Revenge

by Meli Raine

  We share a quick hug. Growing up, we were buddies. For a short time, I had a crush on him. Later, he had a crush on me. Now, we’re just friends. Daniel looks like Brian, all burly and blonde. We stopped hanging out on the same circles by our junior year of high school. He went for vocational school and I was in the academic track. There’s no bad blood between us.

  We just grew up and grew along different paths.

  “How’s your first week home?” he asks. I know he’s just being polite. Making small talk.

  “Uneventful,” I deadpan.

  He winces. “Oh. Yeah. Amy. Mom’s trying to help Minnie but...sheesh. What a fuckin’ mess.”

  I don’t know whether I can say anything about the body the police just found. I just nod and try to fight the giant balloon of tears that’s swelling inside every cell of my body. Daniel’s a good guy. He looks down and kicks the dirt at his feet, suddenly uncomfortable.

  I wipe a stray tear from my eye with the butt of my hand. “It’s okay. I mean, no, it’s not okay. Amy’s kidnapped and no one knows where she is and who knows if she’s hurt or dead or...” I burst into tears, the emotion like having a door smack shut by a surprise gust of wind.

  Daniel looks alarmed. “Uh, do you want me to text my mom? Because she might be good with this.” He reaches out and pats my shoulder like he’s petting a robot dog.

  I laugh through my tears. Daniel was never good with emotions. Cars? Sure. People?

  No.

  “I’m fine,” I say, sniffling.

  “Sure you are.”

  I give him a weak smile and he grins back. For a second, he reminds me of Mark. A less comfortable, quieter version of Mark.

  Mark. Mark’s hands on me, inside me, the rhythm of our sex like the tickling of love’s timeless clock....

  “You look like you’re overheating,” Daniel says, fear in his voice. “It’s a hot day, but you turned bright red so fast, Carrie. And now you’re sweating. Are you having a heart attack or something?”

  Only down below, I think.

  Daniel takes my arm and pulls me away from Mark’s place. “How about we walk? You could use some fresh air.”

  We walk in silence to my trailer. Daniel breaks the quiet by saying, “Oh. Yeah. Mom asked me to tell you to make sure you forward your mail.”

  “I what?” Of all the sentences Daniel could say to me, that wasn’t one I was expecting.

  “Forward your mail. She said she hasn’t received any mail for you and is worried you forgot to put in a mail forwarding order.”

  “Does she need to remind me to eat all my veggies and brush my teeth before bed?” I joke.

  He grins. “You forgot to wipe your ass.”

  We laugh. It feels weird. Good, in that it relieves tension, but it’s like the kind of laugh you give after someone farts and everyone heard it.

  “Tell her I’ll do it this morning before I go to the shelter to help out,” I say.

  “Wipe your ass?” Daniel jokes.

  I elbow him and he laughs, a belly laugh. A real chuckle. The awkwardness is gone. We’re back to being silly kids again.

  Daniel gives me a salute and walks back to the main house without another word.

  Instead of going to my trailer, I climb in my car, insert the key in the ignition, and close my eyes.

  Turn over.

  Ah. For once, my beater car listens to me. The air ripples with the putt-putt-putt of my engine as I back up, then drive the five minutes to the post office before it closes.

  Elaine is right. I should have forwarded my mail earlier in the week. And she’s doubly right: I did forget to do it when I left Oklahoma City. Taking care of basic life issues was dead last on my list of things to worry about. Once the job at Yates was dangled in front of me, I got out of Oklahoma as fast as I could.

  Mark’s touch lingers on my skin as I hold the pen in my hand, filling out the form. I showered, and my hair is wet and limp in my face. One strand dangles over the paper, damp enough to be dark but not so wet that it drips on the paper.

  I finish the mail forwarding form and slip it in the post office mailbox. The line is long and filled with college kids holding package slips. I wonder why their parents didn’t send them packages to their dorm rooms.

  I shrug. Not my problem. I climb back in the car and start to drive back, to change clothes and sit and stare at the ceiling for a thousand years as I try to understand the past week of my life.

  I reach for my phone to call Amy and—

  Oh, God.

  I can’t call Amy.

  A hole starts to grow inside me, like a piece of wet clay on a potter’s wheel. If you take a piece and straddle the spinning wheel, with a single fingertip you can create an instantaneous crater. The clay separates, parting like Moses at the Red Sea. It’s marvelous to make your hands do that, to have command over a swiftly-moving piece of anything.

  And to turn it into something else, even temporarily.

  When I realize I can’t call Amy, my chest feels like the hole a potter makes in the center of a grey blob.

  My best friend is being held against her will by some asshole who thinks he has the right to kidnap her. There is a piece of human excrement who calls himself human out there, preying on women and hoarding them. Hurting them.

  Cutting off their arms and legs.

  Amy might be—

  A wave of utter pain rolls through me like a whip being cracked. A sharp pain jolts me, my eyes blurring. It’s hard to watch the road.

  Then the bile fills the back of my throat. I smell something burning.

  It’s my brain.

  Over and over, for the past three years, I have had a single thought. It makes up the fabric of my life. This thought is the first thing I think when I wake up. It’s my last thought before I sleep. In my dreams, it repeats in an endless loop, like cloth woven from sheer pain.

  I can’t take it any more.

  I can’t take it any more.

  I can’t take it any more.

  Isn’t there a limit to how much one person can endure? I pull over the car. The pain in my stomach isn’t going away. A metal anvil has taken up residence where my gut used to be. As the car tires come to a halt I jump out and run over to the passenger side, throwing up just as I get away from the car door.

  My stomach empties. All the coffee and an apple I had at Mark’s cottage pours out. My body keeps heaving, as if it’s trying to rid me of more than the contents of my stomach.

  As if I could throw up the entire world.

  If I could, I would.

  The bile burns. My eyes fill with unwanted tears. The stabbing feeling in my gut goes away. My legs turn to rubber and I sit on the berm, a mix of gravel and grass that digs into my butt.

  And then I cry until I am so dry there are no more tears.

  Amy is gone. Dead? I don’t know. Dismembered—I can’t think that word. No. No!

  I scrape my palm against the sharp gravel. My skin tears, blood pooling along the scratch.

  I can’t let myself think that way. I can’t go there. My fear is a big ball that lives inside me.

  The very real fear that Amy is dead.

  Or worse.

  An image of an armless, legless woman fills my mind. I’ve never seen one, so my mind has to create it.

  Imagination can be a curse.

  I have been home for six days. Six. I drove into town last Sunday, and today is Saturday. Not even a week has gone by. A stray leaf floats on a light wind. It’s narrow and dried, and catches on the ends of my hair. My nose is full and I sniff, inhaling hot air and sorrow.

  I’m sitting on the side of the road, too tired to cry any more, too empty to care.

  Except that’s a lie, like all the other lies that have swirled around me for the past three years.

  I do care.

  I care too much.

  Images flip through my mind like old movies, flickering frame by frame. Daddy carrying me on his shoulders at the Fourth of July parade when
I was little. Drinking out of the water hose in the backyard. Trying out for cheerleading team in middle school and failing. Graduating high school and how proud Dad was. Moving into the dorms across town and how Dad cried.

  The day Mark came to arrest Dad and cuffed him. How Amy came and got me, took me to the police station, held my hand.

  Elaine, sitting in the defense attorney’s office with me, holding my hand as the lawyer explained everything.

  The look on Dad’s face when he was declared guilty.

  How he looked at me with an expression of such horror and regret and—God help the bastards who framed him for this crime—shame.

  Daddy’s shame that he had let me down, even when he’d done nothing.

  Not one damn thing.

  All those images dissolve. I become nothing. I sit on the side of the road and an ant tickles my ankle. I see it, a black speck, traversing my skin in a lazy line. It’s determined to find something. Food? Water? Shelter? Something I can’t give.

  Isn’t that what life is, really? Nothing more. Nothing less. We seek something we can’t define. We explore a life we can’t predict.

  The sound of tires crunching on stone makes me look up. A little compact car, the same make and model as mine but new, pulls up. I hear the engine stop. A car door opens, then shuts.

  Men’s sneakers appear, attached to legs in jeans.

  “Carrie?” says a familiar man’s voice.

  I look sideways, under my hair, and realize I’m completely alone. My phone, purse, and keys are in the car.

  The man is Eric.

  Chapter Eleven

  I flinch as our eyes meet. His are filled with worry.

  And compassion.

  And something I can’t define.

  He reaches a hand down to pull me up. I don’t move. Just stare at him.

  He lets out a sad sigh. “I guess I deserve that,” he says slowly, bending to sit on the ground a few feet from me. Eric props his elbows on his knees and sits across from me. “Yesterday I was an ass. I am so sorry.”

  Mark’s words pop into my head:

  Stay the hell away from Eric and Claudia.

  How can I do that when I run into them nonstop?

  “Thanks,” I reply. I know the old Carrie would have said, It’s okay or No problem.

  The new Carrie won’t do that. He really was an ass. The truth hurts.

  So does having my best friend kidnapped and missing. If Mark thinks Eric might be involved, then maybe I need to do my own sleuthing. Mark’s overly worried about me. I can take care of myself, especially with Eric.

  He’s over-reacting. Eric would never harm me.

  “Did I hurt your wrist?” Eric asks.

  I look down.

  Okay, let me amend that. Eric would never intentionally hurt me.

  “Yeah, but it’s not bad,” I mutter. Damn. There I go again. I shuffle my feet and literally bite my tongue. I need to stop talking. The more Eric says, the more I’ll learn.

  “I really meant what I said back at the office,” Eric adds. He’s wearing a hunter green polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers. The green sets off his hair and creamy Irish skin, making him look very crisp. Like something from an L.L. Bean ad.

  “What you said? You mean your threat?” My skin starts to crawl. Sitting here, no one can even see us. We’re hidden by my parked car.

  Eric could do anything to me right now and I would have no way of getting any help.

  “Threat?” His eyes go wide and he looks horrified. This is more like the Eric I remember from when I was his student. Earnest. Helpful.

  Nice.

  “You told me not to mess with the Landau family. You grabbed my arm and hurt me.” Mark warned me about Eric and Claudia. Eric warned me about the Landau family.

  I’m sensing a pattern here.

  “I didn’t mean it as a threat, Carrie!” He reaches for a handful of dead grass and starts ripping it in his hands, shredding it. “That was a warning. They’re dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? How?” I play it cool. Meanwhile, my heart’s thumping in my chest like popcorn in a JiffyPop.

  “They’re playing a game and innocent people get hurt.”

  “A game?”

  His shoulders sag. The collar of his shirt is folded inward. I instinctively reach over and pull it out, putting it where it belongs.

  Eric’s eyes go a deep color. Oh, God. Is that passion? His face moves toward me. My mind spins a thousand miles a minute as I realize he’s coming in for a kiss.

  He’s about to kiss me? Seriously?

  And then:

  “STAND UP AND PUT YOUR PALMS FLAT AGAINST THE CAR.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The megaphone makes us both jump. Red and blue lights flash as we stand. It’s a cop car.

  Mark is at the steering wheel.

  And his gun is pointed straight at Eric.

  “I SAID GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!”

  “No! No!” I shout as I walk toward Mark. “It’s not what you think!”

  Eric grabs my arm and pulls me back. Mark leaps out of the driver’s side. There is another officer in the car with him who also has a gun trained on Eric.

  “GETDOWNGETDOWNLETHERGOGETDOWNNOW!”

  Mark and the other officer shout in low, menacing voices as my brain tries to process it all. Eric panics and drops my arm, then runs away from the road. He can’t hide. We’re on a desert road. There’s nowhere to hide. It’s nothing but brown dirt for miles.

  He looks kind of stupid, but panic does that to people.

  “I got him!” the other officer shouts, taking off at a run, while Mark comes over and grabs my arm in the exact same place Eric was just touching.

  “What the hell just happened?” he demands, breathless. Mark’s still holding his service revolver in one hand.

  “Put that away, please,” I say. It comes out like a whispered growl.

  “What?” he shouts. “You’re telling me to put my weapon away when that freak just nearly kidnapped you?”

  “What freak?” I scream back.

  “Eric! I told you to stay away from him. And I find you by the side of the road with him about to throw you in his car and steal you away? What the hell were you doing here with him, Carrie? Is there something going on between the two of you I don’t know about?” His words fly out like angry crows on the attack, all aimed at my heart.

  I slap Mark’s face so hard. So hard. It’s like it happened in the crack of a gunshot and in slow motion, all at once. My palm reaches out and my shoulder inflicts the blow with so much force. It feels like I’m slapping a giant slab of granite, though.

  He doesn’t move an inch.

  I don’t know why I slapped him. Every cell of my body feels full, like I’m about to explode.

  And then I turn and run.

  I guess I become stupid when I panic, too.

  My legs pump hard with the effort of the damned. My calves start to scream within seconds, my heart rushing to fill and empty faster and faster as my blood pours through me. Oxygen and effort go hand in hand. My ears fill with the rush of a thousand waterfalls.

  I am light. I am air. I am muscle and fear and pain and nothing but the flow of my bones and muscles and skin moving me through space and time.

  “Carrie!’ Mark shouts from behind me. “Don’t make me tackle you.” He’s puffing from running, but his voice has a chilling calm to it.

  I don’t answer.

  I just run.

  Underbrush turns a pale green color as I go up a small ridge then down a gully. I see an unfamiliar sight: a small river, wider than the road, but just a few inches deep. It must be a mirage. Have I reached the point where I’m hallucinating?

  Maybe that’s the trick. Just go crazy. Let your mind unravel.

  My lungs fill and empty, over and over, my breathing like white lightning being dragged across my ribs. It hurts, but oh, the pain feels so good. The ache of doing something is always a million times better than just sitting ther
e and letting the world take its pot shots at you.

  No, I think. No. I won’t stop.

  And then—ice chips on my skin. Cold. I can’t breathe. My face is underwater and oh—the water is deeper than I thought. A wall of weight is on me, then a hand snakes around my waist and under my knees.

  I’m wet. Soaking wet, and being lifted out like a child who won’t come when she’s called.

  “PUT ME DOWN!” I scream.

  “Not until you see reason.”

  Mark’s skin is hot under his wet uniform shirt. I try to wrench away and feel nothing but curved muscle. He’s hard and strong and I can’t wriggle away.

  “Reason? All I see a stubborn, thick-headed, controlling—”

  “Then you must be looking at me—”

  “ASSHOLE!”

  “Ouch,” Mark says through mirthless laughter. “Then that means I’m doing my job.”

  “It’s your job to be an asshole? Funny. I didn’t know they gave paychecks for that!” I bark back.

  “And I didn’t know that the woman I love spends her spare time hanging out with men I warn her to stay away from,” he says, the words dripping with sarcasm.

  “You don’t own me!” Wait. Hold on. My brain slams on the brakes.

  The woman I love? Did he really just say that?

  “I may not own you, Carrie,” he says as he wades through the water, eyes forward and scanning the horizon for Eric and the other cop, “but I’m not going to stand by idly and watch you get hurt because you’re being an impetuous child.”

  Child? CHILD?

  “You’re being a jerk!” I thrash and kick. Mark’s arms are like bands of steel. He’s pulling me to his chest and I almost bite him. I could if I wanted to, but that seems too juvenile. Babyish. In my fury I realize I need to have the upper hand by being the mature person in this interaction.

  So I try to kick him in the balls.

  His grip tightens so swiftly it’s like he has bionic arms.

  “Hey,” he says, hot breath covering my ear and neck. His voice goes low and sensual, dangerous and primitive. “You liked that part of me just a few hours ago. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  A red cloud of pure anger takes over me.