Girl in a Bad Place

by Kaitlin Ward

  He leaves, but even after his footsteps have retreated, I don’t dare talk to Cara about this more. Not if Richelle is apparently trying to eavesdrop.

  “I guess we should go to sleep,” Cara says. “We can … figure this out in the morning.”

  “Yeah.” I lay back on my pillow, but sleep doesn’t come so easily this time. My worries about bugs crawling on me have returned, and I need to do a check before I can rest peacefully(ish). I feel around until I find my flashlight, and try to click it on. Nothing happens. Have I overused this thing, killed its batteries?

  “My flashlight’s not working,” I say, frowning.

  “Good. You’ll sleep better if you don’t have that thing as a crutch.”

  I sigh. I miss Cara. Actual Cara, not Condescending Nature Expert Cara. “I’ll just turn on my phone for a second. At least it’ll be good for something.”

  I reach into my backpack and dig out my phone. Which, oh crap, I forgot to turn off after I checked the time earlier. The battery’s not too drained, though, thank God. I’m at 53%. No service, though. Not that I was expecting it.

  But.

  I sit up straight. At some point during our travels this afternoon, I did have service, at least for a second. I have four text notifications. I open my messages. They’re all from Gavin.

  Mailee I know something went wrong. You should be back by now and your phone keeps going to voicemail. I’m telling your parents where you are. I hope you’re not mad.

  I talked to your parents. They said they spoke to Firehorse and you both on the phone and that you and Cara are on a camping trip with the commune all weekend. That’s a lie isn’t it? You didn’t talk to them. You’re still not picking up so I know you don’t have service. I don’t know what to do. I hope you’re ok.

  YOU HAVE TO GET OUT OF THERE. I did some research on Firehorse and it’s bad. I hope by some miracle you get this text. Just get out of there any way you can. Immediately.

  That third text contains a couple images. Screenshots from an article about a group called Sons of Truth. It features headshots of the members, one of whom is Firehorse—his hair is different and he has a beard but it’s unmistakably him—with the name John Merle underneath. I don’t recognize any of the others, just a bunch of middle-aged, generic-looking white guys with scowls. They’re considered a potential threat by the US government, and were thought to have aggressive militaristic plans.

  Until they all fell completely off the radar, thought to have disbanded. The article questions whether they really have, or if they’ve just gone underground until the heat is off.

  I turn to ice. Are the others coming here? Are they involved in the Haven somehow, even if I haven’t seen them? I’m shaking as I read Gavin’s last text.

  I really hope you get these texts, Mailee. I’m telling your parents what I’ve found, and I’m telling them I think you and Cara are in serious danger. Please do whatever you can to keep yourself safe.

  My hands quake.

  “Cara,” I hiss.

  She rolls over and looks up at me. “Mailee, we’re not supposed to be talking.”

  “I know.” I slide back down into my sleeping bag and move my face close to hers so I can talk as quietly as possible. “But you have to read this.”

  She takes my phone with a small sigh. In the eerie glow of the screen, I watch her eyes grow wider and wider. “What is he planning?” she whispers, barely audible.

  I shake my head. “I think it’s bad. Brigit’s really worried.”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  Finally, she sees what I’m seeing. Finally. But I’m worried that now, it might be too late. “Yeah. Like, right now, I think. And we can call someone and get help.”

  She bites her lip. “What about Avalon? I don’t think I can leave her in danger like this. She’s only a little kid … ”

  I don’t want to leave Avalon, either. Problem is, Firehorse has guns and we don’t. And even if we somehow managed to get the guns, we don’t know how to use them. We also don’t know what he’s planning. I assume he has no problem killing anyone he perceives as a threat, but he might not be planning to kill those he doesn’t. His probably romantic relationship with Alexa might keep her safe. “What are we going to do, though? I think we need to let the police handle this. But first we have to get ourselves out of here.”

  Cara nods, but I know she wants to warn Alexa. I think of Brigit, who’s already scared, and I’m worried for her. For all of them. We can’t say anything to Alexa. She’d go straight to Firehorse and that could be dangerous for us all.

  “I think it’s safer,” I say, “if none of them know anything. I hope I’m not wrong about that. He’s more likely to hurt the people who know too much.”

  I can’t believe I’m saying these words. Calmly discussing how to escape from someone who could kill us any second.

  “You’re right.” She hands me back my phone, and I shut it off. “We should pretend to be asleep for a couple hours, probably. So no one’s up when we go.”

  “Good idea.”

  We both burrow back into our sleeping bags, laying quietly and tensely in the darkness. At one point, she whispers, “I’m sorry,” but I can’t bring myself to reply with the standard, “It’s okay.”

  So I burrow in deeper, and pretend I heard nothing.

  There’s nothing to do now but run.

  We don’t take our tent; that’d be like setting off a firework to announce our departure. We only take my smaller pack because we don’t want to be burdened and we plan to run out of here as fast as our legs can carry us anyway. We don’t need much other than our sleeping bags, both of which I manage to hook onto my pack. I glance toward Brigit’s tent, feeling conflicted, but she’s sharing it with someone else. I can’t trust that her tent-mate wouldn’t shout for Firehorse the second we said we were leaving.

  Cara and I creep along until we’re deeper in the trees. We can’t take the path because it’s too obvious and Firehorse will find us in ten seconds. And we can’t be too close to the path for the same reason. So we’re basically guessing at which direction will lead back to civilization and praying to God we’re right.

  Otherwise, we’re both dead.

  “I think we can run now,” Cara whispers.

  And we do. Well, kind of. It’s not very easy to run in the forest, what with all the undergrowth and fallen trees and thorns. This is compounded by the fact that it’s nighttime. If the moon weren’t so near full, I don’t think we’d even be able to see well enough to walk. As it is, I keep getting slapped in the face by tree branches, and if I weren’t so scared, I would not have the emotional capacity to handle the number of spiderwebs I’ve passed through. There’s little worse in this world than the creepy sensation of those thin strands clinging to your skin.

  The terrain is growing hillier, rockier. I hear a thump and a curse word in unison, and stop dead. “Cara?” I whisper. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she rasps. “I fell. A rock knocked the wind out of me.”

  I crouch beside the moving shadow I can barely make out as Cara. “I’m not sure we can safely keep going right now.”

  She inhales sharply, shakily. “You’re right. It’s getting really steep. And really dark. But the only thing is … we don’t have any advantage if we don’t get a head start.”

  “I know.” I frown. “He could easily catch up to us tomorrow. I have no idea how to cover my tracks or, like, hide in a tree or … I don’t even know what you’re actually supposed to do if you’re escaping from someone in the woods.”

  “We should have watched more horror movies,” she says, deadpan.

  I laugh, just a little. We’ve both been boycotting horror movies since my freshman year when a short-lived drama teacher told me my talents were suited for “secondary roles in B horror movies at best.” Now even seeing advertisements for horror movies makes me mad, even though I know there are much worse things than landing a secondary part in a B horror movie.r />
  Like this situation I’m in right now.

  “Let’s try to make it down this hill and then we’ll … I don’t know. Camp?”

  “Okay,” she agrees, and takes my outstretched arm.

  We pick our way down the rocky slope, stopping when we reach a flatter area. We unroll our sleeping bags in a spot where there’s a slight outcropping, which makes us feel at least a little bit hidden.

  From people, anyway. I hadn’t considered other dangers—like bear, wolves, wildcats—until I burrowed, shivering, into the sleeping bag. My breath frosts in front of my face, and I wonder how easily a predator could sense our presence.

  Cara, somehow, falls asleep. I don’t. Fear and cold make it impossible for me. Nighttime temperatures this time of year are usually in the forties and even huddled inside this sleeping bag, which boasts on its tag that it’s good down to twenty degrees, I’m shivering. Spiders are the least of my concerns now. Anything could be out here.

  A twig snaps nearby and I hold my breath. A rhythmic scraping sound against the forest floor moves closer and closer to our resting spot. I’m frozen with fear. I can’t protect myself against anything. We have literally no weapons. A grizzly bear could rip out my innards with one rake of its claws. I reach slowly for my flashlight, hoping maybe I can at least pound it into the face of whatever’s coming near, if I have to.

  Scraaape. Crunch. Crunch. CRUNCH CRUNCH SCRAPE CRUNCH.

  My heart gets louder as the footsteps get closer. A rounded shadow appears, passing slowly by us. A porcupine. I exhale, slowly. We’re okay. As long as it doesn’t notice us, we’ll be okay.

  It stops, maybe five feet from my head. It makes a snuffling sound like it’s located something nearby and isn’t sure if it should feel threatened. All my instincts scream at me to flee, but that’s the worst thing I could do right now. I absolutely do not need porcupine quills lodged in any part of me.

  The porcupine shuffles onward, and I can breathe again.

  But I can’t sleep. Every time the spine of a tree creaks, every gust of wind, every leaf that flutters down startles me like an electric shock. It’s agony. The moment the sun starts to rise, I gently shake Cara into consciousness.

  “Ugh.” She looks around blearily at our surroundings. “I really, really hoped this was all a nightmare.”

  “Me too.” I frown. “But we’ve gotta get going.”

  We roll up our sleeping bags, and I shrug the backpack onto my shoulders. She can have a turn later. Now that we’re alone, and not within easy listening range of someone else’s tent, I tell her Brigit’s version of what happened to Opal in the root cellar, the concrete structure I found, everything else that sketches me out about Firehorse and his Colonists.

  “I wish you’d told me all of that so much sooner,” she says.

  “I would have. I tried, remember? I told you about Opal, but you brushed it off. I know that was an accident, but the way Firehorse reacted, like it didn’t even matter that she died, it’s pretty messed up. You didn’t want to hear about it, though. You didn’t want to hear any of my concerns, so I just … stopped trying.”

  She holds back the branch of a tree so we can both pass by without it slapping us in the face. “I guess you did try. I should have listened.”

  We’re silent for a long time after that. Hurrying, tripping, clambering through the trees and underbrush. It’s hard going. I’ve twisted both my ankles a little, and one of my knees is starting to hurt pretty bad. I’m scraped up from falling several times, and I want nothing more than to be at home in my bed, sleeping.

  “Cara?” I ask tentatively, when I can’t stand the silence any longer.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why’d you invite me to this harvest thing? You barely spoke to me for months and then … you invited me and you were so excited for me to come. Was it really just, like, a good-bye thing, or was there something more?”

  “I guess … ” She swallows so loudly I can hear it. “I guess part of me was scared to do it alone. I never dreamed it was Firehorse, but like I told you last night, I had a feeling lately something was off. I didn’t want to believe it, but I … something in me knew I shouldn’t be alone.”

  I nod. That’s something. But I hadn’t realized until this moment, I’m actually pretty mad at her for this.

  “I’m really sorry, Mailee. I should’ve—”

  “Why, though?” I interrupt furiously. “Why’d you do this? It’s so—I know you’ve been having a hard time, but to turn to a cult? To tell me I’m stifling you and you need space and just … you gave up on me, Cara. You completely gave up on me. I would never do that to you. Look where I am, for you. And you couldn’t even be there the day they announced I was lead in the play. I really—I needed you to be there and you weren’t.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I guess I deserve that. I messed up. But do you know how hard it is to be your best friend sometimes?”

  “Yeah, I know, I get it. I’m messy and I’m flighty and I’m a lot of work. But I’ve been that way, always. If you were getting tired of it … I don’t know. You could have told me differently. I could’ve worked on it.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” She winces as a berry bush catches her with its thorns. “I mean, yeah, sometimes I wish you could fold your own clothes without me mothering you into it, but everything in your life goes so well. Always. You have the best parents. They love you and you eat family dinners together and they don’t stifle you but they also aren’t so wrapped up in their own crap that they don’t notice when you’re absent even more than usual. You have a boyfriend who thinks you’re, like, all the stars in the sky. You know what you want to do with your life, and you’ll probably succeed at it. I don’t have any of those things. I’m jealous of you all the time and it’s so toxic and so unfair to both of us, because it isn’t your fault.”

  That hits me deep inside. I know my life’s been pretty good so far. But it isn’t perfect. There’s so much I’ve wanted to talk about with Cara the past few months but couldn’t, because she wasn’t around. What I’m supposed to do at the end of the year when I leave and Gavin stays. My fear that I’ll go to LA and find out I’m actually never going to make it as an actress. The constant, gut-twisting anxiety that I’m not good enough for my best friend, that I don’t deserve my life to be so easy, that I deserve more tragedy.

  None of that, though, is what I need to say to her right now.

  “I know you’ve had it harder than me these past couple years. I know how bad I’ve felt about Harper, and she wasn’t my sister. I haven’t known what to do, Cara. I should have done better. I should have done so much better. I wish, though … I wish we could have had this conversation at home. That we didn’t have to be in this situation to finally be real about how things are going between us.”

  “I wish that, too.” She frowns, blinking back tears. “I would give anything not to have come here, not to have dragged you into this.”

  “Gavin offered to come with me. I should have let him.”

  “Maybe. But would he even have made this better?”

  “Gavin’s pretty laid-back about most things. But the second he saw that concrete structure? He would’ve dragged you out of here if he had to.”

  Cara stumbles over a root, and I catch her arm.

  “Thanks,” she says. “And I do want you to be happy. I hope you know that. I’m glad that Gavin’s so great, I’m glad you’re so excited about the play and everything. It was just a really hard summer for me. An especially hard summer. I handled it all wrong.”

  “We’ll just have to make sure we get out of here,” I say as she disappears around a tree. “And then we can fix what went wrong. I really, truly believe we can.”

  Silence. I’m worried I said the wrong thing. And then:

  “Mailee.” Cara’s voice is sheer, rip-the-skin-off-your-face terror. “Come see this.”

  Whatever it is, I don’t think I want to see it. But I think I have to. Be brave, Mailee, I
tell myself. And I edge around the tree.

  The ground at my feet is all churned up. Dark, moist dirt blended with surface detritus. And … bones. I feel nauseated. Something was buried here, but not buried too deep. Animals have been here, and they’ve dug it up. Some of the skeleton’s missing, but parts of it are still intact. An arm. Fingers.

  A skull with patches of dried skin and wisps of hair still stuck to it.

  Oh my God. This is a person. A person is buried out here.

  My stomach lurches and I dry heave. There’s not much of a stench. I’d guess this corpse has been out here a few months.

  A rock near the skull confirms my guess. It’s got the name Opal carved roughly into its surface, with a crudely drawn heart beneath. They buried her, all the way out here, and didn’t even bother to do a good job of it. My stomach twists again, this time with sorrow. It feels wrong for a person to be so ill cared for, both in life and in death.

  “This is how we’re going to end up,” I say, panicking. “Cara, if we don’t get out of here, we’ll be shallow graves in the middle of the woods and no one will ever find us again.”

  I hook my toes under the arm bone nearest me. I don’t know what makes me do it. Something compels me; feels like I need to see more of this body, truly absorb how real this is. I lift my foot up, and the arm lifts, too. There’s still some lingering connective tissue, and some scraps of material from whatever she was wearing when she died.

  It hits me so hard that if it weren’t for Firehorse’s negligence, she would be alive right now. This is how little he cares about human life; this is what became of someone who was part of his commune. Someone who hadn’t even done anything wrong.

  She deserves a real funeral, an actual gravestone in a real graveyard where animals can’t dig up her remains, where any family she might have could at least come to mourn. If Cara and I make it out of this alive, I intend to make sure she gets one.