New Horizons (19 page)

Karen jumped down from her bunk and headed for Tracy. Her footsteps shook the whole cabin. "Like you can talk. You’re as spineless as they come. You haven't said two words since your arrival. You’re nothing but a dumb name,
Tracy
.”

Tracy got out of her bunk and stood in front of her. She had the most dead gaze I had ever seen on a human before. It was like someone had turned a switch off and she had shut down completely right in front of us.

Karen slapped her. The sound made a quick crack. It must have stung.

But Tracy didn’t even flinch or make a noise. She simply stared at Karen and took a step forward.

“I’ll do it again,” Karen said.

“Go ahead,” Tracy said. “I dare you.”

Karen slapped her again. .

But Tracy didn’t move at all. Her face was bright red on the side Karen had hit her. Like fire. Bright and burning.

I moved to the edge of my bunk and jumped down. Even though I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t want them to kill each other. I stood between them, like things would end if I did that. I could have stayed out of it but I didn’t want to.

“What are you doing?” Karen shoved me.

"Chill Karen. You guys are scaring me—"

Karen spat on me. Her saliva hit me in the centre of my face. It dripped down my nose and across my mouth.

I wiped her spit off my face with the bottom of my shirt. It was warm and thick, like she had been saving it for me. I was absolutely disgusted, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Being spit on wasn’t something I had expected to happen to me, ever.

"For the last time, my name is not Karen. It's Logan. And you swooping in to—-”

I hawked a loogie and it flew straight at her. It hit her near the left side of her face, near her ear, and got in her hair. It wasn’t a dead hit, but it went everywhere. That was better.

She didn’t wipe it off. She let it drip and move, like it wasn’t my spit, like it was just water that had gotten on her. She left it there as if it didn’t bother her at all.

“You got something on you.” I pointed to the area where most of my saliva was dripping from her. It was a thick, snot clump. I didn’t know I had it in me.

“Why the hell are you even in front of me right now?” She was completely still, like some kind of insect before it was about to jump on you.

"What's pissing me off is that you're the biggest wimp of all of us. I didn't see you jumping in to take a turn with the stick. That's because you’re a coward." I sat down on Tracy’s bed. I wondered if she cared. She sat down beside me.

"I am not a coward,” Karen said. She looked at Brooke. Brooke couldn’t keep her eyes off the spit smeared across the side of Karen’s ear and hair.

“Doubt it,” I said.

“You’re being childish.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You are.”

"Yeah? No. You’re the coward, and a child.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” She took a step forward.

“I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t.”

Karen pushed my shoulder.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Come on.” She pushed me again.

“What?”

“Fight me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun. You want to have fun. That’s why you’re here.”

“You’re crazy.”

She shoved my shoulder again.

“Mess off.”

“Come on, Valerie.”

I stood up. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Well,” she said. “There you go.”

“Coward,” Twinner hissed.

I looked up at her. “Oh yeah? I don’t see you down here.”

She jumped down from her bunk. She stood in front of me, and touched her flat chest to my flat chest. I could see all the holes in her face from the piercings that were taken from her.

“I don’t want to fight you,” I told her.

“I want to fight,” she said. She slapped me in the face so fast that I barely saw it happen.

I dropped to the floor. The slap stung my skin, and I held my face to keep the burn away. I glanced up at her, and it looked like she was going to—-

Karen kicked her in the gut.

Twinner dropped down to her hands and knees in front of me. Her breathing went heavy, and I was scared she was going to pass out.

“Oh my god, you’re going to kill her!” Twin yelled.

But something worse than death happened—Twinner threw up on my head. Her vomit dripped down my face and onto my shoulders. I screamed, and pushed her away with my feet. When I stood up, I didn’t know how to stand without getting more on me.

“That is the sickest thing I’ve ever seen,” Brooke said.

There was nothing I could do. If I stayed how I was, it would just seep in, and I would vomit too. I didn’t know what to do. The only option I had was a shower to wash all the guts off of me. A full cleanse of all bad things.

I moved for the door because I couldn’t just stay there. When I got outside, I still didn’t know what to do. There was no running water near us, and there was no available lake to jump into.

Karen and Brooke followed me up the path in the woods. Neither of us were expecting little Tracy to come crawling out of her cage to sneak out too. Her dewy eyes seemed to glow in the dark, and she kept her hands in her pockets like a little kid hiding what she stole from her parents. She looked so much smaller than us, and she was only a year younger.

The mess hall was through the trees. I felt sick. I thought about puking and I thought about telling the counsellors what happened. That Twinner had lost her guts all over me. My hands shook from disgust, and I was pretty alive for being so dead.

I ran down the path toward the mess hall. It was the same path I ran down every summer when I was a little camper, excited by being there. The twigs and rocks dug into my bare feet, which was something I hadn’t ever noticed when I was a kid. Maybe my feet had lost that hardness that really young people seemed to only have.

The mess hall was right in front of me, and the only outdoor running water was the hose attached at the back. It was all I had to get clean.

“Hurry up,” Karen said. She was somewhere behind me.

I stopped at the edge of the forest. The two girls were running toward me, and if you didn’t know the scenario, it looked like I was winning a race in the dark. Karen was waving her hands to get me to go.

I ran to the side of the mess hall where the faucet was. I didn’t think I’d be able to find it that quick, but it was sticking out and obvious as soon as I turned the corner. It didn’t take that much of a turn to get the water flowing, and it poured out onto the ground like a cold, icy waterfall. I put my head underneath the spout, and I shivered as the water soaked my roots, fell down my shoulders, and drenched my back.

I peeled my shirt off, and then my shorts came off too. I felt like there was a clock somewhere timing me before someone would point a flashlight at me. It was a race to rinse as quickly as I could, and then I rung out my clothes before I began to put them back on.

And then it happened. There was a beam of light.

I bolted for the woods. My heart was jumping up into my throat as I ran, and the girls were far ahead of me, sprinting down the path like it was a sport they were good at. My bare feet were quick on the ground, and when I got to the cabin, I slammed the door shut and collapsed onto the cabin floor. We could only hope that no one had seen us.

Twinner was on her top bunk, looking down at me. Her toothbrush was between her lips.

“You have anything to say to me?” I asked her. “Like an apology?”

“Nope.”

“Why are you looking at me with that dumb face of yours then?”

“Because you’re fucked now.”

“What?”

She touched her t-shirt. Her eyebrows raised and a smile formed on her face when she saw that my stomach was dropping deep into my ass.

Brooke gasped. “Your shirt—it’s missing.”

“Yes, thank you. I’m realizing that.” I stood up. It was amazing how bad situations could get worse. It wasn’t fair. There was no explaining to the counsellors why I was half naked.

12:
COWARD

I was going to be in trouble.
You couldn’t be half naked and not get noticed. That wasn’t a thing. I knew it, the girls knew it, and everyone at New Horizons knew it. You had to have all of your clothes on if you wanted to be okay.

“It will be okay,” I said.

Karen laughed.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“You don’t have a shirt on you fucking dumb shit,” she said.

“Yes, thank you. I realize that.”

There was no denying it. Clothes were a privilege. Clean clothes were a luxury. And I had neither. I was going to get us all in trouble.

“I don’t have a t-shirt now.” I looked at Twinner.

“Your problem is not my problem. I can’t keep track of you—that’s your own job.”

“I was out there because of you. You got sick on me.”

“You did it all yourself,” Twinner said. “You were dramatic.”

Brooke wiped a few tears off her face. But they kept flowing down, and she couldn’t hide them.

“Why are you crying? I’m the one who is nearly naked.” I held my hands out. I was still dripping wet and my hair was beading droplets of water onto the floor. There was a puddle beneath me. I smelled like a bathroom that someone had spent too much time in.

“We’re all going to get found out and we’re going to get in trouble,” Brooke said. She had tears streaming all down her cheeks. “I’m scared.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You have nothing to do with this. I’ll say it was just me. Calm down.”

“That’s not how it’s going to go,” Karen said. “You’ve screwed us all over you dumb fuck. That’s how it works here and you know it. It’s not all about you.”

“Yes it is—that’s why I’m here. Don’t be stupid.”

“That’s why we’re all here too. Have you forgotten that? Do you think New Horizons is just a little game where the bad kid gets sent to the corner? That’s not it. What you do affects everyone. It is never just about you. It’s about
all of us
.”

I didn’t believe that, and I didn’t want to think about it either in case it got stuck in my head. I slowly walked down the middle of the cabin to get into bed. The drops of water falling from me made marks on the floor, leaving a trail.

Tracy peered at me from under her cave when I climbed up into my bunk. I glared at her until I disappeared above her. When I got onto my back, I read the names of the girls who used to sleep in my place, and had left their mark on the ceiling. My throat burned to say something more—I could taste the mean words— but I didn’t want anyone to hate me more than they already did. It was a gross feeling, lying there, keeping quiet. Hatred was the strongest motivation for anyone to ruin your life, and I knew the girls had a good reason to hate me.

In the morning, Sharon knocked on our door to wake us up and begin our day of learning about how to smile and be more appreciative in life. I bolted up and quickly covered myself before she entered. I looked like I was wearing a grey cloak with a hood. Maybe I was in a cult.

“Hello ladies, rise and be bright. Get up to the mess hall, we will be staying inside and having group discussions instead of our normal exercises.”

“Why is that?” Twin asked.

“The weather isn’t good for group discussions outside today. So we’ll be taking it indoors. Get up there quick, it’s raining pretty hard.”

“Yeah, rise and be bright, Valerie.” Karen looked over at me. “Get up and stretch those bones.”

“Oh, I will. Don’t wait for me though, it’s not all about me.”

When she shut the door, Brooke was looking up at me.

“Stop looking at me.”

“I can’t help it. We’re screwed.”

“Calm down, crazy.”

“I am calm.” Her chest started going up and down really fast.

My hand slowly traced my initials in the wood. It wasn’t that long ago since our last storm. It was hurricane season, and just a month ago, a tropical storm blew down a couple trees in our backyard. It wasn’t crazy, and things could have been worse. The neighbour’s plastic shed had ended up in our yard, and our trampoline was in a tree. And I wondered what Mum’s new place, just a couple blocks away, had looked like after the bad winds. I bet her house was fine, and that was hard to think about.

Brooke jumped out of her bottom bunk. It startled me how she got to her feet so fast. And without even stopping to think, she pulled her shirt off.

“Are you mad?!” Karen yelled. She jumped down and picked up Brooke’s shirt and threw it back at her. “What the hell are you doing?! Put your t-shirt back on.”

“We should have each other’s backs,” she said. There were tears pouring down her face. “And I’ve already messed that up and I wanna do you guys right.” She looked at the twins. The twins looked at her. They got out of their bunks just as quick and ran out the door, where Sharon was waiting for us in the mess hall.