The Only One Left

by Pamela Beason

  Mia stood up and padded to the door, her hands held out in front of her in the dim light, fighting dizziness that threatened to make the walls undulate around her. She flipped the light switch near the door. Nothing happened. Next, she tried the doorknob. Locked. She searched for a button to release the lock. There was none. Using both hands, she twisted the knob with all her strength, rattled the door again.

  The door was locked from the outside. A stab of alarm tweaked her gut. It was a metal door, the kind her dad called a security door.

  She searched the walls. There was no other light switch in the room. Just the one that didn’t work.

  Had Darcy left her here, locked in, in the dark?

  Was that a footstep she heard outside? “Hey!” she yelled. “I’m awake. Come let me out!”

  There was no answer. She clenched her hand into a fist, pounded three times. “Hey! I really have to pee! Open the door!”

  Holding her breath, she listened for a moment. What was that creaking noise? It might have been only the wind, because a puff of air whistled in through the knothole at the same time. “Darcy?”

  She remembered now that Darcy had begged to go back to the Gorge. That had been irritating. Why cut short the first real adventure Mia had ever been on? The wind in her hair, her arms around the cute guy, racing down the highway on a motorcycle like a scene out of that old hippie movie, Easy Rider.

  Born to be wild . . .

  What was her guy’s name? Rusty? No, Dusty, that was it. Dusty and—what was the name of Darcy’s guy?—something weird like Commie, no, Comet—had invited them on a picnic. A bike ride, food, beer. The guys were both clearly older than high school, but that was okay; everyone knew that girls matured faster than boys, and she wanted a man, not one of the pimply boys her parents were always trying to warn her away from. Dusty was a handsome dude in a clean-cut-farm-boy sort of way. He looked like a guy she could lose her cherry to and not pick up some disease. And best of all, nobody at school knew him. It was so mortifying to still be a virgin at seventeen. She was pretty sure she was the last virgin in Stanton Academy.

  Mia had instantly been ready to hop on the back of Dusty’s motorcycle, but Darcy hadn’t been sure it was a good idea. Probably thinking of Sean, the neighbor boy she was hooking up with. He was still a kid. Mia was pretty sure Sean had never done anything interesting. And probably never would.

  But there’d been no point in worrying about Sean. Sean wasn’t at Sasquatch. And those two boys who bought them snacks had taken off, too. There were just these two smiling motorcycle riders standing in front of them, promising a good time.

  “We’ll be gentlemen,” Comet had promised, holding up his arms in an “I’m unarmed” gesture.

  That clinched the deal. Most boys they hung out with probably didn’t even know the word gentlemen.

  The ridge where the bikers had taken them was sweet, overlooking the valley and the hills beyond that rolled out as far as you could see, with fields of gold and green and brown like a patchwork quilt. So different from Bellingham, where basically all you saw was trees and mountains and once in a while, water and the San Juan Islands out to the west.

  They’d watched the sun go down as they ate cold fried chicken out of a box and sipped those beers. Hers hadn’t tasted as good she expected, sort of sour and bitter at the same time, but it was her first and everyone said beer was an acquired taste. Plus, there were hundreds of kinds of beer, and you had to try a lot to find the kind you liked. Bellingham was like the brewpub capital of the United States.

  Then Darcy had wanted to go back to the festival, telling Comet, “We want to hear the last concert, and we have to get up early in the morning and drive back home.”

  Mia wasn’t really ready to go, but Darcy had the car keys, and she probably wouldn’t think twice about leaving Mia at the Gorge. “Yeah,” she had agreed, “We’ll get busted if we’re not back by dinnertime tomorrow.”

  “Sure thing. It’s not like we planned to keep you prisoner or anything.” Dusty had smiled at them and then shot a look at the other guy. “You’ll see how sweet it is to ride under the stars out here in the country; you’ll love it.”

  “It’s like flying,” Comet added.

  Mia flashed back on her brother Jared riding his motorcycle. That was exactly what he had said: “At night, it’s just like flying.”

  At five years old, she’d had a vision of Superman flying through the sky under star-spangled heavens, but of course Jared had meant riding his bike at night. Probably speeding way too fast down some lonely highway. She liked to imagine Jared that way, riding free and happy.

  It wasn’t really a memory, because she’d never actually seen her oldest brother take his bike out after dark, but that mental picture of him was so much better than the real memory that was seared into her brain. When she thought of her sister Julie, she liked to imagine her riding a palomino horse bareback through a field of flowers, the blond mane of the horse and her sister’s dark hair floating in the breeze. Justin was a bit harder to envision, but she imagined him sailing on a yacht somewhere. He’d always been quiet, but he loved the water.

  After the beer and the chicken were gone and the sun had set behind the Cascades, Mia and Darcy—Sunshine and Blackbird—had mounted up again behind Dusty and Comet. On the way back to the Gorge Amphitheatre, Mia had started to feel so sick that she was afraid she’d spew down the collar of Dusty’s leather jacket, which would be absolutely mortifying. The world was spinning. So she’d shut her eyes, held on tight, and put her cheek against Dusty’s shoulder. She didn’t remember seeing the stars.

  Actually, now that she examined her memory, she didn’t remember anything after closing her eyes on the back of that bike.

  “Darcy?” she yelled again. “Dusty? Comet?”

  As she pounded again on the door with her fist, dust shimmered down from the ceiling above. “This is so not funny!”

  Chapter 7

  Monday

  Where was the rattler? Darcy could see her feet but not more than an inch in any direction around them. She wanted to run, but which way? If she tried to push away the grass with her hands, the snake would bite her for sure. So she stood, paralyzed, holding her breath, her heart pounding, anticipating the deadly sting of fangs piercing her leg at any second. She had dressed in her favorite jeans for the motorcycle ride, but they were skin tight, practically an invitation to an angry snake. Darcy Ireland was going to die alone in this field in the middle of nowhere. Her body would swell up and turn black and putrid like a rotten potato, and they wouldn’t even be able to have an open casket at her funeral. If they ever found her at all.

  The buzzing stopped. Which was almost worse than before, because now all she could hear was the galloping rush of blood in her head. Then she heard the faintest of rustling noises, moving away. She waited until she couldn’t hear anything but the wind, then she sucked in a giant breath and screamed as she ran down the motorcycle track as fast as the tall clutching grass would let her.

  Finally reaching the edge of the field, she stood, breathing hard, trying to let her nerves settle. He head ached, and her stomach was doing somersaults. Her toes were on a gravel road that stretched endlessly in both directions. Which way should she walk? Why wasn’t there a person or a house in sight? A tractor, some sign of human activity? There was only a long-armed watering machine on giant wheels. Would it have water? But it was at least half a mile away, and if that reddish color was rust, the contraption might not have been used in a decade.

  The motorcycle track curved out of the hayfield off to the right, which, by her reckoning, was east. Or maybe south? If only she had her phone to point her in the right direction. Or better yet, to call a Lyft or Uber. Which probably didn’t exist in Hay Land, not to mention she probably couldn’t get any bars here, so she probably couldn’t call for help even if she’d had the phone.

  This made the third phone she’d lost this year. How was she going to explain that to her parents? She
rubbed her forehead, and then started to laugh. Really, worrying about the dang phone? What a doofus. A lost Android was the least of her problems right now.

  She’d follow Comet’s track. As near as she could tell from the marks where the darker field dirt met the gravel, the motorcycle had gone back in the same direction it had come from. She walked down the middle of the road in case more snakes were lurking in the grass near the edges, scuffing her running shoes in the gravel. If she saw a decent-size rock, she intended to pick that up. In case Comet came zooming back down this road, she wanted to have something in hand to hit him with.

  Was Mia traipsing down some other farm road right now, too? No, she’d probably already talked Dusty into taking her back to the campground and had even gotten him to buy her a drink and ice cream. Mia was like that—pretty and persuasive. Too persuasive. And Darcy had fallen for the Valdez charm again. “You have a car! Sasquatch Festival—I’ll pay for both of us.”

  Look how that had worked out.

  It seemed like it took hours of walking before Darcy reached another road. But still it was gravel, and obviously not a well-traveled route. Not a car in sight. And no clue here which way led to anywhere, either.

  Par for the course, as they said. Where did that stupid expression come from? Sounded like something to do with golf, maybe. But who cared, anyway? She needed her phone to keep her brain from veering off on lame thoughts like that. Turning right, she kept walking, moving her wooden tongue around in her mouth to work up a little saliva.

  Was that the sound of a car coming up behind her? She turned, shaded her eyes with her hand. Yes! A dark-colored pickup was coming her way. She moved to the side of the road and stuck out her thumb. As the truck neared, the driver veered to the opposite side of the road.

  Darcy frantically waved her arms. “Hey!”

  The pickup roared right on by, the black dog in the bed barking and snarling at her, showing his teeth as truck passed, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

  “No!” she screamed, coughing. Then she held up her middle finger. “Fuck you!”

  Those words rarely came out of her mouth, and certainly never at that volume, but if any situation deserved a good F-U, this was it. She coughed in the dust for another minute and then started to trudge down the road again.

  It was at least another half hour before a second pickup came by, this one an ancient turquoise truck heaped with bales of hay. Darcy stepped into the road, jumping up and down, waving her arms.

  Mercifully, the truck stopped. A plump woman with graying brown hair rolled down the window and then leaned toward the opening. Two brown paper bags rested beside her on the passenger seat, a plastic package of hotdog buns spilling out of one. “Where you off to, darlin’?”

  “The Gorge, where the Sasquatch Festival is.”

  A puzzled expression took possession of the woman’s face.

  Maybe nobody here called it the Gorge. “You know, the Amphitheatre.”

  That got through. “Oh, way down by George.” She shook her head. “Sorry, hon, I’m going the opposite direction. You’ll have better luck if you walk on the other side.” She jerked a thumb back behind her.

  “But where—”

  “Well, I’ve got to get these groceries home.” She tipped her head toward the paper sacks. “Good luck, honey!” The woman stepped on the gas, pulled around Darcy, and took off down the road.

  “Shit!” Darcy pounded her fists on her thighs. “Shit! Double fuck!”

  What did the woman mean by “way down by George”? Was the Amphitheatre ten miles away? Hundreds of miles away? And did that backward thumb jerk mean that Darcy was walking the wrong way? Had she just walked for half a freakin’ day in the wrong direction?

  “Shit, shit, shit! I hate this place!” she yelled. “I hate you people! You deserve rattlesnakes!” Then her throat practically cracked open, and she bent over, coughing. When she was finally able to breathe again, she straightened, crossed over to the other side of the road, and started walking back in the direction from which she’d come.

  A little ways down the road there was a damp spot by the side, bordering another giant field of the damn hay. A clump of green plants were clustered in the wet soil. She didn’t know what they were, but she plucked a few of the soft green leaves, wadded them up, and pushed them into her mouth. At least they were moist.

  She wondered how many steps she could walk in an hour. She’d always made fun of her parents, wearing their clunky watches, when everyone just checked their cells. Now she wished she had one of those handy things on her wrist. A Fitbit. Anything.

  Was it her imagination, or was the sky getting darker over there behind the hills? Was the sun setting? No, that couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be that late, could it? It seemed like hours before another vehicle came humming down the blacktop. It was going the other direction, but it slowed. A monster truck this time with a double row of seats, jacked up on giant wheels, radio blasting, coated with mud. The two windows facing her slid down, and a puff of smoke rolled out. Weed.

  There were at least four boys inside. They appeared to be about her age or maybe a little older.

  “Baby, baby!” The driver waved a beer at her. “Where are you going all by yourself?”

  The guy in the back made a smooching gesture with his lips, then stuck his tongue out and waggled it. Disgusting.

  “Don’t you want to come with us?” The driver slugged down the rest of his beer, crumpled the can in his fist, and then dropped it to the ground.

  “I need to get back to the Amphitheatre,” she croaked. “You know, down by George.”

  “Wrong direction,” the driver told her.

  “Do you mean I’m walking in the wrong direction, or you don’t want to take me there?”

  Another face appeared over the driver’s shoulder. “Why you want to go there? You’ll have a better time with us.”

  The driver opened his door and slid out onto the road. So did the guy behind him. Both wore cowboy boots, something she’d didn’t often see in Bellingham. The driver jerked a thumb up behind him, indicating the back seat. “C’mon, babe, we got space. Hop in.”

  “I need to go to George,” Darcy insisted.

  “I know what you need.” The guy from the back seat grabbed his crotch. And then he made a kissing noise and took a step toward Darcy.

  She bolted down the road. Behind her the doors slammed, and then she heard the truck turn and roar in her direction. She leapt over the ditch at the side of the road, and launched herself between two strands of barbed wire fence, catching her jacket on the bottom one. After what seemed like an eternity, she ripped the fabric away and dove into the tall vegetation, crawling as fast as she could away from the road, her breath snagging on her tonsils as her gaze flitted from side to side. Please God no snakes shit, shit, shit.

  The radio blasted from the road through a commercial about tires and then a whole song, something about a girl “shaking it.” The greenery she was tunneling through was not hay this time. The plants didn’t look like anything she’d seen in grocery stores. She was grateful that this crop had rows and had more leaves on top than down toward the roots. Better for hiding and better for watching out for those damn snakes.

  Darcy could catch only snatches of conversation from the boys on the road.

  “See her?” one yelled.

  She stopped crawling and flattened her body against the ground, praying she was far enough away.

  Something about one of them going first.

  A lot of F-bombs.

  Just as the “Shaking It” song ended, one finally said, “Fuck it.”

  Doors slammed, and the monster truck roared away.

  Was this happening to Mia? Darcy had a vision of her tiny blond friend running from a gang of redneck boys. She’d be screaming, and then she’d trip, and they’d be on her like a pack of hyenas, just like those boys from the monster truck would have been on Darcy if they could have caught her.

  Darcy
was a track star. Mia wasn’t. Had she learned enough karate in her secret lessons to defend herself? Could any girl defend herself against a whole pack of boys?

  Had a gang of rednecks caught Mia? Was her friend already dead?

  Would she be next?

  Darcy pressed her face to the ground and cried.

  Chapter 8

  Monday

  Mia was asleep again when a noise woke her up. The door swung inward. A bright light blinded her and she put a hand up in front of her eyes. The light shifted away. Dusty stepped in, carrying a paper bag and a small cooler under one arm and a metal flashlight in his other hand. He gave her a big smile as he bumped the door shut with his hip.

  “Hi, darlin’.” After setting the flashlight and the bag down on the makeshift nightstand, he perched on the edge of the bed and stroked her arm. “Feeling better?”

  She sat up. “What the hell, Dusty? Why am I locked in here? What time is it?”

  Running her fingers through her tangled hair, she realized she didn’t even have a comb. And she’d had to pee so badly she’d used the stupid bucket, but she wasn’t going to point that out. “Where’s my backpack and my cell phone?”

  He pushed a wisp of hair from her brow. “You were pretty out of it. I just wanted to keep you safe. And I had to get to work. But hey, I brought dinner.” He gestured toward the paper bag. “Burgers and fries.”

  They did smell wonderful, and she was starving. She felt like she hadn’t eaten for days. Saliva pooled in her mouth as he ripped open the bag, spread it across the bed to use as a plate. He handed her a foil-wrapped burger and a grease-stained envelope of fries.

  “Okay, that’s great,” she said. “But after we eat, you’ve got to take me back. And where’s Darcy?”

  “Darcy’s fine.”

  Naturally, the beer hadn’t hit Darcy like it did her. That figured. Darcy was always lording things like that over Mia. Being the first to smoke a joint, describing the hot sex she had with Sean, having her own car. It was mortifying.