by Keilan Shea
Slowly, he turns toward me, eyes scanning, until they find me. I know he must see me because he clenches his jaw and starts running for me.
Oh shit. I didn’t think this through.
My legs take me deeper into the forest as I try to recall every lesson Dad taught me. The details are fuzzy. Even before he became Raindrop’s police captain, he didn’t see much action, which he never complained about. He said it meant we were safe. I never thought I’d have to remember what to do in a crisis. Just like I never imagined a car crash would kill most of my family and leave me to deal with the aftermath. The driver and only person in the other car was drunk, so he took the blame.
I know this much: there’s no time to call for help, and the road is no good. Making a call would slow me down, and the road would give the bodyguards a clear shot at me. Then again, Rich Prick might also have a concealed gun—not that I’ve noticed one. I haven’t heard gunfire, but I haven’t given him an opening either.
“Faster,” I tell myself.
I imagine I’m chasing Corey. I’ve done that enough times that I’m adept at navigating the uneven forest terrain. My muscle memory is intact, but my body has deteriorated with my recovery, the absence of my usual summer routine, and my poor appetite. Within minutes of a mild ascension, I’m winded.
I risk looking over my shoulder. I need a break. I’m going to pass out if I don’t stop. I don’t see anyone, don’t hear anything besides the chirping birds. Corey would say that means I’m safe. If birds are chirping, they don’t feel threatened. I want to drop to my ass, but if I sit, I don’t know if I’ll get myself up again. I bend over instead, resting my hands on my shins, and I try to make sense of everything I saw and heard.
So, this guy is rich. Okay. Everyone in Raindrop has money, but enough money to buy a house that’s not for sale? My home isn’t on prime property and it’s a chalet. Rich Prick could have a lakefront mansion, but, for some reason, he wanted my home and he got it—even though money can’t buy everything. Dad was always adamant about that, and he should have been right. Was Harvey threatened? Maybe these guys are criminals who scouted the place, decided it was abandoned, and then moved in. No. Why would they have refurnished my home when it was in excellent condition?
My thoughts are so loud I almost miss the dead silence. No chirping. Not even a breeze to stir the leaves. I raise Corey’s slingshot after excavating another small rock. Ammunition in hand, I slowly turn around, scanning the forest for my pursuer. Blue catches my eyes. Rich Prick sticks out of the foliage like a flag announcing his presence. I let loose my rock, but he lurches behind an aspen. My skinny legs shake as if to tell me they can’t take on another sprint. My knees are about to buckle, so I search for another rock. I can’t find one. I kick off, ignoring the nearly crippling fatigue, but something slams into my back.
Rich Prick has me pinned. His hand cups the back of my head and it’s heavy. My teeth cut into my lips. I eat blood-accented dirt, grass, and leaves, too busy gasping for air to fight back or care. I wonder if this is what it feels like to get sacked.
“Who are you and what do you want, kid?” His voice sinks into me, from his chest to my back as a fierce vibration. I know it’s wrong, but it’s almost soothing. Except for the occasional hug I’ve allowed Harvey to convince him I’m fine, I haven’t touched anyone all summer. Rich Prick’s voice reminds me of my dad’s somehow. It has this authoritative quality, almost like he’s done this kind of thing before. Who the hell is he?
And wait. Did he call me a kid?
“I won’t press charges,” he continues, pulling my hair as he tugs back my hood, “if you stop …”
I curl my fingers, gathering clumps of the forest floor and compacting them. “Your house? It’s my house.”
Rich Prick hesitates. His weight is no longer flattening me, and I’ve got my second wind. Adrenaline makes up for my weakness as I knock my head back. My skull connects with his face. He lets out a startled grunt and rolls off me. I crawl until I find my legs. Blood gushes from Rich Prick’s nose, but he does nothing about it. His smartphone is raised in his hand and it’s pointed at me. Is he taking a picture?
I force my shaking legs to resume running and travel farther into the dense forest and its growing inclines. My legs burn, my lungs heave, but I’m not a quitter. I know how to power through. I spit out the little puddle of blood collecting in my mouth. The metallic taste makes my stomach churn. Thankfully, the cuts aren’t deep and they stop bleeding before long.
I can’t get to my car without being intercepted. Better to put more distance between me and Rich Prick.
CHAPTER 3
I’ve hiked up this mountain for what feels like forever. My legs burn and my mouth is dry. Everything is dry. I think I’ve stopped sweating even though Dad’s jacket hasn’t gotten any cooler and the sun has only risen higher. The trees’ shadows help, but they can’t completely counteract the growing heat.
There’s time to rest, right? I’m safe? True or not, my body doesn’t give me a choice. I collapse onto a grassy patch of almost-even ground. With trembling fingers, I work my phone free from one of the jacket pockets. I check for service and nothing. No bars, no connection to the world, and I don’t recognize this area.
I’m lost.
My head is swimming and all I can think about is water. I’m desperate enough to drink straight from one of Raindrop’s five lakes, but I went east. There are no lakes around here. That’s something, and Rich Prick is nowhere in sight. I think he gave up chasing me a while back. I have time to think.
“If you ever get lost, the first step is to figure out where you are. Find higher ground if you can’t see anything,” Corey told me once, reciting some exploration book he loved. It was this time I’d gone to retrieve him and Rex from the forest because it was getting dark and Dad wasn’t home but Mom was worried. I ended up getting lost, and then they found me, of course.
And, if all else fails, when it comes to Raindrop, I can descend and reach the valley eventually. I’ve done it before, but I’d rather not wander around aimlessly for who knows how many hours with no water.
I push off the ground and wrap my arms around an aspen’s trunk to keep steady. It doesn’t help much. The world is spinning. I’ll tumble down the mountain if I let go, so I close my eyes to concentrate and clear my head. Instead, I have a dark thought, one I haven’t told anyone. My therapist never would have let me go if I’d given it a voice.
It will be fine if I never find my way back, if I’m never found. Better, maybe.
The best way to get people to leave you alone is to convince them that you’re all right. I know Harvey mustn’t completely buy my facade because he lives with me, he’s family, and he knows me. I used to go out all the time because I loved my social life. He watched and supported me in All Star Cheer and knew how hard I worked to improve, the pride I took in my team and winning competitions. After the accident, I threw it all away. “Priorities change,” I told him when he tried to point me toward Raindrop High and my friends for the hundredth time. “I have to find something new.” That was why he registered me at some high school in Boulder. He agreed to let the past stay in the past because I said it was what I needed.
When I open my eyes, the world isn’t spinning anymore. I guess that means I keep going.
I take off Dad’s jacket, bundle it up in my arms, and sidle along a steep ledge to find somewhere easier for me to climb up. There has to be a break in the trees somewhere. I grab another aspen’s trunk and then I see something familiar: a deer trail.
I step onto the skinny, worn path of dirt and rotate 360 degrees. This was one of Corey’s favorite trails. It almost always guarantees deer sightings, and there’s an opening higher up with a rock ledge Corey dubbed Raindrop Rock. It’s bare of trees, the vantage point I need since this trail won’t lead me back. It doesn’t take much more climbing. The land flattens out some, like a shelf, and the aspens part. I test each inch of the rock on my tiptoes. It’s corroded mo
re than I remember, but it remains firm. At its tip, I remember our first time here. Corey was nine, ecstatic about the discovery and his new puppy. He held Rex out like Simba and told him the entire valley would be his or something. I forget the quote—which is pitiful when Corey was in love with that movie (the original cartoon version).
My kid brother was weird—so weird—but he was mine. I miss him so much. My heart ticks as if it’s about to explode.
I rub moisture from my eyes and blink away the blur. From here, I can see for miles. Downtown is the easiest to mark. Most of the families who live in Raindrop own some piece of it, and it’s only grown over the years.
If you live in Raindrop, you probably like nature. Be it hunting, fishing, swimming, skiing, natural hot springs, and more, Raindrop has it. Downtown has everything else so that you don’t have to drive to Boulder to fill up your fridge, watch a movie at a theater, eat out at a café, or whatever else you can think of. It’s also where the townhouses are located. Technically, you can have the same lifestyle in Raindrop as you can in any other small city, but that’s not what attracts most people. So, okay, not everyone in Raindrop has as much money as I do or owns a business downtown, but living here still isn’t cheap, so the local jobs pay a higher average wage to compensate. I’ve heard employees who aren’t the owners’ teenagers go through a rigorous vetting process, too. One of Raindrop’s biggest selling points is the lack of crime. No crime at all, really.
As Rich Prick was saying.
From downtown, I pinpoint my house. It’s in that little clearing west of here, the nearest dot of civilization. I need to get close enough to use my smartphone. It’s a straight shot as long as I don’t go off course.
I’m parched as hell, but with a destination in mind, I convince myself to move. One step at a time. Mostly, I’m scooting down slopes and kind of dropping off short ledges because I’m too tired to climb. The decline becomes less and less severe until walking is all that’s required.
Almost there.
Time for a phone service check. I have one bar. Two! I search my contacts for one name: Harv. I tap it, meaning to call him, when I hear his voice in the forest. “Teagan!”
“Harvey!” My shout comes out as more of a croak, and it doesn’t carry far. I try again, but my throat has transformed into a desert. It must be enough, though, because I see him emerge from the foliage; his prominent laugh lines are overshadowed by worry. He runs to me and I collapse into his open arms.
“Water,” I say.
Lucky for me, he has a bottle full of it. He hands it to me and I drink the whole thing.
“Are you all right?” he asks. “You’ve been gone for hours. I was about to go home and get Rex to find you. Maybe if I had been thinking instead of panicking, I would have brought him with me in the first place.”
“Hours?”
He holds me tighter. That and the familiarity of the musky cologne he likes tells my brain that I’m safe and secure. I let my heavy eyelids close, the weight a reminder of the recent exertion combined with another sleepless night full of my recurring nightmare. Rex helps, since with him I never sleep alone, but last night I was inconsolable.
“I knew better, Teagan,” Harvey says. “I backed off because you’re driving again, you go out with me when I ask you to, and you were all set for school when I saw you off this morning. You haven’t worn your dad’s jacket in front of me in days, either.” He tries to take the jacket from my hand, but I don’t relent, so he lets me keep it. “I called the school to make sure you arrived safely. They said you were absent.”
“So you figured I went home even though I’ve avoided this place all summer?”
“It was an emergency, so I tracked your phone, but then the signal cut out up here.”
“Oh, right.”
Dad installed an app on all of our phones for that purpose. He was kind of paranoid about certain things because of his job and because he grew up low-income with an abusive mother in Chicago. At least he never had to use the app.
“What am I supposed to do with you?” Harvey says. “No one can help you unless you let them. Let someone in.”
No one can help me.
“You don’t have to bear everything on your own. It’s okay to feel and let those feelings out. You’re not alone, and I need you.”
I am alone. I want to be alone and I don’t want Harvey to need me, because I’m poison. It was my fault.
I can’t tell him the truth. He’d throw me back into therapy. I know what I can and can’t get away with saying and doing, but I messed up today. I don’t want to hurt Harvey. He cares too much and about too many, but that’s how I know he and Rex will be better off without me.
Harvey works for an organization, the Rainbow Hearts Club, as a counselor. He mostly talks with kids and teens as fucked up as me, though the focus is the LGBTQ community. He’s well loved. I volunteered, along with the rest of the family, for the Rainbow Hearts Club summer party he’s been in charge of every year in Boulder since I can remember—except for this year. Dad initiated it since he and Harvey were like brothers. Though I’m not related to Harvey, he’s the only extended family I know.
It’s his fault I’m still here. I love him, but I hate him for it. If he had taken things further with Jane before all of this happened and ruined their relationship, he wouldn’t think he needs me anymore.
My guilt pulls me in opposite directions and I wait for my spine to snap.
“Am I grounded?” I ask.
“No,” Harvey replies, “but we need to talk.”
I push away from him when I see people coming our way. I know Larry and George because my dad used to work with them. Police officers are usually a welcome sight for me, but not when they’re talking all chummy with Rich Prick as if he’s meant to be here. His nose is okay. It’s not bleeding anymore, but his cheek is developing a bruise. When he lays eyes on me, this storm settles over him, the tight creases of a held-back scowl.
When I look at him, watery numbness gets evaporated by fiery rage.
“We do need to talk,” I say. “Who is he and what has he done to my house?”
Harvey can’t catch me when I spring forward. The agility I gained from years of All Star Cheer is worth something, but the bodyguards get in my way, like a wall of black that’s too solid to break. I don’t think. I pound my fists against them, but they don’t budge, not even the short one.
Larry grabs me from behind, locking my arms at the elbows, while George holds up his hands and says, “Calm down, Tea.”
“This prick changed all the locks on my house and refurnished the whole thing!” I scream.
Harvey touches my shoulder. “Breathe. Listen and I’ll tell you what’s going on, okay?”
“It’s not okay.” My chest bobs up and down and my head aches.
“Teagan, please.”
I stop struggling and Larry releases me, though he hovers nearby. Rich Prick is hidden behind his bodyguards, but he’s there, and if I don’t get an explanation soon, I’m going to make him wish he never came here. Harvey wanted my feelings to come out? Well, they’re out. “Start talking.”
Harvey runs his hand through his black hair, revealing bits of gray. “I didn’t sell your house. So if you’re thinking that, don’t. I would never do that to you.”
Rich Prick emerges from behind his bodyguards. They sidestep to hide him again, but the glare he shoots them is severe. They let him be. His stance is easy, hands hanging loose from his pockets, and he tilts his chin toward the sky as if he can’t bring himself to look at the rest of us any longer. As if we’re all insignificant ants. If Rex were here, he’d be growling. He’d know this guy is bad news at first sniff.
“You didn’t sell it, but you’re … renting it out?” I venture a guess.
“I never planned to,” Harvey says. “Then Jeffery Earnshaw offered an exorbitant amount of money for his son Blake to stay here for a month or so until the construction of his lakefront mansion is finished.”
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“That makes no sense.”
“I’d miss school otherwise,” Blake Earnshaw intercedes, “which I’m missing anyway, thanks to you.”
“Poor baby.”
He smiles wryly, right cheek twitching. Bet he’s feeling that bruise. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“Should I?”
“Besides the fact that the media loves Earnshaws, my father recently bought all the available land in Raindrop.”
My mouth drops open. I’d accuse him of lying, but I know he’s not. I have seen this guy’s face before, on TV. He’s the oldest of three talented brothers. Their mother is gorgeous, a former model turned fashionista. Their father, perhaps the most notable member of the family, is a huge tycoon known for buying businesses and land outright. He makes crazy investments that always work out for him. Many call him a money genius. He’s notorious for monopolizing everything he touches. Every member of the family has a squeaky-clean record, too. You can’t be a celebrity without the media digging up dirt, but any accusations made their way are always disproved, lies made up by people trying to create drama.
“Your mansion will join the others at Bloom Lake, right?” I say. My voice is thin, thoughts swirling in a whirlpool of disbelief.
“Lunula,” Earnshaw replies.
“You’re claiming an entire lake for yourself?” Lunula Lake was untouched. the only other thermal lake in Raindrop aside from Crater Lake, which is home to Crater Spa. I told Corey Lunula Lake would never be claimed because I figured part of Raindrop was national-park worthy (anything that isn’t located inside the valley), and because he loved it so much it would break his heart to hear otherwise.
