When We Were 8

by catt dahman

  “How on earth could you think that? Never. They’ll be furious with him. They won’t laugh. They may cry and curse. But they’ll be on your side,” she said as she led Angel back to help with chores, but they found that their friends had finished everything for them.

  Jill’s father teased her and Angel about shirking chores, both girls managed to smile, but he could tell something was upsetting Angel and figured that Jill had taken her aside to help her with her problem.”

  Bill Havilland looked at Jill and said, “If you need me….”

  “I know, Daddy, thanks. It’s all fine.”

  Tiffany looked perplexed, and Cassie gave Jill a wink. They knew that whatever was wrong would be shared later. Jill was always the one to get the facts first.

  Jill pretended to be happy and smiled too brightly at her father and Uncle Mike, but as soon as she could, she got permission for the girls to roast wieners and marshmallows and drink cold cokes at the campfire. It was all she could do to wait for the men to make the fire for them and give them the usual warnings about behaving, being careful, and being mature. They always got safety lectures and were always very careful while at the cabin.

  Despite everything, Angel and Jill were starving and ate the hot dogs greedily, devouring two each; the meat tasted savory and wonderful. The marshmallows were gooey, sweet, and sticky, and the girls finished the entire bag.

  Afterwards, they patted their full bellies and sighed. Cassie belched, Tiffany belched louder, and they giggled. The food was always tastier at the cabin.

  “What’s the topic tonight? Ghost stories? I have a good one,” Whitney said after they ate. She was ready for the fun to begin and hadn’t caught on that something was terribly wrong. She wasn’t very fast about catching on about the subtleties, understanding empathy, getting social cues, or reading people.

  She was terrible at games when they tried to guess what people were hiding and thinking because she had no window in the minds to look through. In a bigger city, a teacher might have caught on that she exhibited some signs of high functioning Asperger’s or an emotional issue that might be severe detachment. Even among the eight close friends, she was almost on the fringe and usually not as much into the closeness as the others were.

  “I want a real story. I want the one about what’s wrong with Angel and why Jill is about to jump out of her skin,” Cassie said. Her eyes locked with Jill’s. She was one of the best, besides Jill, at reading body language and facial expressions.

  “Me, too,” Tiffany admitted, “I can tell something bad has happened. Spill it.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll tell everything so Angel doesn’t have to tell it again,” Jill said. “Let me get it all out before you ask anything.” She talked for a while, refusing to answer any questions until she was finished. She compacted the events and tried to stay as calm and neutral as possible.

  At times while she talked, her voice cracked with emotion, and she had to pause, wipe her nose, and take big breaths. Her emotions were all over the place, ranging from anger to heartbreak.

  “What? Rex can’t do that!” Meg exploded. She ran around the fire to the opposite side and wrapped Angel in her arms, crying against her friend’s cheek. For a second, Jill had been afraid that Meg was angry with Angel and going to strike her for sneaking out with her date, but it looked as if this were pure sympathy.

  “He needs to go to jail,” Whitney said. She ground her teeth together and called Rex names.

  “Angel doesn’t want that. She said she’d be humiliated, and besides, it’s his word against hers,” Jill said.

  “I hate him,” Nelwynn remarked as she poked the fire with a wire hanger. “Who does he think he’s messing with?”

  “Me. A nobody,” Angel said.

  Samantha’s eyes burned with hatred and anger. “He messed with seven of your friends, too. He can’t get away with this. I can’t stand it if he does. I mean it: I. Can’t Stand It. If He Does.”

  Cassie dug her nails into her palms painfully. “I want revenge on that bastard. I want Rex to pay ten times over. I want him to hurt just as much.”

  Tiffany, who had been very quietly listening, nodded slowly. “I do, too. He should pay. I think eight smart girls can beat one stupid, asshole thug.”

  For a few minutes, they cursed Rex Wisdom, and then there were some random ideas tossed out, but none were anything but wishful thinking. Cassie stopped for a few seconds to curse the ants that had bitten her earlier. She scratched the raised bumps and said they needed to get someone to put ant killer on the mound.

  Samantha’s face lit up. “I know what we can do, and I know how to do it.” The entire plan came to her in a flash, and in her mind, she saw it as a movie; she liked the images and grinned with malice that was unlike her.

  “You do?” Angel asked.

  Samantha smiled grimly and said, “I think that he’d be a great candidate for that fire ant pile we always stir up down by the river? The ones who got you, Cassie. I mean wouldn’t being tied up and rolled in fire ants be just dues? It isn’t like he would tell on us for torturing him, and then he’d get over it after some pain.” She was usually the sweetest of group, but today, she was ruthless as they planned justice.

  Jill grinned back at her and said, “I’ll be damned.”

  “A lot of pain,” Cassie agreed, “I like it. He deserves something far worse than just a few bites, hurt, and itch. Imagine a hundred of them.”

  “It’s about the worst we can do right? And it’ll hurt like the devil and make Rex look ugly as shit for several days. A few hundred stings and he’s going to be crying like a baby,” said Jill who liked the plan the more she thought about it. It was easy and would teach him a serious lesson about messing with them.

  “Fire ants hurt, and I like that idea, but he’s thirty minutes away,” Nelwynn said. “How would we get him here so we could do it?” She felt a little afraid of the plan but felt as if she could handle her part.

  “He is. But he’s stupid, and he’s looking for another round of sex, right? Willing or rape? Because he’s nasty that way. So he’s doubly dumb. And I know the way to get him to come right to us,” Samantha said.

  “How?” Jill wondered.

  Samantha cocked her head and batted her lashes and said, “Bait.”

  Chapter 6

  It was Saturday afternoon, and Jill thought she was going to sweat down her tee shirt, swimsuit, and shorts before their plan began; she was nervous and oddly excited. She had never imagined such a crazy plan, but she liked it and Whitney and Meg, both adrenaline junkies, embraced the idea at once. Jill thought she kind of understood why those two loved danger and thrills; doing things like this was fun. All eight were ready.

  Jill would never dream of rolling someone in fire ants just for excitement because that would make her a sick person and maybe even a sociopath. But Rex deserved this for hurting Angel. When Jill thought about Angel’s face when she told her story and remembered the bruises on Angel’s jaw, Jill felt sick and furious.

  She wanted nothing more than to see Rex in misery, and it was taking far too long. The minutes passed like hours.

  “It’s so muggy,” Nelwynn complained as she took off her glasses, wiped her face, and replaced them. Her face was drenched in humid sweat.

  “Bad storm coming,” Jill said. If it rained, the fire ant mound that was several yards upstream, would become mud and useless to them.

  “What if something goes wrong?” Nelwynn asked again.

  “It can’t. Sammie and Meg have this. We have to trust them to make it work.”

  “Soon?”

  “I hope so. Yeah. Before the storm comes,” said Jill as she adjusted her position again. Angel, Nelwynn, and she sat in the woods behind a thicket of trees and waited. They could see the river from where they waited. Not far from them, in another hideout sat Tiffany, Cassie, and Whitney.

  That morning, the girls practiced running out and attacking, tying up a pretend Rex-victim, and dragging him
to the anthill. They walked through the plan several times but never went too close to the ant mound because they were afraid to stir them up and be bitten. The truth was they expected to be bitten when they tossed Rex to the ants and then dragged him out and into the water to kill those biting him, but it was worth it.

  They planned and practiced and had the tools they needed. It was all ready. They were ready. Nelwynn chewed the inside of her jaw, Jill saw, and she asked, “Are you okay?” She was afraid Nelwynn was scared.

  Nelwynn laughed quietly. “I dread the ant bites.”

  Jill smothered a laugh and nodded.

  There was a faint noise of someone walking up a trail, and the girls could hear an occasional giggle. That was Samantha and Meg who were chosen to meet Rex close to the road and to walk with him back to the river. Samantha had been right; it was a breeze to get Rex to agree to meet them here at the cabin, and all Samantha said on the phone were a few suggestive things.

  She claimed only she and Meg were at the river and they could easily get away. She implored Rex not only to keep the meeting a secret, but also to bring some alcohol, sealing the trap and making the invitation impossible to resist.

  He almost panted on the phone because he was so excited to meet the girls and be alone with them. He thought Meg was an adventuresome, wild girl that he desired for her spirit and sexy, clean, good-girl looks. Samantha was the most gorgeous girl on earth, so beautiful that Rex found her irresistible. So big was his ego that he didn’t even wonder why they called him.

  His hormones ruled his brain.

  Samantha shook with fury after she got off the telephone; it was simple to lure Rex to the river. She shook with her anger after hanging up the phone.

  Now it was almost time to launch themselves from the trees, tie Rex up, and roll him into the fire ant mound a few times until he cried for mercy. Revenge was within their grasp, and it made Angel smile as she saw her friends taking action.

  Not since Lucy was hit had they acted together on such a big project and stood up to bullies. That time it had been the other boys and John Wisdom….

  John Wisdom who walked on the path with Meg, holding her hand.

  Jill gripped Nelwynn’s arm painfully as they spied him and his younger brother, Rex. Why was John there? Why had he come along? Jill squeezed her eyes open and closed, trying to erase the sudden memory of Lucy bleeding onto the ice and snow. He was much older than they were, already finished with high school, and yet like a bad penny, John appeared on the trail, holding hands with Meg. He was twenty-two years old and chasing girls who were barely into puberty.

  Did he remember hitting Lucy and that Meg was there? Jill doubted it. How easily he brushed away something that changed her life. It was a horrible memory but also a good one.

  It was too late to turn back. Jill whispered, “Go for John. Let them have Rex.” She was nervous about changing the plan but hoped that Cassie and her group would guess that Jill could handle changes. Jill’s main problem was that it wasn’t just Rex but a twenty-two-year-old grown, formidable man.

  Nelwynn nodded nervously, and Angel made a small noise of agreement. Angel whispered, “He’s big!”

  “Yeah. Well, we have the numbers, and it’s too late. If we mess up, they could hurt Meg and Sammie. He’s big, but he’s stupid, right? And he isn’t expecting anything.”

  “He’s a real shit, too,” Angel said. “Remember?”

  “Yes. He was going to shoot her,” Jill said as she thought of Lucy who would have died that day and gritted her teeth.

  At the place they planned their attack, a spot between the woods and the water, Samantha and Meg managed to angle around as they talked so that both boys’ backs faced the woods. Turned, the boys could focus on the pretty girls and the flowing river.

  Meg stretched her arms above her head, causing her shirt to ride up, show off her tanned stomach, and lift her breasts. It was fetching, but it was also a signal and call to arms.

  The other girls rushed Rex while Jill, Nelwynn, and Angel ran at John, their new target. The plan was changed, but they were committed and focused; Jill hoped they would all slide easily into the new strategy.

  Both boys went down when hit.

  Meg planted a foot into Rex’s crotch as he flipped over. She was sure that the plan had not fallen through but only expanded. Her friends would figure out how to handle two boys instead of just one. Everything depended on that.

  “You bitch,” Rex yelled. He doubled over but as soon as he could, he caught Tiffany with one of his heavy fists, sending her reeling. He clutched at his privates and roared as the pain consumed him; he waited for it to abate; surely, it had to stop tormenting him. Cassie clubbed him with a small branch, trying to stop the fight so they could tie him with their ropes and give him to the ants. It wasn’t a very thick branch, more of a stick, and she needed a heavier branch, but that was all that she had.

  Jill lost track of the other fight as she and her team attacked John. He punched Angel so hard that she went down holding her stomach and struggling to get her wind back. Angel hadn’t expected to be hit so hard, and the fight had only just started.

  Nelwynn tried to get ropes on John’s hands, but he batted her away. She slipped on the rocks.

  Jill felt herself fly backwards as John slammed her with a hard kick to her chest. She hit the rocks, painfully scraping her back, and while her back hurt and her chest ached, her leg felt as if it were stabbed with a dull knife. She cried out, ending the noise with a moan. It hurt so much that she almost blacked out, and she had to take a few deep breaths as she sat there.

  A stick punctured one of her legs, its end impaled into her thigh. Blood poured out, but she shook off the dizziness and saw the massive brawl was still going on and that her teammates were not faring well. With a lump on her forehead, Angel had gone down again, was pale, and looked close to passing out.

  What John was doing to Nelwynn made Jill find the strength to get up again as she blinked and tried to tell herself that she was not seeing the horror before her. John wasn’t hitting Nelwynn or fighting with her; his hands were wrapped around her neck. Jill saw that he wasn’t choking her exactly but was systematically knocking Nelwynn’s head against a flat grey rock. Jill saw with absolute clarity that John Wisdom was either about to give Nelwynn severe, irreversible brain damage or he was going to kill her.

  His eyes were full of rage and had gone black with hatred. He muttered, “You and that fucking dog fucked up my truck. My father beat the shit outta me for that…beat the fucking shit outta me….”

  He remembered part of the day he hit Lucy, but he blamed Nelwynn, and he probably blamed all of them for the beating he received and had harbored resentment for years. It was pitiable, but Jill was able to consider only one aspect. He was slowly, but surely killing Nelwynn. Jill had only seconds to do something.

  “You fucking bitch, I’ve wanted to do this a long-ass time,” John muttered. “Bitched at me about that fucking dog….” He slammed Nelwynn’s head down again, and her eyes closed with either pain or death. He muttered more curses, calling Nelwynn names, but nothing he said was as clear as when he concentrated on killing Nelwynn.

  Jill felt tears beginning as her eyes burned and watered; she reached into her pocket and ran at John, confused, in pain, and weaker than before, but she was aware of what she was doing as she fell against John. She whipped her knife back and forward, stabbing him in his throat. “That was me, you bastard. That was me who stood up to you first when you hit Lucy. Me. It was me.” She kept stabbing, but most of the wounds were superficial with only the initial stab and a cut doing serious damage.

  Blood drenched Jill and Nelwynn, and the fight halted. The bright red against all the grey, brown, and cream-colored rocks was vivid and looked surreal as if someone had thrown paint around wildly. Bright crimson red paint. Jill thought of her favorite painter, Jackson Pollack who was known for tossing gallons of bright colors at canvasses.

  Jill stared at all th
e blood around her, wondering how much had come out of John. She had learned in school how the heart pumps blood in the body as she traced veins and arteries in science classes, and she knew humans had a lot of blood in their bodies, but she was still shocked.

  Almost in a daze, she connected the blood to John and his throat and then to her knife and her hand that held the knife. Her mouth opened slightly as she whispered, “Oh.” Beyond that, she didn’t think, yet. The information she was processing was enormous.

  Without making much more noise than a few gurgles and a gasp, John fell over on his side, and his eyes turned glassy. He didn’t move again, and Jill stood.

  She thought that it was both fast and easy with a knife to make him stop killing Nelwynn, but the method wasn’t as easy to accept. She stared at her bloody knife, turning it back and forth in her hand as she looked at it.

  Rex was so shocked by what he saw that he stopped fighting and went still. He was bound in a flash as Cassie worked the ropes around his wrists while he wasn’t moving and was watching his older brother with disbelief. Whitney did her part and lashed Rex’s ankles together. She sat back only for a second before she yanked off her tee shirt, tore it to shreds, ran over, and bound Jill’s leg, eyeing the deep wound. “It’s deep, but it’s okay, I think.”

  “A stick stabbed me. Stabbed,” she barely said the final word, but mouthed it as she still looked at her knife as if it had answers and advice.

  Rex couldn’t stop staring at his dead brother, looking at him and then up at Jill a few times.

  Tiffany went to Nelwynn, and she and Meg rubbed Nelwynn’s arms and hands, wiped her face with cool river water, and spoke to her until she regained consciousness. They checked the back of Nelwynn’s head and found lumps and cuts. She was dizzy and vomited, but after washing her face with the cold river water, Nelwynn said she was okay even if she wobbled and leaned on Tiffany to stand. Had she been hit a few more times, she would be dead, and she knew it.