Lies My Parents Told Me

by Craig Hansen

  “I agree,” Dad said. “Again, I can talk to his parents, if you want me to.”

  “No, please don’t,” I pleaded. “It won’t help anything.”

  “That’s true,” dad said. “Look, Shabbat, Mato Emery is a bully. And you know what’s true of all bullies?”

  “What’s that, dad?”

  Brace yourselves. Here it comes: lie number two.

  “Bullies are just as afraid of you as you are of them. Stand up to them, and they’ll stop bothering you. That’s what you need to do with Mato. Stand up to him. Show him Shabbat Abbott is no one’s doormat. Do that, and he’ll leave you alone.”

  Falser words were never spoken.

  12

  3:59 p.m.

  OF COURSE, BEING ONLY SIX at the time, I took my father’s advice. What choice did I have? Again, I was six. The next day, at school, my first run-in with Mato happened when our first-grade teacher, Miss Austin, began explaining our math assignment for the day. It had to do with fractions; simple ones. Mato, who sat at the desk right behind me, had leaned forward in his desk, planting his chin atop one fist, so close I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. That was bad by itself, but he also reeked of hot oats cereal, and stale fruit; probably a banana. Something sharp pricked the back of my neck; it wasn’t the worst pain in the world, but it was unexpected and annoying. I let out a yelp and slapped my neck at the spot that stung, thinking a mosquito had flown into the classroom and was biting me. But, as I did, my fingers brushed against an object I didn’t expect to encounter. I whirled in my seat, and there, right behind me, grinning like a lunatic, sat Mato Emery, holding the source of my discomfort between the thumb and pointer finger of his left hand: a straight pin, with a green plastic globe on the blunt end of it. On the sharp end, a single red drop of my blood.

  What happened next, happened quickly. To me, it was almost a blur.

  First, Mato began to laugh at me. Second, I noticed how unusually large his two upper front teeth were. Third, I became more furious than I can ever remember being before.

  I shouted, “Keep your grimy hands off me, you bucktoothed fucking jerk!”

  Mato’s eyes gleamed with delight. He held up the pin, my blood now sliding down it, reddening his thumb. “My hands,” he shouted triumphantly, “never touched you, Sacagawea. Gross. Who’d want to?”

  Amy Austin, mid-forties, and veteran elementary school teacher of over a dozen years, though still childless herself, which she attributed to her teaching tenure looking after the bratty children of others, which, she claimed, soured her on the prospect of having her own, nevertheless knew how to handle children. Primarily, by the earlobes. In one swift, fluid motion, she swept between Mato and me, grabbing us each by an earlobe, causing us both to stand close to her, afraid we’d lose our ears.

  “Language, Shabbat,” Miss Austin said, her voice harsh and cross. “I’m surprised you even know such language, let alone know how to use it. Especially in my classroom.”

  In addition to first grade, Miss Austin taught Sunday school and vacation Bible school at the local Baptist church.

  The pain in my ear made my eyes squint and water. I gasped.

  Mato cursed, then blurted, “This is public school, Miss Austin, not your damned church. You’re not allowed to touch us like this. Not here.”

  The teacher gave both our ears an extra twist, stopping Mato mid-rant.

  “It takes approximately seven pounds of pressure to remove a human ear from someone’s head. I’m not the tallest woman in the world, and nowhere near the strongest, but I think I can manage seven pounds of pressure—” At this, she gave both our ears an extra twist. “—Don’t you?”

  “You can’t do this,” Mato insisted. “They’ll fire you.”

  At this, Miss Austin let go of my ear and turned her attention exclusively to Mato. “Who, precisely, is this they you speak of?”

  “I don’t know,” Mato said. “The principal. The school board. Whoever hired your old ass.”

  Miss Austin laughed. Nearly every kid in class audibly sucked in their breath at Mato’s blatant disrespect, on the edge of eager to see how Miss Austin would respond.

  “I’ll have you know, young Mister Emery, that it was a personal recommendation of your parents that resulted in my old ass getting hired here. In fact, they begged me to return to Veritas County following college. Probably, I would guess, to keep an eye on you.”

  Mato glared at me the entire time Miss Austin scolded him. And while she made sure his parents heard about the incident in class, he made sure I never forgot that he blamed me for it. And I didn’t. The most important thing I learned that day, was that standing up to a bully did not mean they’d leave you alone. Often, it simply put you on their radar for far longer then you would’ve stayed on it otherwise. For the rest of elementary school, Mato Emery made it his mission to make my life miserable. It was a mission he was mostly successful at, most of the time. By the time we reached high school, his interest in being my personal devil mostly trailed off. But for several years, he’d tossed plenty of bricks in my direction.

  13

  4:00 p.m.

  THE DEVIL HADN’T BEEN TOSSING any bricks at me, I decided, remembering Lootah’s quote. He’d been spraying me with an Uzi. Even so, it was time to start laying a foundation.

  Mato, my old devil, was a joke compared to this new one, Tuco. I drew within forty feet of the trail before Tuco heard a twig snap just behind him and off to his left. He whirled on me, his eyes wild, cautious.

  “Are you sure?” I kept my voice soft, only loud enough to be heard over the rough wind.

  “Shabby. Sure of what?”

  “That you just want to talk.” I stood up, finally ready to face him.

  A skeptical smirk flashed across his face for a split-second, replaced by a plastic grin. He held out his arms, hands open, showing he was unarmed, concealing no rocks.

  “Of course. That’s all we’ve really wanted. A chance to talk to you.”

  I recalled Tim’s explanation of the fireweed plant. Attractive, yet bitter. Capable of sweetness, even healing, but only if handled right. Now was the time to appear attractive and sweet, to hide the bitterness until just the right moment. I smiled. “Who’s we?”

  “Us guys, of course. You gals, you were so tight. We just wanted a chance, that’s all. Here we are on this hike and they keep us pretty much segregated to begin with. Boys with boys, girls with girls. Pretty gay, if you ask me.”

  I suppressed the urge to tell him I hadn’t asked and didn’t care for his opinion. Instead, I bit the inside of my cheeks and struggled to keep my demeanor neutral.

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do. I also say, screw all those social workers, man. We? We ain’t got no problems. Nothing a little sweet can’t cure, anyway.”

  Tuco took a step toward me, off the trail. I stood my ground and held a hand up, indicating he should stop.

  “So why kill Fang, then? Not sweet enough?”

  The menace reasserted itself in Tuco’s eyes, which narrowed as his lips sneered in anger.

  “That was an accident. Shut up about her.”

  “An accident?”

  Tuco nodded. “You don’t get it. Girls never do. It’s boy-girl, boy-girl. That’s how it works. But there were three of us and four of you. It wasn’t balanced. We know what you girls are like. No one wants to pair off if it means someone’s being left out. You’re all tight like that. So we took her for a walk, to explain it.”

  “We?”

  “The three of us. Late last night. This morning. Whatever. Everyone else was asleep. We sneaked into your cabin, woke her up, told her we wanted to go for a walk. And we did. But when she heard she was the fourth, well … she didn’t like it.”

  “Wait. The fourth?”

  Tuco sighed, wiped his wet face with his hands, took another step forward. I took a step back.

  “What else do you think, chica? The plan was simple. I like Samara, God he
lp me. Jori wants Brena. He likes ‘em small like her. And Jazz chose you.”

  My head whirled. I had imagined the boys talking about the other girls and me, but selecting us like that? My pulse kicked up a notch and I wiped at my blood-streaked forehead, noticing some pebbling of my flesh. I shivered in revulsion, grew faint for a moment from the blood, but kept my eyes glued to Tuco.

  “And let me tell you, Shabby, it was a close call. Lucky you, Jazz is not into the whole goth bit. He likes girls … girls with a pulse.”

  Rage caramelized into hatred inside me at that moment. The only reason I was alive was that a boy I’d barely talked to liked me a little better than another girl? Based on what? It all felt too random, too arbitrary, too out of my control.

  “So now Fang literally has no pulse? Is that the idea?”

  “Don’t worry, Shabby. You’ll be joining her soon.”

  Tuco rushed at me then and I struggled not to flinch, to wait until he was close enough. Then, he slowed down at the ring of shrubs surrounding me, and I brought bush branches out from behind my back and swung them around in an arc, too late for Tuco to stop.

  The leaves hit him with a rustle, followed quickly by the sound of breaking twigs, and then a solid crack as the side of his skull met the thickest part of a branch. He cursed and crumpled to the ground. I stepped closer and brought the branches up and back down again, and turning them into makeshift whips, repeating the motion until I lost count, causing the young man to sputter, spitting leaves from his mouth, begging me to stop. Finally, he fell silent.

  When he ceased struggling, I stopped long enough to look at his face. He was covered in bleeding scratches, a deeper gash near his temple where I imagine I’d first struck him. Shocked by my own actions, I still found a moment to smile at the poetic justice of it all. Tuco had begun his rampage by hiding a rock behind his back; now I had ended it by hiding a branch behind mine.

  Tuco, bloody mess that he was, lay there as rain filtered through the spruce canopy, rinsing the blood away but not quite as fast as it flowed. I saw his chest move, weak and shallow. He didn’t seem to be a threat anymore; at least, not for the moment.

  I dropped the branch, looked around, found a rock close to the size of the one Tuco had used on Counselor Tim, and shoved it into my back pocket. Just in case.

  I descended the trail once again, jogging but not quite running, wanting to have my wind and strength with me so I could prepare for whatever I’d find below the promontory, near the beach.

  I prayed I wouldn’t be too late to save Brena.

  14

  4:27 p.m.

  THE WIND HOWLED AND SAND swam on the beach, pushed by the weather, as if it were a writhing serpent, snaking along, heavy up to ankle height and thinning above that. The gusts felt fierce, turning each grain of sand into tiny, dust-sized bullets. That’s how it felt as I moved toward where I’d last seen the others.

  Even above the noise of the storm, though, I could hear Brena’s cries of protest, the sound of her begging for it to stop, to be over.

  “Don’t!” Her voice, though ragged, projected across the distance and noise, louder than anything I’d ever heard the girl utter before. “Jori, stop! Please. Just … Just kill me. I’d rather be dead.”

  I dug the rock out of my back pocket and broke into a run. I knew the sound, the origin of those words, the cause behind them. I’d uttered them myself when she was only nine. More than once.

  I rounded a corner and there, as I suspected, Jori hovered over Brena’s naked body, her clothes ripped and cast aside, half-naked himself from the waist down. He thrust himself rapidly down into Brena, up again, then back down as the girl cried and begged for him to end her.

  Calling up a primal roar, I cried, “No!” and rushed to where they lay, a thinly-grassed stretch just off the hiking path. Rock raised high, holding it with both hands, I rushed at the teenage rapist I’d caught in the act, prepared to end him just as Tuco had ended Tim. No time to think, just time to act, to end it.

  “Shabby!” A commanding woman’s voice shattered the air, cutting above the rest of the chaotic scene and stopping me in my tracks, less than four feet from Jori. “Shabby, freeze! You, too, Jori! Everyone freeze!”

  I looked up to see state detective Angela Connor approaching from the other direction, gun raised, aimed directly at Jori. The teenage rapist looked up, saw the gun, yelped and pulled out of his victim, scrambling backward, panicked. He uttered profanities as he retreated.

  “Drop the rock, Shabby.”

  I cast it aside. As I did this, Jori scrambled back far enough to run into me. Out of instinct, I recoiled, jumped back, and kicked Jori directly in the spine. He howled in pain and rolled to the side.

  “Shabby! Stop. It’s over.”

  I looked up at the detective, joined by other officers coming up behind her. I sighed and let myself drop to my knees, a move rewarded by fresh fireworks of pain going off behind my eyes, grateful for the rain disguising the tears I knew were flowing from my eyes.

  Then Detective Connor was looming over me, looking down at me, studying my wounds. “What the hell happened here after we left?”

  I coughed, stared up at the blonde woman, into those steel-gray eyes, and said. “Long story. What made you come back?”

  The older woman took out a pair of handcuffs and slipped them on me. “Long story here, too. Let’s just say I’m not as stupid a supposed detective as you took me for.”

  15

  Morris’ Fireside Restaurant

  Cannon Beach, OR

  7:42 p.m.

  THE ROARING FIRE WARMED ME as I sat at one of the tables nearest it. The smell of steak and seafood caused my stomach to rumble. Detective Connor sat across from me as we waited for our food. Over the fireplace was an unimaginably large flounder, though I couldn’t be sure if it was a wood-carved reproduction or a real one that had undergone the full taxidermy and mounting treatment. Either way, it looked impressive. The illuminated log restaurant looked cozy both outside and in. Normally a fire didn’t blaze in the fireplace during summertime, but on blowy, rainy nights like this, it did, our waiter had informed us.

  “I was hoping for something to eat,” I said. “I was expecting McDonald’s or something.”

  The detective nodded. “Least I could do after all you’ve been through, Shabby. My treat, not the department’s. I’m sorry we didn’t work things out before so much spiraled out of control.”

  I took my turn nodding. A silence stretched between us.

  “Is Brena going to be all right?”

  “She’s in the hospital overnight, for observation. She agreed to let us do a rape kit on her. Jori should be going away for a long time. The right judge, and he’ll be collecting Social Security sooner than he’ll be hiking again.”

  “Even if she decides not to testify?”

  “We’ll have the rape kit, other witnesses. Including me and other officers.”

  “I’m more worried about how she’ll pull through. She was begging Jori to kill her.”

  “We have her on suicide watch. She’ll have access to lots of counseling. We’re on top of it.”

  “That doesn’t always work.”

  The detective placed her hand on top of mine, and I didn’t pull back. “I know. We’re doing what we can for her.”

  “So Samara, Jazz, Tim, and Tuco all survived?”

  “Tuco and your counselor Tyee, or Tim as you call him, are critical. No telling whether they’ll pull through or not. If I had to guess, Tuco has the better chance. Tuco really messed Tim up, but he still had a pulse, last I checked with his doctor. Jazz has some internal injuries but should pull through. Samara was knocked unconscious and, fortunately, didn’t die due to the blow from Tuco.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow indeed. At least you’ll be seeing your friends soon.”

  My eyes shot up at the detective. “I thought I was free to go.”

  “You’re not under arrest, no. And we’ve contacted y
our mom, who’ll be coming to pick you up tomorrow and get you back home to Nevada. But you’re spending tonight in the hospital.”

  “Back to the hospital?” I sighed, having hoped I’d dodged that bullet when the state detective had offered to take me here.

  “Yes. The doctors still want to take a closer look at your injuries, even though they seem minor. And it’s a place for you to stay overnight.”

  “Then why take me here?” I waved my arm, indicating the restaurant.

  “Hospital food sucks, Shabby. That, and I twisted some arms to take you out to eat, rather than sitting in a waiting room for hours. That reason enough for you?”

  The server arrived with our food and the good smells of freshly grilled food, as well as a ravenous appetite, overwhelmed any desire to do anything other than eat. Despite my hunger, I slowed down and enjoyed my New York strip, as well as the steak-fries that went with it.

  After our hunger abated, I asked the detective what I’d been wanting to know for hours.

  “I knew things were messed up with this program when Fang pulled out a stash of marijuana. But how did someone as violent as Tuco or Jori even get in?”

  Detective Connor sighed. “I’m no expert on Fireweed Trail, Shabby. But I can tell you that mistakes can happen in any system. We’re double-checking with New Mexico, where Tuco’s from, but we found no previous documented history of this level of violence, either sexual or physical. Same results with the records on Jori so far, from Michigan, where he’s from. No previous history. We’re just getting started, though.”

  I sighed and played with my food, using my fork, my appetite extinct. “So how did you know to come back? Tim was attacked and near death. None of the rest of us had a phone of our own, or a chance to grab his.”

  “You can thank your other counselor, Mystelle, for that. I accompanied her on the ride to the hospital. The pain her ankle was causing her had her pretty disoriented, but I stuck around the emergency room to make sure she’d be okay. We had time to talk and, as we did, she mentioned something she overheard at the campfire after you girls went to bed last night.”