They weren’t sure what to make of Scotty at first. He was quiet, which was funny, because Charley and Maddy had been led to believe that city kids were tough and mouthy. But Scotty didn’t look tough at all. In fact, he seemed much more awkwardly uncomfortable than menacing. He was a little taller than they were, but thinner too, although not in any sort of lean muscular way. The slightly older boy was pale and his hair was a dull brown. Maddy thought he looked goofy too, because his teeth stuck out a little, emphasized by his big nose and small chin. The only thing at all appealing about him was his soft grey eyes.
The pair had also heard that city kids were lazy, and they hoped to sneak away that morning before they could be roped into babysitting their cousin for the day. Perhaps their mother suspected that; she was a cunning woman. She was watching and listening for them to rise, and spoke their names loudly to let them know she’d spotted them at the top of the stairs. This may have also been to prevent them from slipping away without breakfast . . . or Scotty.
The three children ate mostly in silence, Charley and Maddy staring at Scotty in unison, while he tried desperately to ignore their glares. He wasn’t very good at disregarding them, so he instead began to take stock of them to distract himself. His cousins bore much different appearance than he did; their cheeks were rosy and their skins had already been freckled and bronzed by the sun of late spring and early summer. Their hair, otherwise a colour similar to his, had been altered by the same effects as their skin, sun-bleached with a dash of reddish-gold highlights.
“Can you swim?” Charley asked, finally breaking the silence as he started in on his third pancake.
“W-what?” Scotty stammered, startled by the sudden question.
“He said ‘Can you swim’?” Maddy repeated with a smirk. “You know.” She made dogpaddle-like gestures.
“Um, yeah. I can swim.”
He had been picking at his food, unaccustomed to a heavy breakfast. The rush of nerves—from actually being addressed by the children—made his stomach do flip-flops, the pancakes seeming even less appetizing.
“Good, cuz me an’ Maddy are meeting some friends by the little pier. If yer gonna’ come with us, it’ll help if you can swim. We don’t wanna have to be watchin’ in case you drown.” Charley said this with enough of a sneer that Scotty was sure the boy had already decided that his cousin wasn’t worth their time.
“Don’t worry,” Scotty reassured him, pushing his plate away. “I won’t get in your way. You can pretend like I’m not even there. I probably won’t even get in the water.”
“Yer not gonna leave that are you?” Maddy asked, gesturing at the remnants of his breakfast. “Mom hates it when people waste food. She went to the trouble of fixin’ it. The least you can do is go to the trouble of eatin’ it.”
Scotty felt cornered, their cool stares still locked on him. His stomach continued to rebel, as much from anxiety as from being overly full. He’d always had a sensitive digestive system and this situation wasn’t helping any.
“Tell you what—I’ll do you a favour an’ finish those for you,” Charley informed him with a snort, nudging an elbow at the uneaten pancakes. “But only if you agree to get in the water. Otherwise, our buddies will think we have pussies for kin. Are you a pussy, Scotty?” Charley grinned, with an edge of mocking maliciousness.
“Why don’t you wanna swim at our swim-hole,” Maddy demanded, with slightly more hostility. “If it ain’t some fancy chlorinated pool, it ain’t good enough for ya?”
That was exactly the reason Scotty had not intended on going into the water. Unlike the pool that he usually swam in, there were living things in the water where his country cousins swam. The pier was by open ocean and there was a wide assortment of sea-life making a home in those waters and along the sandy bottom. When Scotty’s mother had mentioned swimming there when she was young, he had found the notion repulsive. Just the idea of slimy seaweed coming in contact with his skin made his flesh crawl.
“I’m just not used to swimming in the ocean,” Scotty suggested, hoping to defuse the situation. “I hear that it’s cold, and that you have to watch out for undertow. I could stay here while you go. I don’t have to come with you.”
Maddy wrinkled her nose at this as Charley began to shovel Scotty’s leftovers into his mouth.
“Oh yes, you have to come,” she insisted. “Mom says we have to take you with us, so you have to come. What Mom says goes round here, so you’re just gonna have to grow a pair and put up with the water bein’ chilly. Either you do it, or we’ll do it for you. Charley and I are strong enough to take you, especially together. We’ll dunk you ourselves if we have to. No one’s gonna be able to say we’re related to a chicken.”
Against his better judgement and upon threat of a beating and dousing, Scotty put on his swim trunks and gathered up his beach towel. Then he unhappily accompanied his cousins out of the house. The morning air was brisk, but he could feel it warming. He had a feeling the water temperature would be much worse. He noticed his cousins were wearing ratty old sneakers without socks, as opposed to flip flops like him. He soon understood why. Their trip took them through the smelly, squelchy mud of a sea marsh, and then across a cluster of jagged rocks. The rocks kept catching at his mud-sodden footwear and making him stumble. He could hear Charley and Maddy snicker every time he almost fell, as they sprang effortlessly from stone to stone, like coastal mountain goats.
They arrived at the little pier, an old construct that was severely worn by weather and littered with barnacles and seaweed. The sun had turned the rotting wood a pale grey, and Scotty wondered if it was safe to walk there. There were already three people and a dog standing atop the aged wharf, so he had to assume that it was.
“You’re late!” shouted the largest of the three. He was a red-haired kid with freckles wide enough that they blotched together into one near-solid patch. He had the same taunting smile that Charley always wore.
“Yeah, what took you so long?” hollered the girl standing next to the redhead, almost half the larger boy’s size. The dog beside her started to bark.
Scotty swallowed hard. The animal was only a medium-sized dog, but he lived in a building that didn’t allow pets, so he wasn’t used to them. This one seemed particularly high-strung and snarly, sort of like the kids it accompanied.
Maddy jabbed her thumb in Scotty’s direction.
“It was slowpoke here. He made Charley finish his pancakes, so we didn’t head out in time. We warned you we might have to take him with us.”
“That’s yer cousin?” the shorter boy on the pier scoffed. His skin was tanned a deep brown and his eyes and hair were black. He was thick—oddly muscular for someone so young. “Where’d you find him? He’s as pale as a ghost. Looks like you dragged him out from under a rock somewhere.”
“He’s a city kid,” Charley grunted, and that seemed to be enough explanation, as the others nodded and shrugged. The dog continued to bark.
“Shut up, Scamp!” the girl next to it snapped, and she leaned over, giving it a hard slap on its rump. Scotty cringed. The dog yelped. Then it tucked its tail between its legs and sat down, whimpering softly.
Charley and Maddy piled onto the wharf alongside their friends, but Scotty waited stiffly on the shore, not wanting to approach the dog and unsure how stable the structure was. The five natives chatted for a few moments about people and places foreign to Scotty, before they all jogged down to the end of the rickety wharf. They tossed their towels onto the warped planking, and then one-by-one, they fearlessly jumped into the frothy water.
“Get yer arse in here, Scotty!” Maddy yelled as she splashed at the red-haired boy, whom Scotty had heard them call Derek.
He hoped they would have forgotten about him, caught up in their own antics, but his cousins were keener of mind then he’d given them credit. Having him hover on the beach watching them seemed kind of creepy, plus forcing him into the frigid water would bring them some sadistic pleasure.
; “Looks like he’s too scared,” the short girl, whom they had referred to as Fran, teased. She kicked her way over to Maddy. “Yer family have a secret yeller streak?”
“Scotty . . .” Charley warned, balling up a fist and glaring his way.
Realizing he was not going to escape what he saw as essentially a hazing ceremony, Scotty started to inch his way towards the water. He moved with trepidation, carefully kicking off his flip flops and flexing his fingers before easing his toes into the surf. From Scotty’s perspective, it was like ice water. He shivered and pulled them back again.
“Dammit, Scotty! If I have to drag you onto that pier and shove you into the water myself, I will—and I won’t promise not to bounce your head off one of the side-posts on the way down,” Charley growled.
Scotty looked at the creaky wharf. Not only did it look dangerous, but on top of Charley’s threat, Fran’s dog was still skittering from one edge of the planking to the other. He didn’t want to give the over-excitable animal an excuse to bite him. With a heavy sigh, he started into the water.
He hated the fact that all eyes were upon him as he shuddered and squirmed his way into the water. He stopped advancing once he was waist deep, hoping that it would be enough for his tormentors. They did seem to be satisfied with that and went back to their horseplay, but they would throw an occasional glance his way to make sure he was not trying to sneak back out again.
Scotty thought the whole experience was awful. The briny cold water lapping at his goose-pimpled skin was the least of his troubles. The most immediate problem was the seaweed. Scotty had hoped to avoid the slimy yellowish-brown globules, but even steering clear of the large clumps attached to rocks on the sandy bottom was not enough because smaller segments had broken free and were brushing past him on the water’s surface. He held his arms up out of the water, his fingers curled in disgust.
He soon discovered that there was a second feature to the ocean he disliked even more. The seaweed at least was limp and its only movement was whatever the tide allowed. On the other hand, there was the occasional purposeful movement as something firm grazed one of his legs and then something else made subtle contact with his hip. Scotty bit his lip to avoid crying out, knowing it would draw more negative attention from his cousins. He could not resist, however, when he felt something creep into his swim trunks, into the crack between his buttocks, and then, to his great horror, wriggled up inside of him. It was a fairly gentle sensation, something he might have missed if he weren’t tense and standing stock still because of his circumstances. He shrieked, quite loudly, and it echoed around the cove.
“What’s yer problem now?” Maddy demanded, exasperated.
Scotty was flailing about in the water, trying to shake out what had just swum in. He began to hyperventilate, twisting, turning, and pulling at his swim trunks.
“Something . . . touched . . . me. It . . .” he gasped, still trying to dislodge his anal invader. Before he could finish his thought, little Fran interrupted.
“Of course somethin’ did, you big baby. There’s a million different types of wrigglers in the cove. There’s eels, an’ crabs, an’ minnows, an’ even bigger fish like mackerel.” Her chubby little face took on a mean countenance. “Sometimes even schools of bluefish swim in close to the shore. Two summers ago, we weren’t allowed to swim here because they were in close an’ bein’ nasty. They attacked an’ ate Bernie Miller’s dog. Worst than the dog fish that we spot now an’ then. They look like little sharks an’ have sharp little teeth.” She wanted to scare him. She wanted to make things worse.
That was too much for Scotty. He scrambled back to the beach and out of the water. The girls’ mocking giggles burned in his ears, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the awareness that there was still something alive working its way up inside of him. Avoiding the pier and the dog, he instead scurried farther up the beach to a very large rock. He climbed up on top of it and sat there shivering and clutching his legs to his chest as he fought back fearful tears. Resting his chin on his knees, he ignored the other children’s taunts and jeers. He felt faint, the blood rushing through his head and pounding in his ears. Every time he was tempted to believe it had been just his imagination, he felt a faint twitching in his gut that made him worry again.
His cousins and their friends eventually realized that their teasing was being completely ineffectual. Losing interest in Scotty, they returned to their horseplay. They squealed and splashed and pulled one another gleefully under the surface. Scotty watched where he was huddled on the rock. His stomach ached and he wished that he were back in the comfort of his home. He dried off quickly enough in the hot summer sun, but that wasn’t enough to cure his violent shivers. Agitated, he could still feel that something wriggling at his centre. By the time early afternoon arrived and the children decided that it was time to head home for lunch, he had already crept away behind some boulders to throw up what he had eaten of their heavy breakfast, twice.
When they returned to the house, Scotty could not bear to even look at his meal, so Charley obliged him and ate his share again. He behaved as though he were doing Scotty a favour and that the awkward boy would be expected to eventually offer him something in exchange. After they had eaten, they started out for the door, planning on a second outing. Scotty did not follow at first, lying on the couch, clutching at his abdomen with his breath coming in tiny laboured gasps.
“Come on,” Maddie said, tapping her foot in annoyance. “Quit makin’ us wait.”
“Go without me,” he mumbled. “I’m sick.”
He was staring at the ceiling trying to avoid meeting their gazes, but Maddy and Charley could see he wasn’t well. His eyes were glassy-looking and although it was difficult to believe, he was paler than he had been earlier that day. That wasn’t about to slow them down any.
“No way,” Charley insisted. “We can’t leave you here alone, an’ you ain’t ruinin’ our fun by makin’ us stay home an’ play nurse. Stop bein’ a wuss an’ pretendin’ like there’s somethin’ wrong with you just so you don’t have to go anywhere. We’re goin’ to the clubhouse an’ yer comin’ with us, like we had planned. You can lie in the corner there just like yer doin’ here, an’ if you need to puke, you can go out an’ puke in the woods. It’s not like you ate anythin’ for lunch”
“What if something’s really wrong with me? It feels like something’s eating up my insides. What if it’s appendicitis, or worse?” Scotty groaned.
Maddy stomped over to her ailing cousin with a disgusted sigh and placed her hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she declared. “If you had appendicitis, you’d be burnin’ up. You just got a little stomach bug, is all.” She reached down and grabbed his forearm with a firm grip. “Yer comin’ with us if we have to drag you. Yer not gonna wreck our fun.”
She gestured with her head towards Scotty, signalling for Charley to assist her. He flanked Scotty from the other side, grabbing him just as firmly. They pulled the weakened boy to his feet and started tugging him towards the door. Scotty tried to resist but he lacked the strength, being dragged along like a floppy ragdoll instead.
It felt to Scotty like they were walking through the woods forever. The entire time, his guts felt like they were on fire: a twisting, churning knot of searing agony. He moaned and slumped in his cousins’ grasp, but they ignored his pleas to take him back.
“Quit whinin’, you big faker,” Maddy grumbled. “We’re almost there.”
Their “clubhouse” came into view, a makeshift shack that had been thrown together from broken down pieces of wooden crates and rotting pressboard. The rickety structure was old enough, however, that the damper sections of the pressboard were overgrown with moss. Scotty eyed it warily through his veil of pain. He was surprised that it had somehow managed to resist the elements until now.
Not releasing his hold long enough to open the door with his hand, Charley instead nudged it open with his elbow. He and Maddy yanked Scotty into the dingy interior of thei
r clubhouse and literally tossed him into a corner. He lay there in a crumpled heap, panting and muttering something almost incoherent about the wrigglers chewing up his insides. Fran and Derek were already there. The girl stared at Scotty wide-eyed.
“Is he okay? He don’t look so good,” she observed.
An instance of doubt flickered through Maddy’s eyes, with a hint of conscience. Then she shook her head and shrugged it off.
“He’ll be fine. It’s lie around here or lie around home, an’ we don’t want him spoilin’ our day cuz of a little stomach bug.”
They had only been there a few moments when Scotty began to throw up. It was mostly dry heaves with the occasional spatter of dark viscous liquid, but it quickly drew an aggressive response from his cousins.
“Ewwwww! Scotty, not here! We told ya—if you wanna puke, go out in the woods,” Maddy said, pointing at the door.
The city boy, now white as the driven snow and sweating profusely, stumbled to his feet with Charley’s forceful help and staggered out into the forest. They heard him gagging, whimpering, and crashing haphazardly through the brush before all was quiet again. Charley and Derek seemed nonplussed, going back to their regular activities of digging stolen cigarettes and pillaged alcohol out of their clubhouse hidey-hole. The girls stared at the small puddle that Scotty had left behind in disgust. Fran poked at it with a stick.
“There’s pinkish goop in there,” she remarked. “And is that blood?”
“Nah. Probably just strawberry jelly from lunch,” Maddy replied, forgetting that Scotty had not actually eaten any lunch. “We’ll have to let it dry an’ then scrape it up an’ toss it. Until then, we’ll just have to stay away from it.
Their other friend, Allen, finally arrived and the girls immediately warned him away from the vomit patch.
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