by Jeremy Bates
“Sure. Of course. To my house. When it’s ready.”
“What’s wrong with your cabin?”
Her mind was racing. What could she possibly say? Nothing. She was at a dead end with her lies, and she’d taken it too far to come clean with the truth. Not that she would give Zach the satisfaction of seeing her cave. She looked at him. He was smugly awaiting her response. Fury built inside her. All this was his fault. He was like a big dark cloud hanging over her that refused to go away. God, she’d never detested someone as much as she detested him right then. He was actually getting off on this.
“So?” Zach pressed.
Her protests were getting her nowhere. The more fuss she put up now, the more difficult it would be to tell a credible excuse later in the week, when she’d had time to think of a proper one. So she shrugged, which everyone took as an invitation.
It was a circus. It was a nightmare.
For the remainder of the evening, Katrina put on a show of having a good time, though she was having anything but. She felt like an absolute phony. Which she was. No doubt about it. And that’s what bothered her the most. The fakeness of it all. She never lied. She was an honest person. The kind who would bring a wallet to the local police station if she found one on the sidewalk.
During the drive back to the bungalow, Katrina went over everything that had happened, and she began to realize just how close-knit the community was she had joined. At Garfield High, where she had taught in Seattle, most of her colleagues never saw each other outside of work, choosing to hang out with their non-work friends—friends who would not bring their days home with them. Would not kill the night complaining about problem students or heavy workloads or curriculum changes. But in Leavenworth, with a population of a little over two thousand, the buffet table was slim pickings and you couldn’t be so choosy. If Gary the baker was having a party, you went to Gary the baker’s party. Why not? What else was going on? There certainly were no expensive clubs or restaurants. No see-and-be-seen social scenes. People, it seemed, were just people, all up for a good time, whatever and wherever that may be.
Such as a party at a cabin in the woods that didn’t exist.
How had things spiraled so far out of control?
Doesn’t matter, Katrina told herself decisively. It was done. Now she had to fix it. She began thinking of excuses to get out of the mess she’d gotten herself into, but by the time she parked her car in her driveway, she hadn’t been able to think of a single one.
Chapter 5
Zach cracked open his eyes. Darkness. Had he overslept? Was he late for work? No. The room was ink black. No morning sunlight slanting through the basement hopper windows. He turned his head toward the clock. It was 10:03 p.m.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. The entire room tilted crazily. Christ. He noticed he was still fully dressed, jacket and shoes included. His first thought: he’d drunk too much again. Second thought: where the hell had he been? He remembered. Ducks & Drakes. The teacher thing. He’d stayed until—when? Didn’t know. But it had just been getting dark when he’d wandered up his driveway. Which meant he’d only been asleep for a couple hours or so.
He stumbled to the bathroom and flicked on the light, which was way too bright for his liking. Then he took the longest goddamn leak of his life. He shook, tucked, zipped, and felt a heave in his stomach. He doubled over and vomited into the toilet bowl, which he hadn’t had time to flush yet. He vomited again and again until his throat stung with gastric acid and his eyes watered with tears. A deep breath. Some relief. But he didn’t get off the floor. There was still more that wanted to come out.
Zach had a fear of public spaces. He had first begun to dread them while he was a freshman in high school, and to this day he tried to avoid them, especially crowds. They made him feel exposed and anxious. At the age of thirteen he’d experienced his first panic attack while at a festival at Peace Park in Seattle. When the attacks began to occur more and more often, he did some research and concluded the culprit to be agoraphobia—a fear of open places. Actually, it was a little more complex than that. More like a fear of places from which escape would be difficult in case of a panic attack. In a sense, people like him were afraid of their own fear. A retarded disease if he’d ever heard of one. Up there with performance anxiety, or werewolf syndrome. But that’s what he had, what he had to live with.
Nevertheless, in January of his senior year everything changed. His parents had gone east to Spokane for the weekend to visit friends, and Zach had invited his buddy Marcus Elliot over for a sleepover. They broke into the liquor cabinet and took sips from all the bottles of spirits, getting smashed in the process. Marcus suggested they go cause some shit around the neighborhood. Zach’s standard reaction would be to decline, but this time, numbed by the booze, he found the prospect of leaving his imagined safe place didn’t bother him in the slightest. Booze was the ticket, he realized. His magic pass. It changed his life, for good and bad. The good: he could go out at night and socialize, as long as he was juiced up. The bad: he became a bit of an alcoholic in the process.
Up it came, the beer and the fries and whatever else was in his stomach, a burning projectile. Zach dry heaved until there was nothing left but fumes. But it was good for him. More relief. He felt less nauseous. Less blah. He went to the kitchen and rinsed out his mouth with a glass of water. Gave the cupboards above the counter a perfunctory glance. Nothing. At least nothing easy to prepare. He wasn’t really hungry, but he wanted something to line his stomach. Needed something if he didn’t want to be a walking zombie all day tomorrow. The Country Store Mini Mart would still be open. Even better, the McDonald’s across the street from it.
Zach carried his Trek mountain bike up the basement stairs and hopped on it. He started down Birch Street, thinking about Big Macs and McNuggets and cheeseburgers. The night was cool, the bluish-black sky filled with stars. Not for the first time he wished there was a strip joint in Leavenworth. There wasn’t. The closest was the Rainbow Roadhouse, a bar-cum-strip club outside of town. That’s where he’d spent Friday night. Where he’d met Kandy, a new dancer with nice hips and long legs and hair that smelled of watermelons. He’d paid her for a dance, then asked her out. She told him some bullshit about not dating customers. He called her a whore and spent the rest of the money in his pocket—his taxi money—on dances with other girls, to spite her. All in all it had been a shitty evening. Being caught in a downpour on the way home had made it even shittier.
And then Katrina Burton had picked him up.
Lying bitch.
The details of Ducks & Drakes might be a blur, but he could recall enough to know he didn’t believe her cockamamie story about having two places, one on the lake and one in town. It was just as bad as Kandy’s lie about not dating customers. Did everyone think he was a fucking idiot? Well, he got back at Kandy, sort of, and he got back at Katrina too. He smiled, replaying the toast he’d made. But surprisingly, she didn’t buckle. Which meant she was either incredibly stubborn, or she was telling the truth. Where was it she’d said she lived? he wondered. Wheeler Street? Well, maybe he would do some detective work and swing on by. Because if she could afford a cabin on Lake Wenatchee, she would more than likely have something pretty grand here in Leavenworth. Simple deductive logic.
He made a quick U-turn—Wheeler was over on the west side of town, pretty much as far away as you could get from McDonald’s, which was on the east side, near the school—and reached the street some five minutes later. Each property was fairly isolated from the next. Most windows were dark, except for one or two in which the bright flicker from a TV set seeped out from behind closed curtains. Zach pedaled the entire length of the road until it ended at someone’s farm. He didn’t spot Katrina’s black Honda Civic, and he became more suspicious than ever. Had she lied about where she lived in town as well? He couldn’t think of any reason why she would. Unless she was a genuine pathological liar. That would make his day, hell yeah. Hey Bob, you hear
the latest on the new teacher? Yeah, a pathological liar. Crazy. If she says she’s not, she’s lying. Ha!
He started back down the street. Halfway along he finally spotted her car. He’d missed it on the first pass because it was at the end of a long driveway, partly hidden by the branches of a large pine. The house was a modest-size bungalow. He couldn’t tell for certain, because it was draped in shadows, but it didn’t appear to be in the best of conditions.
Not a hole in the ground, he concluded. But definitely nothing special.
He was contemplating what this meant when a light flicked on in the front room. A moment later Katrina passed before the front bay window, wearing something blue. Before Zach knew it, he was off his bike and moving up the driveway to get a closer look. He stopped behind the Honda. He could see inside clearly now. Some boxes were stacked against one wall, but aside from that the room appeared to be mostly unfurnished. He could also see the start of a hallway. Doors opened off of it, but because of his angled line of sight, he couldn’t see into any of those rooms.
Katrina appeared again.
He had a much better view of her from the closer range. She was walking back and forth, her head down, as if she was looking for something. The blue thing she was wearing was a terrycloth bathrobe, sashed tightly at the waist. The throat was open, revealing the crest of her cleavage. She bent over, out of sight for a moment, stood, went to the hallway, flicked off the lights.
For a moment Zach didn’t move as he wondered what he was doing—or was about to do. The words “trespassing” and “peeping” and “stalking” all ran through his head, but he was pumped up on something, and he dismissed them just as quickly. Then he was dashing across the lawn, passing beneath the bay window. He turned the corner. The shadows were deep and black, offering him more cover. He crept forward, one hand trailing along the ivy-swathed wall. He felt frightened and electrified at the same time. His footfalls were silent on the soft grass. He came to the back of the bungalow and peered around the corner. Yellow light shone through a small window twenty feet away. He was about to start forward when the light went out, plunging the house into darkness.
That slapped Zach’s senses back into his head. He blinked, feeling like a sleepwalker who’d just come awake to find himself standing in his neighbor’s kitchen. His heart was pounding and he was sweating. What the hell had come over him? He’d never done anything like this before. He was filled with surprise and disgust. Disgust he was a fucking pervert. And shame. Jesus Christ, Zach. He quickly backtracked the way he’d come, invisible eyes on him, watching, judging. He climbed on his bike and rode home. Screw McDonald’s. He was feeling edgy and vulnerable and wrong. Like he might just have a panic attack right then and there.
He pedaled fast.
Chapter 6
Katrina woke up at six a.m., fresh and eager to start the day. That ignorant bliss only lasted a few moments until she remembered the events of the previous evening. She wilted. Zach. Goddamn Zach the hitchhiker. She recalled him announcing to the other teachers she had a cabin on the lake, the excited chatter about the party that followed, and her own reaction—standing idly by with what was no doubt a doe-in-the-headlights look stamped on her face, as if she was star struck by the idea. Party? My place? Bring it! And underlying those memories, as silent and dangerous as a crocodile slinking beneath the surface of the watering hole, was the faint yet unshakeable feeling she’d crossed a line when she’d vaguely agreed to host the party from which there was no turning back.
But there was nothing to do about that but get up and on with her day. She showered, ate an apple, then drove to Cascade High School. No who-the-hell-are-you? looks today. Most of the students had likely seen her around the hallways yesterday. Even if they hadn’t, students talk, and she would have been the subject. As she approached the English Department, she had a prickling feeling she was going to walk in to all the teachers gossiping about her party, asking for directions, what they should bring, spreading the word until soon the whole school would know about it. That didn’t happen. In fact, no one mentioned anything from Ducks & Drakes at all. At noon in the faculty lounge—a Spartan place dominated by Formica tables and chairs—she was sure Monica or Big Bob or even Helen, the art teacher, a chatterbox without a lid, was going to light a conversation that would ignite a discussion. No one did, preferring other topics such as the Mariners and the pitcher who won the Cy Young Award last year and whether the cafeteria food was healthy or not. Today it was a slice of lasagna and a roll, lean green beans, canned fruit, and veggies and dip. Big Bob said these lunches were the healthiest thing he ate all week; a couple of the female teachers tsk-tsked him. Regardless, it seemed what happened outside of school, stayed outside of school. Katrina was fine with that. Just fine indeed. And by the last bell of the day at two, she’d decided she’d worked herself up into a fuss about nothing.
She was in the parking lot, about to hop in her car, thinking about stopping by the little Italian place she’d seen the other day on Front Street and bringing home a pizza for later, when Zach strolled by, pushing a bicycle. “How are you feeling today, Zach?” she said, simply to say something.
“I don’t get hangovers,” he replied, appearing annoyed, as if he’d been asked that question a number of times today already. A gust of wind tussled his mop of brown hair. He swept it back away from his eyes, the way some of her students did, and she was reminded again of just how young he was. Tall, brash, annoying. But just a kid. He continued past her.
“Whoa, hold on there, mister,” she said. Kid or not, he wasn’t getting away with the stunt he’d pulled that easily. If she kept letting him push her around, he was only going to start pushing harder, like a playground bully. “Do you want to explain what you were trying to accomplish last night by telling everyone about my cabin?”
He gave her a look she couldn’t read. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Actually, I don’t.” He turned away, scratched his nose, turned back. “Oh—by the way, I talked to some of the other guys today. Everything’s still set for the weekend. Still good to go. I’m going to see about renting the bus.”
Katrina stiffened, as if the temperature had just plummeted twenty degrees. She knew she’d heard him right. She just couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What do you mean, ‘still on?’” she demanded.
“The party.”
“This is exactly what I mean! God, Zach. Why are you so intent on meddling in my affairs?”
“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands, appearing contrite even though she knew he was about as contrite as a snake caught sucking back a mouse. “If you didn’t want to have a party, you shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
“I never confirmed anything.”
“Sure you did.”
“No, Zach, I didn’t.” No, Zach, you little shit, I didn’t, had been on the tip of her tongue, but she held back. She would not allow herself to sink to his level. “If you remember correctly, you made the suggestion I have a party. You invited everyone.”
“You agreed.”
“I didn’t say I would for sure. In fact, I don’t believe I said anything.”
“You shrugged. Same thing.”
“No, it’s not, you lit—” Her voice was ice. Cool and hard and dangerous. “It’s not. It’s a very big difference.”
He turned away again, like he was having a tough time holding her stare. Good. Another scratch of the nose. But when he looked back, there was amusement in his eyes. Hesitant amusement, even uncomfortable amusement, but amusement nonetheless. Like someone who knew he was in the wrong, but also knew there was nothing you could do about it. “So why didn’t you just say no?” he said.
“Because you put me on the spot.”
“Whatever.”
“You don’t want us to come?” she said, mimicking him the best she could. She was getting pulled into his childish world after all, but she couldn’t put on the brakes.
> “You’re a grown woman,” he replied. “You can make up your own mind.” He shrugged. “Anyway, this really isn’t a big deal.”
“Yes it is,” she said, clipping her words.
“Why?” A kind of cunning flickered in his eyes, replacing the amusement.
He knows what he’s doing, she thought. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Trying to get me to cough up the truth.
Well, he could try until the cows came home. She was more resolved than ever to see this through.
“Listen, Zach,” she said, her voice Sunday pleasant again. “I’m going to take care of everything. Just stay out of it, okay?”
“Is that all, Miss Burton?”
She didn’t like his condescending tone. She didn’t like anything about him. “Good night, Zach.”
He started away and mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like “bitch.”
“Excuse me?” she demanded, but by now he had mounted his bike and was pedaling off.
Katrina got in the Honda. Yanked the door closed too hard. She turned onto Chumstick Highway, making a hard right, trying not to squeal the tires. They still squealed. She was enraged. Just when she thought she’d gotten out of the mess she’d gotten herself into, thought her life was going to settle back down into a regular routine, Zach comes whistling by the very next day to stir the pot.
What was his problem anyway?
But she knew, of course. He was a genuine brat. Aside from that, he was still extremely ticked off—and probably more than a little embarrassed, as he should be—about what happened Friday night on the highway, and this was his way of getting back at her. She sighed, angry and confused. Because now she was back to square one. Instead of having the ugly situation fade away on its own, as she’d naively allowed herself to believe, one of those things people get excited about when they’re drunk but never speak of again, she would once more be forced into thinking up an excuse. And ironically, to set herself free from the sticky web of lies in which she was becoming increasingly ensnared, she would have to tell yet another.