The Hunt

by Chuck Wendig

  It’d be nice to go in there. Join up.

  Like a family.

  That thought hits her like a space rock flung down from the heavens. Instantly, she twists up inside. Paul isn’t her daddy. Hell, Mama’s barely her mama—half the time, Atlanta’s the one who has to be the parent here.

  Besides, she’s got this dark cloud over her head. Again she feels like things are moving out of her control: making that YouTube video and getting paid to help other freak-shows and underdogs, that made her feel like she was at the wheel, like she was the one driving this car. But recent events have made it clear just how fast the wheel can slip through her fingers—and just how fast the car can crash. Joey Eckhart. The incident at the junkyard. The man with the money at Samantha’s house. Even the Ambien—waking up like she did, ice cream in her mouth?

  Down the driveway—headlights.

  Bee’s little car comes bumping along.

  Atlanta walks outside to meet her. Bee gets out and starts to do the whole small talk thing, oh, hey, what’s up, did you go to the dance, but truth is, Atlanta doesn’t have the stomach for it right now. She cuts through that overpolite knot with a big old machete:

  “You’re not telling me the whole truth,” Atlanta says.

  “I . . . I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I had a little talk with Samantha Gwynn-Rudin.”

  Bee stands there in the half dark. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.”

  They head to the fire pit—which right now sits dark and cold—and Atlanta hooks a chair with her foot and kicks it over to Bee.

  “Atlanta, I—”

  “This wasn’t just you going to a party and getting too drunk to know better. This was you . . . throwing yourself on the slab.”

  “I . . .” But the words die like flower blooms under withering heat.

  “You get paid?”

  A nod. “Yeah.”

  “God, Bee. How much?”

  She stares into her hands. “Fifteen hundred.”

  Atlanta bites her thumbnail. “That’s not far from what you were gonna pay me to figure this out for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Why’d you need the money? You got a new car. You’re not one of the richie-riches, but you’re not like me.”

  “I got the car just before my dad lost his job. We’re already behind on payments. They’ll probably come repo the damn thing sooner than later.” Her voice shakes a little. A faint tremor, like from an earthquake far away. “I wanna go to college, but my grades aren’t good enough to get a scholarship. And financial aid is a bear, so I just thought . . . I just needed some money.” Whatever tears seemed like they were about to come, they disappear as Bee grunts in rage and kicks a stick. Whitey thinks it’s for him and he goes after it. “Not that any of it matters now, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m pregnant! Jesus.”

  “Pregnant chicks still do stuff.”

  “Yeah, thanks, I’m sure my professors won’t mind if I bring a screaming little rug rat to class. That’ll go over well.”

  “Your parents can watch it.” A moment then as Bee gives her this look, this grim, knowing look. Atlanta puzzles it out pretty quick: “It’s a sore spot with them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re counting on me to figure that out for you.”

  “That’s right.”

  Atlanta buries her face in her hands. Her emotions on this are a pinwheel, the wind blowing one way, then the other. She’s pissed at Bee for not telling her the whole story. She’s sorry for Bee, because no matter what she thought she was getting into, something far worse happened—and it’s not like Atlanta’s any stranger to performing dubious tasks for fast cash. But then the wind howls the other way again as she’s reminded of how Bee threw her into the fire then walked away.

  “Walk me through it,” Atlanta says. “You needed money. You asked Samantha to set you up?”

  “Kinda. She started asking us. Said she had a thing going since end of last year and if any of us wanted to make a little extra money . . .”

  “So you said you did. She told you the price. And then what?”

  Bee taps her foot, seeming anxious and agitated having to go through this. “She told me to go to the party. It was like any other of her parties. They . . . handed me a drink, said I looked like I could use it. Loosen up and all that. I was really nervous. I’m not a virgin or anything, but I didn’t know who was gonna pay, only that Samantha said she ‘had somebody.’ The drink tasted fine, rum and Coke, I think, but then . . . I remember people leading me through the party. Remember people laughing. Everything felt slippery, rubbery, like I was in one of those inflatable bounce castles. Then next thing I know, I was waking up on her front lawn. I’d been . . .” She makes a barely perceptible sound—a whimper, almost. “Something had happened.”

  “Samantha told me that someone came to pick you up. Someone named Mahoney. You know him?”

  Bee wraps her arms around her middle. Shivers. Shakes her head. “No.” Then she says: “Samantha told you all this? Out of the blue?”

  “I had to smack her around a little.”

  A smile tugs at the corners of Bee’s mouth. “Good.”

  Here, another gut punch to Atlanta’s middle: for a little while, she actually thought Samantha, Mandy, and the others were interested in being her friend. Not that she liked them back, but it felt good to be wanted. Now she knows the truth: they just wanted to hurt her.

  And get paid for it in the process.

  “What happens now?” Bee asks.

  “I guess come Monday, I put the screws to Samantha. I’ll shake that tree hard as I can, see what comes falling out.” She thinks but doesn’t say: And hopefully Babycheeks Skylar got the ball rolling with the police. “What’s your endgame? Because I honestly don’t get it. Finding out the father—what’s that gonna do for you? No good’ll come from that. I say get rid of that baby. It’s gonna be a boat anchor all your life, keeping you floating in this one spot: Maker’s Bell for the rest of your life. Abortion’s not a dirty word.”

  “I told you, no.”

  “So, why, then? Why look for the baby daddy?”

  “Because once I find him, I’ll get a paternity test and I’ll make whoever it is pay me a whole lot more than fifteen hundred bucks. I’ll keep this baby in diapers and formula and gross mushy peas with that money.”

  “And what if you find him but he doesn’t want to pay?”

  Bee lifts her chin, narrows her eyes. “Then I’ll kill him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Monday sucks. It sucks the shine off a bumper. It sucks a golf ball through a garden hose. It sucks like a black hole and bites like a snake. She tells her mother this sometimes, and Arlene, she always responds the same way: “You’re like that fat cat, Garfield,” and Atlanta says she still doesn’t know who Garfield is, and then at some point Arlene tries to pull up Google on that ancient clamshell cell phone to show her, but it takes forever and by the time she either manages or gives up, Atlanta’s already out the door and on the way to school.

  Today, Atlanta’s awake early.

  Though to be more correct: she never went to bed.

  (Atlanta hasn’t slept in two nights, because bye-bye, Ambien.)

  Giving up the Ambien was a hard row to hoe, because now she’s left again without sleep. She figures, Maybe I’ll do a couple nights on, a couple nights off, see how that feels. Last two nights, she mostly just lay there in bed, sweating and shaking at every tink, tap, creak, and groan of their old, off-kilter house settling. Every squeaking floorboard. It’s bothering her so much she’s been keeping Whitey in the room with her despite her mother’s protests. And now, every time Whitey growls in his sleep, it just makes her heart jump faster. She’d settle down again, but then she’d hear another noise (real or imagined) and her temples, her neck, her wrists would feel suddenly like they were in a woodworker’s vice.


  Now, though, she’s up and out of the house and she’s not tired. She’s gone so far past tired, she’s come all the way around the world and back to wired.

  Because today she’s on a mission. Today, she’s gonna hunt down Samantha. Confront her. Get another name. Get something. Kick her ass, maybe. Make some threats. Something, anything, to move the needle.

  Samantha isn’t at school.

  Atlanta stalks her spots, doesn’t find her. She spies her friends walking without her, goes through the reasons Samantha might not be here:

  She’s skipping. Her group seems to do that and not get caught. Or at least not catch any hell for it.

  She’s sick. Or probably—she’s still a little beat-up from her last run-in with Atlanta. Samantha doesn’t want to explain the cuts and bruises, and so she’ll hide until they heal up.

  She’s arrested. This is Atlanta’s one true shining hope—a golden ray of light whose brightness she basks in like a sleepy, content puppy. If Skylar Babycheeks called the police, said what happened, maybe they already swooped in, stuck her teen pimp ass in a squad car, and rolled her off to juvie.

  At first, Atlanta really hopes that’s what happened—but then a part of her realizes: everybody would already be talking about it, wouldn’t they? Besides, if Samantha ends up in jail, that means juvie, and juvie’s about thirty miles away. (Atlanta knows, because she thought she might be headed there after what she did to Arlene’s boyfriend.) That means Atlanta will have a harder time figuring out who actually mixed up the baby batter inside Bee’s belly.

  Why are you helping her, anyway? Atlanta thinks. Bee abandoned her before and now, lied to her about what happened.

  But then she reminds herself: It’s not so simple as some dude came along and knocked her up. Someone had his way with her when she was passed out cold, or at least drugged up enough to be unaware what was happening to her.

  Even thinking about that sets off sirens inside her head.

  Her index finger reflexively twitches. Like it’s pulling an imaginary trigger.

  She sees Damon in the hall. It almost looks like he’s dodging her. With a quick side step, she intersects his path and he stops short. “Atlanta,” he says.

  “Hey, Damon.” She scrunches up her nose like a bunny sniffing for carrots. “You need a nickname. D. D-Mon. Demon. Carrizo, Carazzo, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon, you never watched Laverne & Shirley?”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Nick at Nite, dude. A classic.” She waves him off. “Whatever. Hey. Just wanna make sure everything’s cool. We cool?”

  “Cool as . . .” He swallows hard and it’s like he’s searching for a word. “Ice.”

  “You seem weird.”

  “It was a weird weekend.”

  “Okay.”

  He shrugs. “See ya,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  She thinks: What the hell, dude? A week ago he was all in her face, and now he acts like she’s covered in the Ebola virus.

  Men can be such dipshits.

  During lunch, Atlanta heads over to the Mandy Newhouse table, and plunks her butt down right next to her. Mandy gives her a sour once-over. The others at the table—the Barford twins, Petra, Suzie, but no sign of Moose Barnes.

  “Oh, you,” Mandy says.

  “Hey, you,” Atlanta says, quick swiping a fork from Mandy’s tray. She tries to iron the Southern accent out of her voice, slap on a fakey-fakey, super-generic, rich-girl accent. “Gosh, wow, it’s nice to see you again. Great party the other night, huh? Off. The. Chain. What was really great—”

  “Atlanta, don’t be weird.”

  Joshie Barford says, “It was so awesome how you cliff-jumped off the balcony and—”

  Atlanta doesn’t care to hear it and repeats herself: “What was really great was how you handed me a cup of hunch punch that had some kinda date rape drug in it. That was high-larious.”

  At that, the table goes quiet.

  Mandy doesn’t get that memo. Her face twists like a squeezed lemon and she says: “Atlanta, don’t make up lies to make me look bad, because—”

  Under the table, Atlanta pushes the fork against Mandy’s thigh.

  “Ow,” Mandy says.

  “Yeah, ow. You wanna revise your statement, Miss Newhouse?”

  “Suck my tits,” Mandy says.

  Atlanta presses the fork harder. Mandy winces.

  “Fine!” Mandy says, breaking. “I didn’t know what was in the cup. Okay? Samantha just said to give it to you, so I gave it to you. Don’t kill the messenger.”

  “That’s one helluva message,” Atlanta seethes.

  “Here’s a real message for you,” Mandy says, sneering. “You had a shot to run with the big dogs. You could’ve been cool. But you’re not even fit to sniff our asses.”

  Atlanta thinks: Stick her like a pig.

  But she holds off. The fork is a threat—actually stabbing her with a fork is probably not going to fix anything.

  Still, though, the threat has to count, so she removes the fork from Mandy’s thigh—and sticks it in her side, where the flesh is more tender.

  Where more organs exist to perforate.

  Mandy yelps.

  “All your asses smell like some bad shit,” Atlanta says. “And I wanna know what’s going on. Where’s Samantha?”

  “I don’t know,” Mandy says through clenched teeth.

  “Do I need to call someone?” Joshie Barford says.

  Mandy gives a subtle shake of her head.

  Atlanta asks: “Moose Barnes. Where’s he?”

  All around the table, a series of shrugs. Someone says he hasn’t been in school, either.

  “I have a message for you,” Atlanta says, leaning in and whispering in Mandy’s ear. “Whatever you rich bitches have going on, I’ll find out what it is. You won’t hurt good people on my watch. You’ve seen my video. You know what I can do. Don’t mess with me, Mandy Newhouse.”

  Jason Barford jumps in and with a Scottish accent says: “I’ve got a particular set of skills—”

  Atlanta bumps an elbow, knocks his Coke can over. It spills and fizzes into his lap—he leaps up, cursing.

  She withdraws the fork and stands up.

  “You see Samantha,” Atlanta says, “you tell her I’m fixin’ to have a talk.”

  Mandy nods. But then, as Atlanta is walking away, the girl calls after, loud enough so that the neighboring tables can hear:

  “Hey, Atlanta, I hear you went to the Homecoming dance with Josie Dunderchek. I always pegged you for a dyke.”

  Behind her, all around her, come laughs.

  Atlanta thinks: Be cool.

  Stay calm.

  Just walk away.

  She picks up a lunch tray and hits Mandy Newhouse in the head with it.

  Vice Principal Wilson stares at her. Little eyes set back in his big head. Eyeglasses so big they might as well be goggles.

  “You hit another student,” he says.

  “I know.” She realizes that’s not much of a defense. “I didn’t hit her hard.”

  “You broke the tray.”

  “They’re pretty flimsy trays.”

  He sighs, taps a pen against his knuckles. “I know it’s been hard for you,” he says.

  “I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “Everything isn’t fine. Not even for us adults. But for students, it’s particularly hard. I get that. You’re young and . . . confused. Lots of emotions. Driven by a cocktail of hormones. I try to be understanding. I do. But you represent an element of chaos and I . . . there has to be order here.”

  “Okay,” she says, offering a half shrug.

  He sighs again. Looks at the clock above them—some ancient, utilitarian thing from when the Beatles were still new—each tick and each tock so pronounced the sound is like the hammer of her gun pulled back and snapped forward. Backward and forward, backward and forward. Finally, he says:<
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  “I can’t tolerate violence.”

  “Looks like you can’t tolerate not eating ice cream and ham sandwiches.”

  He stiffens, face jiggling as he purses his lips. “A fat joke. Really? I know they call me Planet Wilson. But from you? It betrays who you claim to be. I have a thyroid condition. And I take omeprazole for my heartburn, and one of the side effects is . . .” He frowns. “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  It’s like a cold slap to the face because he’s right. “Man, I’m sorry, Mister Principal. I . . . haven’t slept in two days. I’m a jerk. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  All she gets in return is him looking down at his hands. At his fingernails. At the pen. There’s a moment where she can see she actually hurt him. Cut him with a knife no less real because it came from her mouth and not her hands.

  I’m such a bitch.

  “To clarify, we have a zero tolerance policy here at William Mason High. Particularly toward acts of violence.”

  “Oh.” That strikes a vein of fear. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know what that means, but I promise you, I’m a good kid. All right, maybe not a good kid but I’m an okay kid, the okayest, and please, don’t expel me—”

  “I’m not going to expel you. I’m going to suspend you.”

  “What?”

  “Three days’ suspension. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. You will come back on Friday, and Friday night is parent-teacher conference night, so you and your mother—who has never deigned to show her face here before—are mandated to come and discuss your academic behavior with your teachers. She should know that if you continue along this line you will not graduate.”

  “She might be working.”

  “Then she should find a way to get time off.”

  “That’s awfully presumptive.”

  “It is what it is. You’re dismissed.”

  She stands. Realizes that he’s throwing her a bone. Maybe even trying to reach out, be friendly. And yet she can’t muster a kind word in return.

  As she heads toward the door, he says: