When We Were 8

by catt dahman

  Angel carried the axe with her, and her jaw was set tightly. She took several strikes, and blood spurted everywhere, but Angel slammed the axe down until Ed’s hand fell away from his arm. He howled.

  “Son of a bitch, Angel. Where’d that come from?” Whitney asked.

  Angel mopped away sweat, dropped the axe, and involuntarily rubbed at her plump legs, trying to rub away the shame left on her skin. Ed’s suffering alleviated some of her emotional pain.

  Cassie jumped up and wrapped two bandanas around his mouth to shut him up. “He’s loud. I guess he’ll die of blood loss and shock.” For the first time, she really noticed how much abuse they had heaped upon Ed by burning him and poking at him with sticks. They shouldn’t have tortured him. Right was right. That part was very wrong.

  “He’s dying? Damn, I have to do this,” Whitney said. She took the axe and looked at Ed sadly and said, “I was just a little kid. You shouldn’t have done that to me or to Meg. I wish we had told Meg’s daddy, but we didn’t.” With that, she sliced Ed’s shin, then took several more swings with the axe; the sharpness of the axe and some hard work paid off.

  Jill and Tiffany cried and covered their faces.

  Ed only wiggled weakly. Removing his hand sent the nerves into shock, and while there was some pain, it wasn’t as gut wrenching after a few seconds. He lost a lot of blood, and shock started to set in; he lost some of the ability to focus on the pain. With the removal of his leg, each stroke of the axe was almost unendurable. He was in a colossal amount of pain.

  He wanted to live, and those thoughts of survival kept him fighting but also made the pain more acute.

  Without another word, Whitney dropped the axe and went to wash in the river, watching the crimson stain trail away in the current. She felt nothing but the good burn of her arm muscles. She rinsed off and walked back to where everyone watched her.

  “Meg?” Whitney asked.

  “Yeah, I want it done.” Meg vomited three times as her nerves and bad memories tried to drown her, but she used the axe to remove Ed’s head, killing him with the second stroke. She remembered everything he ever did to her and everything he made her do, how he spoke sweetly and said it was their secret and wonderful, and how she had known it was wrong.

  She had felt ashamed and guilty because it had to have happened because she was worthless and a terrible little girl. Throwing up the tequila burned, and she had to drink a half a cup more to clean her mouth. Nelwynn patted her arm.

  Angel was upbeat. “And hey, I want in on the deal with Andre and Reggie.”

  “No, we can’t do this anymore. We can’t. We were young when the rest happened, and maybe we had some problems, but if you’re planning to…to kill them, then that’s really wrong. They didn’t hurt a little kid. It’s not a heat-of-the-moment thing,” said Jill as she shook her head. “What they did was wrong, but not this wrong.”

  Jill hoped Cassie heard her appeal and understood.

  “I agree. No more,” Samantha said. “I’m sorry about Mr. Griffin even if he was a monster. I regret doing that, and I regret what we did to Billy, Tom, Rex, and John. I’m sorry for all that. I can’t do this.” She crossed her arms and made her lips a tight line.

  “I’m out. I’m not chopping him up,” Tiffany crossed her arms, too. “I am not about to do this. Hell, no. That’s disgusting.”

  “You’re with us or against us,” said Meg, wiping her mouth again and smirked. ‘’Jill?”

  Jill stared at Cassie and glared at Meg.

  “You’re a part of this,” Meg told Jill as she stood up and stood face to face with her friend. If Jill went along, Tiffany and Samantha would back down.

  “You can’t make us do it,” Jill said. “I’m out. Don’t push me, Meg.”

  “You’ve always been a little too goody-goody,” Meg said.

  “And you’ve always been a little slutty. So what?”

  Jill was too slow, and Meg’s hand left a bright red mark on her face. For a few seconds, they stood staring at one another, neither backing down. Meg’s fist clenched for another strike; she was furious that her friend wouldn’t stand with them, considering what Ed had done to her as a child. “You owe us. We are eight.”

  “I’m sorry for what he did to you and Whitney, but I said no,” Jill said. She steeled herself for another blow, but she couldn’t hit Meg back.

  Meg was ready to swing with her fist; her face blazed with fury. She needed the three others to be with them. They couldn’t be five and three. They had to be eight. Always eight against the world.

  Cassie wobbled slightly, but she was still alert. “Don’t hit her again, or I’ll jump you, Meg. Jill is one of us.”

  “She’s not acting like it,” said Whitney as she dripped water on the rocks and stood next to Meg, facing Jill.

  “Stop it. Just stop,” Nelwynn screamed. She yanked at her own hair. “Please. We’re the eight like Meg says. We’re best friends.”

  Jill spoke carefully despite the alcohol; she felt sober all at once. Her face stung where Meg slapped her. “I’ll keep the secrets. Always. I love you, but I am out. I’m done.”

  “No….” Meg’s hand twitched. She wasn’t sure whether to hit Jill again or to reach out and take her arm in supplication.

  “Let her go,” Cassie warned Meg.

  Whitney knew that Meg wanted a fistfight and that she would back her up but wasn’t sure how it would go if Cassie joined the fight on Jill’s side. It was likely to be a violent brawl and fierce, here on the river’s edge where events tended to become deadly. Whitney hesitated because of that.

  “I wanted the truth, not a fight. Don’t push me,” Cassie warned again.

  “I’m done,” said Meg, taking a few wobbly steps backwards.

  Jill spun and walked back up the trail, never looking back. Samantha was wailing, hiccupping as she cried, but she and Tiffany followed. Jill waited for a few seconds, hoping Cassie might join them, but she didn’t come. It felt as if a knife had wedged itself into Jill’s heart.

  “What does this mean?” Tiffany asked. She looked as lost and alone as she had when she was a little girl protecting an injured dog.

  Jill wasn’t sure, but she told her, “It means all this stops now. For me. For both of you. We’re walking away. I wish Cassie had come, too, but she’s torn.”

  “Torn?” Samantha asked.

  “She’s always the one we turn to so that we know what to do, and sometimes, she loses her way, like at the prom, and we have to take care of her. She’s lost right now, but she’s still Cassie. The rest, I don’t know Meg and Whitney right now,” Jill said.

  “Or Angel. She…she went crazy. And Nelwynn is just riding along.”

  Jill nodded at Tiffany. It had felt as if the other girls were strangers. “Maybe Lucy was supposed to die, and we were never supposed to…none of this was supposed to happen.” The words were like fire as she said them, and they burned.

  Tiffany flinched, and Samantha was dismayed as if Jill had said something sacrilegious.

  They quickly ate a few snack foods. Jill made coffee and handed out cola drinks. The food and caffeine sobered them. The other five didn’t return, but no one expected them to.

  The sun had set, and darkness settled; they could see the very faint light of a campfire on the river’s beach, but still, no one came back. Tiffany stared out the window.

  “They’re not coming. It’s better if they don’t. It’s too late for that man,” Tiffany said. “They’re waiting for us to leave before they come back to get more booze.”

  “I think that’s Cassie; she’s keeping them away so there’s not a fight,” Jill said, rubbing her cheek where Meg slapped her.

  “I couldn’t do it, not even for Meg and Whitney. That makes me a bad friend, right?” Samantha asked.

  “We’re bad friends if we go along with it because we have done bad things, but we’re sorry, and we stopped. I don’t think they’re ready to stop yet. Reggie, Julie, and Andre are still on the lis
t. We can’t do this, or it’ll never stop,” Jill said.

  “I think some of them…they like it,” Tiffany said.

  Once Jill was sure she was stone cold sober, they packed her Jeep, leaving the food and drinks they had brought, and drove away from the cabin, unsure if they would ever return. Jill stopped at the turn-in at the end of the driveway, and the big full moon lit the cabin well enough for them to say their silent goodbyes.

  Chapter 14

  Whatever happened at the water’s edge was a secret, just as it should be. Jill, Tiffany, and Samantha didn’t talk about anything related to the events and claimed they had felt ill and thought it best to leave the cabin. A stomach bug that the three caught. That was all.

  Charlie asked Jill what was really wrong, knowing that she was suffering something other than a stomach virus, but Jill soaked his shirt, crying and refused to talk. She cried so hard and so long that Charlie became afraid for her and simply held her.

  He felt talking about problems was best, but whatever was bothering Jill was best left alone. He sensed that if she talked about her pain, she might break into a million pieces and never be all right again. Instead, he bought chicken soup at the diner, took it to her, and pretended she had a virus.

  Had he pushed her, she would have shut down and broken up with him for fear of his knowing her secrets. Only in denial was she safe.

  The girls went to graduation, and Nelwynn was valedictorian. Charlie was salutatorian, something he had kept quiet about to surprise Jill, and it was something that was so exciting and normal that Jill felt some of the bad emotions lift off of her shoulders.

  Tiffany and she graduated with honors at numbers nine and ten respectively. After the ceremony, the class tossed their caps even if they were told not to.

  Jill, Samantha, and Tiffany went to a small, but carefully planned party in and around Tiffany’s swimming pool. Her parents decorated everything beautifully and served elegant food with a mild champagne punch that tasted of almonds and lemons. The music was by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, lounge or Los Vegas music, but it gave the event a classy feel.

  Tiffany’s mother asked about the other five girls, but Tiffany planted a bright smile on her face and shrugged, saying they had a separate party. It was unusual and out of character, but Tiffany’s mother didn’t push the issue and focused on her three favorite girls and then the rest of the guests.

  Despite everything, Jill had a wonderful time, and Charlie was a perfect pool-party date. The best part was watching all the boys and some of the girls staring at Samantha in her tiny, white, crocheted bikini that barely covered her breasts and lower parts and accentuated her tan. Tiffany’s swimsuit was expensive and elegantly sleek, a sexy one piece, and Jill wore a sporty tank-kini.

  The food, the swimming pool, and the swimsuits were normal. They were elements of a regular world that didn’t involve secrets and a cabin at the river. They were just three girls who enjoyed shallow, unimportant parts of life; there was no pressure and no stress.

  “My way,” Jill hummed with a song.

  The other five girls went to a huge party that one of the very wealthy graduates had. The food was less fancy, the alcohol more available, and the pool full of loud swimmers. Young adults enjoyed themselves, danced, swam, and kissed. It was also a normal party that was all about superficial and fleeting fun.

  Angel felt she was slumming by not being at Tiffany’s party and kept a cover-up on the entire time she was at the party, longing for the cool water of the pool. She felt out of place. She sat alone and drank sangria.

  Cassie was unable to shake her depression. She drank alcohol heavily, made out with two different boys she didn’t even like, and missed Jill and the other girls. She sat with Meg and Whitney for a while, but both eventually vanished into the bathhouse with boys and didn’t return.

  Nelwynn left the part early, tired of plastering a big, fake smile on her face.

  Cassie sipped her drink and knew that everything was ruined and the eight were broken in ways that could never be repaired. She thought that if she had a bottle of pills, she would end everything, but she didn’t have a bottle.

  “Hey, wanna go for a walk?” a boy asked Cassie.

  He would be the third boy she fooled around with if she went with him. For some reason, she thought of how Lucy whimpered and shivered in the snow, scared and injured. “Billy should have shot her and me, too,” she muttered drunkenly.

  “Huh?” the boy asked.

  Cassie sighed. She stood and went with the boy. “Hey, do you have any pills? Like a lot of them? A bottle?”

  “No. Why? I have some weed.”

  Cassie almost cried.

  Chapter 15

  Days after graduation, Mike Orinston died, never awaking from his coma, and within six hours, Lucy followed.

  Over the next two weeks since the events on the river’s beach, Jill was around only Tiffany and Samantha, and she had spoken a few times to Cassie. Each conversation with Cassie was stilted and uncomfortable.

  “I had so many questions,” Jill told Cassie.

  “Me, too. Mike was too sick, though. We ran out of time. Are you doing okay?” Cassie asked.

  “No, you?”

  “I’m tired. I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “Nothing. There’s just nothing.” Jill said as she shrugged.

  At Mike’s funeral, Jill sat with Tiffany and Samantha. Angel, Nelwynn, Meg, and Whitney sat together, and Cassie sat alone. When they found themselves together in a room, they were overly civil, but the closeness was gone, and they were like strangers.

  Charlie never left Jill’s side, was flummoxed by the ruined friendships, and was calm and polite but kept himself between everyone else and Jill. He guarded her without knowing why, allowing Samantha and Tiffany close, tolerating Cassie a few words, but giving the rest chilly cautionary glances.

  Jill left Charlie once and dropped a white rose onto Mike’s casket. In a whisper she asked, “What monsters did you create? We were eight.” In her mind, she wasn’t sure if she referred to their ages when they became best friends or to their number. It didn’t matter. It was the same.

  She and Charlie began sleeping together midsummer. She pushed away the demons that haunted her and let herself love Charlie with all her heart.

  She went away to Texas A & M in the fall with Charlie and Tiffany as they carefully had planned. The girls shared a dorm room their first two years, becoming as close as sisters as they healed.

  Jill studied veterinary medicine, Charlie studied psychology, and Tiffany shocked them all by throwing herself into engineering which was something she understood and enjoyed. All three had heavy class schedules.

  Charlie’s roommate was a young man named Joey Pascarella who was interested in law. Naturally, Tiffany met Joey, and it was almost love at first sight. It was also convenient. The four spent a lot of time going places, studying together and hanging out.

  There were times when Jill was depressed as she remembered everything and missed her other six best friends. Then, Tiffany followed with a deep melancholy, but they stayed active, and the boys kept them busy, so the bad feelings never lasted long and came less and less. Jill and Tiffany had each other.

  Each of the four earned honors at A & M every semester, almost competing, and they always put school, grades, and classes first. None of them bothered to go home very often, but when they did, it was to stay around family only: their own and families within the quartet. In time over a few years, Jill and Tiffany were happier than they had ever been.

  Their nightmares were not easy to deal with because like other girls in their group, Tiffany and Jill both had nights when they awoke screaming. Wet hair plastered to their scalps, they would awaken after having watched blood splash across smooth stones and bits of flesh drop into the water.

  Like the others, they never shared what caused them to awaken, terrified and trembling only claimed they didn’t really remember. Most nights they were not haunte
d, which was what saved their sanity, and in the daylight, each explained everything that happened in logical ways. To themselves. Accidents. Justice. They had been young and impulsive. They were law-abiding and didn’t do the bad things anymore.

  Back in her hometown, Cassie went to work at Coral’s Diner, a popular place for everyone to eat. An ex-football player, the owner, Coral, doted on Cassie. He was fair and good-hearted, and while working there, Cassie was able to tuck away excellent tips. She moved into her own little house on the edge of town where she lived alone, sharing only with a trio of stray grey and white cats named Little, Cutie, and Pies, which was great when she called them to eat.

  After Reggie and Andre had been dealt with, which was something Cassie didn’t like to remember, because in retrospect, it was a vindictive reaction, she found herself at the cabin less and less until a year passed without her bothering to go up there. In truth, she had many regrets. She stopped looking at her pretty but stained prom dress that was lovingly stored in a trunk, and she tried to let the remorse and bad dreams go.

  Once in a while, she penned quick letters to Jill, but that stopped after a few months; nothing was the same. Her words and Jill’s words were formal and polite, something Cassie knew was wrong. She understood why there was a division between them and took the blame; she had gotten carried away and done terrible things while Jill had refused to continue. Cassie wished she had been smarter.

  Whitney, presented with a stack of scholarships, went far away to Stanford a school she felt would challenge her. She kept to herself other than to socialize some with her teammates and didn’t study as much as she worked out and concentrated on breaking records. And she did.

  She broke every record Stanford had for women’s track and field as she ran the mile event, the five thousand meter, the ten thousand meter, and the steeplechase, but she made sure she was always passing her classes. When she blew out her knee in her third year, she plunged into education, deciding that she would be a coach and guide young people.