Fall With Me(4)
Author: Bella Forrest

I don’t have to turn to know who that voice belongs to. Yet, I do turn, and there she is, all five feet two of her. She’s got a great body, even though she’s short, a fact that she’s well aware of and—based on what she’s wearing—clearly uses to her advantage. She has always been someone who’s gotten what she wants.

“Hi, Allison,” I say. I dump another pitchforkful of manure into the wheelbarrow. She takes a step back so the errant bits of shavings don’t mar her impeccable outfit: a peach-colored romper with gold sandals that lace up her tanned calves.

“Mom and Dad probably told you already,” she says. “But I’m a junior counselor this year. Second in command only to you.”

“Excellent,” I say. “Glad to see you came dressed to work.”

She laughs. “Well, I’m actually heading over to the lodge right now to help get things set up for the arrivals. But I wanted to come find you and say hi and give you the good news. I really think it’s going to be a lot of fun, us both being counselors.”

I stop shoveling shit for a second and look at her. I am seven inches taller than she is and it’s hard not to see her as a kid, an annoying little sister, even though she’s seventeen. She’s got silver hoops in her ears and pale pink blush on her cheeks.

“Did your parents happen to go over with you exactly what it means to be a counselor?” I ask. “Did they give you any of the details?”

“Well . . . sort of. I think they thought you’d go over most of it. Since you’ve been here so long, and everything.”

“One of the main jobs is the upkeep of the horses. So that means getting down here by six o’clock in the morning and helping muck out stalls, feed, and scrub water buckets. Brandon isn’t coming back this year, either, so there’s another new counselor onboard, too.”

“Yeah, Karen or something. Well, maybe she’ll be more of a morning person and she’ll want to get up early and do the horse chores and I can take the late morning shift.”

I go back to mucking out the stall so I can roll my eyes without detection. “Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be totally open for that,” I say. “She’ll be here around ten, so maybe that’s something you can talk to her about.”

“Awesome!” Allison says, completely missing—or ignoring—the sarcasm in my voice. “I’ll be sure it’s one of the first things we go over.” She skips off. I watch, feeling a thread of tension slip its way in between my shoulder blades.

Shake it off, I tell myself. This is nothing to get upset over.

Okay, so maybe it’s not what I was expecting. But she’s their daughter, and it’s a minor change in the grand scheme of things, really. And I honestly doubt she’ll last more than a week if she has to get up early to do chores.

I can handle this.

Chapter 3: Griffin

Being shut up in this tiny space is something like being in one of those sensory deprivation tanks. I start seeing things in the darkness, little bursts of color, like tiny fireworks. I wonder if it’s because I’ve been closed up in here or it’s just a lingering effect of the LSD.

There’s a gentle rocking motion. It’s enough to lull you back to sleep, but that’s impossible right now; I’ve been swimming the depths of unconsciousness for so long that my muscles feel as though they’ve got electric currents running through them. I never was one who was good at staying still.

So I get up. I touch the walls, which are glossy wood. I knock into a pole that’s hanging horizontally along one of the walls and I realize I am in a walk-in closet. Above me, I can hear the two guys talking, though I can’t understand what they’re saying. I go over and stand under where it sounds like they are and I hit the ceiling a few times with my fist.

“Hey fellas!” I shout. “I’d like to come out of the closet now.”

It’s a pathetic joke, but I smile anyway. I’ve always been good at cracking myself up and, occasionally, other people, too.

To my surprise, the door opens. It’s Snaggletooth, who stands there, holding the door handle, letting a shaft of pale yellow light into the room. He stares at me, eyes narrowed.

“Have I accrued enough good behavior points to warrant a trip on deck?” I ask.

“You’re going to do something for us,” he says. He pushes the door open the rest of the way.

“Okay.” I smile as I walk past him. “That was a joke about coming out of the closet, though. I’m not g*y.”

He shoves me. “We’re not f**king fags!” he shouts. “That’s not what you’re going to do for us. Jesus.”

I’m in a bedroom. There’s a queen-sized bed flanked by two mahogany side tables. There is a mirror on the ceiling.

“Nice touch,” I say, looking up at it.

We go up on deck. The other guy is up there, pacing, drinking a can of PBR.

“Stay classy,” I say, nodding at the beer. Actually, I wouldn’t mind one of those right now myself. It does feel nice to be out, though. I walk over and take a piss off the side of the boat. The boat, it turns out, is not the seventy-foot pirate vessel I’d imagined, but rather, a mere forty-foot cruiser, similar to the one my old man had before he upgraded. “My dad had a boat like this. It was bigger.”

“Then your dad shouldn’t have any trouble paying your ransom,” says Bandana.

I shrug and look out toward the horizon. Nothing but blue sky, blue water. Sun straight overhead. “He’s kind of an ass**le, if you want to know the truth. If you’re so eager for money, it probably would’ve been better to choose a man whose paternal leanings ran a bit deeper.”

“Your father doesn’t seem to want to take this matter as seriously as he should,” Snaggletooth says. “He seems, in fact, to think it’s a hoax. A ruse. A prank that maybe you are in on. So you’re going to call him and tell him otherwise.”

There’s only the two of them, as far as I can tell, Snaggletooth and Bandana. I try to piece together how this might’ve all gone down, but it’s just one big blank, like that part of my memory was erased entirely.

“And it’s not just the money,” Snaggletooth continues. “That’s part of it. But my boss wants something else from your dad, too. A confession, of sorts.”

I snort. “A confession? To what? Being a giant ass**le? Good luck with that one, buddy.”