by Callie Hart
Kacey sighs, rolling her eyes at Zen, but she nods all the same. Zen squeals like she just got something she desperately wanted for Christmas. Halliday dumps her towel on the tiles by the side of the pool—she’s wearing a pink bikini and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that I’m here to witness it. But then, why would she? She’s strutted around the stage at the Rock half naked, her tits hanging out of her doctored Raleigh High cheerleader uniform. One guy sitting by a pool isn’t going to faze her now.
The other girls shed their towels, all of them wearing a scant, tiny swimsuit or bikini of some description. Zen makes a point of bending over, ass facing me, making sure I get a good look at her as she stoops to fiddle with the ankle straps of her sandals, taking her time to unfasten them. She’s shit out of luck, though. I’m not interested, and I’m not looking. I go back to lying down on the lounger, my eyes firmly fixed on the stars overhead.
A series of loud splashes, along with girlish, high pitched squeals, signal that they’ve jumped into the water. Still, I don’t look.
The door opens again, and Jake's voice carries on the fresh, autumnal air. “You girls better be naked,” he calls. “My dick could break concrete right now.”
Gross. I don’t wanna think about Jake’s boner, or what nightmarish catastrophe is about to take place in that pool. Gradually pulling myself up into a seating position, I’m about to get to my feet when Jake sidles past me wearing board shorts and slumps down on the lounger next to mine. He holds out a beer to me, grinning from ear to ear. “Saw you out of the window there. Looked like you needed this.”
I don’t want the beer. I specifically don’t want it because he brought it out for me, but I can’t be an asshole. Not if I want to put all of these moving pieces into place and get what I want out of this fucked up situation. The glass is beaded with condensation, cool in my hands. The night’s growing colder, and it feels as though it’s going to start raining any second now, but the beer’s still somehow refreshing. I press the beveled rim to my mouth and allow the golden liquid to pour down the back of my throat, raising my eyebrows at the guy sitting across from me.
“There are some shorts inside for you if you want them, man. Leon has a thousand pairs. He doesn’t mind us borrowing his shit at these things. Mind you, from what I heard earlier, both Zen and Halliday wouldn’t mind if you jumped into the pool sans shorts.”
“I’m actually gonna head home in a beat.” I’m firm. My tone brooks no arguments. Not that Jake pays any attention to that.
“Ahh, come on, Moretti. The pool’s a right of passage. It’s gotta be done.”
I pull on the beer again, draining half the bottle in one swift move. I could drain the whole thing right now and get the fuck out of here if I wanted to, but Jacob would probably see it as a slight against him. I need to draw this out at least a few more minutes before I get to my feet. “Sorry, man. I’m just not feelin’ it. I got shit I have to take care of, anyway.”
“Let me guess,” Jake says, wagging the neck of his beer at me conspiratorially. “You can’t swim, and you don’t wanna embarrass yourself.”
“I swim like a fish.”
“Then, what? There are six beautiful women in that pool right now, and in about ten minutes none of them are gonna be wearing any clothes. Beautiful naked mermaid shit. Tell me you aren’t just dying to see that. Don’t you like tits?”
“I like tits just fine. But I have better things on the agenda.”
“What does that even mean? What’s better than tits? Hey, Zen!” Jake calls. “Your boy’s talking about leaving. I suggest you do something to capture his attention and do it fast!”
It’s Kacey that answers, not Zen. “Don’t worry. We have something in mind for the newest student at Raleigh High. It’d be rude not to give him a proper welcome, don’t you think, baby?”
Jake whoops, throwing his hands up in the air, spilling beer all over the place. “That’s my girl. Come on, Kay Kay. Let’s see what you got!”
I’ve never been a relationship guy. I’ve been around plenty of other guys in relationships, though, and as far as I can remember none of them have encouraged their girlfriends to get naked to impress another man. If I went to the trouble of committing to a girl, I’d destroy any motherfucker whose gaze lingered too long in her direction. This just feels gross on so many fucking levels.
“Watch, man,” Jake says, laughing. “Just fucking watch. These girls are dirty as fuck.”
Sure enough, Kacey and Zen are stroking and caressing each other, unfastening each other’s bikini tops. It happens all too quickly. One second, they’re nuzzling at each other, smiling, whispering into each other’s mouths, and then the next they’re kissing, their tongues lapping at each other, flicking each other’s lips. The water’s lapping around their bare tits, their hands roving over each other’s skin. Kacey gasps as Zen ducks down, taking her nipple in between her teeth. She licks and sucks at the dark, swollen bud of flesh, and Jake grabs hold of my arm, digging his fingers into the sleeve of my jacket.
“Fuuuuck, man. What did I tell you? They’re fucking animals.”
I look away, drinking the remnants of my beer and placing the empty bottle at my feet. “I’m out of here.”
“Fuck is wrong with you, Moretti?” Jake’s grip tightens, holding onto me as I try to stand. “Is your dick broken, or are you some kind of fucked up feminist?”
“I told you. I’m…not…interested.”
The other girls have all followed Kacey and Zen’s lead and are undressing each other, scraps of colorful material floating on the surface of the pool. They cavort in the water, naked, performing a highly sexual, highly intense charade just for us. Their eyes are all on me, hungry, inviting, daring…
I can’t see what’s happening, but I can guess. Zen sucks in a ragged breath, her shoulders stiffening as Kacey dips lower in the water; I’m assuming she’s touching her between her thighs, and Zen looks like she’s enjoying it just a little bit too much. Her head rocks back, and Kacey laughs, kissing her neck as she—
The lounger scrapes against the tiles as I push up and away.
My feet are moving.
My back is turned.
A cold, slick, oily feeling is twisting in my stomach.
Jake hollers something behind me, but I don’t turn around.
When I walk through the first door I can find back into the building, I’m met with a dozen cell phones, all being shoved into my face.
“Whoa! Hey, Alex! Alex, where the hell are you going? That’s the hottest shit I’ve ever seen, bro!”
I don’t know who says it. I cast around, searching the living room I find myself in, trying to find the owner of the voice, but there are too many lights shining in my face. Quickly, they veer away from me as the people gathered in the living room turn back to the windows that look out over the pool. They’re aiming their cameras at the scene taking place out there, and it’s pretty fucking obvious that they’re all recording.
Just…fucking…perfect.
16
SILVER
There's no cell reception at the cabin, which is partially why I love the place. There are no interruptions up here. Just me, my school assignments, my guitar, and my books. It's so damn peaceful. Whenever I come here, I leave behind the politics and bullshit of Raleigh. There are no judgmental, suspicious eyes, following me any time I move. At the cabin, I can breathe. I can be me, without having to worry about defending myself, protecting myself, trying to think three steps ahead at all times. It's ultimately freeing.
The Nova grumbled the entire way from Raleigh to Lake Cushman, threatening to quit on me, but I talked her through it, coaxing and chiding her until she came to a relieved stop in the cabin's mossed-over driveway. Could be that she doesn't want to start again when the time comes to leave, but I'm not worried about that. If anything, the fact that Monday night could roll around and I end up stuck here is far from a tragedy. I could stay here forever, and that would be just fine with me.
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It's still early enough, maybe eleven, and the day stretches out before me, full of promise. Outside, the rain hisses like the static from an old radio, the volume turned right up. With a fire crackling happily in the little wood burner Dad brought up here for me a couple of years ago, the little cabin's toasty warm and cozy; it feels like a sanctuary of sorts. One I'm always loathed to give up.
When the girls used to come here with me, things were very different. I didn't really give a shit about the cabin. I didn't pay attention to the small details of the place. I only cared about the partying. The booze we could steal away from our parents. The occasional bottle of pills Zen lifted from her Mom's purse. Diving into the lake in the middle of the night, high, drowsy and languid on Percocet, everything feeling like a dream, the black, inky water over our heads, laughing like giddy ghosts, clinging to each other on the pebbly shore. I'd sleep like the dead, not caring where I rested my head because that was unimportant.
Now, I see the scuffs and the scratches of the place and think of them as lines that mark the face of a familiar old friend, bringing them to life. The collection of small, colorful steel wind-up birds perched on the bookshelves, hiding in the corners of closets, at the back of kitchen cabinets, fallen down the back of the furniture, are totems of my childhood, reminding me of a time when I used to delight in the way they seemed to move of their own accord overnight. I would wake to find them relocated, convinced that they came to life while I slept and fluttered all over the cabin on silent wings, communing with one another in the dark. It was Mom who'd moved them, of course. She'd place them around my bowl at the breakfast table, as if they'd gathered there, waiting for me to drag my lazy butt from my bed, but the sunrise had rendered them inanimate again before I managed to show my face.
The throws that hang over the backs of chairs and at the ends of the beds are old and a little holey, but surprisingly spared by the moths. They have a smell all of their own, a little musty and dusty but comforting—the smell of faded sunlight and summers past, captured in the crocheted pinks and blues, and browns and oranges of the rough wool.
The creaky floorboards have been worn raw in some places, the varnish rubbed away by the footfall of too many sock feet, and the paint on the window sills is chipped and peeling in places. The stove in the kitchen is temperamental and likes to cut out halfway through boiling the water inside the old, dented copper kettle, and sometimes the pipes rattle and judder mid-shower, but there isn’t one single detail, one single flaw that I don’t cherish about this place. It’s perfect in its imperfection, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My favorite part of the cabin, though, is the deck. Out of the front bedroom, the raised wooden platform is at least six hundred square feet and seems to be both suspended amongst the trees and reaching into the water at the same time. I used to spend most of my time at the cabin sprawled out on the deck when I was a kid. I can close my eyes and still feel the rough wood beneath my belly, the sun beating down on my back, as I laid on my stomach, flipping the pages of book after book, the weeks of summer vacations passing by in a lazy, hazy blur.
I stand in the kitchen now, patiently waiting for my tea to steep, steam curling up from my grandpa's old mug, and I plan out my day: first, guitar. Then, couch time with the newest Orla Stanislavski book. Later, probably around three, I unashamedly schedule in a nap for myself. Then I'll head to the store and pick up the groceries I neglected to buy on the way up here. In the evening, I'll cook myself some dinner and relax in front of the T.V. There's no cable or internet up here, but there's something comforting about selecting a DVD from the cabin's respectable library and tucking myself up on the couch with a blanket—I usually pick ‘Die Hard With a Vengeance,’ since it was Grandpa’s favorite. The man loved anything with Bruce Willis in it.
I fix my tea with milk and a dash of sugar, the English way, Nona says, and I gingerly carry it up the narrow stairs in one hand, my guitar in my other, trying not to spill any liquid on the way up. Thankfully, the deck is partially covered by an overhang from the eaves so I can sit out there in an old, weatherworn rattan chair with the waist of the guitar resting snuggly against the top of my thigh and not get soaked by the rain.
It comes down in sheets over the lake, pitting the surface of the water with millions of tiny ripples. Across the other side of the lake, a column of smoke rises from another chimney, but I can’t see the other house. There’s someone over there, just like me, hiding from the world inside a small, warm cocoon; they’re probably looking at the column of smoke rising from this cabin’s chimney, trying to pick the building from the masts of the trees, too. It’s so secluded here that it is mildly comforting to know there’s someone out there. Not that I’d have a hope of finding or reaching them if I needed help, but still…
I fingerpick my way through a series of chord progressions, warming up my hands, stitching a melody together, trying to keep my mind as blank as humanly possible, but it proves difficult. I can play without any real concentration on my part, so a succession of thoughts parade through my head, one by one, all demanding my close attention.
“I’m not going to force you to fall for me, Silver. You’ve already been forced to do too much. But don’t blame me if I try and change your mind.”
Alex's words had felt like a promise. They felt like an omen of some kind. He's not just going to let this lie. He's already shown himself to be a determined person who gets whatever the hell he wants. Turning up at my place after I told him our lesson was off and hanging out with my dad until I came home? Yeah, that proved that well enough. It was there in his eyes, though: a steel will, focused directly on me, telling me in no uncertain terms that I will give him what he wants when all is said and done. Does it matter that it seems to be what I want to? I'm so fearful of that—my own urge to hand myself over to him, even though I know just how dangerous it is to contemplate such a thing. I've trusted before, and in turn, I've been so badly burned. My scars are all internal, but they're there, brutal and horrific all the same. He can't see them. He can't know how deep they run.
I’m too broken and too flawed. I can’t get him out of my head, though. Like the oxygen bonded within my own blood, he’s an ever-present constant that I can’t deny myself. He’s with me, listening and watching as I play, his dark eyes unknowable, his thick, wavy hair falling down across his face, soft mouth quirked up at one side in that infuriating way of his. Even as a projection from my own head, I can’t figure out what he’s thinking as he leans against the deck’s railing in the rain, his posture relaxed and wound tight at the same time.
After thirty minutes, sifting through a litany of situations and possibilities, where I manage to overcome the damage Jake Weaving and his friends did to me and I somehow find the courage to tell Alex that I like him, I realize that I’ve only managed to convince myself just how impossible any of it would be. Not the outcome I was hoping for, but it seems to be the truth. I wake up panting some nights, soaked in sweat and tangled in my bedsheets, trying to fight off an echo of violence that has already taken its toll on me. For a while there, I couldn’t even bear coming into contact with Mom or Dad without nearly jumping out of my own skin and dissolving into a fit of panicked hysteria.
Alex isn’t safe enough to be right for me, and I’m not whole enough to be right for him, either. That’s really all there is to it.
After lunch, I grab the groceries I need, grateful for the long weekend and the extra day I'll be able to spend at the cabin. The bait and tackle shop cottoned on to the idea that they were the only store within a five-mile radius of the actual lake and they expanded, turning themselves into more of a convenience store, stocking up on the essentials most holidaymakers require while they're away from home. I pick up some bread, cheese, milk…some ingredients to cook up some pasta, as well as breakfast items and snacks. Merl, the store owner, chit chats with me as he runs my card and takes my payment; I'm laughing and joking with him, helping to load my goods into a paper bag, when
I feel my cell phone buzz in the back pocket of my jeans.
I’ve never gotten a text up here at the lake. Never. Takes me a second to register the fact that something weird just happened, though. When it hits me, I pull my phone out and stare down at the screen, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“Pretty awesome, huh? They put in one of those camouflaged 5G poles on the hillside over on the other side of Whitley Hill. Now, every once in a while, we get a burst of reception and all our messages come floodin’ through.”
“Why?” A strange numbness is creeping into my fingertips, up my hands, sinking into my joints.
“Little girl drowned here six months ago,” Merl tells me. “Such a shame. She was only eight or nine. The parents have been campaigning ever since. Said it was irresponsible that there was no way to call for help. They hold that their little girl would have survived if they’d been able to call an ambulance. Seems to me they’re just trying to find someone else to pin the blame on, though. They weren’t watchin’ the little mite close enough. Couldn’t have been if the girl slipped under the water and disappeared in the first place. You’re a strong swimmer aren’t you, Sil?”
I don’t answer him.
I can’t.
I'm too busy staring down at the video that's just come through on my phone. I don't know the number, it's not in my contacts, and it's not one I recognize. There's no message, and no name in the actual body of the text. There's only the video: Alex, sitting with Jake at the edge of a swimming pool, holding a beer in his hands. They're too far away to read the expression on Alex's face, but I can picture it just fine because, in the water, Kacey and Zen are naked, their bodies lit up by the pool lights, and they're making out like crazy.