Reunion at Walnut Cherryville (The Eternal Feud Book 1)

by Lauren Salem

  “Do you need something?” I asked.

  “Just wanted to check and make sure you’re all right,” Vincent said.

  “I’m OK,” I said. “Now please close the door, and if you need something, please knock instead of barging in.”

  “Sorry,” Vincent said as he closed the door.

  When I finished my business, I flushed the toilet with a toilet paper square and exited the most disgusting bathroom I’ve ever seen. As I began washing my hands in the sink, I saw through the mirror that Vincent put our sleeping bags on the floor…where the dead bugs rested. He got naked and let his uniform drop to the floor…on to more dead bugs. He even left his tight black underwear on the floor…on still more bugs. Calm down, Laura…don’t freak out…breathe. I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes again, I turned off the water and dried my hands on a white hand towel that surprisingly didn’t have any stains on it.

  Vincent pulled down the quilt and lay down. “Come to bed, honey,” he said.

  “Vincent, don’t call me honey,” I started. “Don’t leave our sleeping bags and your clothes all over the dirty carpet, don’t walk in on me in the bathroom, don’t come to bed naked—”

  “Whoa, take a breath, Laura, relax,” Vincent interrupted. “There can’t be this many rules already; we’ve only been in a relationship for about three hours.”

  “Casual companionship,” I said, correcting him. I stood by the edge of the bed, glaring at the quilt with my arms folded. “You didn’t check for bedbugs.”

  Vincent pushed off the quilt and looked around the sheet very quickly as if he was mocking me. “There, I checked for bedbugs. Come to bed.”

  I threw his underwear on the bed. “I am just as afraid of bedbugs as I am of garden snakes,” I laughed.

  “Hey, I’m not a garden snake!”

  “Well, you ain’t no anaconda,” I continued to laugh while my eyes teared up. “Wow, I crack myself up.”

  Vincent put his tighty blackies back on and pulled up the quilt. “It’s bigger than it looks…It’s just cold. You can’t judge it correctly until you use it.”

  “I see where you’re going with that, and that’s a no.” I took off my uniform, folded it up with Vincent’s, and put them in a drawer. I found the TV remote and threw it on the bed. “Do you want to watch TV?”

  “I don’t want to do anything with you because you insulted my manhood,” Vincent said with his face buried in a pillow.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said, tugging the pillow. “Let go; it was only a little joke.”

  “See, you did it again!”

  “The second one wasn’t intentional,” I said as I crawled into bed. When I turned on the television, it was on the local news station. I started searching the guide for something more entertaining to watch but stopped when I heard a special news report update mention that four high school students and a counselor were missing from Sonoran Correctional High School. I cancelled the guide to watch the story and tapped Vincent on the arm. “Vincent, get that pillow off your face and watch this.”

  “We have been updated that one of the students, Collins Greene, has been found,” the reporter announced. “He showed up in a cab in front of the school a few hours ago and tried to climb over the school fence. Sonoran Correctional High School went on immediate lockdown until the student’s identity was verified. Neither the principal nor the student was available for comment. The police are still searching for the remaining three missing students and the counselor.”

  The screen changed, showing four images in each corner: top left: Counselor Hank, top right: Vincent, bottom right: Johnny, and bottom left: me. “The students and Counselor Hank have been missing since last Friday, and they were last seen at the Phoenix Café on Cherry Street. If you have seen or know the whereabouts of any of these missing people, please call the number on the bottom of your screen or report them to the local police. In other news…”

  “Ah, shit, Collins,” Vincent said, “By this story being all over the news, he’s led the secret Walnut Cherryville watchers right to his location.”

  “What happens if they find Collins?” I asked.

  “They could torture him until he tells them where we are and then take us all back to Walnut Cherryville.”

  “Dammit, Collins, you’ve screwed up again!”

  “When we leave this motel room, there will be a lot of people looking for us. We need to change our clothes and get something that’s less noticeable. We don’t want to attract a lot of attention.”

  “How much money do we have left?”

  “I think we only have forty dollars.”

  “How are we supposed to each buy new clothes with only forty dollars?”

  “It’s called living on a budget, sweetie.”

  “Don’t call me sweetie!”

  “You’re cute when you’re angry,” Vincent said as he wrapped his arms around me. “Come here.” He tried to kiss me, but I pushed him away.

  “No, Vincent. There’s no time for kisses right now! We have to focus.”

  “But there’s always time for kisses,” he whined.

  “No kisses!”

  “It’s OK, don’t worry. We’ve already established that I’ll manage the finances.”

  “No, we split the money fifty-fifty.”

  “You don’t know how to manage money because you’re a woman.”

  Silence filled the room as I glared at Vincent. “What did you say?”

  “You don’t know how to manage money because you’re a woman.”

  I grabbed my pillow and started slapping Vincent with it as hard as I could. He didn’t try to block it or defend himself.

  “Feel free to use your hands to slap me, scratch me, or choke me if you want,” he said.

  I stopped. “You like it when I hurt you…how odd.”

  “I never said that, but I did say that your ass looks fat in those panties.”

  “You bastard! How can you say I look fat when I work out three times a week? I even diet, control my portions, and deny myself—”

  Vincent slapped my ass, and I suddenly stopped talking. Time to ditch the pillow and choke him to death. No one calls Laura fat! I smacked Vincent across the face, and he smiled. He pushed me down, rolled over on top, and started kissing me as he locked my hands against the headrest. “Distraction!” I yelled out.

  “Do you normally yell out ‘distraction’ when you’re about to make love?”

  “We are not having sex. I told you that.”

  “You’re right,” he said as he got off me, “We’re not having sex. We’re making love.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not the same thing, Laura, totally not the same thing.”

  “We have to stop getting distracted and start working things out. If we only have forty dollars and the room cost twenty dollars per night, we only have enough money for two more nights if we don’t buy any clothes, food or transportation.”

  “Well, look who just learned how to manage money…you,” he said as he pointed at me.

  “You know what? I’m not even going to get mad because that’s exactly what you want.”

  “I got a hardwood right now in case you do get mad and need somewhere to put your frustration.”

  “For the thousandth time…no sex. I don’t want you to get sick. Can’t we just talk and have a nice conversation for a while?”

  “Yes. As long as you don’t tell me about your diet, complain about your frustrations, or call my dick a garden snake, sure we can talk,” Vincent said as he sat behind me and locked me up in his embrace.

  “What’s our plan? How are we going to make more money? What happens when our forty dollars runs out?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you that I have a long-term plan, but I know how we can save our money. We don’t need transportation, because we each were born with two feet,” he said before he kissed my neck. “We don’t need to buy food because God blessed this world with soup kitchens and ho
meless people. We could walk over to the soup kitchen, eat a nice dinner, and then walk to the Salvation Army where we each can purchase a new outfit for probably ten dollars or less. As far as income, there are plenty of options, darling.”

  “Don’t call me darling. We’re not married, we’re not in a relationship, we’re just casual companions.”

  “If you say so, dear.”

  “Don’t—”

  “Don’t call you dear; that’s right, I remember. Anyway, for income, we could steal from strippers, become strippers, display our talents on the side of the road, so people will throw money at us as they drive or walk by—”

  “That only works if you’re a musician.”

  “Well, I’m sure we can come up with some kind of duet that will entice people to at least give us their spare change.”

  “Do you have any serious suggestions?” I asked.

  “I think we should sing “Sick Love Song” together. That would be cool.”

  “But we don’t have any instruments.”

  “Our voices are our instruments.”

  I laughed. “Are you seriously considering this? We could go to a home improvement store and wait in the parking lot with the illegal immigrants for some person to drive by and offer us a job. That will pay more.”

  “Are you good at running after trucks? Are you secretly skilled in housework like repairs or painting? Can you lift more than two pounds? I don’t think so.”

  “Actually, I can! I run three times a week, I’m physically fit and healthy, and to your surprise, I can lift fifty pounds. Also, I know how to paint and do house cleaning. So what do you think? Shall we be house cleaners who sing duets together during work?”

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll do it,” Vincent said, “but I’d rather sing on the street and watch people throw money at us.”

  “Come on, let’s go to the soup kitchen and get some food,” I said, putting my uniform back on. I tossed Vincent his uniform.

  Wait…Did I sound excited to go eat at the soup kitchen? Before my Walnut Cherryville experience, if someone were to say to me “come on, let’s go eat at the soup kitchen,” I would have been running in the other direction. Homeless people were disgusting bottom dwellers who fed off the rich by stealing what they couldn’t earn themselves. I always hated the way they stood on the streets with signs that read “will work for food” and how they would dig through a public trash can after you threw food away. I even saw them sitting around shopping malls, holding their cups full of change and asking shoppers if they could spare a dime. And what happened next? Well, one dime turned into twenty dimes, which turned into enough dimes to buy a bottle of Jack. The homeless were always hungry, yet they never learned how to do anything but accept handouts. They conned people into thinking that if they gave them a dime, they would go buy food; in reality, they were just going to buy a bottle of whisky and get drunk on a park bench.

  I had worked in a soup kitchen, but not by choice. December was Sonoran Correctional High School’s community service month. All students were assigned seventy-two mandatory hours of community service, which I usually fulfilled on the weekends. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to choose where I served my hours. Last December, they sent me to work in the soup kitchen, which was the last place I ever wanted to go because I despised homeless people. Even worse than that, I learned that they served all canned food and meat that was two days old. I guess that was the disgusting crap you got when it was free. In the morning, I was the designated can opener. I opened countless cans of fruits and vegetables with a manual can opener, which hurt my hands like a bitch. Later in the day around lunchtime, they’d put me on the serving line. Disgusting homeless men would ogle my body, wink at me, and try to ask me out on a date. I pretended to smile, told them I already had a boyfriend, and served them their food.

  My supervisor was a superbitch; so if I caused any trouble, she’d give me a bad evaluation, which would mean that all the hours I served wouldn’t count. If I had any incomplete hours by the end of December, I would have had to serve them at a different site in January. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that. I was able to keep my cool long enough for my supervisor to give me a full seventy-two hours of good evaluations.

  The thing I hated the most about soup kitchens was the fact that employees and homeless people constantly tried to hit on me. At night, when the soup kitchen closed, I was on clean-up duty with a few other volunteers. I did what I knew how to do best: wash dishes. There was nothing like helping people who didn’t really need to be helped…It was their own fault. After my community service experience, why would I think to step foot in a soup kitchen ever again? I wasn’t a homeless person, just a missing person who currently resided in a motel. I wasn’t desperate enough to eat at the soup kitchen.

  “Actually, Vincent, I’ve changed my mind,” I said as we stood in front of the Santa Maria Soup Kitchen. I gazed at the long line of homeless people that started at the door and wrapped around the parking lot. “I saw a McDonald’s a block back; could we go there instead?”

  “Typical woman…always changing her mind. Why would we spend money on food if we could get it for free?” Vincent asked.

  “Oh, please, don’t tell me that men never change their minds. It’s not that much money. You can get a whole meal for only ninety-nine cents.”

  “All right, well, if that’s how you want to spend our money, baby, we’ll do that.”

  “Don’t call me baby.”

  “I know. I’m just messing with you.”

  Chapter 19: Collins

  8:00 a.m.

  Was it that time already? I smacked the snooze button, snuggled my pillow, and went back to sleep.

  8:05 a.m.

  The alarm rang louder than it did the first time…shhh! I was trying to sleep. I smacked the snooze button again, snuggled my pillow, and went back to sleep.

  8:10 a.m.

  Alarm clock was smashed on the floor for being disruptive and annoying. Now, because of a pesky alarm clock, I was finally awake. I grabbed the black permanent marker from the desk and drew another notch on the wall next to my bed. Today marked the seventh day I’d been stuck in quarantine, since I decided to continue telling the truth about Walnut Cherryville to my new counselor.

  8:15 a.m.

  I left my room to buy a snack from the vending machine in the hall. I inserted my last dollar bill into the machine and pressed E6 for strawberry Pop-Tarts, but for some reason the damn machine decided to give me cherry. I was tired of this machine never giving me what I wanted! Yesterday, it gave me a banana walnut muffin instead of a blueberry muffin…What was up with that? Despite the mix-up, I went back to my room and ate the cherry Pop-Tarts in two minutes flat. Wow, the cherry ones were delicious.

  8:25 a.m.

  I listened to rap music on Pandora while running on the treadmill. Had to stay in shape for the basketball team…assuming that I would get to play again sometime soon. This was the time of day that I most believed I should stop telling the truth about Walnut Cherryville. My only problem with telling a lie to Counselor Moleski and Principal Brock was that I didn’t know how I would be punished. What if they decided to suspend me from the basketball team? They would think that my friends and I did something to harm Counselor Hank, ran away, and lied about it. How would that affect my permanent record that I had worked so hard to keep clean? Even worse, would it prevent me from getting into college? I couldn’t decide whether it was better to be a liar or a lunatic. For the past six days, I choose lunatic, but that didn’t mean I’d choose that today. It was all a matter of when I would reach my breaking point. When would I fold and give up on the truth?

  9:25 a.m.

  I gathered a fresh pair of boxers, basketball shorts, and a white T-shirt into a bag in between gulping down a bottle of water. I headed over to the quarantine locker room and took a shower with some strange body soap that smelled like mangos. Why would they put this kind of soap in a man’s locker room? Smelled like it was f
or women, and it made me lose my manly musk!

  10:00 a.m.

  I ate breakfast by myself in the quarantine dining room. Well, I wasn’t totally by myself. There were five other quarantine students in the room, but we were not allowed to share tables, and everyone was sitting really far away from each other. The nurses handed everyone a tray of two scrambled eggs, two strips of premade bacon, a slice of wheat toast, and a side of mixed fruit with orange juice to drink. I just got food, but some of the other students got crazy pills, or what I assumed were crazy pills. They were served in tiny paper cups by the nurses who watched the students swallow the pills. The nurses then checked their mouths to make sure that the students didn’t just hide the pills under their tongues. I wondered if that would be me in a few days. What did they prescribe to people who were delusional? Would it have harmful side effects because I was not actually delusional? Would they still keep me in quarantine even after I took their crazy pills? I wished Johnny was here. He could help me decide better what to do. I shouldn’t have been so proud…I shouldn’t have told him that I didn’t need a packed lunch. Now I was on my own, and I had to make a decision…a decision that would determine the fate of the rest of my life.

  11:00 a.m.

  Maybe I just needed to clear my head and forget about the tough choice I’d have to make at my 1:00 p.m. appointment with Counselor Moleski. I checked my email and saw that many of my teachers had sent me new assignments to work on. OK…changing gears…I was no longer going to think about Walnut Cherryville for the next two hours. Instead, I would concentrate on completing this chemical equation worksheet that I missed in chemistry class.

  As I worked quietly, a lined yellow piece of folded paper slid beneath my bedroom door. Curious, I got up to see what it was. When I unfolded it, I saw a series of stick-figure drawings with the sun and trees in the background. The sun was always in a different place in every frame as if it was revolving around the four stick people, who appeared to be walking in a line. As the story progressed, the ground split apart, revealing a fiery pit in the earth. The last frame showed the stick people falling into the fiery pit.