Reunion at Walnut Cherryville (The Eternal Feud Book 1)

by Lauren Salem

  “Did you just say you love me?”

  “Not that directly; I’m just saying that I have feelings for you, and maybe if we explore our feelings, we can eventually have a more romantic companionship. My point is…death doesn’t scare me, so you shouldn’t be afraid to do things with me.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just saying that? What if we got into a relationship, had sex, and then broke up because we no longer had a romantic interest in each other? I would have ruined your life and your chances to be with someone else in the future. Once you have HIV, no one else will want you, and that would be my fault.”

  “I want you, and I don’t care that you have HIV. Dying from HIV is better than jumping off a building and surviving from it. The worst type of suicide is one that doesn’t work.”

  “What made you do it?”

  “I lost someone that I cared about, and I don’t want to let that happen again. Laura, please come with me. Don’t go back to school with Collins or backpacking with Johnny and Veronica; come with me, and we’ll find a way to make this work. I promise there will be a mall within walking distance of the motel because I know how much you love shopping.”

  Laura laughed. “Fine, I’ll go with you.”

  We hugged, and I kissed her on the cheek.

  “Yo, Romeo and Juliet, the cab is here,” Collins shouted.

  Laura and I walked over to the cab, placed our sleeping bags in the trunk, and squeezed into the crowded back seat with Johnny and Veronica.

  “Where to?” the cab driver asked.

  “Sonoran Correctional High School in Phoenix, please,” Collins said.

  “There will also be two other stops along the way, but we’ll just let you know when we want to get out,” I said.

  The cab took off, and we left Flagstaff, a place where I had so many good memories. Laura leaned up against me and closed her eyes. Cheers to starting a new relationship and a new life!

  Chapter 16: Collins

  Sonoran Correctional High School in Phoenix was the last stop of the day. The others had said their goodbyes and left the taxi within the last hour to start their own adventures. I would miss them a lot, but I wasn’t looking for adventure…just a normal life…well, as normal as a juvenile delinquent’s life could possibly get.

  I stepped out of the cab, handed the driver all the money I had left, and peered at the school from the sidewalk. The school was so good at keeping people out that I had no idea how I was supposed to get in. I’m sure the security cameras could see me standing here by the gate watching the school. I grabbed the bars and shook the gate door to see if it would open, but it didn’t. The only way in was to climb over the gate, which should not have been difficult since I was very athletic. As I started to climb the gate, a loud siren sounded, and I felt like it was nearly scrambling my brain, but I didn’t let that stop me from making it over the gate. Once I was at the top, I jumped down and landed on my feet in the grass. School security surrounded me and looked ready to whip me with paddles. If there were ever a real intruder, I hoped they would have something better than paddles that they could use to protect the students.

  “Stop!” one of the security men shouted. “Don’t take another step! You are intruding on private property, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”

  “Relax, I’m a student here,” I said.

  A woman security officer pulled out the pepper spray from her belt and pointed it at me.

  I raised my hands over my head and stepped back until I bumped into the gate. “My name is Collins Greene, and I am a student at this school; could someone please talk to an administrator to verify this?”

  “Schwartz, go inside and see if you can find an enrollment file for Collins Greene,” she said. “Everyone else stay on guard.”

  After three minutes of uncomfortable waiting, Schwartz brought back the file and asked me some questions to verify my identity. They compared me to the picture they had on file and asked me to state and spell my name correctly, my age, and social security number. Since I answered all their questions correctly, they escorted me inside to the library. Not a soul walked down main hall or in the library while the school was on lockdown. Security made me sit in front of a computer as they huddled around me.

  “See if the computer system knows who you are,” she said.

  I swiped my pointer finger along the fingerprint scanner on the keyboard. It automatically inserted my name and password into the system and logged me on.

  “He’s a student here; stand down,” she said into a walkie-talkie. “Call off the lockdown.” She motioned to me to stand up from the chair and follow her. “OK, Collins, we’re going to the principal’s office; the rest of you can return to what you were doing. I can take it from here.”

  As I walked down main hall behind the security officer, students began flooding out of the classrooms. When they saw that I was the reason the school went on lockdown, everyone started cheering, hooting, and applauding. They loved any distractions that interrupted classes. Members of the basketball team cheerfully bumped my side and slapped my back as I walked past their lockers. Main hall quickly went from silence to chaos in a matter of seconds.

  “Excuse me, settle down folks, back to classes,” the security officer shouted. “Who wants to go to Principal Brock’s office? Get in my way, and you’ll be coming with us.”

  The students settled down and backed away, clearing a path in the hallway that led to the principal’s office. Once we reached the office, she left me alone to sit in the waiting room. Believe it or not, I had only been to the principal’s office once before, and that was when I was first being enrolled in the school. I wasn’t in trouble, I just had to fill out some papers, get my picture taken, and go through the enrollment process. Before I could be accepted into the correctional school, I was required to have an interview with Principal Brock. Unlike most other students here, I was never been sent to the principal’s office because I was in trouble.

  This would be my first time. I heard rumors…lots of rumors about how scary Principal Brock was when students were bad. Principal Brock was a hefty white man with an expensive suit, a blood-red tie and slicked-back, glossy brown hair. I heard that he was so fat because he ate newborn babies. I heard that his tie was red because he never washed the blood off it. I heard that his shoes were so shiny because he had his own personal shoeshine guy. I heard that his hair was so glossy because he used afterbirth to slick it back every morning. After taking a closer look, some students claimed they could see tints of red…that could have been afterbirth blood or his natural brownish-red hair color. All those rumors were bizarre and probably untrue, yet I was still a little afraid…you never knew.

  “Collins, step into my office,” Principal Brock said.

  I walked into his office and took a seat on the couch.

  Principal Brock closed the door and sat down on the couch across from me. “First, I want to say that I am very thankful that you’re back. I will not punish you for being gone as long as you cooperate with our search in finding the other missing students and faculty member. As you are probably aware, Counselor Hank, Jonathan Cockit-Gilbertson, Vincent Henderson-Smith, and Laura Hansen have been missing for about a week. You were checked out of school with them at the same time, so the four of you could go to a late lunch with Counselor Hank. Do you have any idea where they might be now?”

  I didn’t know what to tell him. I couldn’t tell him the truth because that would compromise Johnny, Vincent, and Laura and probably get Veronica deported back to Mexico. I felt bad about leaving Counselor Hank in Walnut Cherryville. We probably should have taken him with us, but he would have slowed us down. He was the most annoying and nagging counselor in this school, but he didn’t deserve to be left behind. Maybe I should tell him that everyone was still in Walnut Cherryville. This way they might rescue the counselor and everyone would get what they want.

  “We were abducted and taken to this place called Walnut Cherryville Village,�
�� I said. “The others provided a distraction so I could escape and find help.”

  “Where is Walnut Cherryville Village?”

  “I don’t really know. I think it’s a remote factory village in the middle of a desert.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we went out to lunch with the counselor, we were drugged and then thrown into a truck, which is where we were when the drugs wore off. We couldn’t see where they were taking us, but we ended up in Walnut Cherryville. They made me be a janitor and clean things, and we each got assigned different jobs. It’s a produce factory. I escaped by hiding in a produce truck while the others distracted the guards.”

  “Collins, are you being serious with me? This is no joking matter.”

  “Yes, I’m being totally serious. If this was just some plan to leave the school, then I wouldn’t have come back. Everyone in Walnut Cherryville is in serious danger. There is this really crazy man there named Kenneth, who runs a reality television show called Chair Trials, where people get voted to die via electric chair. I was on the show, and I was so scared I was going to die!”

  “Wait—so first we’re talking about a produce factory, and now you’re telling me you were on a reality show…Have you been feeling OK lately?”

  “You don’t believe me,” I sighed in disappointment. “I can swear to you that I’m telling the truth.”

  “That’s not necessary. How did you get from the produce factory to the reality show?”

  “In this village, the reality show is produced by the government. and the contestants are people who have broken Walnut Cherryville laws. Chair Trials studios is part of the village, which is part of the produce factory.”

  Principal Brock scratched his head in confusion. “Collins, do you truly believe everything you’re telling me right now, or are you just lying to me?”

  “I believe every word because it’s the truth. What’s so hard to understand about this?”

  “So now you’re saying the government is involved? I’m going to be frank with you; your story keeps getting more and more unbelievable by the minute, and I think you really need some rest.”

  “Principal Brock, I know I’m telling the truth!”

  “How can you be? Why would the government care so much about a couple of teenagers? Also, there is no such thing as a reality television show that’s produced by the government. The government doesn’t even use electric chairs to kill criminals anymore. You’re either in desperate need of psychiatric help or telling me a load of crap.” He signaled someone from outside his office to come in.

  I turned around to look and saw two nurses walk through the door.

  “Ladies, please take Collins Greene to the medical center. Give him a private room so he can rest for a few days. He will not be returning to classes until he is physically and psychologically healthy. Run all the tests you can, and I will send in a new counselor to talk to him.”

  Telling mostly truths did nothing but make the principal think I was a liar or crazy. I wished there was some way to prove to him that I told the truth. The nurses escorted me to a private room in the medical center with a label on the door that read “quarantine room three.” Looked like I’d be staying here for a while. The room was equipped with a twin-sized bed, a laundry basket, a treadmill, a small television that hung from the ceiling, and a desk with a laptop computer by the window. Wow, these medical rooms were more decked out than students’ actual rooms. Everyone usually shared the television, but here I got my own. Students only got to use computers in the library, but here I also got my own. This room was more spacious than the Walnut Cherryville room I shared with Johnny, so that was nice. The nurse explained to me that I wouldn’t be leaving the medical center for at least a week or until all the testing was done, which meant that I couldn’t go to the cafeteria, class, or the library. All my food would be brought to me, and I would be using separate facilities to shower and take a dump. Basically, like I read on the door, I was quarantined to the medical center until they decided to let me go. Unfortunately, this would cause me to miss another week of basketball practice. The nurses said that I could communicate with my teachers through email, so I could start catching up on the assignments I missed. I hoped it would not take long for people to realize that I was not crazy or lying about where I was. I missed playing basketball with my brothers.

  I wondered what information I could find if I ran a search for Walnut Cherryville or Chair Trials on Google. I turned on the computer, swiped my finger across the finger print scanner to log on, and Googled the terms. Walnut acres homes for sale in Cherryville, Pennsylvania. Walnut acres apartments and homes for rent. Walnut Grove Baptist Church in Dallas, North Carolina. I searched through five pages of results finding nothing related to what I wanted before typing Chair Trials into the search engine. All that did was give me websites for people selling chairs, one law office hit, and a YouTube video of some idiot with a helmet rolling around in a chair before he crashed into a wall…mildly amusing.

  The search was not very helpful, but I guess it made sense why I couldn’t find anything. Walnut Cherryville was so private that they probably didn’t have a website or much publicity. Most likely, the best evidence of its existence would be found in a grocery store that sold Walnut Cherryville produce. Even that might not be strong enough evidence to convince people that my story was true. Maybe it would be easier to forget about proving the truth and just tell them that I lied. If I continued with the Walnut Cherryville story, the nurses might keep me in quarantine for a long time, and that would defeat the purpose of escaping from Walnut Cherryville. If I lied, I would be punished for not cooperating, lying to the principal, and possibly an array of other reasons. Principal Brock would force me to tell him where the others were. He might kill me and place me in the fetal position inside a Dutch oven with some chicken broth, butter, white wine, carrots, onions, those tiny red potatoes, garlic cloves, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary sprigs. Both options had their pitfalls…This was really frustrating. I thought things were going to get better if I came here, but right now that didn’t seem to be true. If I lied, this might be the first time I got sent to the principal’s office for being in trouble. I deserved to go many times before, but I always found a way out of it.

  * * *

  Back in the day, about two years ago, I used to be a prankster. One day while Johnny and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria because there was a dust storm outside, we noticed there was a new kid in school. He sat alone on the floor in the corner of the cafeteria with no lunch, looking like a depressed underfed vampire. His body was frail, his skin was pale, and he wore black skinny jeans with a leather jacket. I thought he was gay because he wore eyeliner, which is for girls. I ignored him at first and continued to enjoy my roast beef sandwich, but Johnny insisted that we introduce ourselves and invite him to sit with us.

  “If he wanted company, he’d go and find it,” I said.

  “He’s sitting alone because he’s afraid of approaching people and being rejected,” Johnny said. “I’m going to go over there and talk to him.”

  “Really,” I complained. “He looks like the Grim Reaper’s child.”

  “Come on, Collins,” Johnny said as he got up from his chair.

  We walked over to the new kid and sat down next to him.

  “Hi, I’m Johnny, and this is Collins,” Johnny said, “Welcome…What’s your name?”

  “Vincent,” he said.

  And that’s the day Vincent joined the dynamic duo, which was now an unfortunate trio. It took me a while to get used to Vincent hanging around us because he was so different. He didn’t like sports, girls, or food, which made it difficult for me to relate to him, so I got annoyed that he was hanging out with us all the time. He would always put a damper on a happy lunch by reading us his depressing love poems that he wrote. They were all about the same thing, a girl that died, which made me wonder why he had to write about it so many times. It got boring after a while, so I sha
red with him the poetry that I grew up with…Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent. Finally, we had a way we could relate to each other. I introduced him to rap music, and he liked a lot of it, and he introduced me to death metal, which gave me a headache. I even saw his father, the Grim Reaper, on the cover of several Children of Bodom albums.

  Everyone got along fine for two weeks until we all attempted to pull off a prank on Principal Brock, which was my idea. Principal Brock always drank a Diet Pepsi with his lunch, so I thought it would be funny if we put Mentos in it. Johnny and I were the distraction. We pretended to start a fight with each other in the main hall, and Principal Brock rushed over to break it up. While he was lecturing us about how this school had a strict no-violence policy, Vincent put a Mentos in his soda and resealed it. I saw him leave the principal’s office, which meant that he was finished doing his part.

  The bell rang, and the hallway became crowded with students, so Principal Brock took us to his office to talk. He said that since it was our first fight, we’d each get a warning, but we weren’t in trouble. When Johnny was forced by Principal Brock to explain what started the fight and he began making something up, Principal Brock unscrewed the cap to his Pepsi, and soda exploded in his face! Anyone who was around and saw it almost died from laughter, except Principal Brock. Little did I know that Vincent filmed the prank and uploaded it to YouTube, where it became viral within a week. I didn’t tell him to film it…He decided that on his own. I didn’t understand how it was possible to film it without getting noticed, but at the time I didn’t realize that Vincent was a master of tiny devices and cameras. Eventually, I found out that he used a nanny camera hidden in a pen that saved the footage to a memory card, which he later uploaded to a computer in the library. Once the principal found out from another faculty member that there was a video of soda exploding in his face on YouTube, the library technicians were able to track down the user account that uploaded the video. All evidence pointed to Vincent, so he got in trouble while Johnny and I got off like we didn’t take part in the prank at all.