by Kaitlin Ward
“You’re insane,” I whisper. Inside, I’m panicking. He’s right; my family, Gavin, everyone would insist I would never do something like this. Because I wouldn’t. But would they give up, eventually? How hurt will they be, to think I’ve killed people? To go through the rest of their lives wondering what they didn’t see? I feel sick.
“I’m the sanest person here,” he hisses, anger flashing in his eyes. “Anyway, it was kind of you not to go with those fools when they freed you. So convenient that you came right back to me. Not that it would have mattered either way.”
His eyes flick to something over my head. I turn, and there are Brigit and Finn, both with their hands tied like the others while Richelle holds a gun to their backs. My heart sinks.
“Yes, I was never going to let them escape. I was never going to let anyone escape.”
Firehorse strides casually past me. I don’t move, because he’s still holding that gun, and I know he’s not afraid to use it. “I knew you and Brigit would bond,” he says. “She’s been a thorn in my side for a while, but I thought she might prove useful.”
Brigit’s eyes shoot lightning at him. He turns to Finn, his mouth twitching into a regretful frown. “You,” he says, “I thought I might be able to take with me. It’s too bad.”
Finn spits in his face. Firehorse backhands him with a violent crack, and I cringe. But Finn doesn’t cry out, doesn’t do anything. He lets the blood dribble slowly down his chin, and doesn’t even try to wipe it away.
Firehorse wheels back to me, smiling like this is the best day of his life. I glance at Cara. She looks terrified. I am terrified. But at the same time, there’s something truly freeing about knowing you have no way out. I can say or do anything I want at this point; can’t make things worse.
“It’s too bad I won’t be here to see how the police react when they find the girl who did this,” says Firehorse, still grinning down at me like a monster. “The girl who shot bullets into their midst, who killed every member of this commune.”
“You won’t get away with it. People have seen you who aren’t here. They’ll question what happened to you.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Firehorse grips me tightly by the arm and brings me over to the fire we built when we all set up camp. There’s a burnt-up corpse next to the flames, all crisp and blackened. I can’t help it. My stomach heaves, and I double over, puking out whatever’s left in me.
My eyes sweep over the group. Only three boys left. Firehorse killed one of the boys to be his unrecognizable body. I notice another burnt corpse nearby, and my gut twists again. This time, though, I manage not to be sick.
“We can’t have just one unrecognizable corpse,” Firehorse says. “That would be very suspicious.”
I almost ask What about Avalon? because Gavin certainly will ask that when he reads about all this in the papers. There was a little girl, he’ll insist. Where is she?
But if Firehorse hasn’t considered this, I don’t want to mention it. If anyone here deserves to be safe, it’s Avalon. She’s just a child. A scared little girl, cowering by the side of the cave while her mom holds a gun to my best friend’s head.
“What exactly is this supposed to accomplish?” I ask.
“Chaos,” he says simply. “I’ll keep doing this until I’ve started enough chaos that the world implodes. And when that happens, I will be far, far away, safe from the fallout.”
“What, like on a spaceship?” I spit.
“So funny, Mailee.” His expression darkens. “You think you’re so much better than me, but you just don’t know. You don’t see why I’m doing this. How important it is.”
“You’re delusional.” I shouldn’t talk to him like this. He could kill me for it. But he’s going to kill me anyway, so what does it matter? “But I’d love to hear what makes you think it’s important that you kill people. Just exactly what it is you think I don’t know.”
He folds his arms and straightens his spine, trying to look formidable now. He’s never looked smaller to me. “People are such monsters. It disgusts me to be part of the same species as all of you. I want you all to see how awful you are. You think you care about each other, you think you want the world to be better, but you don’t. You’ll all revel in the chaos. I just have to help nudge you in that direction.”
His ego. My God. He thinks he’s capable of spiraling the entire world into an apocalyptic implosion. By himself. “You think we’re so awful and so beneath you, yet you’re the one doing the killing.”
“Because I have to. To prove it. Everything has aligned. The world’s anger has reached new heights. No one else is willing to make this sacrifice.” He grabs my arm and shoves me to the ground. “It’s time, Mailee. Time to harvest what I’ve sown. Before the police arrive, and they will arrive, I need all of you to be dead.”
He lifts the assault rifle, clicks off the safety, aims it at my head. Cara screams, and I hear the sound like it’s muffled through water. Time has stopped.
I have nothing to lose. If I don’t move, Firehorse is going to shoot me in the face. If I do move, he’s probably still going to shoot me in the face. But he might miss. So I do it. The bravest, dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
I rise up, grab the gun, and yank hard. His finger manages to twitch on the trigger before I tug it from his grasp, and a bullet flies through the space between my arm and my torso. It embeds itself in the ground with so much force, I feel it vibrate. My ears ring painfully from the sound of the bullet leaving the chamber. I don’t have time to think about how dead I’d be if that bullet hit an inch in either direction. All I know is I now have a better grip on the gun than he does, and suddenly, everything’s erupted into chaos. I don’t think this is the chaos he wanted, though.
I can see it all in my peripheral vision; Brigit got free, somehow, and now she’s freeing the others while Richelle and Brian try to stop them. Alexa cowers back, arms protectively around Avalon, who’s screaming with fear. Good.
I fight against Firehorse with everything in me. He’s bigger, stronger. But if I let go of this gun, he’ll shoot me with it and not think twice. And then he’ll start shooting everyone else. Something jolts Firehorse forward, like he’s been kicked in the back, and he loses his grip on the gun. I hug it to my chest and roll sideways, clambering to my feet at the sight of Cara holding a piece of firewood in both hands. A piece of firewood that she just used to club Firehorse in the back.
I readjust my grip on the gun, hold it like I’ve seen in movies with the butt against my shoulder and my finger curled around the trigger, pointing it at Firehorse’s torso, standing back far enough that he can’t reach me. Everyone goes quiet. Waiting to see what will happen.
“You don’t know how to use that,” Firehorse hisses.
“You’re right, I don’t. But you already took off the safety, and I know this is the kind of gun that would shoot a hole straight through you, so I don’t even have to be accurate. I just have to hit you anywhere.”
“You would be willing to kill a person?” He tilts his head to the side condescendingly.
Nope. Ninety-nine percent sure there’s no way I could actually pull this trigger and end a life. Even the life of someone as vile as Firehorse. “Do you want to find out?”
He comes at me. I can’t make myself shoot him, so I do the next best thing: I throw the gun over the ledge.
He lunges for another weapon, but I tackle him, and so does Cara. I pound at him with elbows and fists and ignore what’s going on all around us. Firehorse has hurt enough people. He doesn’t get to hurt anyone else. I fight and claw, even as he fights back, punching me so hard in the throat that I can’t breathe for a few endless seconds.
Finn joins the fray, throwing his heavier body on top of Firehorse. He grabs Firehorse’s hands and holds them together while another girl winds rope around them.
“Ankles, too,” I say, holding on to his feet the best I can while he kicks viciously. Cara helps, and the girl winds rope from his ankles to
halfway up his calves.
And just like that, Firehorse isn’t the one with the power anymore.
Richelle and Brian both still have guns, but so do some of the other cult members now. And they’re on my side. I’m pretty sure.
“Kill them, fools!” Firehorse roars, lifting his head to look at Richelle.
She hesitates. I want to duck behind Finn, but at this point, that’d be beyond cowardly.
“Or you could just go,” I say. “The three of you could take Avalon, go through that passageway in the cave, get out of here and be safe.”
“They would never abandon me,” Firehorse snarls.
But I think he’s wrong. Alexa glances at Richelle, and then back at her crying, quaking daughter.
“We’ll let you leave,” I say, and I hope it’s true. I’m not the one holding a weapon, and I’m certainly not in charge here. But everyone was here for an off-grid vegan hippie commune. I can’t imagine they want violence if it isn’t necessary.
“Let’s go,” Alexa says, her voice firm and authoritative. “Richelle, Brian, let’s go.”
“Alexa!” Firehorse’s voice is different now, desperate. “Don’t—you wouldn’t leave me. We need each other. You know that.”
But Avalon’s still weeping, nestled into Alexa’s side.
“It’s over,” Alexa says. “This was always about Avalon. You knew it was. I’m sorry, Firehorse. I thought you could keep us safe, but you can’t, so I’m done. I’m gone.”
If she were speaking to anyone other than Firehorse, I’d feel pretty bad. Her voice is hard, cold. Her face utterly emotionless. But Firehorse deserves this. He deserved to be used by her, to be abandoned when he needed someone most.
“Leave the guns,” Cara says, because Richelle and Brian still haven’t dropped their weapons as they edge toward the cave.
Brigit aims a pistol at them, and they both set down their guns at once, raising their hands like caught criminals and backing after Alexa, disappearing into the cave. Brigit turns to me, frowning. “Should we have let them go?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe we should have a couple people near the cave entrance just in case they come back? Who thinks they could shoot someone if they had to?”
“I could,” Finn says, his voice hard. A couple of the girls volunteer, too, and the three of them stand sentry in front of the cave, armed and ready.
I crouch beside Firehorse and grace him with a big, nasty smile.
“Was this the chaos you were hoping for?” I ask.
He turns his face away from me and says nothing at all.
The real chaos happens when the police arrive. Everyone who’s armed drops their weapons the second they show up, and through our sobbing, terrified stories, it becomes clear right away who the criminal is here.
Plus, when I tell them Firehorse’s real name, from the article Gavin sent me, they recognize it at once. Seems like they’re pretty happy to have caught him. I also make sure they know about the opening at the back of the cave, because the only person in that passageway who deserves to get off free is Avalon.
They talk to all of us, ask millions of questions, and it feels like forever until we’re finally allowed to leave. My car was towed out of its mud pit, but I ride back to civilization in the back of a police cruiser, just like everyone else. Cara’s with me; we insisted that we not be separated, even though we’re all going to the same place.
My parents are already at the police station when we arrive, and so are Cara’s. Cara seems surprised, and watching her mother hug her like she never wants to let go is, more than anything, what bursts me into tears. My parents gather me into their arms, and I just cry and apologize and cry some more.
All the fear I held inside of me while I was trying to be brave earlier, it flows out like water you try to hold in your fist. But I’m proud of myself, too. Proud of everyone here, because we saved our own lives, and we stopped Firehorse from doing this not only to us, but to whoever else he planned to attack along his way.
His toxic ideas, his manipulations, all of it is going behind bars along with him, and the world will be better for it. No part of me believes he could have instigated an apocalypse like he wanted, but I do think he would’ve tried like hell.
“It wasn’t you we spoke to on the phone this weekend, was it?” Mom asks, when the flow of my tears starts to diminish. “Your voice sounded wrong, but I thought it was the reception.”
I shake my head.
“We’re so sorry,” says Dad. “We should have listened to Gavin sooner. He was so worried.”
“I should have told you where I was going. He shouldn’t have been the only one who knew. I should have told you everything about it, and maybe we could have stopped this sooner.”
Maybe no one would have had to die. I wasn’t close with either of the ones who were burnt up, but that doesn’t make me less sad about their deaths. They didn’t deserve this. They were just people. All they wanted was a place to belong, and that’s not a bad thing.
Brigit hovers awkwardly in a corner, and I leave my parents’ side to talk to her. Except, when I reach her, I have no idea what to say.
“Thank you for getting me out of that concrete prison,” I say.
She smiles faintly. “I guess it turns out you were going to be freed with or without us.”
“True, but still. You didn’t have to, and I appreciate that you did.” I pause, shoving my hands into my front pockets. “I don’t know if you have someplace to go back to or what, but if you need somewhere to stay while you figure things out, I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t mind.”
“Thanks. I might have to take you up on that.”
Impulsively, I give her a hug, because she was such a good friend to me over this horrible nightmare of a weekend. I can’t believe it was only Friday when this all started. Feels like forever.
But I don’t get to do or say anything else, because the police want more statements, and they whisk us away, separately. I’m exhausted when it’s over. They warn me that Firehorse will most likely have a trial, and I’ll have to rehash all of this. But I don’t mind. Anything to put him behind bars. Hopefully, forever.
Cara’s family and my family leave the police station together, and we take Brigit with us. I wish I could bring everyone to my house, let them all camp out in the living room or something, but that’s probably too much to ask of my parents. I don’t know where they’ll all go, but wherever it is, it’s better than with Firehorse.
As I’m getting in the car, though, I pause. And when I turn my head, I see that Cara’s paused, too, getting into her parents’ car. We run to each other, hugging tight.
“I will never try to cut you out of my life again,” she says, voice strained with tears.
“And I will never let you join another cult.” I’m trying to lighten the mood. It doesn’t really work. “I love you. I’m glad you’re safe.”
“I love you, too.” She hugs me even tighter. “And boy do we have a story to tell everyone at school.”
That lightens the mood. I laugh. “We most definitely do.”
Here’s the thing about being nearly killed in a cult situation that makes national headlines: It’s really great college application material. You can use it for pretty much any essay prompt they throw at you.
All my efforts have started to pay off; acceptances are trickling in. Rejections, too, but let’s not dwell on that. Today’s the big one, though. Today’s the day I can check online to see if I got into UCLA. It’s where I most badly want to go.
Cara and I sit cross-legged on my bed, facing each other, laptops on our knees.
“Ready?” I ask.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“Okay, well, we have to look, so let’s just do it.”
“On three.”
We count together and both click the link. But when the page starts to load, I can’t look. I shut my eyes on instinct.
“I got in,” Cara says, disbel
ievingly. “Mailee, you—Mailee! Open your eyes.”
I do it. Scan the page, and—“I got in, too.”
I cannot feel my limbs right now.
“So we’re both in.” A huge grin spreads across Cara’s face. “So … we’re going to California?”
“I guess we are.”
We shriek and hug, letting the laptops fall off to the side with no regard for their safety.
Cara didn’t apply to schools for film production like we planned in the Book of Life Goals. Instead, she applied to be a psychology major, and she thinks she’d ultimately like to get a master’s degree in social work.
“It feels right,” she said when she filled out the application. “More right than anything’s felt in a long time.”
And then she happily crossed out the rest of her plan in the Book of Life Goals.
It’s funny, really. The messy, chaotic girl is sticking hard to her original, well-drawn plan, while the organized one forges a new and unknown path. I’m proud of her. We both started going to therapy after what happened to us this fall, and Cara’s on medication now for her depression. A depression all of us should have seen and none of us did. Things aren’t perfect yet; medication helps but it isn’t magic. Still, she’s doing so much better these days. It’s made me realize how long she’s actually been struggling. And how much more I wish I’d done to help.
“You should text Gavin,” she says. “He’s going to be so happy for you.”
I bite my lip. “I will, later.”
Gavin’s going to a local community college so that he can live and work on his parents’ ranch while he gets his degree. It’s a topic we’re still avoiding, mostly. The subject of how we’re going to make this work when our life paths are going down two different forks. The idea of us breaking up makes me sick to my stomach, but I can’t see a future where we end up together. You never know, though. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that you cannot predict what life will throw at you.