Aric Davis - The Fort

Hooper had taken her just to cover his tracks, in case Amy was telling the truth and her friends gave up to the police what they’d been up to and where she’d really been. If they did, someone was going to have seen his car, maybe even remember the license plate number if he was really unlucky. The burned body by the drive-in could change all that, slow down the investigation as the sands of truth fell to the bottom bell of the hourglass. If the friends she claimed to have been with kept up the lie for even a few days, the discovery of the body would make it unnecessary for them to tell the truth—as far as they knew, their friend would be dead, so why get themselves in trouble? Hooper still wasn’t sure exactly what game had been afoot, he just knew that it had allowed him to take Amy, and for that he was grateful.

The shower ran cold, and Hooper bent to turn it off. They never seemed to last long enough, and he could feel the clarity from the solitude of the running water falling swiftly away. He dried himself quickly and hung the towel on a hook next to the shower. He considered going to the bedroom to get clothes, but instead walked back to Amy. I can shop for what I need tomorrow. Now I want to be with her. Her eyes widened as he entered the room, and he could see her struggling with the chair. He smiled to himself as he circled behind her bound form.

“You need to learn to calm down,” said Hooper. Not for the first time, he wished he’d learned something of medicine in Southeast Asia, but he hadn’t. NyQuil might do the trick. If it didn’t, booze would. “I can get something to help you relax,” said Hooper. “But for right now, how about something to eat?” He ran his fingers through her hair, and she jerked away from him. “You’ve got to be hungry,” he said, cupping her chin and looking into her eyes. She was tearing up, no longer feeling tough. For Hooper, seeing her already beginning to crack was like receiving a gift from God. “Good girl. I’ll make you some toast, and if you can eat it and don’t try and scream, maybe we’ll talk about what I need from you.” She nodded her head slowly, tears streaking her cheeks. Perfect.

14

“I still don’t think it means anything,” said Luke. “So some detective is driving around and asking questions, so what? That’s just his job. I say she turns up in a day or so, tired and maybe still a little hungover.”

“It’s not like all we want to do is go rummaging around the woods,” said Tim. “But we would be, like, the coolest if she were lost back there, or hurt or something, and we found her.”

“Or dead,” said Luke. “Or say we do play cops, like you guys want, and we find her with her guts torn out? Have either of you thought about that? You know, considered the actual bad parts of this, and not just thought, Oh, cool, cops are at my house ? Where I live, the cops’ being at your house is really uncool. The reality is that if she is out there, she’s probably dead, and I’m not going to lie, I don’t need to see that.”

“What crawled up your ass?” Scott asked. “So what if we think it’s cool that we got to talk to the cops or whatever? It is pretty cool.”

“Whatever.”

“Look,” said Tim, trying to bring reasonableness back to a normally very reasonable Luke. “We don’t need to do anything. If we decide we want to go look for clues or whatever, we’ll do it as a group. Just like everything else that we do, and you know that,” he said, pointing at Luke. “But what is it with you lately?”

“What do you mean?” Luke asked, but he kept his eyes on the floor.

“I don’t know what I mean, but you’re, like, all…I don’t know, lately. Something’s going on with you. It’s obvious. If you want to tell us what’s really going on, I wish you’d just go for it.”

“It’s everything, OK?” Luke said hoarsely, his friends thinking that he might actually cry, and how scary that might be. Crying was for skinned knees, not emotional breakdowns. “Everything in my life is getting so fucked up. You want to know something crazy? I made my sisters’ lunch like an hour ago, and you know what they were doing? Smoking. They’re eleven years old and they smoke cigarettes, and apparently my mom is totally fine with it. They don’t have to do anything but sit around and watch TV, and I have to do everything. Plus, my mom doesn’t work, and she’s never home. Even when she’s there, she’s on the phone all the time, just totally forgetting the fact that she has these three kids she’s supposed to take care of. Plus, she’s fucked up all the time. And not like when one of you guys’ dads has too many beers or whatever. I mean she gets really fucked up, like, pisses her pants or throws up on herself.”

There was a long moment when none of them talked or looked at each other. The sounds of the forest trickled into the fort, and then a lawn mower started up somewhere.

Finally Scott said, “That sucks, man. Seriously. But if it helps at all, no one has a perfect life. At least you see your dad a few times a year. I never see mine. And don’t tell me how that doesn’t count because Carl’s cool. Carl isn’t my dad, and he never will be—he’s just Carl. So yeah, if I went through all the rotten stuff in my life, I bet I could feel pretty bad for myself too, but I don’t. Not everybody has it easy like Tim.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just messing with you,” said Scott, punching Tim lightly on the arm, and then turning back to Luke. “You need to look at things like that counselor lady told us: ‘Your glass needs to be half full.’”

“That’s fine,” said Luke. “But what do I do if I don’t have a glass?”

“She didn’t say anything about that.”

“I figured as much,” said Luke. “They never tell us the stuff we really need to know.”

After a day basically wasted sitting in the fort, Scott was almost excited to go home for dinner. On the way there, he kept his eyes peeled for some sort of disturbance, something glaringly different, but, of course, he saw nothing. That sort of thing seemed to be reserved for the movies, like digging for dinosaur bones and actually finding them.

The air was cool as he walked through the woods, and he could smell at least one person barbecuing, the smell of suburban summers that never got old.

Luke was a wreck, there was no debating it, and Scott had no idea what to do for his friend. He wanted to talk to Tim about it, but the three of them were always together, and there was no good time for it. I could call him later , but that would mean he wouldn’t have any privacy. If his mom heard even half of what was happening at Luke’s house, she’d call the cops in a second.

Scott had a hard time believing it at first. Why would an adult be so shitty at being an adult? It just didn’t make any sense. His dad’s leaving made no sense, and now Luke’s mom, Emma, made no sense. It almost made him question adulthood in general. What if they’re all just faking it? What if none of them has the slightest idea what they’re doing?

The sight of smoke billowing up from behind his house made Scott whoop with joy. Whatever else had gone wrong with the day, Carl was grilling, and even the worst of days can still finish well with a good dinner.

Carl was standing in front of the grill, drinking a can of Miller Lite, and Carl never drank during the week. For a very brief moment, Scott was terrified. Maybe everything was falling apart here too, and the goings-on at Luke’s house could be explained away easily: “The adults all went crazy.” Carl’s smile made everything OK, though, and, passing through the kitchen of the house, Scott opened the screen door and went back outside.