Aric Davis - The Fort

Today, Tim saw the Coke and Sprite caps right where they were supposed to be, and he flipped his Budweiser cap next to them out of habit, just as Scott’s stepdad had told them to. “You have to do it every time,” he’d said, “or it’ll be pointless and you could end up getting killed by some drifter anyway.” The boys had nodded at this passing of valuable knowledge, and all of them loved the ritual that felt almost like something James Bond would do.

His cap in place, Tim slowly began to ascend the ladder. All three of them could do it quickly—Scott the fastest by far—but it was still pretty cool to go slowly and look at how the forest changed as you climbed. There was nothing out of the ordinary to see—the boys’ near-constant presence in the woods would’ve sent most local wildlife in search of a quieter locale—but there was still a lot to take in. Even the trees looked cooler the higher up Tim got, and no matter how many times he did it, the trip to the top never seemed to get boring.

Tim arose from the hole in the floor, then transitioned from the last rungs of the ladder to the waiting safety of the fort. Luke grabbed his forearm as he came over the gap in the wood, and then Tim felt the faint sense of vertigo fade. Feet planted on semisolid ground, Tim thanked Luke for the hand and asked the other boys what they were doing.

“Nothing,” said Luke. “Just trying to hit that target again, or at least we were.”

“Yeah,” said Scott dejectedly. “Either our guns suck, or we suck. Probably both.”

“Well, we’re not going to get better guns,” said Tim. “I had to bug my mom forever just to let me get this one. There’s no way she’s going to let me get a better one, not even if I got a paper route and saved my own money.”

“Good luck getting a paper route around here,” said Luke. “The Bennetts have that locked up until they die.” This was an endlessly sore point for any cash-strapped neighborhood child old enough to have a bicycle. The Bennett brothers, a pair of alcoholics who lived in Luke’s trailer park, had miles’ and miles’ worth of paper routes, and had used them as a sole source of income for as long as anyone could remember. The worst part was that the Bennett brothers, drunks or not, did a great job with their thousands of deliveries and there was no way they were going to get fired anytime soon.

“Yeah,” said Tim. “I know. It just sucks, is all. I know my dad would let me get a better gun, maybe even a .22 like I fired one time up north, but my mom won’t have a real gun in the house.”

“Hey, did you guys hear about Molly Peterson?” Scott said, changing the subject. “Her mom and my mom are friends at work, and I guess Molly never came home last night. My mom said that, knowing Molly, she wouldn’t be surprised if she was shacked up with a sailor or something for a few days, but I guess her mom is totally freaking out.”

“I heard about that,” said Tim. “Her mom called my mom this morning. Molly was out to the movies last night with my sister and…” Tim trailed off.

“And what?” Luke asked him. “What happened at the movies?”

“Well,” said Tim, “the thing is, I don’t know exactly. Also, my mom told me not to tell anyone about it. She said it was private family stuff, and that it was supposed to stay that way.”

“Hey,” said Scott, “we’re not just friends, we’re blood brothers, remember?”

Tim did. The three had sealed a pact in blood coaxed from their pinkies three years prior. Scott had a point, but Tim’s mother’s words still rang in his head. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But my mom was super serious about not telling anyone about what happened to Becca. She said it could be bad for her reputation, which made no sense. Like, how is some girl going missing bad for my sister’s reputation?”

“You just don’t understand how reputations work for girls,” said Luke. “My sister Ashley has all kinds of rumors going around about her at school. You guys know exactly what I’m talking about.” They did. Rumor had it that Luke’s fifth-grade sister Ashley had been caught giving a classmate a hand job in the boys’ bathroom right before spring break earlier in the year. No one could confirm it, but the fact that both she and Todd had been suspended at the same time was fairly telling that something, even if no one knew exactly what, had happened. “Still,” Luke continued, “you can tell us. Besides, it’s summer. Even if we wanted to be jerks and blab to the whole school about what happened, there’s no one to tell.”

“Not to mention,” said Scott, “if Molly really is gone, everyone is going to know exactly what happened anyways. If she’s really gone for more than a few days, it’ll be on the news, like last summer, when that kid from Kentwood wound up dead in that refrigerator.”

“I still don’t get why anyone would hide in an old fridge,” said Tim, trying to deflect the thought of Becca being anything like Luke’s sisters. “You know it had to have smelled super bad in there. And you guys have a point. But you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone. If the whole town finds out my sister was frenching some dude at the drive-in, that’s fine, as long as they didn’t find out from me, or from you. Got it?”

Scott and Luke did, both of their heads bobbling as Tim started to tell them what happened. “My sister wanted to go see a couple of movies at the drive-in, and—”

“What movies?”

“ The Untouchables and Full Met —”

“Wait,” said Scott. “Did she say if Full Metal Jacket was good? Carl and my mom saw it on Friday when it came out, and he said it was awesome. Seriously, you guys, my stepdad told me that movie would put hair on my balls. He said it was just like Nam, no Hollywood fucking around like Apocalypse Now or Platoon . I totally want to go, but Carl asked at the movie theater and they said no minors. I could tell it was good, ’cause my mom was freaking out, but—”

“Let Tim tell us what happened,” said Luke. “Just give it a rest in general.”

Scott sat down, looking pissed. Tim thought Luke was pretty harsh, calling him out like that—what about the blood-brothers business?—but went on with the story.

“So my sister and some friends went to the drive-in, most likely to drink beer and hit on older guys. The usual stuff.”

“Stupid stuff,” added Scott.

“Yes, exactly, super-stupid stuff. Anyways, something happened, I’m pretty sure between my sister and one of the guys. Which is weird, because I know she is, like, in love with Tyler Cranston, but she says it wasn’t him, and even sounded sort of PO’d that someone would even think it was. So my theory is this: My sister and her dumb buddies go to the drive-in. Something happens that makes Becca pissed at Tyler, probably saw him kissing another girl or something, and she decides to try and make him jealous. Only the older guy that she hooks up with wants to do more than just kiss.”

“Like have sex or something?” Luke asked.

“Yeah, something like that. Maybe he was trying to go all the way. Who knows? Anyways, my sister made it clear she didn’t want to do that, and something bad happened. When she came home her shirt was torn, and I could tell she was really upset. And not like how she gets upset when I call her Bacon and she’s feeling fat, but really upset, and really scared too.”

“Did any of the other girls hook up with some of the older guys too?” Scott asked. “’Cause maybe they did, and one of them took Molly. Maybe he’s some psycho killer or something, like that guy dumping bodies in the park, and her saying no wouldn’t have mattered at all.”

“Yeah, right,” said Luke. “A psychopath kidnapping some high school chick from a drive-in movie theater? That might happen downtown, but not here. You need to lose the late-night horror flicks, Scotty.”