“Leave me alone, Neil.”
Chapter Sixteen
When Sammy returned to the cabin, she headed straight for the kitchen, grabbed the bottle of Johnnie Walker, and poured herself a glass. She drank it down in one swallow, and then poured herself another. Over the past few weeks, she’d grown concerned that it’d gotten far too easy to turn to this bottle for consolation. Right now, however, she didn’t give a damn. She needed the drink.
She swallowed the whiskey, stared down at the empty glass for a moment, and then threw it across the kitchen. It slammed into the wall, shattering on impact. Falling to her knees, she sobbed uncontrollably. She leaned forward, pounding her fists on the floor as her cries filled the otherwise silent cabin.
She hadn’t expected this to be so hard. Hearing Chris’s voice again had sent her into an emotional spiral, one that had driven her from her place of concealment near the zipline. She’d stumbled through the forest for a short time, her mind reeling from the memories his voice had invoked. Apparently, eighteen years hadn’t been long enough to heal the wounds. Now, all she could do was cry.
Sammy remained huddled on the floor for close to ten minutes. Her eyes had long since dried up, but she felt emotionally drained, unable to persuade herself to stand. When she finally did rise, she crossed to the small closet, pulled out a broom and a dustpan, and swept up the broken glass.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, she aimlessly played with the salt shaker, her mind drifting beyond the room, beyond the cabin. She’d never expected her reunion with Neil Brewster to cause such emotional upheaval. Until the other night, she was certain that she could make it through this weekend without shedding a single tear. The years had hardened her, leaving her cold and unfeeling. Wasn’t that how her ex-husband had once described her? Cold and unfeeling. It was probably a true statement. That was why he asked for the divorce. But they’d both entered the marriage with baggage. His had been a porn addiction. Hers had been Neil Brewster.
Sammy set the salt shaker back on the center of the table and leaned back in the chair. Gazing at the ceiling, she recalled her first meeting with Neil. She’d fallen for him the minute she’d met him. While her father spent his days caring for the camp facilities, she had roamed free throughout the camp and the surrounding forest. She’d often mingled with the other campers and counselors. It must have been Neil’s first summer. She didn’t remember seeing him before. “Dreamy” was the word she’d used back then. Of course, he paid her no heed, leaving her just a fourteen-year-old tomboy with an unrequited crush.
It wasn’t until his last summer at camp that he’d finally shown interest in her. Sammy had gone from teenage tomboy to blossoming young woman, catching his eye in the process. Within the first week of the summer of 1997, their camp romance flourished, and she couldn’t have been happier. Of course, he wanted to have sex with her. That was clear from the outset. But she’d promised herself to wait until she was sixteen. So she waited. Her promise, however, didn’t stop her from enticing him. There was something mischievous about getting Neil hot and bothered, only to deny him gratification.
She’d heard all the stories about his exploits with the other girl counselors, but it didn’t bother her. She knew he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. When she was ready, he’d be waiting. By the time Sammy turned sixteen, she’d gone from crush to infatuation to love. The thought invoked a smile. Love. How foolish she’d been back then. What the hell did she know about love? She’d just been a kid, just a young naive kid.
Sammy rose from the table, opened a nearby kitchen drawer, and pulled out a pill bottle—Xanax. She got another tumbler down from the cabinet, half-filling it with whiskey. Popping two pills in her mouth, she washed them down. She’d never told her therapist about this weekend. He’d be furious if he knew what she had planned, seeing it as the absolute collapse of all they’d accomplished over the past five years. She never had the heart to tell him that their sessions had done nothing to help her cope with her feelings. It didn’t matter anyway. She wasn’t planning to see him ever again.
Sammy crossed into the living room, then walked to the front window. Gazing out across the stone-covered driveway, she thought about his arrival the previous night. Seeing Neil standing in the driveway had stirred up those old forgotten emotions, leaving her with an amalgam of incompatible feelings. The eighteen years of anger and hatred that had fueled her life were in dispute with feelings that she’d not felt for a very long time. She felt betrayed by her own heart.
While she’d been watching him on the zipline, Sammy had struggled to keep herself from putting a halt to her plans. Following through would make her no better than him, right? That argument had crossed her mind many times over the past several weeks, but she’d always just brushed it aside. Now, however, it didn’t seem as easy to ignore. Seeing him again seemed to be weakening her resolve.
She climbed the stairs, entering the bedroom at the far end of the cabin. Opening the closet door, she stared down at the coil of thick rope laying on the floor. A faint musty smell lingered in the air. When she’d cut the rope from the old dock by the lake, it’d been submerged for years. The rough fibers had taken two weeks to completely dry out. For years, the thick strands had secured the canoes to the dock, keeping them from drifting into the lake. If everything went according to plan, the rope would soon secure something very different.
Pushing the closet door closed, she turned to gaze around the room. Except for the new hooks in the wall and ceiling, the room looked exactly as it did eighteen years ago. Her father never could bring himself to clean it out. She crossed to the twin bed and sat down on the pale blue comforter. She found herself asking the same question that she always asked while sitting in this room. Why? There was never a satisfactory answer. He’d left no note. No message. Why didn’t he ask for help? She’d have done anything to help him if she’d known. If only she’d known . . .
She left the room, crossing to the other bedroom. She peeled off her pale blue t-shirt and laid it on the bed. The floral comforter was faded and fraying along the edges. She smoothed the wrinkles out of the t-shirt, tracing the letters imprinted on the front. Sammy had found the box of camp t-shirts in the back of her father’s closet. He must have been saving them for something. For what, she didn’t know. Sliding the tan shorts down her legs, she set them on the bed next to the t-shirt.
Turning to stare into the mirror over the dresser, Sammy wondered if Neil would still want her like he did back then. Her figure had filled out a bit over the years, but she’d worked hard to stay fit. Did she look good enough to entice him to her bed? He’d seemed interested the previous night. Would he come to the cabin like they’d agreed? Her plan depended upon him coming to see her tonight.
Stripping off her bra and panties, Sammy walked to the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stepped inside. As the hot water poured over her, she continued to think about Neil. She’d half-hoped that he’d become bald and fat over eighteen years, but no such luck. If anything, he’d grown more attractive, maturing perfectly with age. His good looks probably came naturally, without a bit of effort. She, on the other hand, struggled every day to maintain some semblance of the body she’d once had with minimal success. Just typical, she thought with a huff.
As she lathered shampoo in her hair, she recalled how it’d felt to embrace him again. How warm she’d been within his arms. His deep blue eyes had mesmerized her, and his voice had once again thrilled her to the point of arousal. He’d been everything that she’d fallen in love with years ago. Everything that she’d wanted back then. Everything she wanted now. No matter how much she claimed to hate him, Sammy couldn’t deny that she wanted Neil Brewster just as much.
“Damn it.”
Her hand touched the St. Christopher medal hanging from her neck. Remember what this is all for, she thought.
Summer, 1996
Keeping to the shadows, Neil crept throug
h the trees, his friends following close behind. The moonlight struggled to pierce the canopy of tree limbs above him. The rain from earlier in the day had finally stopped, but he still heard water droplets falling from the trees into the foliage covering the forest floor. He made his way from Redwood Lodge across to Cherry Lodge, fifty yards at the most. As he approached the cabin, Neil signaled for his friends to be silent. “Remember, we can’t let him scream.”
Patrick lifted the HandyCam to his eyes, and a red light above the camera lens blinked, indicating that he’d started recording. Placing his hand on the cabin door, Neil reached for the door handle. The rule in camp was that cabin doors must remain unlocked. He knew Stinky Bateman was a stickler for the rules.
As gently as possible, he pulled down on the door handle and heard the bar on the other side rubbing as it lifted. He heard Jeremy start to snicker and, turning, placed his finger to his lips, trying to shush his friend. Pushing the door open, Neil stepped gingerly into the dark cabin followed by his companions. In the dim light, he saw his quarry on the lower bunk of the nearest bed. The huddled mass of Stinky Bateman was laying soundlessly, his deep breathing barely audible even in the silent cabin.
With his fingers, Neil gave his friends a countdown from three. When he reached one, Jeremy clamped his hands on the young boy’s forearms, holding them firmly against the mattress. Steve got a solid grip on Bateman’s feet, holding them tightly together, while Rob’s hand covered the boy’s mouth, ensuring he couldn’t cry out. Hovering above Bateman’s face, Neil stared into the boy’s fear-stricken eyes. He laughed, watching Bateman’s terrified struggles. They all knew he stood no chance of freeing himself. “This’ll be a lot easier if you don’t struggle.”
His words only served to cause Bateman to fight more fiercely. The boy twisted his body back and forth, trying to free himself with no success. As Patrick leaned in over his shoulder with the video camera, Neil tore a piece of duct tape from the roll he’d brought. Just as they’d planned, Rob removed his hand from Stinky Bateman’s mouth as Neil slapped the duct tape down in place.
Grunts and groans were the only sound the boy made as Rob and Neil wrapped duct tape first around his wrists, then around his ankles. Rising to his feet, Neil looked down at the gagged and bound Bateman, watching him struggle against Jeremy and Steve’s grasp. “He’s ready. Let’s go.”
Chapter Seventeen
Leaving behind the old boys’ cabins, Neil and his friends continued their hike around Lake Friendship, crossing over the old earthen dam that separated the lake from Lower Creek. Standing on the dam, Neil had an unimpeded view across the lake. He glanced down, watching the overflow from the lake wash through the narrow spillway into the creek below. The old creosote-coated timbers forming the walls of the overflow channel were deteriorating, and some had even splintered, lodging themselves in the channel and forming an obstruction over which the water rushed. Moving to the other side of the dam, he saw debris and brownish-white foam congregate where the water flowed out of the chute, giving the otherwise clean creek an unnatural polluted look.
“Remember when Jeremy rode this in a canoe?” asked Rob.
Leaning on the wooden rail above the spillway, Jeremy laughed. “You thought I wouldn’t make it!”
“I thought you’d get us kicked out of here,” said Steve.
“If I remember, you didn’t exactly make it,” Neil added. He pointed down at the chute emptying into Lower Creek. “You sank the canoe coming out of that chute. Damn thing’s probably still there.”
Jeremy folded his arms over his chest. “I didn’t see any of you try it.”
Patting Jeremy on the back, Patrick said, “None of us were as stupid as you.”
Laughing, Neil and his friends moved across the dam and shortly found themselves standing among the cabins that had once housed the girl campers and counselors. There was little difference between the girls’ cabins and the boys’: same wood slat walls, same bunk beds, same lumpy mattresses. Rob wandered over to the girls’ bathhouse, disappearing behind it. Moments later, Rob poked his head around the side.
“Check this out!” Rob shouted.
Moving behind the bathhouse, Neil found Rob kneeling beside the cinder block wall, his fingers digging at an indentation along the wall’s rough surface. After a few moments, an oblong piece of mortar broke away from the wall, revealing a hole in between the joints of the cinder blocks.
It had taken three weeks of careful, meticulous work, Neil remembered, during their first summer at camp. He and his friends had taken turns excavating the already deteriorating mortar joints in the wall. He was surprised that it had never been discovered. There had been more than a few Saturdays where he’d spent the morning with an eye pressed against the cold block wall, watching the girl counselors as they showered.
When Rob and Neil caught up with the other three, Jeremy, Steve, and Patrick were already making their way around the far side of the lake. The main trail hugged the lake edge tightly, with smaller side trails leading into the forest. White sand coated the surface of the trail, disturbed only by the occasional gnarled tree root. Walking the trail was almost second nature to Neil, leaving him surprised at how familiar it seemed to be.
A short distance from the girls’ cabins, Neil and his friends came upon a fork in the trail. The main pathway banked upward to the left, away from the lake, while the other narrower path led down along an isolated sandbar flanked on one side by the lake and on the other by a shallow stream. The path along the sandbar, although more direct, had always been more challenging to navigate because of its inaccessibility. Unlike the main trail, the small island-like path sprouted tall pine trees and thick thorny underbrush along its two sides. The two paths eventually met on the west side of the lake, where a primitive rope bridge crossed the gap between the two trails over the stream. During his time at the camp, the two divergent paths had become a source of competition between Neil and his friends. The race always started at the fork with the goal of seeing who reached the rope bridge first.
Neil smiled, taking pride in the memory of his superiority when traversing the narrow path. He’d gained a reputation for being the fastest at crossing the sand bar. He felt that old thrill return, leaving him to wonder if he still had what it took to accomplish something he’d done as a kid.
“Who wants to race?” he asked.
“You kidding?” Steve said. “You can’t get through there.”
Neil had to admit that the undergrowth was much thicker than he remembered. Where he had once been able to see a clearly defined entry point, he could barely find the trail now. If not for the white sand leading into the underbrush, he might have missed it altogether. But it’d probably clear out once he got past the overgrowth. It was worth a try.
“It’ll be easy,” he said. “Who’s with me?”
No one stepped forward to volunteer, at least not at first. His four friends glanced at each other until Patrick finally said, “What the hell, I’ll go.”
Pointing at his other three friends, Neil smiled. “You three against Patrick and I. Last one to the rope bridge . . .” He paused. Remembering an eighteen-year-old taunt, he added, “The last one there has to give Miss Schlappi a sponge bath.” With that, he charged into the thickets with reckless abandon.
As he pushed low hanging branches and thorns out of his way, he heard Patrick shouting after him. “Wait for me!”
Patrick pushed through somewhere behind him, but Neil wasn’t about to lose precious seconds to allow his friend to catch up. He had only one goal in mind—reaching the rope bridge before his friends. Brambles clawed at his bare legs, forcing him to admit that Steve’s assumption about the path having grown over was more correct than he’d at first thought. The revelation, however, did nothing to deter his forward charge.
The path rose slightly before it dropped suddenly into a water-filled gully. Without even thinking, Neil push
ed off with his foot, leaping over the gully. White sand flew out from under his feet as he landed, stumbled forward, and continued with his full-on run. The undergrowth began to thin, and as the path rose and fell, the exhilaration of the competition fueled his momentum. Somewhere behind him, he heard Patrick clambering in pursuit, but, to Neil, it barely registered. The thrill of the race and the desire to win were the only things occupying his attention.
Leaping across another water-filled gully, he landed more gracefully this time and ran on with everything he had. The trees lining either side of the path were a blur, giving him only an occasional glimpse of the lake on his right. Brambles whipped at his legs, causing them to sting, but Neil ignored the discomfort, pressing on as he dropped into another gully, this one not filled with water. As he came up the other side, a pine branch lashed at his face, causing him to stumble. His foot caught an exposed gnarled tree root, sending him crashing to the ground. Rolling in the white sand, he waited for the momentary pain to subside. The gritty particles of sand covered his arms and legs, clinging to his skin. He cursed at his misstep. This might have just cost him the race. Pushing himself up, his eyes drifted out toward the lake.
Neil realized later that if he hadn’t fallen he probably never would’ve seen it. It was the baseball cap’s bright red color that had caught his eye first. Resting atop the lake’s surface, the cap’s black bill was just dipping below the water line. Careful not to tread in the thick mud along the water’s edge, Neil inched closer, kneeling to get a better look.
Embroidered silver lettering emblazoned the front of the cap’s stiff red peak. He read the words aloud. “Snap-on.” In smaller black cursive script underneath was the word “Racing.” It had been eighteen years since he’d seen one like it, but the cap was all too familiar. He’d spent three summers seeing it day in and day out adorning the head of Stinky Bateman.
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