Authors: Dan Carr
It was a laugh.
I had no idea why she was laughing and I wanted to cover my ears because it was so gross and wrong right then—
“YOU IDIOT! I WASN’T MOLESTED!”
I sat up and had no idea what was going on.
Karen was off the wall and her hand was on her chest. Her eyes were wide and looked so huge on her face. That’s what the combination of confusion, shock, and regret looked like. That was what being
tricked
looked like.
“I was just seeing which one of you would pour your guts—and you did it, Logan! I don’t even have a stepfather. I even said I was a pathological liar and you still believed the other stuff.” She laughed. “That’s what you get for being such a bitch all the time—right Val?” She looked up at me from under her bunk.
I didn’t know what to say. Karen was lost somewhere in space as her face turned to anger. Twin and Twinner’s mouths were open wide, in shock, and smiling.
“Right Val?” she asked again.
“You’re disgusting, Brooke,” I told her.
There was no other way to put it. Brooke was no cute, innocent Green Gables. She was a horrible, mean person. And to make it worse, she didn’t even know it. She thought she had done nothing wrong.
“What?” she said.
“You’re terrible and that’s why you’re here.”
Brooke started to cry again. This time is was a loud wailing that filled the corners of the cabin. There was no hiding from it.
Karen jumped down from her bunk. She headed for the door to escape because she had to be embarrassed. I would be embarrassed if I were her. She had revealed herself when no one else had. That sucked.
I jumped down from mine and followed her to the door. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I grabbed her by the arm.
“Don’t touch me,” she yelled. She pushed me back with both hands, right on the bony part of my chest. It felt like a hard jab, and it almost hurt since I wasn’t ready for it.
“I DIDN’T MEAN IT! THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY!” Brooke screamed.
“I need to use the bathroom.” Karen had tears in her eyes, but they hadn’t begun to fall.
I got in front of her and blocked her from going out the door. Karen put her hands on the tops of my arms and dug her sharp nails into my skin.
“I’ll rip your skin right off your bones, Val.”
“I don’t feel anything,” I lied.
“Yeah? Well then I’ll knock the shit out of you,” she said. She grabbed the top of my hair instead, where it was all held together in a messy bun. She began to pull, and it felt like the roots were being yanked out of my skull, like a carrot coming out of the ground.
I didn’t know what to do. Things were falling apart and that’s what was supposed to happen to people like us while we were there—
"I've tried to kill myself twice," Bambi said.
Karen turned around. She still had me by my bun. I looked over my shoulder at little Bambi. Little Bambi, who had come out of her bunk as Tracy the paranoid loner. She stood out in the open, and her eyes were a dark black.
“My aunt took me in about two years ago. I got out of a bad home, and into an even worse one. I shared a room with my two older cousins, and they snuck boys into the room at night and did stuff under the covers.”
Tracy was becoming clearer, and less pixelated. She had a mole above her upper lip, like a model. I only noticed it right then, and I realized Bambi had completely disappeared. There was a girl with a scary, real life in front of us, and I was becoming terrified just looking at her.
“There were a lot of problems…” She stopped talking and looked at her feet. “The first time I tried it,” she whispered, “I just didn’t know what to do so I tried slitting my wrists."
Twinner inhaled hard enough for the ceilings to fall in.
Bambi was dead. Her life had killed her. Tracy flipped over her wrist. There were faint, long vertical scars glowing on her skin. Someone who knew what they were doing.
"But my veins collapsed. My aunt found me passed out in my room before I could slip away.”
Karen let go of me. I leaned on the door because I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to make any sudden movements in case the spotlight came to me. I was too scared to go near Tracy.
“The next attempt was a drug overdose. But I knew nothing about drugs and where to get them so I stole a whole bottle of my cousin’s prescription pills and took it all at once."
Brooke rocked back and forth under her bunk. Her eyebrows were high on her head like a crazy person—maybe because she was a crazy person.
"My aunt called 911 when she came into the bedroom and found the empty bottle beside me. We sat together and waited for ten minutes until the sirens came down the street. They pumped my stomach, and two days later, after finding a half written suicide note in my top drawer, I ended up here."
I was in disbelief. New Horizons wasn't where someone like Tracy needed to be. She needed better counselling than a place meant to shock teenagers into life. She needed real help. We probably all did.
"I want to slip away, and when it happens, I want to be forgotten. That is my dream. But it’s so hard because everyone is obsessed with remembering and keeping things forever.
There is no such thing as forever
. And fuck, life would be so much easier if we were allowed to leave it on our own. I know I’m going to leave it on my own. And I want that to be okay.”
The floor had a lot of creeks in it walking back to my bed. And Karen’s bed sounded like it was going to fall apart when she got up into it. I would have loved to tell her about weight limits, and how bunks could only hold so much of a person, but I had no idea where I was. I was suddenly in a cabin half full of strangers, and there was no comic relief that could save us.
8:
SQUARE KNOTS AND BOWLINES
Sharon woke us up in the dead of morning.
She threw the door open and I flinched when she blew a whistle. It wasn’t something you wanted to hear when the sun wasn’t up. It felt like my ears were never going to stop ringing.
Brooke rolled over and fell out of her bunk. She landed on the hard floor and cursed. Twin and Twinner laughed in their own mocking tones, and I smiled at that. It was something we needed to see happen to Brooke, the compulsive liar. I wished I hadn’t known who she really was. But I had unfortunately grown up and realized the truth. Wasn’t that what growing up was? Realizing things? If I could have it my way, I would never realize anything, ever. It was sometimes nicer to imagine how people might be, instead of how they actually are.
“Rise and be bright, ladies,” Sharon said.
“That isn’t the saying,” Twinner said. Her short hair was sticking up, and you could see her dark roots. I wanted to scream across the room that she wasn’t all one colour, but there was no point. Everyone had dark roots, but not everyone had huge, droopy earlobes like she did.
“Oh stop that, I can say whatever I want as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody,” Sharon said. “Everyone get out of your bunks. Because we are going on an overnight adventure.”
I couldn’t look at her because she still had on that wrap for her sprained wrist. It was from the night I had chucked her into the woods, and each day that passed that I didn’t say sorry to her, her wrist seemed to be screaming louder and louder at me, accusing me of assault. I had chucked an old woman into the woods like she was compost, and each day she continued to stand in front of me, like nothing happened. It was like a young, dumb idiot hadn’t tried to kill her, and she was smiling because maybe she believed I wouldn’t try it again. I felt sick that I had done something so obviously wrong. Yet in the moment, when it was happening and things were blowing up, I couldn’t
not
do it.
But I had to stop thinking about it if I wanted to move on. I got down from my bunk, and when I got my shirt, socks and boots on, we all followed Sharon outside. On the dirt path in front of our cabin were six backpacks attached to sleeping bags. We each picked one up and dropped our toiletry bags into the sack. I held 49 in my arms as I followed the frail woman down to the fence in front of the lake.
The gate in front of the stairs was open.
My heartbeat quickened. There were counsellors all around the area, but I still had the urge to run down the stairs and disappear down the shore—just to see if I could get away. One moment of freedom was all I wanted.
“We’re going down to the shoreline. Go single file down the stairs. They are steep, and we don’t want anyone tripping. Once you are on the shoreline, head to the dock, where the canoes are waiting. No funny stuff, there are counsellors everywhere.”
I took a breath and headed to the stairs. They were sandy from the wind blowing off the water. We walked in single file like Sharon had instructed, and I kept my grip on the railing, in case I passed out from the excitement of being outside of the fence.
"Girls, get into groups of two and find a canoe down at the dock," Sharon said. "And leave the hiking bags in the middle of the canoe so the weight is balanced out."
"Sharon are you coming?" Karen asked.
"No, I'm afraid I’m not in the condition I’d like to be in for hiking.”
I couldn’t look at her. I knew she was looking at the side of my face. I really wanted to apologize but I didn’t know how to do it without looking like I was just trying to do the right thing. I wanted her to know I really was sorry, and not doing it just to look good.
"Larry, Guy, Rick and Mary will be joining you on the trip," Sharon said. "Now, go get into a canoe and wait for instructions."
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. Larry was going to try to tick me off the whole time, and angry me was going to fall for it. Maybe I would chuck him into the lake and drown him and end up in juvie just like Guy had warned me. And then there was Mary—her stomach, big nose, and little eyes finally had a name.
I paired off with Karen because Karen grabbed my wrist. I guess she wanted nothing to do with Brooke, and she didn’t have many good options in our group to pair up with. We walked toward the dock and our boots sunk into the wet sand. Behind us, our footprints revealed where we had been. If I were to run, I’d have to be careful about leaving a mark.
I decided I was going to take the back of the canoe since Karen probably wasn't a very strong paddler. When we got down to the dock to get into our canoes, the boys were already in theirs and out in the water.
Murray waved at me. He seemed happy to see me and that was kind of exhausting. I hadn’t seen him in a while since the girls had been separated from the boys in a lot of our daily activities. But there he was, waving, excited just by the sight of me. Like a puppy. Murray had no idea who I was, and had become happy just by the idea of what he had created in his head.
“You two are in love,” Karen said.
“Yep. We’re going to get married. And when I have kids, they’re going to come out with caterpillar eyebrows and tattoos. I’m pretty excited about it.”
“Caterpiller eyebrows?”
“Yeah. Don’t you see them on his forehead?”
Karen didn’t answer me. She was looking down at the canoe, waiting to see how shaky it could be as she put in her bag. I dropped mine on top of hers, and took a step back to watch. It was quite the thing to see. She had no idea how to get into a canoe.
“Come on Karen, it’s going to be tomorrow by the time you get in.”
“How the hell am I supposed to get in without tipping it?”
“Just jump in.” I put one foot in and then the other and then I was in the canoe. I looked at her. “Holy shit!”
“What?” Her eyes were wide with fear.
“That was hard.” I smiled.
She was scared. Anyone could see that, and I had no idea why she was afraid. Her eyes were green. Not in between blue or any other greyish colour—just green. She wasn’t paying attention to the other girls getting off the dock around her. She just cared about herself right then. Karen looked good. Everyone seemed to look their best with a little fear smeared across their face. Worry had a way of painting things more sharply.
"Okay residents, the goal is the islands. We will be exploring several of them and even camping out on the largest one in the middle. Are you all ready?" Larry asked.
Nobody responded.
I watched as he got into his canoe. Guy sat behind him and didn't look very pleased to have to share a canoe with him. Mary and Rick got in another one and paddled toward where the other residents were already paddling away. They screamed after them to keep together.
“Come on Karen.”
She looked down at me.
I held out my hand.
She sat down on the side of the dock. I thought maybe she was just going to sit there for a bit, but she put one foot in the boat, and then the other followed. She took my hand and used it to carefully enter the canoe, which swayed a little bit. Before the canoe could do anything crazy, she dropped down into her seat quickly.
“Oh my god,” she gasped.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Shut up.”
“This is going to be the longest day of my entire life.”