by Megan Linski
“Perry, we’re trying to do a movie, not creating an arc for a character that nobody knows anything about,” Pepper says with a tired voice.
“But you don’t understand! We worked for hours on his backstory!” Perry argues.
“I haven’t even seen the revised script, I know you’re a writer but...”
At Perry’s wide-eyed face, Pepper takes a deep sigh. “Can you tone it down a bit, at least?”
“Fine,” he agrees, and goes back to twitching.
Pepper adjusts her glasses. “This is a disaster.” She shakes her head and says, “Puppy, Raz, go back to the classroom and try to find some sort of prop we could use. It may help. The rest of you, try rehearsing something that looks like a fight!”
The two of us glance at each other quickly. I’m not surprised to find Puppy doesn’t look happy. We head back inside the school and toward the auditorium. The silence between us is practically eating me alive.
Puppy won’t look me in the eye. In the hallway, I grab her arm and say, “Puppy, you’re avoiding me.”
“And?” she asks. She pulls away from me and continues down the hall.
“Puppy, seriously, what’s your problem? Why aren’t you talking to me?” I ask.
“Oh, no reason,” Puppy rolls her eyes. “Only that you’ve decided to get cozy with my worst enemy, that’s all.”
We enter the classroom in silence and ruffle through the boxes of props that people have brought from home to help out. “How did you even know we were talking?” I ask.
“I found out you were in detention together. I knew Maymee would try to wrench some sort of info from you, and I was right.”
“Maymee’s not as bad as we thought she was,” I say.
Puppy stops going through boxes. “Really? You would tell her anything she wants to hear just because you think she’s hot.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Do I? I don’t know. I didn’t know you were hanging out with Bethany Cade.” Her voice is dripping with dissapointment. It reminds me of my mom.
“You don’t even know who Bethany is,” I say, my voice rising.
“I don’t have to! She shows in the way you act.” Puppy shoves a box aside roughly.
“You know nothing about what happened to me over the summer!” I shout. “Nothing!”
“Only because you won’t tell me,” she says.
When I don’t reply, she wrenches open the door and says, “Just leave me alone, Raz. Go find Maymee and get some sugar.”
She leaves. As she slams the door, I yell, “Get some sugar?!”
* * *
My disastrous experience with Puppy isn’t going to be made any better by my last detention this afternoon. I really don’t feel like recounting my summer escapade with Bethany to Maymee, especially right now, but I made her a promise.
This time when I sit down, she doesn’t pounce on me. She waits patiently for five minutes, while I stall and talk to her about other things to get her mind off the topic.
It doesn’t work. I begin to tell the story once more, and a weight is lifted off my chest as we begin. “Where were we? Oh, yeah, the best part of the story. Hold onto your seat, girl, because things get really bad here…”
* * *
Dust is rising off the gravel road. I look out the window to see someone driving a red Thunderbird up our driveway, and my eyebrows furrow. Nobody I know drives a car like that.
Imagine how surprised I am when I see Bethany roll down a window. I open the screen door and ask, “Bethany! Is that your new car?”
“No, I’m just borrowing it for the day,” she says. There’s a glint in her eyes. “Want a ride? We can go where we want, the tank is full.”
I hesitate. We’ve snuck out before, but never in a car. “We can’t be long. My parents will be back soon.”
“They won’t even know we’re gone.”
I slam the door and plan to hop in shotgun, but she’s already in the passenger’s side.
“You’re driving,” she says, and she tosses me the keys.
“I’ve still got my permit,” I say warily.
“Big deal. I don’t even have a permit and I didn’t get caught. You know you want to drive this thing.” She strokes the dashboard.
I do. Driving makes me nervous, but this vehicle is drop dead gorgeous. I’d be dumb to refuse a chance to drive it.
I go to the driver’s side, buckle in and put my hands on the shiny wheel. It makes a beautiful purr as I start the engine. In seconds we’re down the road.
“Now you’re getting it,” Bethany smiles.
She pulls out a cigarette but I say, “No, not in the car. Put it away.”
“Um, excuse me? I’m the one borrowing it.”
“And I’m the one driving. Cut the crap, smoky.”
She pretends to scowl but she’s in too much of a good mood to argue. She rolls the window down, letting out a happy holler.
We avoid the main highway and take winding rural paths until we aren’t even sure where we are anymore. We turn the radio on full blast most of the time, but once or twice we turn it off just to talk. There’s nothing to be worried about except the wide, open sky.
Our moseying takes us to a smaller city. I realize with a shock that we’re in Norton, which is about two hours away from Tinyork.
“I’m bored,” Bethany says abruptly. She looks around the town for a distraction.
Once she sees one, her eyes light up. I cross the county line and she says, “Zoom past that police car over there.”
“What? Are you crazy? It’s a speed trap,” I protest.
She smiles. “Exactly. Bet you can drive faster than he can.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so. Sit back and enjoy the ride,” I say.
But just as I’m passing the trooper, Bethany grabs the steering wheel and jerks it to the side. I wrench it back to steady it and end up crashing into a lamp post and a sign. The police lights come on and the whirr of the siren rings in my ear.
“Drive boy, drive!” Bethany screams, and I panic. My foot finds the accelerator and within seconds I’m going eighty in a forty mile per hour zone.
I look back in the rearview mirror and my stomach plummets as I realize the cop’s chasing us. Bethany cries, “Speed up!” I do, swerving to avoid crashing into trees on the sharp turns.
“Bethany, this is nuts. I’m pulling over,” I say.
She looks at me with wide eyes and says, “You can’t! If they catch us, we’ll be arrested!”
“It’s only a hit and run on a lamppost and a sign! I’ll get in more trouble for running away!” I argue.
“If you stop now we’re going to be arrested for stealing a car, you idiot!” she screams.
My heart is pounding out of my chest. “I thought you were borrowing this car from someone you knew!” I shout.
“I’ll return it if you don’t crash it up,” she says snippily. She looks back at the police cruiser and says, “There’s no way he can catch up. This car can go way faster than that police cruiser.”
“You think?!” My speed keeps on increasing. Apparently he’s called for backup, because now there are two cops chasing us. I nearly clip several cars as I go around them. The intensity increases.
“Bethany,” I whine. “We’ve got to stop.”
“Do you really want to go to jail for grand theft auto? You’re the one driving, not me!” she screams. “I swear to God I’ll play the victim if they catch us!”
A policeman pulls out in front of us from seemingly nowhere. Instinctively, I slam on the breaks and the car spins out of control. The world turns into a blur.
My head spins in circles when the car comes to a stop. By the time I’ve got my bearings, Bethany is bleeding from the head. She’s knocked out. She had to have hit her head on the dash.
Before I can even comprehend what’s happening there’s a big guy at my window pointing a gun in my face.
“Get out of the car!” he orders. Shocked, I
exit the vehicle and hold my hands up in the air. He roughly pushes me against the vehicle, searching me for anything I may be carrying in my pockets.
Once he’s sure I don’t have a bazooka in my jacket, he handcuffs me and reads me my rights.
There’s a female in blue coming up. By the look on her face she was expecting some hardcore, die hard criminal. “Aw geez, Charlie, this one’s just a kid,” she says.
For some weird, ridiculous reason, I think how great of a movie this would make.
“Kid or not, he shouldn’t have ran.” Charlie shakes his head as he guides me over to the cop car.
I’m put in the back of the cruiser. they drive to the station with me, the getaway driver, in tow. Out of all things, I really didn’t expect to get arrested today.
“What were you thinking, driving that car like that?” the cop called Charlie asks. I remain silent and can’t answer. My mouth opens and closes a few times like a fish’s.
“I don’t think you’re going to get much out of this kid, Charlie, he’s all white. Looks like he’s in shock,” his female partner says.
“He should be! He could have killed a lot of people today!” he growls.
Could have killed people. I feel like I’m going to drown. What a stupid decision I made, and it only took seconds to decide.
They pull me into the station and the woman goes up to the front desk. The handcuffs cut into my wrists, but I don’t dare to ask if they can take them off.
Charlie guides me over to a chair and tells me to sit down. I do so. He picks up a phone, asking who my parents are. In a voice that’s not my own, I bumble out some names.
I can hear the voice on the other line. It’s my Dad. Charlie clears his throat and says, “Hello sir, is this the Sweet residence?”
I can hear him say yes on the other line, confused.
“Well sir, this is Charlie Samille from the Norton Sheriff’s office. I need you to come in and clarify some things with us. Your son has been arrested.”
Has been arrested.
My parents are gonna kill me.
* * *
I can’t go on. Maymee looks at me, eyes wide and asks, “So what happened?”
I shrug. “They put us on trial. Bethany went to juvenile hall, because before she came to live with her grandmother she had done some other stuff as well. She wasn’t sixteen yet, so they couldn’t try her as an adult like me. I was already seventeen by the time this happened.”
“What other stuff had she done?”
“Mostly drugs and petty theft. I got community service after I explained my story, and a huge fine. I barely avoided jail.”
I turn my head away. “They took away my permit, banned me from getting my license, and then my parents shipped me to my aunt and uncle’s here in Limesville.”
She notices the sad look on my face and says, “Hey, don’t be upset about it. Half of the actors nowadays have trouble with the law. You’ve already got a black record, so you’re ahead of the game!”
“Yeah, I’m just a regular outlaw.” I smirk. We chuckle a bit, but stop when we see a figure outside.
The door opens. Goose looks at us queerly before configuring his face into a sneer. “Your detentions are over. Stay out of trouble, or you can be sure you’ll be back in here again.”
The threat is obviously directed toward me. I give Goose a cold stare. Maymee and I head toward the parking lot so she can wait for somebody to give her a ride. I’m walking home, but I want to make sure somebody picks her up so she’s safe.
Her ride comes to get her really late. Maymee reluctantly waves goodbye before getting into the car.
Something doesn’t seem right. The guy driving the car, her new boyfriend, leans over to kiss her. She pushes him away. He slaps her across the face, yelling as he does so.
The reason why Maymee wears so much makeup hits me like that guy’s slap.
I want to do something. I want to stop her, pull her out of that car and tell her that she deserves better.
But I can’t do anything. I’m frozen on the spot, completely useless as I see the tears welling up in Maymee’s eyes as they drive away.
I know exactly how she feels.
Once I get home I completely crumble. I’m glad that no one’s home to see it. I know that I have to pull myself together before school tomorrow, slip on this monster called Razberry Sweet, but right now, I can’t do it.
I’m unable to stop the flashbacks. They come in waves, pinning me to the bed and holding me down.
* * *
It’s sunset when I’m finally let go from community service. All I had to do was pick up trash at the playground and give one of the bridges a fresh coat of paint. A lot better than prison, I figure.
I head back to my house, feeling lucky that I managed to escape going to jail.
When I round a corner at the edge of Tinyork, I freeze. Cayman’s there, his hands bunched into fists and giving me a terrible smile. There’s a bandage over his eye from where I threw the bottle at him.
There’s something in his one good eye that makes me feel like he’s lost all sense of humanity.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Sweet.”
I run. I turn on my heels and head straight for the middle of town but he’s faster than I am. He grabs me by the back of my neck and tosses me on the ground. I try to fight back, but I’m useless at brawling.
He kicks me in the stomach, then drags me into an abandoned warehouse and before tossing me into darkness.
He starts by beating the shit out of me. Cayman doesn’t hesitate. He pummels his fists into my face until one of my eyes is swelled shut and my mouth starts bleeding. I know I can’t take him so I just try to block his hits unsuccessfully.
I just want him to leave me alone. His fists don’t hurt as much as his hatred.
I can tell by the look on his face that he’s having the time of his life tormenting me. By the eighth time he punches me, I’m swaying on my feet.
“Why do you hate me so much?” I ask, blood dripping from my mouth. The room’s spinning. If he hits me again, I’m going to pass out.
“I don’t hate you, Sweet,” he says, laughing. “I just get a thrill out of making you feel like the useless piece of garbage you are. You’re nothing but a toy to me.”
He kicks my feet out from under me and pins me to the floor. He presses his hand up against my neck and chokes the air from my lungs.
“I’m going to make you suffer, Sweet,” he hisses into my ear. “You’re going to wish someone heard you scream when I’m done with you.”
* * *
Cayman leaves me curled up in a ball in the warehouse floor, among all the broken glass and fragments of nails.
“It was fun, Sweet,” he says. Cayman gets up with a laugh and spits on me as he zips up his pants. “Let’s do it again sometime.”
He prowls away arrogantly, leaving me to shiver against the concrete. The sun falls lower and lower outside until it’s completely dark and I’m cold.
I don’t want to walk home alone. But I have no choice. I force myself to climb to my feet and put one foot in front of the other in an absolute haze. Everything seems so surreal, so cloudy. I can’t form a coherent thought in my head. All I can do is replay what happened to me over and over.
I want to cry, but I can’t. Cayman has ripped everything away from me, rearranged it and then thrown it back. I can’t even begin to piece together the mess he handed me. Cayman’s erased everything I know and torn it to pieces.
A part of me knows that I should go to the hospital. That I should tell the police even, though they wouldn’t take me seriously because I’d stolen a car. Tell someone. Anyone.
But the one person who I would tell is gone, and I don’t trust anyone else. Now that Bethany’s in juvie, I have no friends. There isn’t a single person on earth who’s going to believe me right now.
I feel utterly and completely alone.
“Mildfreud, what happened?” my mother says as I come int
o the house. “You look awful.”
“I tripped,” I say immediately. “Down a flight of stairs at community service.”
“If you weren’t so clumsy you wouldn’t have tripped,” my father says. He doesn’t even bother to look at me from behind the research paper he’s writing.
“Be more careful next time. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that before it sinks in,” my mother snaps. “And for God’s sake, go wash up. You’re dripping blood all over my spotless floor.”
I go to the bathroom and turn on the shower. I stand under the steady stream and watch as the water in the tub turns red around my feet.
I don’t get out until the water goes cold. I wrap a towel around my waist and notice that I’m bleeding heavily from several cuts around my face, among other places. My one eye is still swollen shut.
I know my parents won’t help me. I have to take care of myself. I take a couple bandages from the box and try to put them on, but they won’t stay.
I angrily throw the box across the room and take a look at myself in the mirror. That’s when I dissolve into tears. I sink to the floor, completely lost. I’m trying to quiet my voice enough so my parents won’t hear, because they don’t like crying, but I can barely contain the sound of my sobs. I feel like screaming. I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I hate myself.
Chapter 6 - That Couldn’t Have Hit Me Harder if it Had a Hammer
“So how’s the editing going, Wiz?” Soldier asks.
Wizard presses a button on the keyboard. “It’s going good. I was able to turn this scene…” he presses another button, “Into an explosion.”
On the screen several zombies go flying as a computer-generated bomb goes off. I am amazed at Wizard’s knack for technology… the special effects are actually pretty decent.
“Hold on,” I say, pointing to the screen. “Where are Andy’s legs?”
“Pardon?” Wizard asks.
“He changes into a zombie at this point, right? Why are his legs suddenly ripping off of him and then disappearing?”