“Help us,” Katrina said.
I took Heather’s arm, and she turned her head to me. “Helpme.”
I open my eyes. Now that the memory has been exposed, I can’t get it out of my head. Like liquid bubbling up and over a cauldron.
“It’s her initiation,” Kat said.
“Not cool,” I said.
“Shh,” Kat said, nodding toward Heather, who was quiet now, no longer fighting us. “You know it’s just for fun.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said even though I knew no such thing. What I did know was exactly what Heather felt. I’d had my turn in this room. Kat, Summer, and I had been hiding in the basement late one night, laughing and drinking, and then they’d told me it was my turn to prove myself, and to hold my hands out. I’d done it. I’d let them put the zip ties on and lead me to the room under construction, thinking I was only going to be in there a few minutes. They’d locked me in all night.
“I thought this was a joke,” Heather said. “Let me go or I’ll scream.”
“Go ahead,” Kat said. “Maybe Baldy will wake up and we’ll all get expelled.”
“Nobody’s getting expelled from this place,” Summer said, laughing. “This is where girls come who get expelled from a real school. We’re already in our punishment.”
They laughed, but Heather paled. And she didn’t scream. The three of us took her farther into the room and let her go.
“C’mon,” Kat said to Summer and me.
Heather stood still as we walked to the door, and just before Summer shut it, she said, “Nighty night.”
We shut the door, and Kat grabbed a spare cinder block from the corner and put it in front of the door. Summer and I helped move several more blocks. Then we all stood back and looked at it. Kat dusted her hands on her jeans. “We’ll let her out in the morning.”
And I laughed with them and then went upstairs and lay awake all night, telling myself I was going to go back down and let her out. But I never did.
A sharp pain jags behind my eyes. I press on my temples, then reach into my tote and grab for my medication but remember I’m out. I find two loose Advil in my bag and swallow them dry. I need to call my doctor, but I know he’ll say what he always says to me. He can treat the symptoms, but I need to work on reducing my stress load and try to figure out the root cause. No thank you.
I look up at the school again. I think I know the root cause.
I wait a moment to see if the pain in my head is going to bloom or shrink back and disappear. It does neither. It stays steady. Steady I can handle. I slide on sunglasses even though the sunlight is now muted by hazy clouds. I’m not risking the light triggering something even more.
I turn my attention to the caretaker’s cottage behind me, where I saw a woman run away the last time I was standing here. Rosalie.
Nature has claimed the small structure. Vines and weeds and small bushes have twisted their way not only around the structure but into it as well. It sits on cinder blocks and looks as if it could collapse at any minute. The roof is partially caved in, the front door is missing, and the glass in the windows is shattered.
I move closer, and sticks crunch under my boots. I peek inside the cottage’s open door. Poison ivy and tall thistles grow up through the busted floorboards. I take my phone out and put the flashlight on. I don’t risk going all the way in. Instead I lean forward and move my phone in a slow circle. There are remnants of broken furniture and a sofa riddled with holes, the stuffing all over what’s left of the floor. On the far wall hang rows of taxidermy animals, deer heads, wild boars, framed turkey beards.
An image of Katrina running into our room flushed and out of breath comes to mind. She was always flushed and out of breath, and she’d come into the room with her hands behind her back.
“Guess what I found?”
Summer and I had looked up from our books. “What?” Summer said.
“You have to guess,” she’d said. She leaped onto my bed and started jumping up and down. “You won’t believe it. I hit the mother lode.”
“What?” Summer said, coming to the bed.
Kat looked down at us, and we looked up at her like a scene with Sandy from the movieGrease, only she would have been the “after” Sandy, not the before.
“So,” she said. “I went into that caretaker’s cottage.” She watched us to make sure we were listening. “Did I ever tell y’all I talked my way out of a DUI last summer? And the cop gave me his phone number.”
“Kat, stop,” I said. “What did you find?”
She straightened her shoulders and pulled her hand from behind her back, and Summer gasped. Kat held out a bag containing loose weed, rolling paper, and several joints.
