Reunion at Walnut Cherryville (The Eternal Feud Book 1)

by Lauren Salem

  These were the same exact images I saw on the courthouse in Walnut Cherryville! Who drew this? Who gave this to me? I crumpled the paper in anger, opened the door, and peered down every corridor near my room. There was no one in sight. I even checked the bathroom, which was empty. I didn’t know what the importance of this drawing was or why I kept seeing it, but it must mean that a Walnut Cherryville secret watcher knew that I was here. To deliver this note, they must have been in the school somewhere spying on me…great, like I really need more bad news!

  1:00 p.m.

  Counselor Moleski began a consultation in my room. When he walked in, he took a seat on my desk chair, turned to face me, and rested his clipboard on his lap. I sat on the bed, frazzled about the stick-figure drawings.

  “Good afternoon, Collins,” he said. “How are you doing today?”

  “Eh.”

  “You look worried about something. What’s troubling you?”

  I felt as if I shouldn’t be talking to Counselor Moleski. Something about him seemed off. Whenever I talked, his facial expression never changed, and he wasn’t very personable. He reminded me of a robot. As far as I knew, there were only two people in this school who knew about Walnut Cherryville: Counselor Moleski and Principal Brock. Could one of them be a secret watcher? Did they already know about Walnut Cherryville before I told them about it? How come I’d never seen Counselor Moleski in school before? He might not even be a real counselor.

  “Oh well, just being stuck in quarantine when I want to get back to classes and basketball. You know, the usual. How much longer do you think I’ll be staying in here?”

  “I don’t know. That all depends on you.”

  “We’ve talked for six days. What do you think of me so far?”

  “Well, I think you’re a very ambitious student who is eager to get back to class, and I would like to help you do that, but you seem somewhat disoriented.”

  “Does that mean you think I’m lying?”

  “I haven’t made that decision yet, but let’s not focus on what I think. We need to be talking about what you think.”

  “I don’t know what else to tell you. I keep feeling like I’m repeating myself at every consultation.”

  “Don’t focus so much on formulating answers and being right or wrong. Say whatever is on your mind. This is a safe space.”

  “I’m kind of shy when it comes to talking to people I don’t know. Maybe I might feel more comfortable talking to you if I knew more about you. I’m only used to talking to Counselor Hank about my problems. Do you mind telling me a little about yourself?”

  “Sure, I will if it makes you more comfortable. I was born and raised in Phoenix. I’m divorced with no children. I am a doctor of developmental psychology and have been in practice for over twenty years. Hmm…I started working at Sonoran Correctional High School last year as a counselor.”

  His answers were vague. He could be lying, but there wasn’t really a clear way for me to tell.

  “It sounds like you trust Counselor Hank a lot. Do you miss him?” Moleski asked.

  “He was annoying but easy to talk to,” I responded. “I miss all my friends.”

  “Do you think they are all safe right now?”

  “I hope so, but I don’t know.”

  “Do you or your friends have any known enemies that you think are trying to hurt you?”

  “I think there is someone, but I don’t know who they are. That’s the only possible reason I could think of as to why we all were drugged at the café and then abducted.”

  “Has anyone tried to contact you since you’ve been back at school?”

  “No. No one talks to me unless I talk to them first. I mostly just talk to you, my teachers, and the nurses. What’s the real reason why I need to be in quarantine?”

  “Principal Brock just wants to make sure you’re healthy physically and mentally. This is not punishment, even though it might feel like that. Personally, I’d rather be living in a quarantine room than one of the giant dorm rooms with forty guys stuffed in it. It’s important to this school that all its students and faculty are safe, and we really need your help in finding the remaining missing people. Your health and your help are the only reasons why you’re here.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know, but I still feel like no one believes me.”

  “If you and your friends did something against school rules, it’s OK. The sooner we find out where everyone is, the sooner your life can get back to normal.”

  “But that’s what you don’t understand. Counselor Hank invited us all out to a late lunch. He signed us out of school and got approval, so we all left with him. He took us out to lunch because he wanted to talk to us about our futures and discuss our options for after graduation. My friends and I had no plans to leave the school and not come back.”

  “Look, Collins, I believe you. I believe that you didn’t leave intentionally, but I don’t understand why you can’t tell me where your friends are.”

  “I told you they’re in Walnut Cherryville!” I shouted. “I tell you that every day.”

  “Calm down, Collins, there’s no need to get upset. We’re just having a discussion; this is not an argument. I did some research on Walnut Cherryville, and I don’t see that a produce factory exists under that name.”

  “Did you look in the grocery store like I asked you to?”

  “Yes, we found produce from Walnut Cherryville Farms located in California. The police checked it out, and we did not find your friends or any other suspicious activity.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the right place. We weren’t on a farm.”

  “The police don’t have any other leads to follow. Are there any noticeable landmarks you could describe that you saw in Walnut Cherryville?”

  “Walnut Cherryville is surrounded by desert. There is a skyscraper made entirely out of glass, a courthouse made out of clay with stick-figure drawings on the outside, and a building that looks like a giant cheese grater. Somehow, and I don’t know why, there is also a forest that grows mangos.”

  Silence filled the room as he jotted some notes down on his clipboard.

  Wait…How could I have not noticed this before? He had lined yellow paper attached to his clipboard! It was Counselor Moleski who slipped the drawings under my door. He’s the secret watcher! While I was panicking in my head, I somehow managed to keep a straight face in front of Moleski. I squeezed the crumpled drawing in one hand and the edge of my pillow in the other to relieve my frustration momentarily. I totally pegged him to be the secret watcher until another yellow paper slid under the door as we sat together. Well, if Moleski was in here, then who was out there sliding the second yellow paper under the door? I bolted up from my bed, rushed to the door, and opened it. The corridors were busy with nurses…What if it was one of the nurses?

  “Collins, are you OK? Is there something wrong?” Moleski asked.

  I picked up the paper and unfolded it, and it was blank! “Someone just slid this under my door.”

  “And that urged you to jump up and leave the consultation so you could look in the hall? Why is that piece of paper important?”

  “Because I want to see who did it.”

  “Why does it matter who did it if the paper was blank?”

  “OK, fine, you got me,” I said, handing him the crumpled yellow paper. “I’m freaking out because someone slid this paper under my door a few hours ago.”

  Moleski flattened it out and looked at it. “I don’t understand. What is this?”

  “Those are the stick-figure drawings on the courthouse in Walnut Cherryville. I’m afraid that someone from there knows that I’m here, and they’re taunting me, so I rushed to look out in the hall to see if I could spot who did it. How many people in this school use that yellow notepad?”

  “Well, pretty much all the faculty members use this notepad. It’s free supplies from the school.”

  “Dammit! Well, that doesn’t narrow it down any.”


  “OK, I can see that this is making you feel unsafe and nervous. Can you explain to me why someone from that place knowing that you’re here in school is a problem?”

  “They’re here to take me back to Walnut Cherryville. I wasn’t supposed to escape, and the truck driver told me that there are secret watchers in every city that are watching me and waiting to bring me back. I’m scared and about to shit my bricks! If you really want to help me, make sure they don’t get me.”

  “Collins, I don’t think you need to be concerned about someone taking you away. There are security cameras all over the school, and the only people who can get in or out are faculty and students with supervision. It would be difficult for someone to steal you without being seen. Now, I want you to take a deep breath—”

  A tranquilizer dart shot into Counselor Moleski’s neck from an unknown direction. His body became limp within seconds and fell out of the chair. I gasped and ran out the door as quickly as I could, into the hallway crowded with nurses.

  “Excuse me, no running through the halls,” a nurse shouted.

  “Someone get that man under control!”

  I had no idea where I was going. I was just running and shoving nurses out of the way. All of a sudden, a hot, sexy red-headed woman with a bangin’ body grabbed my arm and pulled me toward her before she jammed a syringe into my neck.

  “This will only sting for a second,” she whispered.

  As the injection filtered through my body, my limbs became numb, and I quickly lost strength. I struggled to keep my eyes open, even though I was highly motivated to get another look at that redhead’s rack. Fight it, Collins, you can do it for…boobs. My body fell to the floor, and hot-boobs nurse caught me. She laid me down carefully, but I was already asleep before I got another chance to see her boobs.

  2:15 p.m.

  When I opened my eyes again, I found myself sitting on a cloud…in a diaper…with a giant, rainbow-swirled lollipop in my hand. I was a baby with a grown man’s voice, sitting on my cloud enjoying my lollipop. It was all good up in the hood until a white baby with black eyeliner came on my turf and licked my lollipop. “Hell, no, you did not just lick my lollipop!” I said.

  The Goth baby snatched my lollipop and began a game of tug-of-war. There was a struggle, but I heroically won the battle and smacked Goth baby with my lollipop until his face turned into a rainbow, and he fell off the cloud. I watched as he plummeted to earth and splattered rainbows all over the street. When I looked back up into the clouds, I saw a female baby snuggling a plush toy panda. She was giving me the “I want you” look, so I invited her over to my cloud, and we shared my lollipop.

  4:00 p.m.

  When I woke up for real, I was attached to a polygraph machine and was tied to a chair. It looked like I was in a partially furnished parking garage, but there were no cars parked in it except a Walnut Cherryville produce truck. Dammit…They got me! Hot-boobs nurse walked out of the truck with Darnell’s truck driver friend.

  “OK, Collins, here’s the deal,” Hot-boobs nurse said, “I’ve injected you with truth serum, so you’re going to tell me where your friends are. If you lie, the polygraph machine will catch your mistake.” She sat on the table next to the polygraph machine, clamped my jaw in her hand, and turned my head to face her. “You don’t want to lie to me, Collins. You won’t like what happens when you lie to me.”

  “You’re hot,” I said. “In my mind, I call you hot-boobs nurse. How long have you been working in my school?”

  Hot-boobs nurse hopped off the table and slapped me across the face. “We’ll start with some easy questions first. Are you eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where Johnny, Vincent, Laura, and Veronica are located?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me where Johnny is right now.”

  “Tonto National Forest.”

  “What?” she questioned as she peered over at the truck driver.

  “Don’t look at me; I don’t know what he means,” truck driver said.

  “Are you lying to me, Collins?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Hot-boobs nurse glanced at the polygraph machine. “Well, it looks like he’s telling the truth, but still that answer is kind of odd. Where in the forest is Johnny located?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No.”

  The needle on the polygraph machine still kept a normal rhythm. Hot-boobs nurse wrote down some notes on her lined yellow notepad. “Where is Veronica?”

  “With Johnny.”

  “Where is Laura?”

  “Cave Creek, Arizona.”

  “Where in Cave Creek is she located?”

  “She and Vincent talked about getting a motel together.”

  “Are you lying to me?”

  “No.”

  “I think we’ve distinguished that he isn’t lying to you,” the truck driver said.

  “Are you sure that Vincent is with Laura?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “OK, disconnect him and throw him in the cargo container,” she ordered.

  The truck driver tied a blindfold to my face before he untied me from the chair and escorted me into the cargo container. I heard the sliding door closing.

  “Wait, I have something to say,” I said.

  The door stopped closing. “Hot-boobs nurse: your boobs are really hot, like your hair. Do you have a boyfriend? If you do, I don’t care. I still want to bump nasties.”

  “What is wrong with teenage boys these days?” she said sarcastically.

  “I don’t know,” the truck driver responded as he closed and locked the door.

  Chapter 20: Johnny

  I was really enjoying life in the wilderness, but I could sense that Veronica wanted to leave. After seven days of what she called roughing it, she still had not learned to live in nature. Every daily activity presented new challenges that she had to learn to overcome with my help. I enjoyed Veronica’s company, and I liked teaching her about survival, but helping her get over her fears was difficult because she was afraid of practically everything. She didn’t see the natural world as I saw it because her mind was still stuck in the modern, materialistic world that we escaped from. To be able to appreciate everything that nature had to offer, she needed to stop living in the past and accept that fact that nothing she knew about life would apply here. In order to survive, she needed to learn how to live differently and be more patient and wary of her surroundings.

  Obstacle #1: living on the schedule of the sun.

  One of the difficult parts about living in nature was that you never really knew what time it was or how long the sun would be out every day. Our days were busy because we only had from sunrise to sundown to make a fire, hunt, gather, cook three meals, collect water for the day, bathe, build tools, and make repairs on the shelter when needed. With only limited hours of sunlight, we couldn’t afford to waste much time resting and doing unproductive activities, like reading a book during the day. This was tough for Veronica because she used to read during her breaks when she worked in Walnut Cherryville. Reading was how she made it through the day.

  A few days ago, I asked Veronica to collect firewood while I hunted for breakfast. In the time that it took me to find bird eggs, climb a tree, and bring the eggs back safely to camp, Veronica had barely collected any firewood because reading books on her breaks caused her to lose track of time. I hated to be the one to tell her that she shouldn’t get caught up in a book until all her work was done, but I was the only other person here, so I had to do it. She understood my reasoning when we ate breakfast for dinner that night because the fire wasn’t ready in time.

  I woke up as soon as I felt the sun kiss my face and wasted no time on sleeping in. Veronica, on the other hand, had a difficult time waking up because she spent most of the night reading with a flashlight. She couldn’t seem to live without a clock telling her when to go to sleep. Every morning I had to wake her up,
and she whined and groaned about how tired she was and that she needed more sleep. At night, we hung out together by the fire, talked, ate, and read books before bed. I usually fell asleep before Veronica, and she stayed up reading. I didn’t mind her reading at night after I fell asleep, but she needed to be a better judge of how much sleep she needed and when to put the book down. Maybe I could encourage her to go to sleep when I did so she wouldn’t be so tired in the morning and so unproductive during the day.

  Obstacle #2: navigation and the buddy system.

  Since Veronica didn’t know how to track and navigate locations in the woods, we had created the buddy system. The buddy system only had one rule: your partner must be within shouting distance of you, so if Veronica started to get lost, she could find her way back to me by following my voice. Veronica was slowly learning how to get to places, like from camp to the stream and back to camp, so she could get fresh water on her own, but she still needed the buddy system for gathering plants. Sometimes the buddy system was a little invasive. Veronica couldn’t do her personal business while I was around, and shouting distance didn’t give us much separation.

  Obstacle #3: learning new skills and responsibilities.

  Veronica and I regressed our lifestyle back to the hunter-gatherer ways, which was the way people lived in the Stone Age. As the woman of the lean-to, Veronica was responsible for collecting fire materials, water, and plants. On the second day, I gave Veronica a tour of the forest and showed her what kinds of materials she should be collecting for fire and food. For the fire, she most commonly collected dry, dead grass for tinder; small twigs for kindling; and dry, dead branches for fuel. After she brought back the materials, we made the fire together, so she could eventually learn how to make it on her own.