Cheryl stood a few yards off, pointing toward the worn-out tires piled against the south wall of Cabin Four. The other squads of campers were starting to stare. “Get me one of those. Now.”
Nadine’s heart sank into her stomach, but there was nothing to gain by stalling. She trudged over and hefted one of the frayed and ragged tires, sliding her arm through its center so its weight rested on her right shoulder. It was already starting to rub her skin raw by the time she lugged it back to where the other girls were waiting for her.
“The truck’s been riding off-center,” Cheryl said with bored disdain. “I want a spare with us on the morning run, just in case. You don’t mind carrying it, do you, Donovan?”
Betty, standing with her clique behind the counselor, gave a shrill, dirty little giggle.
“No, ma’am,” said Nadine, her cheeks burning. I’m going to fucking kill you, you bitch. You fucking asshole. I’m going to cut your face up. “Not at all.”
That smug smile again, this time without a hint of pretense that it was anything else. “Good.”
Felix jogged a little way ahead of the others, trying not to listen to the sound of Nadine’s labored breathing. Even with the tire she was keeping up, more or less, but the last time he’d looked back her face had been a waxy, ghoulish gray. Sometimes he thought he had the hots for her, with her long, slender legs and that wild mane of tawny hair, her broken nose and crazy grin. Other times she made him sick and angry, made him want to cover himself up and hide.
Keep your head down, he thought, trying not to think about how hungover he was. His head pounded with every loping step. His stomach churned. He tasted bile. Do your time.
The ground melted away beneath his feet. He thought of Linford Christie winning gold in Barcelona, those legs scything over the track’s pebbled red-brown surface, that smile breaking like dawn at the finish line. That was going to be him at the end of the summer. He’d blow through the ribbon and never look back, never think about this place or his weird dreams again. Who cared if they’d all dreamed about some hole? It’s not like it meant anything. He’d had lots of nightmares before. At six years old he’d woken up screaming every night for a week from dreams of a bear getting into the house, its huge claws ripping the wallpaper, its hot breath snorting in rancid puffs under his bedroom door.
“Pick it up, Igarashi!” Cheryl shouted back at Jo. The truck went through a patch of loose earth, tires filling the world with a smoky haze of grit. “Let’s see some hustle!”
That was when Nadine fell. Felix felt it in his bones at the hollow pwup of the tire bouncing off hard-packed soil. The rest of the group stumbled to a ragged halt. Felix nearly tripped. His head was swimming. His mouth was dry and still tasted faintly of puke. A short way back Nadine was struggling to get to her feet, the camp a hazy blur in the distance beyond her. Her shoulder was raw and bleeding where the tire had rubbed against it while she ran. Part of her dirty tank top was soaked with it.
“On your feet, Donovan!” Cheryl barked, striding back toward the rest of them. Betty and her clique fell in around her like jackals slinking after a lioness. Nadine got her knee under her and shrugged the tire from her shoulder. It fell with another hollow thwack of rubber against dirt, raising a little ring of dust. Nadine’s hair was dark and matted with sweat. Not so tough now.
Keep your head down. Do your time.
Cheryl came to a halt an arm’s length from Nadine, hands on her hips. In her dark, form-fitting tracksuit she looked like she’d just stepped out of Enter the Dragon. Her bare arms glistened with sweat. “Did I tell you to put that down?”
Nadine looked up at her with such pure hatred that for a moment Felix thought the other girl might try to throw herself at Cheryl, but instead she bent and looped her arms around the tire, flipping it up on its edge before trying again to stand. Points of color burned in her pale cheeks. Her legs trembled.
Keep your head down. Do your time.
“Benson, Schwarz,” said Cheryl, her lip curling in disdain. “Help her up.”
Celine and Dana started toward the struggling girl. Celine’s big, bulging eyes were wet with excitement. Dana looked nervous, almost tearful, hanging back a little as Celine grabbed hold of Nadine’s hair and bounced the girl’s face off the tire, blackening her mouth with dirt and soft rubber. Nadine groaned, collapsing on her belly, and Dana shuffled forward and kicked her half-heartedly between the legs.
The shout tore out of Felix before he could stop himself, not the shrill complaint he always feared when he raised his voice but, for all that it cracked a little, a man’s voice, hard and stern. “Leave her the fuck alone!”
Betty grabbed him from behind just as he started toward Nadine. Cleaver was bigger than him, two or three inches taller and at least thirty pounds heavier. He struggled, trying to stomp on her foot and only succeeding in bruising his heel on a rock. She got an arm across his windpipe. “Let her go!” he wheezed, thrashing in the redhead’s grip. “You’re gonna kill her!”
Cheryl looked at him. “They’re just trying to help her, Vargas.” Her dark eyes gleamed with a kind of flat, satisfied complacency more terrifying than the most naked malice. The other girls watched, frozen. Jo was crying, her arms pinned to her sides by Athena. Celine kept dragging Nadine forward by her arm, then bending down to simper with fake concern as Nadine got to her hands and knees and crawled a few pitiful feet. There was blood on the inner thighs of her Wranglers.
“You’re next, faggot,” Betty whispered in Felix’s ear.
Nadine hated the sounds Mrs. Glover made during sex. Even in the kitchen, even through the ringing in her right ear where Celine had kicked her, she could hear the pastor’s wife keening like an animal upstairs. Bedsprings creaked and groaned. Flakes of plaster drifted from the kitchen ceiling to float in the sink. It made her think of her own mother, who she’d heard gasping and moaning more than once when her parents thought no one was listening. It was so fake. So staged. The breathy, girlish exclamations of “Oh, Eddie” like he was taking her on a magic carpet ride beneath a sea of stars instead of ramming his dick up into her mildewy box. Nadine scrubbed at a copper-bottom stock pot, scratched hands raw and stinging. She wanted to march into their bedroom and dump the pot of filthy, boiling water on both of them, even if she’d have to gouge her eyes out later.
Godddd, came Mrs. Glover’s deep, guttural groan, muffled by the intervening floor. Oh Godddd, Eddie, Eddie.
Felix and the girls pretended not to hear it, though Jo’s face was beet red as she hulled peas at the kitchen table. The thump and creak of the bed frame and box spring grew louder. Faster. Nadine scrubbed harder at the Pyrex baking dish she was cleaning. They get to do this to us, and I had to put my hand over Tess’s mouth when I got her off. She scrubbed faster, fighting the stubborn crust of whatever the dish had held. I have to kiss Shelby in a bathroom stall, breathing in the smell of piss and bleach.
Oh, Eddie. Yes. Harder. Harder.
A phone rang, an earsplitting clatter of handset against cradle. Nadine dropped the Pyrex, which broke cleanly into three pieces. “Shit,” she hissed, trying to fish the shards out of the soapy water. The phone rang again, and suddenly the pounding from upstairs stopped cold.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it!” someone shouted from the living room. Enoch, she thought. The screen door banged, then the sound of a key fumbled into a lock. The phone’s third ring cut off abruptly. Ignoring Jo’s warning look, Nadine crept toward the door to the living room, wiping her soapy hands on her jeans. Heavy footsteps overhead. She peered around the doorframe just in time to see Pastor Eddie come bounding down the stairs in nothing but a pair of wrinkled tan slacks. He met Enoch coming through the little office, always kept locked, to the right of the front door, and without pausing grabbed his son by the front of his shirt and shoved him back against the wall.
“You called Harlon last night,” Pastor Eddie rumbled, his face brick red. “About the truck? Isn’t that right?”
Nadine couldn’t see Enoch’s face from where she stood, but she could hear his terror. “Yes, sir.”
“Did you turn the ringer on?”
Enoch mumbled something.
“Speak up,” said Eddie. Nadine knew that tone. Her father had used it with her more than once before the belt came off.
Enoch swallowed. “He had to step away and I didn’t want to miss his call back in case—”
The pastor slapped his son across the face with a crack that echoed from the walls and silenced the whole farmhouse. Nadine didn’t care. She wasn’t listening. They have a phone. She smiled, the effort tugging at the fresh scabs on her cheek and over her right eyebrow. They have a fucking phone.
Too late she realized Felix and the girls had gone silent for another reason. Blinding pain lanced from her ear as a hand seized hold of it and twisted cruelly, dragging her back from the doorframe. It was Cheryl. The counselor pulled her farther back into the kitchen, jaw set and nostrils flared. “Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” she snapped. “You’re a guest in this house. Don’t forget it.”
Nadine almost laughed, but the pain in her ear and jaw was overwhelming. When she grabbed at Cheryl’s arm, the counselor seized Nadine’s wrist and twisted it behind her back, forcing her to turn while keeping her neck taut and burning. At the table, Felix stared fixedly at the potato he was peeling. Jo was crying. Nadine’s face felt hot, caustic shame burning her cheeks. “Let me go,” she said, and felt pitiful as soon as she’d said it.
“March,” said Cheryl, pushing her toward the back door. Nadine hobbled forward, helpless, so angry she could hardly see. “I’m not done with you.”
Cheryl marched Nadine across the yard and toward the ramshackle hulk of the barn. Chickens scattered from their path, squawking and flapping. Nadine thought for some reason of Gonzo’s pet chicken, Camilla, on The Muppet Show, every episode of which her uncle Rick had fastidiously taped during what her grandmother called, with quivering disapproval, his Mary Jane years. Cheryl smelled a little like her grandmother, a slightly chemical reek of mothballs and herbal liniment. I’m going to kill you, Nadine thought matter-of-factly, looking at the counselor’s smug profile. Whatever kind of fucking freak you are, scuttling around on your belly, I’m going to cut your throat and shit in the slit.
Even thinking it felt flat and pitiful. She wasn’t going to kill anyone. She wasn’t going to change anything. Cheryl had her by the ear, the same way her father had dragged her around as a little girl when she did something to set him off, or when he decided she had. Cheryl set her shoulder against the sliding barn door, splintered wood rattling in its rusty track, and the warm, grassy stink of cow manure flooded Nadine’s mouth and nostrils. Horned heads turned toward her. Big, dark eyes blinked slowly. Cheryl released her ear and kicked her, hard, in the back of the knee. Nadine dropped with a grunt to the straw-covered concrete floor, the impact rattling her teeth.
