When We Were 8

by catt dahman

  Angel brushed away the apprehension from her friends and claimed she wasn’t hurt, only sore and had the wind knocked out of her twice. Her gut and chest were aching, but she was more concerned about Nelwynn than herself. “He….” She didn’t finish.

  The eight girls and Rex Wisdom looked at John. He was dead. That part was clear because of all the blood that covered the rocks, the two girls, and John; they were drenched in red.

  Whitney checked John’s pulse anyway, scared to find one and scared not to find one; she shrugged and sat down.

  “Wow,” Angel said. She shivered as she looked at Nelwynn’s head.

  Jill looked at Angel. “Yeah, wow. I…I didn’t…I didn’t plan that. He was….”

  “He was about to kill Nelwynn,” Angel said pragmatically. “What else could you do? You had no choice. What you did was to save her life. It’s clear that the bastard would have killed her. What an asshole, you know? What a total asshole.” She kicked a rock at John’s body, and the rock tapped his side.

  Nelwynn cried, afraid to look at John’s body. “But he’s dead? He’s really dead?”

  Whitney cocked her head, “Yeah, he is. I don’t guess we can take that back, right? It’s done. No take-backs with this shit.”

  “I’m going to prison,” Jill said.

  “You were saving her though,” Angel argued.

  “We called them here. We attacked them.” Tiffany sniffed back tears. “We can say what he was doing, and I mean, Jill did save Nelwynn. We will just leave out a few things like the ant mound plan, calling them, and fighting them first. They just showed up. That way Jill is clear.”

  “I think she might go to a juvenile facility if anyone said a word about the other. I mean if someone said we called them and we planned this, it could look like…what is it? Premediation?” Cassie asked.

  “Premeditation. First degree. They electrocute for that,” Jill said.

  “Not kids!” Samantha cried.

  “If someone was more believable than us, then Jill could be in big trouble,” Cassie said.

  “We can pretend we never saw him and leave the body or hide it,” Nelwynn said through her tears.

  “Hide it? He knows,” Jill pointed to Rex.

  “The rapist knows? We can tell the police that and discredit him,” Samantha said.

  “No. NONONONONO. I can’t talk about that again. Just no,” Angel begged. “Besides, then we do look like we wanted revenge and maybe Jill killed the wrong one…bad idea.”

  “I don’t think it would be much more difficult to hide two bodies than it is to hide one,” Whitney said. She got up and went to Rex where she wrapped some of her tee shirt around his mouth in case he wanted to argue his case loudly.

  Tiffany looked at Rex critically. “Remember what he did to Angel. If Jill went to prison, it would be like he won, wouldn’t it?” Rex’s eyes were large and begging, but Tiffany showed no mercy on her face.

  “But about John…what I did to him…that was an accident. You’re suggesting that we do something that is not an accident,” said Jill as she looked at Cassie and hoped she would have a better plan.

  “Why’d you bring a knife, Jill?” Cassie didn’t get an answer, but she didn’t expect one, not really. She only wanted to make a point. “You brought it in case something went wrong. And sure enough, something went shit-storm wrong.” She spread her arms and looked around. “You were prepared.”

  “I can’t do something bad to Rex. I can’t let Jill go to prison either. I can’t do anything,” Samantha wailed. “I have no plans at all. My plans all suck. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I do. I know what we can do with the bodies so they’ll never be found. It’ll take work, but I know how we can do it. The other part….” Whitney looked at Rex and then spat in his face. “Rapist. Pervert. Asshole.” She kicked him in the gut.

  “You know what to do for sure?”

  “Yeah, I have a perfect plan to get rid of two bodies,” she said, turning her face to the incoming, black clouds and smiled thinly. “I know and it’s easy. It’s almost here…the answer I mean.”

  Cassie sighed and said, “I know the rest. I mean I know what to do before we do whatever Whitney has in mind, but we have to all be together for this. It has to be all of us in on it. We have to agree and be a part.”

  “We’re already a part,” Angel said.

  “No, I mean. A real part. Jill did John. The rest of us have to get our hands just as bloody, so to speak. We have to finish this,” Cassie said. “Blood oath time.” She walked over to Rex and saw him strain at the ropes. Flopping like a fish, he tried to yell around the gag. Without thinking about it too much, Cassie picked up a rock and smacked his head.

  Blood welled up, and he fought, but Cassie threw herself across his body and told the others, “Come on. Finish it. We have no choice except to protect Jill. Blood oath. I drew blood. We all do it. Not one but all.”

  “Oh….”

  Cassie nodded. “Come on, Angel.”

  Angel came over and took the same jagged rock that fit her fist and pounded it in the same spot as hard as she could. “You evil, cocky, cruel, rude, nasty bastard. You hurt me,” she said as shook nervously and then took her place to hold Rex’s legs down.

  Whitney gulped and looked at Angel, then at Jill, and then at John’s body. She walked over and grabbed the rock and then swung it with all her power. She thought she heard bone cracking. “Only once? Can I hit him again?”

  “Whatever you want,” Cassie said. She was surprised.

  Whitney struck three more times, and Rex stopped moving. He might have been dead, but no one checked. “That was for Angel. I hate pervs.”

  “Thanks,” Angel said softly.

  Nelwynn, still unsteady on her feet, walked over, and as she cried, she barely tapped his head, hitting a spot that was dented and bloody. Cassie nodded that it was okay. After she finished, Nelwynn went over to vomit in some brush, unable to look at either boy. She wiped at her eyes and her mouth and then at her nose.

  “Awe, Nelwynn. That’s all?” Whitney asked.

  “Yeah,” Nelwynn said as she stared at the rocks.

  Tiffany went over to Rex and made a face as she looked at the bloody rock. Instead of using it, she took another one with a jagged edge that was slightly larger. With both hands, she slammed it into his nose and saw the flesh and bone smash open. He twitched. ‘Rex, Rex, Posed. Hit him in the nose,” she said dully.

  “Damn,” Cassie whispered, “pissed off much?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “Rapist. I have no use for him. He deserves it. Evil.”

  Meg took her turn and barely grazed his head because she couldn’t stand to look at the blood and gore. “I can’t do anything else. Please don’t make me. I hate him so much, but I’m scared.” She heaved as she cried. Her adventuresome spirit was broken, and she was miserable: afraid and sick.

  “It’s okay, Meggie. It isn’t easy, but you did it. You made him suffer for his sins,” Cassie said. “Sam?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to. We all have to. You’re one of us. You know he deserves it.”

  Samantha looked at Angel and asked, “Was it bad? Did it hurt? I mean what he did to you? Tell me that part again. Did he hurt you badly?”

  Angle nodded and said, “It was gross. It hurt so much. I still ache inside. I hurt a lot. What if he gave me a disease, or what if he got me pregnant?” Angel burst into tears and sat down beside Rex as she rocked herself. She looked smaller and paler. She was the image of every girl who had ever been taken advantage of. “And…and…he…he said I should be…glad he did it…bah, bah…because I’m fat,” Angel almost screamed the last three words. Jill and Samantha flinched, and Cassie closed her eyes for a second.

  Whitney went over to hold her and smooth Angel’s hair as Angel whimpered. ”I wanna beat his head some more, but he’s probably dead. I’d want him alive to suffer for saying that.”

  Samantha went to Rex and took the j
agged rock, and she slammed it down onto his head. Again. Again. Three more times. She didn’t seem ready to stop anytime soon.

  Jill went over and took the rock after Samantha hit Rex seven times and quietly told Samantha that it was done. Jill understood how it was to feel as if it were impossible to stop hitting. As Samantha crawled to the side, weeping and shaking uncontrollably, Jill used the rock and hit Rex just once. It was her token.

  The rock made a splatting sound.

  Chapter 7

  “You already did a part. You didn’t have to,” Cassie told her.

  “I had to,” said Jill and sighed, “and my, God. We killed them.”

  “They were bad. Rex raped Angel, and John tried to beat Nelwynn to death.”

  Jill looked at Cassie, “Yeah. We caused the second part though.”

  “John ran over Lucy and tried to shoot her,” Cassie said.

  “A long time ago. But, yeah, we did it. We can’t undo it, I suppose. Now what do we do?” Jill asked Whitney.

  Whitney explained carefully and with exquisite detail, leaving nothing out. The other seven girls nodded and understood their roles; Whitney’s plan was perfect.

  They went to work tossing bloodied rocks into the river to erase the blood from the shoreline. They used the few hats they had to carry water and wash the smallest stones clean and used tree limbs to rake the banks until there was no trace of blood. The clouds were still rolling in and looked dark against the remaining light. The air was muggy and heavy. They couldn’t trust the rain, as heavy as it would most likely be, to wash the rocks well enough.

  “It’s going to be a really bad storm,” Whitney said. “I love bad weather. I bet this river will swell fast with the rain and get deep and dangerous very fast. It would be crazy to be out in the water when the rain hits.”

  “It would be.”

  The boys’ bodies were hard to pull to the water, and the girls had to stop and cool off in the river, washing away their sweat as they worked. The storm was moving fast, and their plan had to be timed right because if they waited, it would be too late for anything.

  Once the bodies were in the water, they floated.

  Whitney and Meg were the best swimmers besides Jill, but they decided it was better not to have Jill and her injured leg in the water more than necessary. Meg kept her nose crinkled as she and Whitney dragged the boys by their arms into the river, then around the bend, and then out of sight. Cassie went with them to help, pushing the bodies along when the current slowed. They had a long way to swim to get to where the boys had left their car, but they had no choice but to follow the plan.

  “Now what?” Nelwynn asked as she watched the other three girls pull the boys’ bodies down the river.

  “We wait,” Jill told her. Earlier they had to wait, too. It was always the waiting that was the worst. But this time, it was only a few minutes of waiting before the rain began, a grey, heavy, pelting rain that seemed to cascade down from buckets.

  “Hurry,” Nelwynn looked at the sky and let the water pelt her face.

  The river rose quickly as the flash flood took effect. Jill said, “Now, get in the water. It has to feel true. We have to do it right.”

  Samantha, Angel, Nelwynn, Jill, and Tiffany waded into the water and fought the water’s power. Within minutes, the river had swollen, and the strong current threatened to drag them down stream. Tiffany squeaked as her shin hit a rock and bled.

  “Are you okay?” Samantha asked her.

  Tiffany shrugged. “I guess. It’s just one more cut and bruise, right?”

  Nelwynn winced as she said, “I hope Cassie, Whitney, and Meg are okay in this. This is all insane. The plan, I mean.”

  “We didn’t have anything better, and it’s the only way we can save Jill. And ourselves,” Samantha said. She jumped as thunder exploded.

  Jill and the other four dragged themselves out and stood on the bank a few minutes, shivering in the cold rain. Minutes before, they had been sweating, and now they were chilled by the cold water, icy rain, and cool air.

  “We felt the current. We were banged around and stupidly didn’t get out. We didn’t know how dangerous it was until we started getting slammed around and carried over there to the big rocks,” said Jill as she pointed. She recited the plan they had quickly practiced. Luckily, they hadn’t been pulled over to the most dangerous place in the river; the water was rushing and frothing against the large rocks; sprays leaped upwards to fall back with the rain.

  “We made it out. We learned a lesson,” Angel said. She had memorized the story well.

  “We sure did,” Nelwynn said.

  “Where are they?” Angel worried for the other three of their friends.

  “They’ll be there. Let’s go. We’ll meet at the campfire. They’ll be there,” Jill said. She, too, worried about the girls who were in the water with the corpses, trying to make sure it looked as if the boys jumped in the water fully clothed to cool off and had been swept away and beaten by the rocks. It sounded unbelievable that the boys would be in their clothing and shoes, but Cassie said it was about right for them and their low-class nature and that no one would find it odd at all.

  Jill started to argue, but Cassie reminded all of them that she knew low class. It made Jill a little sad to know that was true.

  At the washed-out campfire ring, the five girls stood under the heavy rain and waited; the other three weren’t there yet. They wished they had a roaring fire instead of the wet, muddy logs that sat in the center of their usual hangout.

  Jill chewed her nails and wondered if something had gone wrong. Maybe her friends were hurt in the river. There were at least a hundred problems that could arise and ruin their plans, and the water was dangerous. Anything could go wrong.

  “Where are they, Jill?” Tiffany asked. “Should we go find them?”

  “We have to wait. I can’t even think I’m so cold,” Angel said. “This is the biggest rain I’ve ever seen. How did Whitney know how bad it would be?”

  “She knows weird shit,” Nelwynn said. She didn’t curse often, but she was miserable and impatient. She felt they should look for the other three, but before she could start her petition to go look for the trio, Whitney, Cassie, and Meg appeared in the dreary rain.

  Whitney limped a little as she walked. “That was so real. I thought we were goners.”

  “Did you….”

  “Oh, yeah. They floated down stream and banged on every rock there was,” Whitney said. “They were being beaten to a pulp in the storm and in the river the last we saw.”

  “What took so long?” Angel demanded. ”I was scared to death.”

  “John’s throat. Cassie realized that his wounds didn’t fit with the plan of drowning and being beaten up and broken. They’d get cut up and bleed in a flooded river, but the wound was wrong and we’d get caught. Anyway, she fixed him.”

  “Fixed?” Jill asked.

  Cassie heaved a big sigh and said, “I had to smack him up in the neck and face with a rock so it all fit, okay? I had to beat his throat with a rock. I did it down deep.”

  “I saw bones,” Meg whispered.

  “Well, it had to be deep,” Cassie told her. “I fixed it. If we had let that slip….”

  “That’s just horrible,” Angel said.

  They trudged back to the cabin where Jill’s father and Uncle Mike paced, wondering where the girls were and if they were safe.

  “I was about to go look for you,” Bill Havilland thundered. “Didn’t you notice the storm?” He never got angry and was usually easy going, but his face was lined with worry, and he pointed at Jill as he raised his voice. As she saw her leg bleeding, he stopped being angry and hugged her before ordering them to get into dry clothing and wrap themselves in blankets.

  “Dad, we messed up. We really did,” Jill said. She meant far more than her words implied, and it made her face a mask of grief.

  Bill Havilland took it to mean she was ashamed of worrying him, scared from the raging wat
ers, and embarrassed to be yelled at. His face softened as he hugged her. “But get changed and get warm, ladies. I don’t want you dying from pneumonia or something else.”

  Bill Havilland and Uncle Mike used the first aid kit to patch Jill’s leg, which was one of the more serious wounds. Bill thought she might need stitches but settled for scrubbing it clean before using special glue to seal the injury and bandage it. Jill winced and squirmed as he worked and realized as her father talked to her that the hole was deep.

  She wondered how she had walked and speculated that she had gone into some kind of shock from her injury and because she saw John trying to kill Nelwynn.

  Almost all of the other girls needed their scrapes and cuts cleaned and band aids placed on wounds. Bill Havilland shook his head often and grimaced as he worked. Uncle Mike patted the girls’ hands or let them squeeze his hand as Bill worked, looking at them with kind, but curious eyes.

  “All this from a fight with a flooded river?” Bill muttered.

  Mike nodded and said, “I think they had a fight for sure. I’m glad they won the battle. That says a lot, doesn’t it? They are very young and yet managed to use their wits and win a war.”

  Jill narrowed her eyes, but Mike betrayed nothing but sympathy. She was creeped-out at how close his words were to the truth. Cassie gave Jill a wide-eyed glance as she listened.

  Whitney had a swollen ankle, but Bill said it was a deep bruise that would heal within a few weeks at the most if she stayed off of it and didn’t try to run through the pain.

  “Oh, Dr. Havilland….”

  “You can see the doctor for a second opinion, Whitney. I’m sure he might find something else and put you in a cast for a few months,” he said as he grinned, “or you can trust a vet.”

  Whitney gulped and replied, “No, I believe you. I’ll need a note for class, but can we say maybe for two weeks?”

  “I can agree to two weeks if you don’t cheat.”

  Whitney agreed, glad she would be back to running sooner than if she saw the doctor. Her parents would go along with Dr. Havilland, luckily for her.