by Kaitlin Ward
“Yeah, true. Cara’s really excited about it. I’m glad to see her so happy about something.” I am becoming an excellent liar.
“Cara is really great,” Brigit says, but her voice lacks conviction. Part of me wants to wax poetic about all the ways Cara is great, but part of me wonders … what makes Brigit not like her?
I notice that she’s eaten everything on her plate except the bottom couple inches of all her stalks of asparagus. “Saving the best part for last?” I ask, pointing my fork at her plate.
She chuckles. “Listen. Just because I’m vegan doesn’t mean I have to like all the vegetables out there. I can eat asparagus if I have to, but I cannot make myself choke down the thick part of the stem. It’s gross.”
“I feel the same way about broccoli. Tops only.”
“Good luck. I’m pretty sure broccoli’s on the menu for tomorrow night.” She tosses one of her asparagus ends into the fire, where it sizzles and shrivels. “Don’t do what I just did, by the way. Firehorse hates it when we waste food.”
I glance up to where Firehorse is sitting with Alexa, Cara, and Finn on the other side of the fire. He’s too engaged in conversation to notice what Brigit is doing. She’s a little rebellious, and I like it.
“Can I try?” I ask.
She grins and holds out her plate. One of the other girls frowns disapprovingly as the asparagus chunk hits the flames, but Firehorse didn’t see.
“It’s fun, isn’t it?” Brigit says. She gathers the rest of her asparagus into her fist and tosses them behind us, into the trees. “I don’t like to push it, though.”
“What … would happen if you did?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” She runs a hand over her arm, like suddenly she’s chilled. “But Firehorse doesn’t really like to be tested.”
I look through the wavering flames at Firehorse again. Smiling, laughing, totally at ease. But I’ve seen darkness in his eyes, I’ve felt it in his tone of voice. I think about my earlier revelation, about this being a cult, not a commune. It’s not like today was the very first time it crossed my mind, but I dismissed it before. Now I don’t know how I ever did.
Last week, Samantha sent me a link to an article on cults and how they recruit. Deception, manipulation, isolation. All I texted back was, LOL. But the signs are there. Firehorse is crazy manipulative. He cut Cara off from me, and as much as everyone’s pretending it’s fine that I’m here, it’s obvious to me that I was not part of the plan. Cara got a wild hair and now they have to pretend to be fine with it to save face. Control, that was another thing. And there’s this underlying current of fear no one’s really open about. Firehorse has created a routine for these people and when they don’t follow it, he is mad.
I’m starting to get kind of angry, thinking about it. Who is Firehorse, even? He’s no one. He might have gotten these others, but he will not have Cara.
Tents are creepy. Even sharing the space with Cara doesn’t help. Shadows from tree limbs overhead weave patterns over the thin fabric. Only the shadows don’t look like tree limbs, they look like claws outstretched, and then closing into fists when the wind shifts. Or the lithe bodies of murderers, edging closer, waiting for me to fall asleep.
I’m edgy, and I flick on the flashlight from Cara’s pack for about the sixth time since we got settled into bed.
“Mailee,” Cara groans. “You are driving me crazy with that thing.”
“Sorry.” I aim it toward the corner of the tent and am about to shut it off when I see movement. My heart stops. It’s my worst-case scenario (besides a murderer).
A spider is in here.
I have one of those moments, like a woman who heroically finds the physical strength to lift a car off her child, and I whip the butt of the flashlight forward and slam it down on top of the spider, grinding hard. My whole body thrums with adrenaline as I lift the flashlight. Little bits of spider flesh dangle from the end. A severed leg falls, and I suppress a scream.
“What are you doing over there?” Cara grumbles.
“Nothing.” I turn off the flashlight and burrow into my sleeping bag. “Good night.”
She mutters something incoherent that I think is also a “good night” and her breathing deepens almost immediately. What I wouldn’t give to be able to sleep as easily as she does.
I am trying really hard to be brave but the spider was too much for me. Could there be others? Could one be crawling on me right now? I press my face into my pillow and let tears come, as quietly as I can manage. As much as I hate spiders, I’ve never cried over one before, and Cara won’t understand.
Because it’s not about the spider, it’s about all of this. She misled me on purpose to get me out here, and now I’m stuck and I just want to call my parents and ask them to please, please come get me—come get both of us—but that would require cell service, of which there is none. I keep having these bursts of resolve where I feel like I want to take down Firehorse single-handedly, like I’m going to tap into this previously unknown source of power within myself and shoot laser beams out of my eyes that fry him to dust. But alone in the dark with the shadows and the spider and the isolation, that resolve melts away, replaced with unadulterated terror.
When Samantha sent me that article about cults, I laughed it off. Like, yeah, the Haven is a strange place, and there were maybe some red flags, but you read about cults in thinkpieces online; you don’t run into them in real life. I should have seen all the signs, and I should never have come up here alone without cell service, leaving my car stuck in mud and totally unusable. I am not this dumb. It’s just … part of me never believed anything bad would happen. And still refuses to believe it.
The other part is completely and utterly lost trying to understand how to get out of this. Especially since Cara is so drawn in, it’s not even funny.
“Hey, Cara,” I whisper, poking her until she rolls over toward me and opens her eyes. “What did Firehorse say that convinced you to live at the Haven? Like, what was the thing that cemented it for you?”
She sighs and rubs her eyes. “It wasn’t Firehorse who convinced me. It was Avalon.”
Great.
“She told me Firehorse was so pleased that Alexa had brought me into the group. That Alexa was so pleased, too. Everyone, and most of all, herself. I don’t know. She’s a sweet kid, Mailee, and she needs me. Everyone’s happy to have me here. No judgment, no … it’s just nice. I fit. I feel unburdened.”
Why you, though? I want to ask. But there’s no way to ask without sounding insulting. Cara’s great. Beyond great. But the fact that they were all so pleased, specifically about her, after meeting her once … I don’t know. It sketches me out big time.
The question I ask her instead isn’t much better: “Was I … making you feel burdened?”
She blinks at me. “Good night, Mailee. I’m too tired to talk anymore.”
“Good night,” I whisper, and turn back to face the side of the tent and the bits of squished spider. I am that spider now. And Cara just ground the butt of that flashlight into my heart.
I think it goes without saying that I slept like crap. On the plus side, no other spiders infiltrated our tent after the first one. At least, none that I saw. For breakfast, we had granola. No yogurt, of course. But the granola obviously came from a store—“Firehorse still buys some stuff while we work to become fully self-sustaining,” is how Cara explained it—and if you’re going to a store anyway, there must at least be some kind of dairy-free yogurt alternative.
But I’m trying not to complain, and I’m trying to appear like I’m falling into the folds of this whole thing. I even smile kindly at Finn, a piece of acting that I personally feel should win me an Oscar. It’s easier to smile at Alexa, who comes to help when we struggle a bit with the whole taking-down-our-tent business.
“It’s one of those things where they make it so easy it becomes hard,” she says. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be nice or mean. “If you do it the exact way it’s meant t
o be done, you can fold it up in two seconds, but if you deviate even a tiny bit, it takes forever. You’ll get it with practice.”
I glance across the clearing to where Alexa’s tent was set up last night. “Is that Avalon taking down your tent?”
“Yep.”
“Well that’s not embarrassing at all,” says Cara.
Alexa laughs. “Would it help if I remind you that little kids learn new skills way faster? And that Avalon’s been doing this a whole lot longer than you anyway?”
“I’m going to pretend that makes me feel like less of a failure,” I say, and Cara and I both watch Alexa as she shows us how to fold the poles from our tent.
She wasn’t wrong. It’s super easy if you do it the right way. Which, clearly, we didn’t.
“Now I’d better go help Avalon. She does fine taking the tent apart, but not so much attaching it to the pack.”
Alexa trots off, and I watch her go. She and Avalon both seem so happy and content here. Watching them, it’s hard to believe anything malicious might be going on. But then I catch a glimpse of Brigit eyeing Firehorse nervously, and I wonder how much information Alexa just doesn’t have. Same as me, minus the skepticism.
Finn sweeps Cara away as we start walking, and I feel like a major outcast. I edge toward Brigit, the only person I feel like I’ve formed any kind of bond with at all, but just as I reach her, Firehorse swoops between us.
“What’s your parents’ number?” he asks.
“Why?”
“I’m still not getting cell service even with my range extender,” he says. “So I’m going to try climbing a tree to contact them.”
This feels super made up, but it’s not like I can demand to join him in the tree. Even if he said yes, I can’t even begin to climb one.
If I get out of this alive, I’m taking a wilderness survival course ASAP.
I type my parents’ number into his phone, all the while feeling Brigit’s eyes boring into my back.
“Please let me know what they say,” I tell him. “And tell them I’m really sorry the trip is longer than I expected, but Cara and I are having fun.”
He beams at me. I do my best to match the expression, then watch as he does, indeed, scale a tree and dial his phone.
“What are the odds he’s actually talking to my parents?” I say to Brigit.
She raises both eyebrows. Right. She can say subtle things, but apparently it’s not cool if I openly question whether Firehorse is a liar.
“Don’t mind me.” I kick at a rock with my toe and send it skittering off the path. “I didn’t sleep that great, and I’m a little cranky.”
“I understand,” she says. And then after a brief silence, adds, “You seem to be good at reading people, though.”
She probably has no idea what a compliment that is to me, but I’m so pleased that I feel myself starting to blush. “I want to be an actress one day. So it’s important to really understand body language and facial cues and stuff.”
“Huh. I would never have thought about that.” Brigit stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Anyway, I just … wouldn’t let yourself get talked out of trusting your gut, is all.”
“I—”
“Hey, Mailee!” I glance behind me, following the sound of my name. It’s Richelle, one of the girls who Cara seems to have particularly bonded with. I feel like I’m not a fan, but “because Cara likes her too much and I’m jealous” is probably a pretty bad reason not to like someone. “Cara wants you to come walk with us!”
I glance at Brigit, fully intending to bring her with me, but she waves me off. “I’ll talk to you later,” she says.
And as I walk away, I swear I hear her add: “It’s probably for the best.”
A chill runs down my spine.
Cara’s very chipper, skipping along with her group of friends like this is a school field trip or something. I have to remind myself that we’re the only high schoolers here. The others may be young, but they’re not as young as us. Including Finn, who she’s starting to look a little more than platonic with. Guess I don’t blame her. But it doesn’t mean I trust him. Or any of them.
Or even Cara, right now.
Which is a thought that makes me very, very sad.
“Oh my God, Mailee,” she says, voice filled with laughter when she spots me. “You have to hear this story Finn was just telling about the first time he went camping with the group. It is hilarious.”
To be honest, I am not interested in this story at all, but for her sake, I pretend. Finn weaves a pretty good tale, I can’t lie. I am actually laughing a real laugh by the end, listening to him talk about tent collapse, tick overreactions, and tripping and rolling down a steep hill like a boulder.
“So you and Mailee really aren’t doing all that bad for your first time,” he says, slipping an arm around Cara’s waist. I glare at his hand, and Richelle catches me. I quickly rearrange my face.
“Good to know,” I say. “Because I’m a pretty serious camping virgin.”
“Yeah, her parents took her and her brother to a campground once in—what was it, Mailee, like, fourth grade? And she had so little tolerance for it that they had to leave in the middle of the night and never tried it again.”
They laugh, but it doesn’t feel like the same as when everyone laughed at Finn’s story. It’s the hurtful kind of laughter, where everyone acts like they’re laughing with you, but really they’re laughing at how much they think you suck.
“What can I say?” I keep my voice light. “I’ve always been an indoors girl.”
“But outside is so fun,” says Avalon. Great, I’m getting put down by a six-year-old.
“Outside has a lot of spiders,” I tell her.
That’s when Alexa joins us, emerging from the trees at the side of the path. She smirks, but Avalon just looks befuddled. “Spiders can’t hurt you, Mailee.”
Maybe not the ones we have around here, but has she heard of black widows? Or the freaking brown recluse? Or the Brazilian wandering spider? Alexa throws me a look that says do not pass along your irrational fear to my child, so I keep my mouth shut about it.
“I know they can’t. I just don’t like how many legs they have.”
“I wish I had eight legs.” Avalon sighs wistfully. “I could run so fast.”
“Yeah?” I laugh. Some of the people here creep the heck out of me, but Avalon’s pretty cute. “And where would you run to?”
I know at once that I’ve asked the totally wrong question. Avalon’s eyes widen and her lip quivers. “Just around the woods,” she says. “Or when we needed to go into town, I could run there so fast and we wouldn’t need to take a car on that bumpy road.”
I force a smile. “That does sound fun. Maybe I want eight legs, too.”
The others have gone silent. Did they think I meant the question to be more than it was? I figured she’d say something whimsical and childish, like “all the way to space!” or “to see the ocean!” I didn’t realize she wasn’t even allowed to have an imagination.
Her reaction concerns me. Is she … scared of Firehorse? I glance up at Alexa. She looks casual, but …
Is Alexa scared of him, too?
Just as I’m about to open my mouth, the man himself appears. “Mailee!” he says, all jovial and bouncy. “I’ve just spoken with your parents. They wished you’d told them a bit more about where you were going, but they’re happy to let you spend the weekend here.”
So he couldn’t get his range extender thing to work on the ground, but he climbs a tree a little ways and magically has a great conversation with my parents? Who are completely fine with me being gone all weekend with some strange man? This feels really wrong. But Cara looks pleased, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.
He falls into step between Alexa and me, so close to her that their fingers brush. It doesn’t seem to bother her one bit, and makes me wonder—again—what kind of relationship those two really have. I get that he has no sense of person
al space, but they have a comfort level that seems beyond platonic.
“Thank you so much for calling them,” I say. “It’s such a relief to have them know where I am.”
“Of course.” Firehorse pats my shoulder. I am quickly growing to hate when he does that. It feels condescending. “Anything I can do to make you more comfortable, Mailee.”
He says it in a very sincere tone of voice, but I have a gut feeling it was sarcasm. I’m trying not to anger him, because I’m more and more worried about what incurring his wrath could mean, but it seems like I’m failing anyway.
As the day wears on, I start to wonder if, at some point, my feet will fall off my body. If they’ll scream, “Enough!” and leap off and refuse to go anywhere ever again. I’m not a total slug or anything; I do exercise. But walking on an uneven forest path for a full day is an entirely different beast. My legs are killing me.
It’s so pathetic, but I’m starting to straggle. Cara and her new group of friends are so far ahead of me, I can’t even see them. This includes Avalon and her tiny child legs.
Brigit is closer to the back of the group, but Firehorse is hovering near her, so she hasn’t looked back at me once. Or maybe she hasn’t looked back at me once because she doesn’t care that much about my whereabouts. That’s entirely possible. I mean, why would she?
I step over a log, and I just can’t anymore. The log calls to me. So I stop and sit. Stretch out my legs before me and wince at the ache in my muscles. I want to curl up in a ball and die. Maybe it’s dramatic. But that’s how I feel.
I have no idea what time it is, so I retrieve my phone from my backpack and turn it on. 4:17. Could be worse, I guess. But I still have no clue how much longer we’ll be walking and I’m so exhausted. I shove the phone back in its pocket, drop my face into my hands, and try not to cry.
“Mailee?” I look up at the sound of Cara’s voice. “Firehorse sent me. He said he saw you sit down and he was worried about you.”