Reunion at Walnut Cherryville (The Eternal Feud Book 1)

by Lauren Salem

  During our stay, my family and I visited the Wupatki Ruins located outside the city of Flagstaff in the surrounding desert. The ancient people left pueblos made of thin, flat blocks of red sandstone that are now ruins preserved in the desert. When I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine how the ancient people lived with limited technology. It made me thankful that I lived in a time where the things I saw in Back to the Future could actually exist. Those were good times.

  * * *

  I remembered Flagstaff was roughly two hours and twenty minutes north of Phoenix, which meant we were fairly close to home.

  “We’re two hours and twenty minutes away from Phoenix,” I said. “After we get Collins, we could probably find someone to hitch a ride with that’s heading in that direction.”

  “Or even the bus,” Laura suggested.

  “I don’t see how we’re going to do either of those things without any money,” Johnny added. “Most people won’t pick up hitchhikers, but we can try.”

  Johnny opened the door to the gentleman’s club, and we walked into the dark room lit by strobe lights. Club music played as ladies of all different ages, shapes, and sizes danced around in giant birdcages, wearing only sparkly pasties, a thong, and high heels. People crowded around the cages, slipping dollar bills between the bars. There was also a group of women pole dancing on stage.

  I scanned the crowd for Collins and waved him down. He excused himself from the table, but the other truck driver hardly noticed because he was being motor-boated by one of the strippers. Collins stumbled over to the front door, looking all sorts of crazy.

  “Hey, guys, this place is great,” Collins shouted over the loud music.

  I could smell alcohol on his breath. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Collins shouted as he started dancing. “We should all hang out here for a while. This place is off the hook!”

  “I’d rather not,” Veronica said. “Collins, I don’t think it’s the best idea for you to be drinking at this time. We have to get out of here.”

  “Come on, Veronica, don’t be a fun sucker!”

  “How did you get the liquor?” Johnny asked.

  “There are dollar bills flying all over the place around here,” Collins explained. “The birdcages are overflowing, so I grabbed two handfuls, and there’s nothing those ladies could do about it because they’re trapped in a cage! Isn’t that awesome? I stole money from a stripper so I could get the truck driver to buy me alcohol and a lap dance!”

  “Well, that’s mean,” Laura said. “She’s working hard for that money. She’s probably a single mother with two kids at home that she has to feed. You shouldn’t steal money from her; she really needs it.”

  “Laura,” Collins said as he pointed. “Don’t ruin this for me by making me think about her girly problems. I don’t want to care.”

  “Give her the money back, asshole!”

  “No,” I interrupted. “Keep the money because we could use it to get home. How much do you have left?”

  As Collins counted the money, I caught Laura giving me a pouty face.

  I stood next to her and held her hand behind our backs, so no one could see. “I’m sorry, but I promised you that we’d get home safely, so you could find yourself again,” I whispered in her ear while looking at the stage. “Don’t get upset with me for condoning Collins stealing from a stripper; it was an act of desperation that already happened. By the way, you look really cute when you’re angry, and I want to kiss you again.”

  “Vincent, we can’t; I don’t want them to know,” she whispered back.

  “You’re right; some things are better left as secrets.”

  “I have twenty-six dollars left,” Collins announced.

  “That’s it?” Johnny laughed.

  “The ladies and the booze are expensive, you know.”

  “All right, everybody split up, get as much money as you can, and meet back by the door in five minutes,” Johnny said.

  I saw a red lit-up sign pointing to the restrooms on the right side of the stage. “Follow me,” I said, leading Laura through the crowded tables to the men’s room. We walked into a stall, locked the door, and let our feelings take advantage of us. I pressed myself up against her curvaceous body, pinning her hands to the door as I kissed her supple lips. She wrapped her leg around me, pulling me in closer. The danger of kissing a girl with HIV made me excited. I wanted her to look at me with that pouty face as I got kinky with her. I wanted her to hurt me, but she didn’t want to tear my skin. She was afraid that I would catch the infection, but in the moment I couldn’t care less. I bit her neck, but she forcefully pushed me away, and I fell on the toilet, hitting my head against the toilet tank. I smiled as my vision came back into focus. She sat on my lap, pressing herself against my hard dick, but she wouldn’t let me take her clothes off. She wiped my mouth with toilet paper to check for blood.

  “Am I clean, Doctor?” I asked.

  “I said no biting,” Laura responded. “I don’t want you to get sick. Thankfully, you didn’t break my skin.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, putting on a puppy-dog face. “I just want to have fun with you.”

  She continued to kiss my lips as she pulled my hair and ground herself against me. All of a sudden, someone walked into the restroom, and she stopped.

  “Vincent, are you in here?” Johnny called out.

  Laura started giggling, so I covered her mouth.

  “Yes, I’ll be out in a minute,” I said.

  “OK, we’re all ready to go when you are. Veronica is checking the ladies room for Laura,” Johnny said before he left.

  “Well, she isn’t going to find me,” Laura laughed.

  “I don’t want to go yet,” I complained. “I want to stay here with you.”

  “We have to,” she said as she got off me and unlocked the door. She fixed her hair in the mirror and washed her face before she left the restroom.

  I waited two minutes before I walked out. On the way to the front door, I grabbed some money from the overflowing birdcages. I saw Collins going from table to table, drinking from unattended drinks. “Come on, Collins, we’re leaving,” I said as I pried the glass from his hand. He leaned on me as we walked out the front door.

  “Ahh, the light!” Collins complained as he covered his eyes.

  We walked down the street to the McDonald’s and used the dollar bills we stole to buy ourselves a cheap lunch. Combined, we had enough dollar bills to call a cab to drive us to Phoenix. After lunch, we walked back to the truck to collect our stuff from the cargo container when we were caught by an unexpected visitor: a drunken, angry truck driver.

  “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” the truck driver yelled.

  Collins no longer had Darnell’s sunglasses on his face.

  “You’re not Darnell! You tricked me so you could sneak citizens out of Walnut Cherryville!”

  “I know. Wasn’t it fun?” Collins asked excitedly. “I hope you had a great time; I know I did. Hit me up if you want to do it again sometime.”

  “Get your asses back in the truck now,” he demanded. “I’m taking you back to Walnut Cherryville!”

  “I don’t think it’s safe for you to operate machinery,” Veronica said.

  “Shut up, woman, and get back in the truck where you belong!”

  “You can’t make me!”

  “Yeah, you’re seriously outnumbered,” Johnny added as he strapped his sleeping bag to his back.

  “You either do it willingly, or I’ll do it forcefully,” the driver said as he pulled out his medical button. “There is no escaping from Walnut Cherryville! There are secret watchers in every city, and in a matter of a week, you’ll find yourselves back in Walnut Cherryville anyway; so you might as well not fight me on it. Get back in the cargo container, walk all the way to the back and put your hands behind your head!”

  “I’d rather take my chances,” Veronica said.

  The driver pressed his medical
button. “The guards are on their way. Now that I’ve pressed my medical button, everyone, even the secret watchers, has been notified that something is wrong.”

  Whether the truck driver’s threats were real or not, we were determined to find a way home. With the supplies on our backs, we hurried back into town and used a pay phone to call a cab. While I was in the bathroom having my way with Laura, Johnny was smart enough to tear a page of cab listings from the phonebook and hide it in his pocket. The man on the phone said it would be twenty minutes before a cab could arrive at our destination in Flagstaff. Laura and I sat on opposite ends of a bench next to the payphone, stealing the occasional glance from each other. Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled when she caught me watching her. Suddenly, I realized that this might all end if we went home. If we went back to Sonoran Correctional, we would never be able to get this close again. The only time I would get to see her would be during my lunch hour, and she’d be trapped behind the fence, busy with other men that would pay to get a feel. I didn’t want to compete with them. She might forget about me. How would I avoid losing another girl that I cared about?

  * * *

  Kat…It’s sad what happened to her. Everyone blamed me for her death, but it wasn’t really my fault. Kat was a prescription-drug addict. The harder it was to obtain the drug, the better she felt about abusing it. When she found out about my secret as the unofficial neighborhood watchman, I had no choice but to do anything she wanted, and she decided to use me to get her drugs. If she wasn’t threatening to expose the secret of my life, I would have saved her. Instead, I let my secret die with her and never talked about it again until I told Laura...sort of. I tried to tell Laura, but letting her know the whole truth was too risky.

  Doctors were wary about prescribing drugs to Kat, because they knew she was a drug addict. She faked her symptoms at her doctor’s appointments, used her medications too fast, and constantly called for refills. Eventually, she was forced to go to rehab, but that didn’t help. She quickly fell back into old habits. For four months, I faked medical conditions that I didn’t have to protect my secret: ADHD, depression, sleeping problems, etc. Every week I saw a different doctor and got a different drug for Kat to abuse. The only problem was that when she died, she died in her bed holding a bottle of prescription sleeping pills with my name on it. Her parents blamed me for killing her by purposely giving drugs to a known recovering addict. I tried to lie and say that I didn’t know she was an addict, but her stupid ex-boyfriend called me out on my lie and could prove that I did know. Right before she went to rehab, she sent a Facebook message to all her friends telling them what happened, where she’d be staying, and that she was sorry if her drug abuse hurt anybody. There was nothing more I could say to prove my innocence. Everyone thought I was guilty, even the police.

  I spent a week behind bars, afraid of how my fate would unfold. I had a lot of time to think, cry, and blame myself for hurting someone I cared about. I should have refused to get her the drugs despite what rumors she was going to spread about me, but I’m not that noble. I was supposed to be taken to court to be tried for involuntary manslaughter, but thankfully my parents had friends in high places. They never told me what deal they made or who they had to pay off to get the charges dropped. At first, I felt relieved that I was free from legal consequences, but for some reason I could never get over Kat’s death. My life was depressing, cowardly, and lonely, so in her honor, I decided to kill myself. I know I told the cameras, my parents, and my friends that I jumped off the roof for reasons concerning the stress of my parent’s political campaign, but that was a lie.

  * * *

  “Where will the cab be taking us?” I asked.

  “Back to school,” Johnny answered. “That’s the only safe place I can think of.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Isn’t that where the Walnut Cherryville watchers expect us to go? They could be sitting there, waiting for us to arrive so they can take us back.”

  “He has a good point,” Veronica added. “We should go somewhere that is unpredictable because it gives us a better opportunity of not being recaptured.”

  “Are our lives ever going to get back to normal. or are we constantly going to be living in fear of being recaptured?” Collins asked. “I thought if we escaped we would be able to go back home and live normally. If this wasn’t going to be true, then someone should have told me.”

  “Honestly, Collins, I had no idea what was going to happen if we made it out,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry. I know you desperately want to get back to your normal life, and I hope that we all can do that soon, but right now it’s in everyone’s best interests to not be recaptured.”

  “If we don’t go back to school, then where are we going to go?” Laura asked.

  “The truck driver said there are secret watchers in every city,” I added. “Are there actually safe places we can go? How serious do you think he was about that?”

  Everyone looked to Veronica, but she didn’t have any information to offer. “There’s no doubt that they’re out there. If they weren’t, then we wouldn’t have been captured in the first place,” Veronica said.

  “But what should we do?” Laura insisted.

  “If there are people trying to track us down, the best thing to do is to keep moving and not stay in one city for too long,” Johnny said.

  “So now we’re convict nomads…great,” Collins complained. “I don’t see why it’s not safe for us to go back to school. As long as we never leave the school grounds, nothing can happen to us. That school is on high security watch, and there are always a lot of people around. It’s not like just anyone can enter the school because the fence blocks it from the streets, there are security cameras, and all visitors can’t enter without administrator clearance. Sounds like a pretty safe place to me. I’d rather take my chances there than be on the run for the rest of my life. At least I will feel safe and be able to finish high school.”

  “But what happens when you graduate?” I asked. “Graduation is in two months. Where are you going to go then?”

  “I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”

  “Right now I feel very conflicted,” Laura said. “It doesn’t sound like one option is safer than the other.”

  “Why don’t we split up, then?” I suggested. “We don’t all have to go to the same place.”

  “I’m going back to school,” Collins announced. “Anyone going with me?”

  “I’m going with the nomadic method,” I said.

  “I don’t belong to your school; I don’t have American citizenship; if I go there, they might deport me back to Mexico. I think I will go with Vincent,” Veronica said.

  If Veronica travelled with us, then Laura and I wouldn’t have any privacy. She couldn’t come with us. “Like I said, we don’t all have to go to the same place, even if you choose to be nomadic.”

  Veronica looked confused. “OK…Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to go with you?”

  “I wasn’t saying that…I’m just informing you that you can go anywhere you want. Johnny, wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to backpack around the country? I know you said you wanted to do that.”

  “I would like to do that, but I think someone should go to school with Collins so there are two people that can watch out for each other. You know, in case something goes wrong,” Johnny said.

  “It’s OK, Johnny,” Collins said. “I’m a big boy; I can go to school by myself. I don’t need no packed lunch.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Well, if you’re sure. then I’m going to go backpacking. If anyone wants to come with me, that’s cool as long as you’re OK with roughing it caveman-style,” Johnny said.

  “What do you mean, caveman-style?” Laura asked.“Camping in the woods, hunting for food, exploring the wilderness…going to a place where there are no roads or shopping malls.”

  “Ah…no thanks.”

  “Sounds good; I’ll come with you,” Veronica
said.

  “Yes, the wilderness is the best place to hide from immigration,” I said.

  “Vincent, can I talk to you in private?” Laura requested before she stood up and started walking away.

  I followed a few steps behind her, watching as her hips swayed back and forth. She was so beautiful that she could even make a black, baggy Walnut Cherryville uniform look sexy. When she walked far enough away from the bench, she stopped and turned to face me.

  “What the hell is going on with you? You’re acting strange.”

  “Nothing,” I said. I held her hands in mine for about a second before she pulled away.

  “I want to let you know that this thing that we’re doing is just casual companionship…if there is such a thing. I don’t want you to get too emotionally or physically attached. Can you handle that?”

  “Laura, I just want to spend time with you under any terms or conditions.”

  “Why? Don’t you know that I’m dying?”

  “That’s just more of a reason we should be together.”

  “I’m afraid that if we spend too much time together, we might lose control over ourselves. I don’t want you to get this disease.”

  “Laura, I’m not afraid of some silly disease, I—”

  “Don’t say that! This disease is a serious, life-threatening condition, and you should care more about avoiding it.”

  “I feel like we have something here, and I think we should explore it. I’ve started to have feelings for you that I can’t explain. I’ve never cared this much about another person since my ex-girlfriend, Kat, died. Here’s another truth for you…I was placed in the correctional school for being suicidal. I would rather die from your disease, loving you every day of my life, than to spend more time alone.”