Last Chance Llama Ranch (23 page)

Thad looked around the fire; shame, fury, and defensiveness radiating from his body. Merry found herself barely breathing, and at her side, she could feel Sam was wired to step in, watchful. He put his hand on her knee, but it was hardly less edgy than she was. “Hold steady,” he said quietly, his eyes darting between the boys. “I won't let anything happen.”

Somehow, Merry believed him.

“And, what? You think farting around in the woods like a bunch of fairies is going to change things? Make your daddy stop beating on you and your mom every time he comes around drunk?” Thaddeus rounded on the other two boys. “You think rubbing sticks together and building Boy Scout shelters is gonna get you the hell out of this one-horse town? Get you into college? Find you a job?” He laughed bitterly. “Dream on, you morons. None of us is going anywhere.”

“Then why are you here, if you think that?” The question came from Zelda. “Nobody's forcing you.”

“Maybe I just came for a chance at your sweet snatch,” he said, leering.

Zelda's mouth dropped open, a flush blooming across her cheeks. Merry sucked in her breath in shock.

“Enough,” Sam said. He'd risen to his feet so quietly Merry hadn't even heard him. “Apologize to Zelda. Right now.”

Next to the still-sprouting Thaddeus, Sam was like a boulder, immutable, immovable, and just as rock steady. Thad seemed to shrink down in size until he was just a boy again, unsure of himself and aware he'd gone too far. He looked from Sam to Zelda, whose arms were crossed defensively inside her windbreaker. Tears of anger and hurt trembled on her mascara-clotted lashes.

“Sorry, Zel,” he mumbled. “That wasn't cool.”

“Fuck you, sleazoid,” Zelda sniffed, but she tossed her hair in a way that told Merry she'd already half forgiven the boy.

“Now how about Joey, while you're at it?” Sam prompted. “I think you owe him an apology.”

“For what? Telling the truth?” Some of Thad's belligerence returned. “Everyone knows his mom's the trailer park hoochie.”

“That's not true. My mom's
not
a whore!” Joey insisted hotly. “She just…she just…” His voice broke, and he started gulping air. “She can't help how she is. And if people like you didn't give her such a hard time, maybe she could get better.”

“Hate to break it to you, Joe Blow, but people like her
never
get better. Sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be.”

“And what about people like
you
, Thaddeus?” Joey was steaming, even though his cheeks were wet with tears.

“What's that supposed to mean? People like me?”

“Illiterate people.” Joey crossed his arms and lifted his chin. “Everybody here knows you can't read anything harder than
Goodnight Moon
.”

“You're gonna regret that—” Thad started around the fire, pushing past Sam.

Mikey stuck a foot out.

Thad went down—thankfully into the pile of leaves they'd gathered for insulation, and not the fire. He sprawled out in an undignified tangle of arms and legs, sending leaves scattering in all directions.

No one laughed.

“Who did that?”

“Musta been a tree root,” Bernie said. “That or you're a total klutz, brah.”

The redness in Thad's face was evident even in the waning light of approaching nightfall.

Joey stepped forward before Thad could jump back to his feet, quicker even than Sam, who had moved to intercept him. The slender kid stuck his hand in front of Thaddeus's face. “Take it or break it, Thaddeus,” he said quietly. “But either way I'm not backing down.”

For a moment Merry thought Thad would choose the latter, and she bit her lip, thinking how little fun it would be to cart the kids down the mountain in the middle of the night in search of medical attention—and perhaps the aid of law enforcement.

Then Thaddeus cracked a smile. It lit up his face and showed Merry for a second what a heartbreaker he was going to be when he was fully grown. “Good for you, Joe.” He took the smaller boy's hand and let him help him to his feet, though the assist was clearly not needed. “Maybe you aren't a total pussy after all.”

“And maybe
you're
not a total asshat, but the jury's still out,” Joey said.

The two other boys loosened up visibly. Zelda, stroking Cleese's shell, was smiling at Thad in a way that told Merry she was no more immune to his charms than he was to hers. “We could teach you to read, you know,” she said. “All of us could take turns. We'd never tell anyone.”

The other kids looked solemnly back at Thaddeus, nodding.

Now it was Thad's turn to have tears in his eyes, though he scrubbed them away before they could fall. “You'd do that for me?”

“Dude,” Bernie said. “We're like the Three Musketeers. Or five, or whatever. Anyway, we stick together when it counts.”

“We'll sort you out, Thad,” Mikey said. “Just stop acting like such a jerk, okay? It's really uncool.”

Thad scooped up a pile of leaves and tossed it at Mikey, but he was smiling. “Deal.”

“Hey, Sammy,” Bernie called, “all this chest thumping is hungry work. Did Dolly pack any dessert?”

With a lean-to built of branches tied with dogbane-husk cordage to keep the warmth of our fire at least ostensibly from escaping, we bedded down at last between a layer of scrounged-up leaves and our garbage bag comforters. However, precious little comfort was to be had as the stars wheeled into view, and all trace of warmth stole away like a thief in the night.

Actually, a thief in the night would have been welcome, so long as he was willing to spoon.

There's one piece of advice I will share about overnight outdoor survival, dear friends, and that is: Do not be the outside penguin.

Remember
March of the Penguins
? Where all the roly-poly emperor penguins huddle in a big stinky circle on an ice floe in Antarctica for like, ten hundred months? Well, some unlucky bastard has to be the outside penguin. And since I couldn't very well cuddle up with a bunch of teenaged boys (this is a PG magazine column, after all) and I was busy keeping dear Zel from a frozen grave by being “big spoon” to her little, yours truly played OP for the night. Even Snape stood me up, content to kush all by his lonesome closer to the stream. (Honestly, he farts, so I wasn't too broken up about it.)

But what of Studly Sam? Wouldn't his arms have made the perfect haven of warmth and security a girl dreams of in a dark forest echoing with the cackles of coyotes and screeching of owls in the night? Well, perhaps, but our fearless leader had to stand sentry, did he not? Lay wakeful through the night to feed the fire and keep us all safe?

Indeed. Sam took that bullet for us, and, cold posterior notwithstanding, I was most grateful.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—GNUP!

Haaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwww—shwishwishwi!

The sound of someone sawing logs with a wood chipper made of pure Satanism woke Merry. And not for the first time. Throughout the course of this most miserable night of her life, someone—namely the rather
un
studly Sam—had been snoring fit to wake the dead. The pile of leaves he'd burrowed under for shelter fairly shuddered with the force of his stentorian snores. Or perhaps they were his defense mechanism—no woodland beast in its right mind would disturb anything making such a monstrous ruckus.

Merry, who had slept approximately one third of a wink, scrubbed her hands over her face and gave sleep up as a bad job. The trash bag full of last year's leaves may have served Sam's intrepid young squirts fairly well, but a six-three Amazon wasn't getting much coverage from a contractor bag. And
damn
, it was cold out here overnight. Merry had plowed into snowbanks that felt less chilly. Of course, in those days she'd been clad in space-age fabrics designed to keep competitors in peak condition, not the remains of one woefully insufficient Burberry windbreaker and a pair of skinny jeans she was coming to loathe with a passion fiery enough that it probably
should
have kept her warm. At one point, Merry had even tried to climb
inside
her leaf-stuffed bag instead of just using it as a blanket, but the resulting fiasco was worse than what little she cared to remember of prom night—all wrestling, rustling, and ultimately, disappointment.

Sam obviously had no such struggles. After the evening's dramatic confrontation, he'd made sure the kids dropped off to sleep okay, then tromped off to his own private pile of leaves, declining even a trash bag, as he'd been “training his mitochondria” for over a decade to keep his temperature optimally regulated, he said, and never felt the cold.

Bully for you, Sam Cassidy.

She snuggled deeper into her personal mulch pile, putting her arm back around Zelda to keep the girl warm. At least one of them should get some rest, she thought.
I'll just lie here and dream of Mother's Austrian goose-down feather beds, the ones at the winter chalet where we spent so many Christmases pretending to get along.
Merry started to slip back into some semblance of slumber.

This time it wasn't Sam's attempts at New Age nasal symphonics that woke her. “Um, Miss Manning?” A voice piped up in Merry's ear.

Surely the voice would go away if she ignored it. Surely the gods would not be so cruel as to snatch this last chance of rest from her, just as she was so close to achieving it?

A finger poked at the arm Merry had wrapped around her young charge. Tentative, but insistent. “Miss Manning?”

Merry said a silent prayer for generosity of spirit. “Wassup, kiddo?” she asked, scrubbing a hand over her weary face again. She looked down at the kid she'd been spooning. Zel had rolled over on her back, her dyed hair looking black in the faint light.

“I, um…that is, I have to…” The girl nibbled on her lip piercing. “Would you come with me to the bathroom?” she blurted. “I'm scared of, um…everything. Plus,” she added with more spirit, “I don't want those pervs staring at my ass.”

Merry felt a little bit flattered to be needed, even for so basic a function.
Sleep can wait
. “Sure, Zel. I don't know about a bathroom, but I can probably scope out a suitable tree. And I'll totally keep those pervs”—currently sleeping angelically like a pile of puppies across the fire—“from gawking where they shouldn't.” With a repressed groan, she rolled stiffly to her feet, every muscle a scream after the night spent in frigid temperatures.

Zel bounced up with enviable grace, ponytail swinging as she headed out from camp. She'd found a suitable thatch of cover and had her jeans down before Merry even caught up.
Somehow I don't think she needs my help
, Merry thought.
At least not with pissing in the woods
.

When in Rome…Merry found her own bush and attended to nature's call a few feet away.

“So, ah, Miss Manning…” Zel said from her hiding place.

“Please, Zel, call me Merry. Once you've peed in the trees with someone, formalities seem a bit absurd.” Merry pulled out some of the velvety wipe-safe leaves she'd stashed in her pockets and did the necessary, hoping her skin wouldn't have some horrible delayed reaction.

“Um, okay…Merry. So, like, I had a question. Can I ask you a question?”

Merry zipped up. “I think you just did.”

“Um, like, another one?” Zelda rustled around, finishing up her own business. Her footsteps were muffled on the leaf duff as she tromped over.

Merry left off teasing. “Of course. What's on your mind?”

Zel leaned her back against an aspen tree, whose trunk barely shone white in the predawn light. She shivered, but Merry thought it was more nerves than the temperature. “So, like, you probably had a boyfriend or two, when you were younger?”

Ouch, kid
. “Well, back in those days, it was all arranged marriages between us knights and damsels,” she quipped. “Of course, gals like me and Brienne of Tarth, well, we weren't exactly hot commodities, but I did have one or two suitors vying to carry my favors in the lists.”

Zelda colored, but wouldn't be deterred by Merry's teasing. “Yeah, um, right. So, like, what do you do if you like a guy, but he's kinda…I don't know, like…not in your same league?”

Merry's lips quirked.
Well, that's one I know plenty about
, she thought. When you were bigger and stronger than 90 percent of them, somehow that tended to have a paradoxical effect on your league stats with men. But Zelda—zesty, conventionally pretty—she'd be unlikely to have the same issues. “I don't think anyone's out of your league, sweetheart,” she said to the girl. “Just in one day of knowing you, I've seen enough to know that. You're smart, you're lovely,
and
you're kind—a lot kinder than I bet you want people to know.”

Zel blushed at the compliment, but she brushed it off. “Not
that
kind of league,” she said, with an arrogance that made Merry smile inwardly. She tossed her hair. “I mean
money
.”

“Ah,” said Merry. She knew a lot about that too. Having come from more wealth than she knew what to do with, she'd met her share of guys who felt intimidated by her family's fortune and prestige. She hated to think of Zel feeling that way. “I'm sure no one would judge you for not having a lot of money, Zelda—” she started.

“No, I mean, I
have
money. Like, a
lot
of money. And he doesn't.”

“Ah,” she said again. Merry looked the girl over, noting belatedly how her hair's dye job, even as punked-out as it was, had been done with an expert hand, and her clothes, while as trashed as the others', looked to have been deliberately demolished by a designer's fashion-conscious hand. Even her body jewelry was obviously quality, now that Merry looked. “I'm guessing you don't want him to know.”