by Jae Hood
“Barbequed raccoon,” Brodie boasted, standing tall over where I sat on the front deck of our house facing the lake. “Made by yours truly.” He pointed his thumb at his massive, muscled chest as my face paled, a lump of thick barbeque wedged in my throat.
Gagging, I flew from my chair, ran across the deck, and leaned over the wooden rail. My stomach rolled as I spit and retched. Brodie, Lucy, and Mia howled with laughter. I cursed and heaved before grabbing someone’s forgotten beer sitting on the deck rail, swishing some in my mouth and spitting it out.
“I’m gonna kill you, Brodie.”
Jumping on his back, I beat him with my fists. Easily three times my size, Brodie smoothly removed me from his back and sat me down in my chair, laughing at my feeble attempt at an attack. I glared at him and huffed, but my anger ebbed away at the sight of my sister’s laughing face.
A week had passed since searching for and finding my sister at the party in Oak Bluff. Once Josie had outdriven the blond guy from the party, Lucy fell asleep with no more strange ranting and raving. Josie had helped me put her to bed. When Lucy had woken up the next morning, it was as though nothing had taken place. I’d been too scared to bring it up again. Visions of the blond boy trailing us still flashed in my mind from time to time. It was best Lucy didn’t know he was friends with the Montgomerys.
I was pretty impartial when it came to the Montgomerys. I wasn’t sure who to blame for my father’s death anymore, but Lucy was different. She blamed them all … with gusto. The mere mention of the Montgomery name sent her into a frenzy. Lucy hated them not only for our father’s demise, but for our mother’s departure as well.
Other than two parties we’d attended, the week had gone by relatively smoothly. There had been no more random phone calls from Bryce to “Cassie,” which seemed to have disappointed Josie judging by the way she moped around the cake shop. And fretting over our missing money had been in vain. After calling the Social Security office, I had spoken with a representative who promised to work everything out. The money had been deposited into someone else’s account. My missing money had appeared in my account by Wednesday. I’d paid all the bills right on time, taking some of life’s heavy weight off my shoulders. Nana felt so much better that she’d come back to work on Tuesday with a big grin on her face. She continued to refuse to discuss the matter of the safe she’d forced upon me.
I’d found the perfect place to hide Nana’s safe, although it was somewhat of a struggle. After racking my brain, I had wrapped the safe in several garbage bags and buried it underneath a huge white oak near a stream in one corner of our property. An old, rusty barbed wire fence marked our property line. I’d tied a small, pink ribbon on the wire next to the tree to remind myself of the safe’s location.
Friday night rolled around, and we were all hanging out on the deck of our house, an old ritual we hadn’t practiced in a while. Brodie declared it a night of debauchery with underage drinking and gratuitous drug use. Nothing heavy, of course. Just a little weed courtesy of Peyton who was passed out on a lounge chair.
Lucy had the brilliant idea to draw on his face while he was unconscious. She was sitting on his lap with a black liquid eyeliner pen in her hand. A Hitler-type mustache was drawn above his upper lip. Mia was snapping photos and posting them online as she chuckled below her breath. To put it simply, we were having an amazing Friday night.
Until the raccoon incident.
“Don’t be mad at me, Rue.” Brodie laughed at my scowl. “Those raccoons are mean as hell. They deserved to die. They were eating the vegetables out of Nana’s garden so I set up a live trap and put them out of their misery. It was very humanitarian, really.” Brodie punctuated his declaration with a disgusting belch.
“I hear they’re very clean animals.” Lucy smirked at my perturbed look. She was drawing an intricate spider web-like tattoo on Peyton’s neck as he snored.
“I think they eat shit. How is that clean?” I snatched up my red cup and took a swig.
Lucy finished her artwork and climbed off Peyton’s lap. She joined Mia and me at the table.
Brodie leaned against the deck rail, grinning like an opossum. “Mia, put on some of that old school hippity hop music,” he bellowed, removing his shirt to reveal his huge chest. “Get your phones ready, girls. I’m fixin’ to show y’all something epic.”
Mia rolled her eyes but did as he asked. She strolled inside through the sliding glass doors. The outside speakers began booming, the sound reverberating over the still lake and filling the deep, dark woods with the lyrics of an old hip hop song.
Laughing, I grabbed my phone and began recording. Brodie sauntered seductively to where Peyton sat sprawled out in the lounge chair with his head tipped sideways. His mouth was hanging open and he snored loudly. A trail of drool trickled from one corner of his mouth.
Brodie straddled his legs, swaying his hips from side to side with the rhythm of the music. Grabbing a handful of Peyton’s hair, he began thrusting toward Peyton’s sleeping face. The unconscious boy never woke up. Brodie slung his black zombie shirt helicopter-style over his head as he twerked to the beat.
“YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, this is going everywhere!” Lucy laughed, holding her phone in the air.
After the song ended, Brodie grabbed the eyeliner pen from the table and wrote on one of Peyton’s bare cheeks before he was satisfied with our cousin’s inevitable humiliation.
“Let’s put him in one of the skids and see how long it takes him to wake up and realize he’s in the middle of the lake,” Brodie suggested, smirking.
“Um, what if he wakes up, falls in the lake, and drowns, Brodie?” I asked, as I seemed to be the only voice of reason.
Brodie glared at me. “You’re such a buzz kill, man.”
“Dude, why? Because I don’t want my cousin to drown?”
“Maybe he’s already dead,” Mia said. “I haven’t seen him breathe in a hot minute.”
We all stopped what we were doing to stare at Peyton who, eventually, let out a grizzly-like snore.
“Nah, he’s good,” I said.
“Okay, how about we put him in the blow-up raft and push him in the pool?” Brodie asked. “That way if he falls in we’ll get to him in time.”
He shot us all a perverse grin as he pulled on his shirt. We sat for a moment and exchanged thoughtful glances before I spoke up.
“That’ll work.”
Brodie let out a war cry as he picked Peyton up and threw him over his shoulder. Peyton never flinched.
We followed Brodie down to the small, rectangular pool near the lake, snickering as he laid Peyton in the raft, cradling his head so as not to hurt him. Brodie and I shoved him off the edge of the pool into the water, giggling as Peyton snored louder.
Lucy and Mia continued to record him as he drifted below the fat, white, Mississippi moon. The raft cast small ripples over the surface of the water.
We sat around the pool for a while, dangling our naked feet in the cool water while chatting and waiting in anticipation for Peyton to wake up and have his inevitable freak-out.
Lucy and Mia uploaded their videos online. I didn’t because I was a firm believer that any form of social media was the devil, thanks to Lucy. Watching her stalk people on different mobile apps for hours on end was enough to make a person yank their hair out in frustration.
All became quiet for a while as I stared up at the blanket of stars hanging above me. I began identifying my favorite constellations, which reminded me of Tanner. Pushing his face from my mind, I refocused on the twinkling above.
My sister’s sudden movement snapped me out of my thoughts. Lucy jumped up from where she’d been perched near the pool, pulling her feet from the water as she stood to her full height with the moon directly behind her. Her body was a mere silhouette framed in the middle of the giant glowing orb.
A wild, chillingly-familiar look flashed across her face, causing me to shiver. Mia noticed as well and shot me a worried look. Mia a
nd I screamed as a sudden flash of lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating us all in a brilliant white light before fading away. It was followed by an ear-popping clap of thunder that quaked the earth around us. Lucy remained still, staring into space.
“It’s here … the storm’s here.” Lucy’s eyes were fixed on nothing.
I grabbed Lucy’s hand, shaking her slightly and trying to bring her back from whatever planet she was on. Snapping out of it, she abruptly peered down at me.
“What?” She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.
I didn’t get a chance to respond because her phone started chirping, alerting her of an incoming text. Lucy darted to the table, grabbed her phone, and plopped down on a chair. Brodie and I exchanged concerned glances. He shrugged, turning his head to the sky with his brow wrinkled, and watched as storm clouds drifted across the moon.
“Oh, shit!” Lucy hissed, glaring down at her phone. “Jeremy Stone just sent a group message telling everyone that some Birchwood kids are in Mayhaw trying to start some trouble …”
Lucy’s voice trailed off as Brodie and I stood and walked over to her. Her face turned red, illuminated by the tiny lights surrounding the pool.
“Including the Montgomerys,” she finished, staring at me. Her lips were drawn into a frown and her small features looked entirely too menacing.
Lucy’s words soaked in and my body froze, the blood in my veins becoming ice water. The Montgomerys were in Mayhaw? Could … he be in Mayhaw? And if he was there, was it because of me?
I tried to discretely catch Mia’s attention, but she was so absorbed with the look on Lucy’s face that she never looked my way. Besides Josie, Mia was the only one I’d confessed my secret attraction to.
“The Montgomerys are in Mayhaw? Hell, yeah! That’s all I need to make my night freaking perfect!” Brodie declared with a grin.
It didn’t take much to get Brodie riled up. A little weed and a lot of beer and he was down for whatever, including a good fight. I avoided fighting at all costs. I couldn’t blame him for his way of thinking, not really. Living in a small, Southern town, there wasn’t much else to do besides kiss, cuss, drink, smoke, and fight. And Brodie did it all. He reveled in it.
It was my phone to ring next. I snatched it from my pocket and Josie’s fishy-mouth expression glowed in my hand.
“Hey.” My mind reeled over the fact the Montgomerys were in Mayhaw.
“Rue, where are you? Are Brodie and Peyton with you?” Josie’s voice sounded nervous and close to tears.
I sat up straight in my chair and caught Brodie’s attention. “I’m at home. Yeah, they’re here, but Peyton’s currently indisposed.”
Josie began murmuring and crying before a childlike squeal left her mouth with the distinct sound of a struggle in the background. Horror washed over me, causing me to shoot up to my feet. Blood drained from my face. I clenched the phone in my hand and began to pace back and forth as everyone stared at me.
“Hello?” an unfamiliar male voice said.
“Who is this? Where’s Josie? Put her on the phone now!”
“Pffftttt. Josie’s fine. She just didn’t wanna let go of the phone,” the voice said, laughing and sounding slightly drunk.
His words caused me to slow my pacing until I found myself at a standstill, my heart hammering away at my chest.
“You best not hurt Josie,” I hissed, my forehead breaking into a cold sweat. Wiping the wetness from my face with the back of my hand, I turned away from the prying eyes of my relatives and waited for a response.
The male voice ignored my demand. “Tell Brodie and Peyton to meet us at the old train station. We have some business to discuss. And make sure you come with them, that is if you want to see your cousin again.”
With that, he ended the call, leaving me standing there with my mouth gaping. I pressed Josie’s name on the phone screen with my thumb, waiting impatiently for her or the male voice to answer, but it went straight to voicemail each time. The desire to scream in frustration was overwhelming, but I tried to remain calm.
“What’s going on?” Lucy asked.
“I think the Montgomerys have Josie.” I tried to call her once more, cussing below my breath. The call went to voicemail yet again. “Some guy took her phone. They’re at the old train station. He wants me, you, and Peyton to meet him there.”
“Shit!” Brodie dropped to his knees, reached into the pool, and yanked on the rope that drooped from the side of the raft.
He began shaking Peyton and screaming his name. Peyton continued to snore. Brodie grabbed the side of the raft and hoisted it over, dumping Peyton into the water.
Peyton broke the surface, coughing and sputtering. Pure shock, then anger contorted his face. The tousled curls on his head were plastered against his face. The eyeliner melted down his cheeks and neck leaving a wavering black mess on his skin.
“What the hell, man?” His eyes locked on Brodie’s in accusation.
“The Montgomerys have Josie at the old train station! Let’s go!” Brodie yelled, his voice tinged in panic.
Peyton’s anger dissipated. Sluggishly, he made his way to the pool steps. His clothes clung to his body as he emerged from the water.
“Call everyone!” Brodie bellowed over his shoulder, darting behind Peyton and jumping into his truck.
He spun down the long driveway. The truck veered wildly at an alarming speed. I cringed, terrified of my frantic cousins crashing the vehicle in their haste.
Lucy and Mia tapped at the screens on their phones, alerting everyone of what was going on. I was too frantic to call anyone. My hands trembled at the possibility of Josie being injured. Lucy relayed that she sent a group text to everyone in her phone as the three of us darted across the lawn, easily crawling into my Jeep since the top was off. The air smelled of rain, but I didn’t have it in me to worry about a possible downpour at that moment.
“Are you all right to drive?” Mia asked.
I nodded glumly, my thoughts on Josie. At that moment, I swore on my father’s grave if someone hurt her I’d kill them. My body was on autopilot as I changed gears and shoved my foot against the gas pedal.
Pushing the Jeep to the limit, we flew down the old country roads toward the train station, which stood near the edge of town near the Tenn-Tom. The wind slapped my hair across my face leaving it stinging and sore.
The station had been abandoned years ago, becoming a hangout for the local kids. An ancient Coke machine still stood on the platform, faded and rusty in its old age. A dozen or so cars and trucks sat on each side of the lot. Mayhaw kids were on one side and the unfamiliar kids from Birchwood were on the other.
I maneuvered around the familiar-looking vehicles of the kids I went to high school with. Josie’s truck was parked precariously near the train station, her driver’s side door slightly ajar. I could tell the vehicle was abandoned by the dim light that shone from inside.
Brodie’s large red truck was parked next to it. As we pulled up to the station, headlights shone against my rearview mirror. Vehicles flowed in as I parked next to where Brodie and Peyton stood. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Brodie’s arm wrapped around a sobbing Josie, and my heart wrenched for her.
In the middle of the dirt parking lot stood two guys, one of whom I recognized immediately. He was the same shaggy-haired boy from the party in Birchwood, the same shaggy-haired boy from the party in Oak Bluff … the same shaggy-haired boy who Lucy claimed was the man of her dreams. Chance Hayes.
Standing beside him was another guy around my age. He was about six feet tall with dark blond hair slicked back against his head, making him look like a younger version of a shade-tree car salesman. The evil glint in his eyes caused me to swallow nervously. He and Chance glared distastefully in Brodie’s direction.
I found myself scanning the many faces of the other kids who stood behind them, searching in vain for Tanner. I hoped he was there so I could get one more look at him. But I was also terrified
to see him as well. If he was there and didn’t already know my true identity, he would by the end of the night. The truth of that weighed heavily on me, and I was overcome with simultaneous relief and sadness that he wasn’t among the large group of kids facing us.
I grabbed the handle of the door and shot my sister a firm stare. Lucy stared straight ahead at Chance. Her face no longer showed happiness and yearning. Only hatred and vengeance shone.
“Lucy, stay in the Jeep,” I commanded.
Lucy nodded minutely, but it only made me doubtful.
Mia clambered over the seat, following me out of the Jeep. I grabbed Josie’s hand, tugging her away from my burly cousin’s arms. She murmured my name, throwing her arms around me. Her makeup was smeared, leaving dark shadows under her eyes. Josie’s body trembled in my arms as I gave her a tight hug.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, my voice muffled against her neck.
“We were hanging out on the platform when they pulled up.” She withdrew herself from my arms and swiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “They demanded I call Brodie and Peyton. When they didn’t answer, they told me to call you.”
“What do they want?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me. They just said they needed to talk.” She shrugged, shuddering slightly. “The one guy was pretty rough, grabbing my arm, but Chance stopped him.”
“What the hell do you want, Drew?” Brodie bellowed, walking away from us and creeping toward the two guys in the middle of the lot. “Why did you call us down here?”
The guy with the slicked-back hair gave Brodie a menacing grin and a dark chuckle. “Why did I call y’all down here? You mean you don’t know? I called you down here because of the broken boundary rules.”
My heart stopped. Josie’s eyes met mine as soon as the words left Drew’s mouth. The blood drained from my face and Josie’s as well. Cold terror consumed me.
Had we been caught?
Brodie approached the opposing group, stopping just a few feet shy of where Drew stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “What are you talking about? We didn’t break the boundary rules. And what’s it to you even if we did? You’re not a Montgomery.”