Campbell

by C. S. Starr

  Andrew hadn’t been sure he’d ever see the house again. In that moment, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

  In fact, he wasn’t sure why he’d returned, since it was the first time in his life he’d really been free, but something had drawn him back. Maybe it was the hope that his grandfather had died, since that seemed to be what adults were doing. Maybe it was the promise he’d made his mother to watch over his siblings before she knew she wasn’t going to be around to do it anymore. Maybe it was because he had nowhere else to go. Nowhere he could claim.

  Andrew walked tentatively towards the old farm, each step cautiously placed, like he was in the middle of a mine field, worried at any moment someone from child services, or the police, or whatever, would come, throw him in a car and take him to some other hell hole where nobody wanted him, but everybody wanted a piece of the check he brought in. All if he stepped on the wrong spot.

  He'd disappeared into the night after his foster parents had kicked it, and it had taken him a while to get back from Edmonton to Fort Macleod. He’d hitchhiked a bit, amazed by how many kids just a year or two older than him had picked him up, and shocked by the lack of law enforcement that was around to give them shit about driving underage. Andrew missed Cole and Lucy desperately, and he hated the lie he’d told that separated them. Hated that he’d left them here, in this place that was the worst kind of hell for a sensitive boy and a too-smart-girl. He’d told himself night after night that it was better that they were together, and that his leaving was unavoidable after he’d broken his grandfather’s nose, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. He wasn’t sure it was worth it, what Lucy and Cole were going through to stay together. His guts churned at the thought of the old pervert touching his sister, the light that had gone out in her eyes in the months after they’d been sent there.

  Their grandfather deserved to die.

  As he slowly opened the door, he learned he wasn’t the only one that thought so.

  September 2012

  Campbell

  “I can’t believe you!” Lucy hissed, hurling the nearest thing she could find, a dog-eared copy of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream across her bedroom. “With everything that’s going on, you…I…you knew I wouldn’t be okay with that! You had to know that was a fucking stupid thing to do!”

  Zoey stood her ground, her arms crossed. “Well, it’s not like I’ve had much for alternatives, and it’s not like I did anything we haven’t talked about a million times. It’s not like me and him were talking strategy, or talking much at all.”

  She smelled like him. She’d just crawled right into the bed she shared with Lucy, like it was nothing. It wasn’t just the sex that was infuriating. It was the level of disrespect that shocked Lucy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so livid, and she’d been angry a lot lately over much bigger things.

  “Here’s a fucking alternative. Keep your fucking legs closed. I’m trying to negotiate with them!” She threw a pair of wool socks from the hamper, which Zoey casually stepped out of the way to avoid. “And you just go out there and fuck him? What does that do for our position?”

  “We haven’t had sex in a month, Ce!” she shouted. “A month, and it was three weeks before that. And don’t blame it on what happened with Cole, because that was only two weeks ago. You never want to do it, and you just want us to lay in bed and talk, and I’m fucking over it. I’m so fucking over it.”

  “This isn’t about sex, and you know—”

  “Isn’t it?” Zoey sneered. “Because that’s all it was for me.”

  Lucy shook her head, and her stomach tightened into a knot as she entertained for the first time the thought that Zoey might be the East rat. It made her sick, but she knew it was a possibility. Anyone was a possibility. She was doing things, things that weren’t in character for her. Not the man sex, but the not thinking part, or rather the making it seem like she wasn’t thinking part. “Anyone else, Zoey. Anyone else would have been a different story.”

  “Your brother’s got anyone else terrified to touch me. He doesn’t care that it’s what we’ve talked about.”

  Lucy groaned. “He’s my brother. Of course he doesn’t care what we’ve talked about. He sees it as fucking around on me, which—”

  “He sees it as a personal rejection when I’m with men, that’s how he sees it,” Zoey muttered. “It’s got nothing to do with you, and you’re a fool if you think it does.”

  “God, you and your fucking drama. Don’t you understand what’s going on? Can’t you see the bigger picture? It’s not about who’s fucking you! We’re all going to get fucked if we can’t work this out, and not in the way you seem to be obsessed with.”

  “Oh, and what’ll be left when you’ve sorted everything out? I’m not going to stick around like some fucking nun making you food and warming your bed while you ignore me for politics for the next however long.” Zoey wiped a tear from her cheek.

  “I’m not choosing anything over you. I don’t have a choice, and it won’t be forever,” Lucy said gently, relieved to realize that Zoey’s reaction was genuine and not a fight for show. Zoey never cried. It didn’t mean she wasn’t the rat, but it seemed less likely, especially since her actions earlier that evening were obviously for attention, and she did have reason to be upset. Good reason. Lucy had left her alone with Andrew, against her better judgment several times since Cole had vanished. “It’s just for now.”

  “What if you don’t get him back? Then what?” she sobbed, allowing Lucy to wrap her up in her arms. “Then you spend the rest of your life fighting, and we never swim in the river again, or hide away from the world for a day together? What if nothing is ever the same?”

  “Nothing ever stays the same for long, Love,” Lucy whispered. “You know that.”

  “I don’t want you to change.”

  Zoey knew, just as Lucy did, that without Cole, everything changed. “I’ll be better. I’ll try and be better,” Lucy whispered. “I’ll take you with me when I go away, and I won’t leave you with Andrew again. I shouldn’t have left you with him. I know better than that.”

  “He’s just so hateful towards me,” she whimpered. “You’d think I was the one that had…hurt him. I try, because he’s your brother, but it makes me sick sometimes, to even be in the same room with him.”

  Zoey couldn’t even say what he’d done to her years earlier. She’d never been able to. They both knew, and it was Lucy that had held her tight as the pennyroyal and mugwort had worked its way through her body while she’d bled and bled, forcing the physical evidence of his cruelty out of her body a few months later. It all seemed like so long ago, but in reality, Lucy realized, it hadn’t been. A couple of years. That was all. “You know he won’t hurt you again.”

  Zoey sniffled and nodded, her hurt expression painful for Lucy. “I do, but….”

  “I know,” Lucy nodded, holding her face. “That doesn’t really make it better. I can’t get rid of him. You know I can’t, or I would sometimes.”

  She’d never stop owing him for letting her and Cole stay together, even though they’d all lost in the end.

  “I know,” Zoey replied quietly. “And I know part of the way he is isn’t his fault, but fuck, he’s an asshole.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me there,” Lucy whispered into her hair. “You didn’t tell him anything you shouldn’t have, did you, Zoe? Tal?”

  She shook her head against Lucy’s chest. “No, I swear I didn’t. I mean, I don’t know anything I could have said that would have been a problem.”

  “Okay,” Lucy nodded back, resting her chin on the top of her head. “And he thinks I don’t know anything about what you were doing there?”

  “No.”

  “Because I wouldn’t want him to think that’s how I do things, especially with you, because you’re more important than anything and I’d never use you like that.” She spoke calmly, and hoped that Zoey would see her sincerity and drop it. She’d try and make her happier, as muc
h as she could. Zoey was complicated. Far more complicated that she considered herself to be. “I need you to take a shower, and then we’ll go to bed.”

  “Okay, Ce,” she whispered, raising her eyes to meet Lucy’s. She knew Zoey felt bad, but it was unlikely she felt bad enough to take a personal vow of fidelity. This did little to assuage the nagging voice in her head that said things weren’t going to last forever for a host of reasons.

  When Zoey walked out to shower, Lucy lay on the bed, and felt more defeated than she could remember.

  “I feel like I’m looking for someone to blame,” she whispered into the air, tugging the blanket over her. “But I know it’s my fault he’s gone.”

  She knew she couldn’t undo any of it. She couldn’t bring back to life the two guys who had been killed because they were in the way when Cole had been snatched, any more than she could bring Cole back. All she could do was control how she moved forward; how she reacted now. Every step had to be carefully mapped. Things like what happened that night, they couldn’t happen again.

  She’d mostly fallen asleep when Zoey returned, her hair damp, smelling like the lavender soap they shared.

  “I’m sorry,” Zoey whispered, as she pressed her body against Lucy’s, her leg sliding in between hers.

  “For what?” Lucy questioned, hoping beyond hope that this wasn’t going to be the beginning of some grand confession about Cole, which would probably kill her, because then she’d have to murder Zoey.

  “For earlier.” Zoey frowned in the dim light. “Is there something else I should be sorry for?”

  “I don’t think so?” Lucy replied. “I hope not.”

  “All right then,” she mumbled, rolling towards Lucy. “So we’re good.”

  “We’re good.”

  “Good.”

  “How was…it?” Lucy asked, hoping Zoey wouldn’t look at her. She asked sometimes, and had been doing so almost as long as they’d been together. Sometimes it was for reassurance that things were better when they were together, but other times it was out of genuine curiosity. Tonight, it was the latter, because she knew they’d have to actually sleep together for things to really be better between the two of them, and that wasn’t going to happen. Lucy had decided somewhere along the way that one’s approach to sex had a lot to do with who they were as a person, and she wanted to know more about Tal. There was a good chance she wouldn’t be able to work with Connor, and Tal was the next obvious choice if they needed to get rid of the current leader of West to move forward.

  “Do you really want to know?” Zoey asked carefully. “Because I don’t want to upset—”

  “I won’t get upset,” she promised. “I…I’m just curious.”

  She listened thoughtfully as Zoey described her encounter, and Tal’s suspicions and objections, which seemed to have crumbled quickly with a few well-placed words.

  The older Lucy got, the more curious she found herself about sex and relationships with men, even though the actual logistics still terrified her. Every man had his rough hands, his unclear intentions. She knew that she’d come a long way because she’d avoided those dynamics, because men looked at her differently. Not necessarily as an equal, but not like they looked at other women. It wasn’t a conscious decision she’d made initially, but it had helped her countless times, and when she looked at the way men regarded her, as opposed to how they regarded Zoey, she was very glad she’d made the choice early on to do what was easiest.

  She wasn’t sure she would have been in the position she was if she’d compromised on that point with any of the men she’d been close enough with to consider being with. The power dynamics would have been confused.

  “…he’s nice. A little fumbly, but sweet. We didn’t have sex, exactly. He didn’t want to. I didn’t either.”

  “Why?”

  “No condom.” She shrugged. “And I’m never going down that road again.”

  “Good,” Lucy agreed, relieved. Despite her curiosity, Lucy didn’t like it when she was unsafe, because she’d read enough to know it could affect her too.

  The next morning, Lucy got up early and did something she hadn’t done in years. Smoking her grandfather’s pipe, once his most prized possession, had given her a great deal of pleasure when she was very young, especially right after she’d finally put him out of his misery, but now it felt a little unnecessary. This morning though, she wanted it. She wanted to feel that control she’d felt when she was young and lit it up for the first time. The heady tobacco made Lucy lightheaded, and she rocked on the creaky porch swing, repeating the mantra that had got her through the early days.

  She was in charge. He wasn’t.

  East wasn’t.

  Zoey wasn’t.

  She was.

  She breathed deeply and tried to remember what Cole felt like, how his presence calmed her, even when they were doing the most mundane things, like sitting on the porch. Her mind ran through all the familiar things she could remember about him; his smell, the way he pigeoned his toes when he’d sit, the awkward cowlick on the back of his head that she was constantly flattening.

  The sun rose in the east, an important constant. Lucy curled up, bringing her legs up on the porch swing, and watched the light grow, as it inched over the horizon. She’d always fancied herself a morning person.

  Despite what should have been a lack of distractions, she barely heard the steps on the porch behind her before she felt a searing pain in the back of her head before everything went black.

  ***

  Tal hadn’t woken early. The bottle of wine he’d consumed with Juan late into the night to top off the one he’d finished with Zoey had seen to that.

  He known, every minute that he’d spent doing everything but proper sex with Zoey, that it had been a terrible idea. He started to wonder if he wasn’t harboring some serious masochistic tendencies. Maybe he needed a healthy dose of guilt to accompany his orgasms. Maybe, despite his best attempts to be as normal as possible, he’d become more fucked up than most. That night, he’d gotten drunk to pretend that wasn’t true.

  When Tal eventually woke up, it wasn’t on his own. He opened his eyes to see a ski-mask-covered face looking down on him, and a great deal of pressure on his torso, from said ski-masked face sitting on him. Ski-mask was a big guy. Tal felt like he was being crushed.

  He also felt wet, as if someone had poured something on him. Something sticky; thicker than water.

  “What the fuck?” he rasped, as he tried to move.

  “You’re Tal Bauman?” The ski-mask asked in a gravelly voice.

  Had Tal had the foresight to say no, he would have, but he’d been caught entirely off guard.

  “Yeah, and who the fuck are you?” He replied, struggling to get free, realizing he was covered in blood. Juan’s blood, from the look of the still glassy eyes in the face of the cold person beside him. Tal found himself panicking and tried with all his might to move the mass on top of him, but to no avail. The ski-mask simply smiled at his efforts.

  “I’m East,” he replied coldly, as he pulled out a syringe and stabbed him in the neck. “And you picked the wrong time to come to Campbell.”

  Chapter 7

  October 2001

  Los Angeles, California

  Leah, Tal, and Rachel looked numbly at Tal’s brother Rob as he shivered on the couch. At fifteen, he was a tall kid, broad from years of rugby, which he much preferred to the academic ventures, unlike his siblings who were both lankier.

  “I think it’s just a cold,” he chattered, wrapping the blanket around himself tightly. “I feel okay.”

  Tal wasn’t sure if Rob was broken and in denial from all the death, or just too empty to care about himself anymore.

  “I’ll get you some tea,” Leah said, smiling bravely at her cousin. “Rach, you want to turn up the heat a bit?”

  She nodded, scampering off to play with the thermostat.

  Tal kept his distance from Rob, opting to sit across the room in his mom’s
favourite armchair. “I should go out for some things.”

  “Make sure you take Dad’s gun,” Rob rasped. “And don’t lead anyone back here, whatever you do.”

  Tal nodded his head. “I know.”

  “We’ve got more than most,” Rob choked and squeezed his eyes shut. “They made sure we’d be okay.”

  “I know,” Tal replied, thinking of the cans and cans of things in the cupboards. “And we are.”

  Rob looked at Tal critically for a few moments. “If it’s just you, what are you going to do?” Rob whispered. “If I’m gone? Are you going to take care of them?”

  Tal swallowed hard, the realization that Rob had determined what was going to become of him sinking in for the first time: it could have been a cold. But it wasn’t. They both knew that.

  “I’ll take care of them,” Tal said, his voice wavering. “I’ll do whatever I need to do. We’ll take care of each other.”

  “They say kids aren’t dying,” Rob continued. “That it’s just grown-ups.”

  “Rob, maybe you’re not a grown-up,” Tal said, mustering as much hope as he could in his weak voice. “Maybe it’s just a cold—”

  Tal’s brother sat up a little. “Maybe it’s thirteen, like we always learned. Maybe that’s where it ends.”

  “I don’t know how to go on,” Tal replied, his voice small as he pulled his legs up to his chest. “What happens now?”

  “I don’t know,” Rob said honestly. “I guess you’ll get to figure that out. Just…be smart. Don’t pull a Richard Cohen.”

  Richard Cohen was a boy from Tal’s class who, upon his parent’s death, had burned their house down a few blocks away, after firing into a crowd of kids waiting in line at a gas station with an automatic weapon that he’d found in his father’s gun case. Luckily he was a lousy aim and only a couple of people were hurt. No one was sure where he’d gone after that.