skills you learned in your ballet class against the skills I’ve learned in my taekwondo class?”
“Don’t you mean your taekwondon’t?” Jessica offered, trailing off the word but emphasizing the T sound at the end of the pseudo-word. She tried to continue her teasing but was cut off by Tuesday.
“You don’t scare me, and next time you touch my bear, I’ll rip that hand off and feed it to the wolves! Got it?” Tuesday threatened. “You’ll need your sister’s hand to do all your favorite activities from now on, but I can’t imagine how that would change things from the way you’re already doing them.”
The two girls stopped in their tracks for a moment, trying to fully comprehend what it was that was just thrown at them. Then they realized that the comment was incestuous in nature, triggering their rage even further. They realized that Tuesday wasn’t about to play in the same boundaries that they were in. The argument rapidly escalated, taking a turn for the worse.
“What?” Serina screamed, trying to drop herself to a new low. “Did you learn that talk from your hooker of a mother?”
Tuesday had her defenses fully up by this time. She was ready to fight back and was in fine form. “No.” Tuesday returned, snarling her anger at Serina. “I learned it from yours.”
“Ha!” Jessica laughed, going for the most obvious insult she could think of. “That really hurts my feelings coming from a freak-girl!”
“Yeah!” Was all that Serina had to back up her sister’s words.
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings!” Tuesday yelled, coming right for Jessica. “I’m trying to hurt your face!”
Tuesday swung her arm straight out in front of her, catching Jessica off fully guard, impacting the left side of her mouth with a force that knocked the snooty twin to the ground with a low, dull thump. Tuesday’s blow had connected cleanly causing Jessica’s lip to split wide open and began bleeding onto the yellow-gold color of her “spirit jacket”. Serina looked down at the ground where Jessica sat dazed, and moved herself into an attack position. Before she could fully prepare, Tuesday’s foot caught her under her jaw, knocking Serina to the ground, on top of her sister. The two girls, both sitting on the ground at this point, looked at each other and then at Tuesday, with furious and looks in their eyes, and an intention to cause harm to her.
This was the way of things, especially on Monday and Friday mornings. Almost every week, the Jackson girls rode the bus to school on those days, and every week they tried to start something with Tuesday. Often the two of them would come out on top, outnumbering her two, sometimes three to one. Sometimes their friend Lisa would show up and ride the bus with them and that was the crux of Tuesday’s Thursday mornings. The three of them would often beat her pretty badly. Sometimes Tuesday was often in so much pain that it made trying to do anything intolerable, and there was nothing she could do about it, except fight back she learned. The two, sometimes three of them would beat her and she would suffer the next couple of days, or she would jump the gun and take them by surprise. It didn’t do any good to tell anyone when she got to school; they all appeared to be on their side. So she learned to strike first and hard, contrary to the teachings of her sensei. She tried to reason with him that her only form of self-defense was to attack before they inevitably got the chance to, and she was becoming increasingly more proficient at it. Usually they would regain the upper hand, and Tuesday would always end up the victim, with nobody to talk to, nobody to sympathize with her. She could have just waited inside her house until the bus arrived, but she didn’t want to appear to be a coward in anybody’s eyes. In her mind, it was better to take the physical beating than to take the emotional one.
In a flash, the Jackson Twins were back on their feet and circling Tuesday trying to figure out how to get inside her defense, knowing that it would only take one blow to destroy her concentration. Meanwhile, Tuesday was doing an exceptional job of repelling Serina and Jessica’s uncoordinated attacks with simple maneuvers.
“We’re gonna beat you down, crybaby!” Jessica shrieked, throwing an uncoordinated and uncontrolled punch in the direction of Tuesday’s face, which she easily sidestepped.
“Yeah, did you dream about this?” Serina taunted, and then attempted to sweep Tuesday’s leg out from underneath her, again easily sidestepped.
“I didn’t need a dream to help me to foresee what morons you two are.” Tuesday responded, remaining calm, focusing and opening her senses to prepare for the next wave of attacks.
The next wave seemed more focused as they continued to circle around Tuesday, throwing in punch after punch, which were all simply easily blocked or sidestepped. But then fate handed victory to the Jackson girls, as Tuesday’s leg was swept out from under her and she fell down on her back, taking her wind from her. Instantly the twins were on her, cuffing her viciously, laughing and teasing as they did so. Although they were hitting her, their attacks were weak, just strong enough to hurt for the better part of the day, but it was unpleasant nonetheless. Suddenly there was an unfamiliar voice coming from a direction that Tuesday couldn’t see.
“Get off her you two!” The voice commanded, directing the Twins to cease their actions. “Leave her alone,
or you’ll deal with me!”
The pounding momentarily subsided as Serina and Jessica looked to see who was disturbing their ritualistic beating of the freak-girl. The two of them could tell by the sound of the voice that it was a boy, but couldn’t see him as he was backlit by the morning sunlight streaming through the leafless trees behind him. He began to circle around the trio, out of the light and became more visible to them. He was perhaps a year older than Tuesday, with sandy blond hair, which was disorganized on his head in an unkempt mop. In one hand, he clutched the strap of his backpack, which was slung over his shoulder, and in the other a beat up, sticker-covered skateboard. He was dressed in green shorts and a black hooded sweatshirt that was adorned with the names and logos of bands that Tuesday hadn’t heard of. He stared at the twins with his blue eyes, narrow and slitted, peering in accusation with justice on his mind. His presence was such an out of place event that at first neither Serina nor Jessica could believe he was there, much less opposing them. They were the most popular kids in school, and they thought that they knew everyone, whether they liked them or not, but they did not recognize this boy. It took the better part of ten seconds to realize that he must be new to Cadence Falls.
“You heard me!” The new boy re-asserted, stating his terms loudly. “Get off her or you’ll deal with me!”
Slowly the twins picked themselves up and turned to face Tuesday’s rescuer, kicking Tuesday back onto the ground as she tried to get up. Her head hit the soft, wet lawn as she crawled backward and away from them before trying to stand again. After backing about three feet from the girls, Tuesday slowly got to her feet as well, a little sore, but better off than she normally was following a confrontation with the Jackson Twins. Meanwhile, the twins were questioning the newcomer, trying to satisfy their curiosity and making vain attempts to turn him to their cause. It was a scene that reminded Tuesday of an old western movie, where the gunfighter had come to town to liberate those under the yoke of oppression. She didn’t know who the new boy was, but she was certainly relieved to have an ally, if only for a few moments.
Then it hit her, “This is the boy from my dream.” And if that was the case, she was thinking that a little bullying wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen today.
Suddenly, she wasn’t sure this was going to be such a great day.
