by Angela White
Bruised and dirty, but still cleaner than I’d been five minutes ago, I scrambled to my feet and took off running. I kept my arms in automatically, like I did when there were plants here to keep from doing damage. I forced my legs to keep going until I was half the distance to the Sticker’s Grove gate. Someday, I wouldn’t stop, gasping for air while I stared at that fence. Someday, I would get out.
“Hey!”
I turned to see who had yelled, hoping it wasn’t the farmer and Ticker. The dog might tolerate me and then again, he might not, and I was too upset to concentrate.
Judging by his outfit, the man was from Fernald and he lumbered through the rows, snapping plants just starting to come up. “You can’t be here!”
Surprised to find someone way out here dressed like a giant bug, I had frozen.
“Girl!”
If he told anyone, Mother Brady and Georgie would know about the clubhouse and the cornfield. They would find my stash of things from Marc!
I had already jerked up my hood to keep people from seeing me crying as I left the back of the restaurant. Maybe he wouldn’t remember what I looked like. I spun around and fled toward the clubhouse as the Fernald man shouted again, this time in fear.
I heard an awful growl and tried to go faster. There was no way I could calm Ticker down while he was attacking someone I didn’t know. Only my love for Marc had made me strong enough the first time.
“Help!”
“What are you doing in my cornfield?!”
I got away from them as quickly as I could, wondering if the arriving farmer might shoot the man. I hid inside the clubhouse that we’d done a good job of disguising, waiting for the chaos, but it didn’t come. Sometimes life was that way, I was learning. When I expected fireworks, nothing happened, but the minute I thought I had earned peace, blam! It was hard to accept that as an adult I wouldn’t have any control over that part of my life either.
As I huddled in the rear of the clubhouse by the exit, I wondered what Marc was doing right now. I would have given about anything for him to come in. He had no idea how much I missed him when he was away. There was a small room in my heart that ached and throbbed at the mere thought of him. The future, so close and yet so far away, was now my nightmare and my salvation. How could one person be so afraid all the time? And how could so many people be evil? Even Patty didn’t have an answer for that, but over time, I realized she was a perfect example of the other side. I learned many things from Patty, but the most important turned out to be that there were good people, good adults. She was kind and loving, and even protective when she could be. If Patty had been my mom, my life would have been completely different. I would have been wanted.
The second most important thing I learned from Patty was control. As I grew older and the hormones flowed openly, it was hard to keep my secrets. Patty taught me ways to get a release, to refill the energy I used, and to respect what I could do. If not for her books, I would have been discovered and then who knows what would have happened. She gave me the two things that I needed most–compassion and guidance. I didn’t know what Patty got from helping me, but she never asked for anything in return. She even refused to tell me about her life or why she was alone when there were pictures of family on her walls. She said the past had to be let go of and you couldn’t do that if you talked about it.
It was an area that we disagreed on. If you forgot the past, you ended up repeating it in the future. The witch was very clear on that point.
My witch was growing stronger by the day, but it was harder to direct and often came in bursts that I couldn’t manage. I got far from town and people when I practiced, finally taking Patty’s advice. I liked being by the creek in case things got out of hand. Wading in the cool water was soothing when I got frustrated. Making the doors open so that I could search ahead was hard. A lot of the time, it wouldn’t work for me at all. The witch said that was a concentration issue, but I didn’t understand yet. My age was always holding me back in one way or another.
The only time I felt at peace was when Marc and I were together. I spent years being spied on, touched, and forced to do things that made me throw up afterwards. The days passed in an ugly blur for me, but I’m positive that if I tried, I could recall every moment of fear and desperation. Like the days when a can of corn was my dinner or the evenings that I shivered in fear at the sound of Georgie’s car pulling into the driveway. His control over himself was failing. He couldn’t wait to enjoy his toy. That’s how he thought of me, and I hated the nights, the darkness, because of his visits.
During the day, however, I still wasn’t allowed to be in the house where I might disturb my mother. Despite Georgie’s order for her to keep better track of me, I continued to roam our small neighborhood alone, getting further from safety each day. I’d already found the haunted cabin (falling down shack with condoms on the floor. Ew!) and kept going to the thickly wooded property that the older kids swore held a camp of homeless men. I didn’t find any signs of that, but I wasn’t hunting for people. I was searching for peace.
I did see a few people during my treks. Most of the time, I heard them coming and ducked out of sight, but not always. Twice, I got in trouble and had to be rescued. The first time was a stranger who found me in the woods and if not for Daniel, Georgie would have lost his prize right then. Daniel, not much bigger than I was, had screamed until the man ran off and then he’d taken me to the cornfield and helped clean me up. He didn’t offer to take me home or tell my parents what had happened and for that, I was grateful. If Georgie found out someone had almost taken what he considered his, I’d never be let out of the house again, no matter what my mother wanted. But it didn’t stop me from going back. Reckless.
The second time I had to be rescued, it was from family. Put a girl in front of me, and I would draw blood. Change it to a male and I froze, becoming a quivering ball of fear. The day my cousins caught me was no different. I was already fending off Rodney and Scot at the gatherings, and avoiding them whenever I could. As I roamed after Georgie’s abuse in the restaurant, I was lost in misery, wondering why Marc hadn’t been at the Easter gathering, praying that he would be here tomorrow for the July parade. I was in the deep woods again, well past the haunted shack and the place where the homeless people were supposed to be. I didn’t realize that I’d gone so far until I came to the remotest farm in our town. I was so isolated that only fate could have saved me.
Marc
I stayed on the farm for the first half of 1995, branding and baling like we’d always done, occasionally helping the neighbors, but this year, I didn’t enjoy it. After kissing Angie, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I knew I had to keep distance between us, but it hurt. I told myself it was for our own good when I skipped the Easter gathering at the Brady home in favor of taking Jeanie to a couple’s event that the church had organized. We rode in the wagon, and snuggled under blankets with the other teens, but all Jeanie cared about was her new habit of drinking. I never got into her car anymore. We always took mine.
By June, the headaches and stomachaches for no reason finally got it through my thick skull that I was feeling Angie’s misery. She was just a kid and kids had to be reminded of things, but I still stayed on the farm. I didn’t trust myself not to kiss her again.
I held out until July and then the flags started going up and I broke. All it took was my imagination pulling up an image of her planting our flag alone–again. I couldn’t keep doing that to her. I would strictly mind my behavior and give us both a much-needed visit. We’d done longer stretches, but these last six months had seemed to be harder. I assumed it was because I’d declared my feeling and intentions. There were still times when I couldn’t believe she’d said yes. I was going to be a very lucky man.
Once I decided to see her, I went right then, taking along a baseball and bat for our entertainment. To make this work, I had to sneak out. That was easy, but I had a long bike ride that took me through the deep woods at the top of the hill. I was almost to
the top of the hill, trying to decide if I should stop somewhere for snacks, when I realized the woods had gone quiet. That’s what I called it when the birds and bugs stopped making noise. It meant I wasn’t alone.
As I had that thought, a female scream echoed from behind me, followed by excited male voices.
“Grab her!”
“Watch the feet!”
The sounds were urgent, bad.
“Get off me!”
The shriek was piercing.
I didn’t want to get involved, but my honor wouldn’t let me drive off. I quickly killed the quiet engine of my bike and rolled it behind a tree. I took the bat in case it was needed and ran toward the struggling.
“Stop!”
“Shut up! Hold still!”
Getting close, I now suspected what I’d find. I’d recognized the male voices. My cousins were bullying the neighborhood during their summer break, as usual.
As I came around a thick tree trunk, I couldn’t see the struggling female’s face, only her bare legs, but it was indeed my big cousins pinning her to the ground. They were shoving her shirt up, pinching her and pulling at her jeans. These two had become terrors during gatherings. My mother had already handled a similar situation last week.
“Flip her over!” Scot shouted, lowering his pants as Rodney squirmed on top of her.
I moved forward, thinking I could distract them and then I froze, unable to breathe around the rage. It was Angie on the ground, Angie’s eyes wide with terror, my Angie…
I glanced down at the bat still in my hand.
Crack!
The impact from the bat knocked Rodney aside as blood splattered, and I swung again.
Rodney crumpled to the dirt.
Fury peaking, I punched Scot in the mouth before his surprise faded.
He fell and I swung the bat a third time, splitting his cheek open. I wanted them dead! Everything would have ended there if not for Angie.
“You have to stop!”
I didn’t want to, but clearly, she was right. The two boys were bleeding and groaning.
I tossed the bat to the ground. “Scum!”
My cousins struggled up with narrowed glances of hatred that I expected to fill with rage. I braced myself as they began to understand what had happened. I’d never crossed them before. We almost become friends until I’d had to spend years listening to them talk about the things they wanted to do to Angie and every other female they knew.
The brothers stood together, holding bleeding wounds as their slow brains worked through what had happened. Their glowers went from me to Angie as the anger grew, and for the first time, I used the authority that was my birthright.
“Does my mother need to hear about this?”
It was a warning and an escape for them, if they were afraid of me at all. They should be.
“No,” Scot, the eldest, answered sullenly. “But it ain’t over.”
“Get lost,” I ordered scornfully.
They went slowly and the glares they threw at Angie said she was now a bigger target than she had been. Those sharp glances were already planning revenge and she would be the one to pay because I was off-limits. Hurting me might bring my mother’s wrath, but if they took it out on the whore’s kid? She’d probably send them to Disney Land as a reward.
I turned to see if Angie was okay and the fear in her expression hurt me. She was sitting with her knees to her chest, cowering against a tree, and those eyes! I couldn’t stand for her to feel that way.
“Thank you,” she whispered, tugging her shirt down.
I stayed where I was. “Sure.”
It was a timid response compared to what I had just done to help her, but nothing I was thinking would have been better. I wanted them dead. That would never change.
I scanned Angie for injuries and couldn’t help noticing that she’d grown up again while I was gone. She looked my age now.
“Are you gonna try to get them in trouble?”
Like any male staring into that sad, beautiful face, I stumbled. “No…maybe… Do you want me to?”
I would try if she did, but it could get ugly.
“No, not unless it will make you safe.”
It was still so strange to hear someone caring about me. I sometimes went years without it.
“I’ll be fine either way,” I answered pointedly.
Angie looked away.
She tensed when I dropped down next to her, but she didn’t run. That was another thing about Angie that had always impressed me. She hated to run from anything.
Silence hung between us for a long moment where I accepted she was in real danger. There was years before I could even attempt to get her away from here. Rodney and Scot would catch up to her a lot sooner than that. I would have to do something about this.
Frustration and sadness permeated the air, but I couldn’t stop myself from staring. Two years ago, her new body had begun to emerge and I’d been able to ignore it because she was just Angie then, my friend. Now, I had felt the passions of a man and to say that I wanted her that way was like saying water was important to living. I could drink other things, sleep with other females, but only Angie’s well would be perfect, and I knew it.
Angie wasn’t scared now, but her sadness hit me in waves. She had never asked me to defy the family for her, but she was desperate for my protection.
I was always being ripped out of her life and I’d begun to hate myself for the pain she suffered whenever I was gone, but I was scared to be here with her. Even now, I was afraid of giving in to the need of this man’s body, to the love I held in my heart for her. I wanted to be disgusted by my attraction, to deny it and mean it, but Angie chose that moment to look at me.
“I love you.”
The world shifted, and then there was no tree against my shoulder, no bloody bat at my feet. There was just the brilliant July sun, and my Angie.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded like an idiot, but speech wouldn’t come. Her words had stunned me this time.
I slowly returned to trying to find my determination to wait for her to finish growing up. Her wants didn’t occur to me until she frowned and spoke what I’d been trying not to think of.
“But I don’t want to wait, Marc. If it’s wrong later and it’s wrong now, what does it matter?”
She staggered off and I stayed against that tree until the light faded and my curfew passed. I knew I was in trouble.
A thousand ideas went through my mind and I was grateful for my mother’s insistence on thinking a situation through before reacting. I hadn’t been able to when I’d spotted Angie fighting with the cousins, but now, my brain was full of the slipknots and tightropes that I was about to walk.
Rodney and Scot came searching for me an hour after dark. I stayed against the tree as they approached me, shoulder-to-shoulder. Both wearing bandages, they avoided looking at the crusty bat at my feet and kept their distance.
“She has people out searching for you,” Scot stated, meaning my mother.
“I’m going to give you my pass to the convention this year,” I stated, immediately taking control of this dangerous situation. The convention was a weeklong excuse to party that didn’t even end when dawn came.
Both of my cousins studied me suspiciously and they flinched when I stood up. Good.
“Why?”
“Yeah, why?”
For being older than me, they were dumber and I let them figure it out on their own, sweeping the area to be certain that we were still alone.
“What’s in it for you?” Rodney demanded.
“Why would you…” Scot trailed off.
Here it comes, I thought, bracing.
“Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Rodney demanded.
“He wants to poke her!”
“He wants to poke who?”
“Angie!”
Their next words were too crude for me to repeat and the insults hurt–mostly because they were true.
&n
bsp; “Wait until your mother hears!”
Before I could reply, Scot elbowed his brother. “We don’t tell, stupid. That’s why we get his slot at the convention.”
Burning on the inside, I thought, yeah, that’s why, you sleaze.
“How does this work?” Scot asked.
I slowly bent down and retrieved the bat. “What did you tell everyone about today?”
“No one knows we were hurt,” Rodney confided uneasily, studying me. “We went to that traveling doctor.”
“Perfect.” I pinned them with my rage, letting them see I wasn’t over it just because I’d drawn blood. “I’ll hunt you down if you betray me. That includes even talking to Angie again. Don’t ever do it.”
“Then we want more than your convention place,” Scot demanded, understanding they would have to take another beating. Their current injuries were too minor for me to be punished much.
Expecting it, I made the deal too good to refuse. “I won’t tell anyone that you guys killed all those pets a few years ago, or how you watch the widow and break things on her property to get close to her. I also won’t mention your pot plants behind the silo or the fact that your customers hate you. Don’t fuck with me, and I won’t have to do the same to you.”
I raised the bat a bit, enjoying their nervous reactions. “Take off those bandages and come earn your pass. This has to be serious for mother to buy it.” I couldn’t wait to hit them again.
It occurred to me, as I stepped into the front parlor with bloody shoes a short time later, that in some ways I was very much like my mother. Once I locked onto something, I rarely ever let go until I got it. In the past, those things had been simple–like getting to go to the farm and visiting the recruiting office. What I wanted now was life changing and magic spun through the air. I was choosing my path, my future.
My mother would put an end to that as quickly as she discovered it, but I had a solid plan. She wouldn’t expect me to have gotten so far ahead of her. She was about to make a huge mistake.
“Is that you, Marcus?”
I sucked in air, heart a thumping mess.