29
Kate dropped out of school. Heather told me the rumor was she was going to get her GED, but I didn’t care. I was happy she was gone, although in her absence Natalie became the new leader. She appealed to Mason and promised they learned from Kate’s mistakes, but it didn’t matter. The guys were done with them. The bathroom beat down finalized the decision for each of the guys, which I was thankful for. School was easier when I returned. People were friendlier.
Once I healed enough, Coach Grath had me running with a select group of girls in the mornings before school. There were five of us, but there was only one that was competition for me, or she was the closest thing I had to competition. When real practices started, I was still leery about running with so many others, but I went at my own pace. I shut it all out. The guys. The girls. The people who were talking with each other, the girls who gossiped, the ones who complained about practice. All of it. Half way through the season, after a few scouts started coming around, my status changed again.
I was one of the best.
I was also becoming popular. Slightly.
Heather snorted when a few of the drill team girls hurried to open a door for me one day. She said I was now the prime target—get close to Samantha Strattan meant getting close to Mason and Logan Kade. They didn’t care that I was Mason’s girlfriend, they were lining up to be his next one or Logan’s go-to girl since Tate had stopped his all-access to her.
When I asked Heather if it was because they felt sorry for me, she started laughing. “Are you kidding me? People don’t give two shits if someone gets hurt or not unless you’re their friend. You weren’t friends with anyone. They’re being nice for two reasons: you got Kate out of here and they want to use you to get in with the Kades. It’s a good thing I don’t give a damn about either Kade.”
My eyebrow arched up at that. “You going to finally talk about Channing?”
Heather kept her lips sealed tight about that relationship, but I wasn’t blind. Channing was at Manny’s more often than not. He now had his own stool right next to Gus and they kept Brandon entertained during the slow nights. Logan and Mason joined them after their basketball practices, and all five of them had become friendly. Logan mentioned going running with Gus since the guy had a beer gut that was bordering on becoming a bear gut.
He even invited Gus to family dinner at Helen’s. That didn’t go well.
Nothing went over well with Helen.
Mason had been right and wrong. She didn’t buy Nate’s old home. She bought land at the end of the block. She was going to build her ultimate dream home. Since James and Analise were gone, she moved into their house until it was done. I moved into Malinda’s home, and that seemed to be the official move in day for David as well. He reassured me he wouldn’t sell the old house. It would be there for me if I ever wanted it. Mason spent the nights with me while he ‘lived’ with Helen in the old house. Logan came over for almost every breakfast and they were around most of the time during the weekends.
This was another arrangement Helen didn’t like, neither did David, but neither of them could say anything—it was going to happen whether they wanted it or not. We’d already fought one parental unit about our relationship. They knew we would’ve done it again, but it didn’t mean Helen didn’t make things uncomfortable at times.
Today was one of those days.
It was a Saturday, and Mason had spent the night, but so had Logan. Helen didn’t like that. He and Mark came back to the house after a party and played video games all night. He fell asleep on the couch, and Helen started calling at eight that morning. She called both of their phones, and then she began calling the house phone. When she asked for her son, Malinda knocked on our door and gave the phone to Mason. Wrong son. When he sat up and I heard her yelling on the other end, I rolled out of bed and grabbed my running clothes.
Helen was a saner version of Analise.
It was time to run.
I headed towards my favorite path. Instead of driving to my old neighborhood and jumping on it from the park, I found another trail that connected to it from behind Malinda’s house. When she learned where I ran the most, she pulled out a map of walking trails and showed me new trails, but I kept with the one that ran past Quickie’s and into the hills behind it. I could get lost back there and today was a day I needed that. It was when I came back that I noticed something was wrong.
The clerk was pacing back and forth outside the side door. He would stop, wring his hands together, shake them out, and return to pacing. After a few moments, he stopped again, took a deep breath and peeked around the back corner. Jerking back, he shook his head and started twisting his hands together again.
I made my way down to him. My heart was pounding so I pulled my earbuds out and silenced the noise. As I got to the bottom of the hill, I took a few breaths so I could talk and not pant through a conversation. He was turning around again in another sharp circle when he saw me, and his eyes bulged out. I recognized the same clerk from all the other times I’d been around here. I saw him through the window the first morning when the Broudous showed up for a pit stop and a few times when I’ve run past here.
“Hey,” I murmured, “are you okay?”
He jerked his head in an abrupt movement. “No.”
“Okay.” I frowned at him. When he didn’t say anything more, I leaned my leg against the building and started to stretch it out. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Ahh-hmmmggbbb—”
“What the hell?” I whipped around. It sounded like someone was being strangled. I started to step towards the back, but the clerk grabbed my arm.
He held me back. “Don’t.” His voice was trembling, as was his hand. The longer he held me, I realized all of him was shaking.
A foreboding sensation started in me. “What’s your name?”
“Ben.”
I nodded. This guy was about to piss his pants and I glanced down. He hadn’t, but he was close. Reaching up, I started to remove his hand from my arm, but his fingers tightened. He hurried out, “No. You can’t go over there.”
“Okay.” I let his hand stay in place. “Where?”
“They’re on the other side of the gas station, by the back.”
I nodded. He looked ready to bolt. “Why?”
“AHHHHHHHHHH! No …” The last ended on a whimper. A girl’s whimper.
I started to turn again. The girl was in trouble, and it wasn’t because she was crying to cry. She was crying in fear, the kind that comes from deep inside a person.
“No.” Ben pulled me back, firmer this time. He had stopped shaking so much. “You can’t go back there.”
“Okay, but why?”
His mouth closed and his lips pressed tight.
“Ben, you have to tell me or I’m going to kick you in the balls so I can go and see who that is.”
He winced and tried to cover himself with one hand. I snorted. That wasn’t going to help.
“Ben,” I started again.
The girl cried out again, but it was hushed by someone else. A male someone. The foreboding sense kicked into full gear. Disgust was next. I had to go. Whether this clerk was going to let me go or not, I was going. “I mean it. Let go or you’re never going to have children.”
“You can’t.”
“Why?”
“You just,” he faltered. “You can’t.”
Slap!
I started around the corner, dragging Ben with me. My blood was still pumping from adrenalin. I hadn’t gone numb like I usually did when I run. I was going to help whoever was back there. I’d been hurt. Someone came to help me. I was going to do the same.
“You can’t,” Ben grunted as he held me back. He was scrawny, but he was stronger than me. I was hauled back and then shoved towards the front of the gas station. “Budd Broudou is back there.”
I stopped. Ice cold water filled my veins, and I couldn’t move.
That was Budd.
So that was Kate. This was it, this was what he would’ve done to me if Mason hadn’t manipulated everything.
“Nnoo … AH! Wha—”
“Shut up,” he hissed at her.
I flinched. I could imagine him slapping his hand over her mouth. Then he continued doing whatever he was doing.
“Oh my god.”
“See.” Ben yanked me the rest of the way. “You can’t go back there. He’ll hurt you. She told him that you were Mason’s girlfriend and not her, but he didn’t believe her. You can’t go back there. He might not care and hurt both of you.”
“Call the cops.”
He stopped, and I ran into him. Shaking his head, he started trembling again. “Yeah, right.”
“You have to.”
“No.”
“Ben.”
“NO. No.”
“He is hurting her.” It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. If she hurt me, if she hadn’t. What he was doing—I didn’t even want to know, though I had a good idea—was wrong. Revulsion swept through me, but I shoved it down.
I’d been hurting. Someone helped me. That kept running through my head. I had to help her, no matter who she was.
“We can’t call the cops.”
“We have to. Do you have cameras? Anything? Her uncle is a cop.”
“He is?”
I nodded.
“Okay.” He still looked ready to piss his pants. “We have two cameras, no—three. We have three cameras.”
He stopped. Nothing.
I asked, “Where are they?”
“Oh. One is pointing towards the front. One is where they are and the other is inside.”
My heart sank. “So none on him?”
He shook his head and pushed up his glasses. They began sliding down right away, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to me and his hand went back to his hip, his very tiny, scrawny hip. I sighed. What the hell was I doing?
“His truck is over there.”
“What?”
He pointed down the road where his truck was hidden in a copse of trees. It was far enough away from the gas station and surrounded by healthy trees. If … a plan began to form, but as I went over it in my head, I couldn’t. There was no way.
“HELP—”
He slapped her again. It was followed by a thud.
I closed my eyes. He hurt her again.
That sealed it. Looking at Ben, there was uncertainty, but panic mixed with trust. He was trusting me, but I had no idea what I was doing. I did, but I held no promise it was going to work. It had to. I pushed all the fear down, and I remembered everything that had made me angry.
Analise.
David leaving me.
Jeff cheating on me.
Jessica and Lydia stabbing me in the back.
Adam lying about me.
Becky believing him.
Kate and her friends. She wanted Mason back. All of them hurting me.
And now Helen. I knew she didn’t want me to be with Mason. Everyone knew it. It was another obstacle in our relationship. I felt it coming, so did Mason, but neither of us knew how to stop it before it began.
By the time I remembered everything, all that old anger had mixed with the adrenalin from my run. I was heated. I was sick and tired of being hurt, being shoved down, being pushed around, being punched, stabbed, and being replaced.
“Ben.” My voice was firm.
He settled down and nodded.
“Turn your cameras off in the front. There can’t be any evidence of me.”
“There won’t, but,” he hesitated, “what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to distract him.”
“Okay.” Another beat of hesitation. “What do you want me to do?”
“Wait until I light it before you call the fire station.”
“Okay.” He rushed back inside.
I waited a second.
He rushed back out. “Light what?”
I took a deep breath. “I need some gasoline.”
His eyes popped out, but he went inside and brought back two full red containers and handed them over without a word. This was the time when I was making the decision to help someone else. This could cost me my life. I had no idea, but he was hurting another girl, and I couldn’t let that happen. There was no way I could walk away from it without losing a piece of my soul, so I took the two containers of gasoline Ben gave me, and I carried them to Budd’s truck. It was hidden, and I had no doubt that he was going to use the running trail to slip past the cameras and drive away.
That pissed me off even more. I had no idea why, but he wanted to get away with it, using my trails. Everyone got away with screwing people over.
Not this time.
I didn’t touch the truck, but I doused the entire thing with gasoline. When I was done, I heard Kate cry out again. He was still doing whatever it was he was doing. I closed my eyes and pulled my sleeves over my hands. I wiped down the containers. Ben told me to do that. He said they could maybe get my finger prints off of them. I had no idea what he was going to say when the police would come. He said he would turn the cameras off. He was an accomplice, but he told me not to worry about it. He had my back. Apparently, he had my back the entire time. Budd kept coming back to the gas station and questioned Ben about Mason’s girlfriend. He never told him, not once. I could only imagine what Budd must’ve put him through.
I’d never come to Quickie’s again without being thankful.
“Oh … God …” Kate moaned, but not the good kind. It was the kind that reached inside a person’s darkest parts and took root.
I moved far enough away before I flipped the lighter and bent down. Grabbing some old branches, I put the flame to them and waited. My heart was pounding in my chest and everything went to slow motion then.
I was going to do this.
I kept hearing her cries.
“You should’ve quit school today. I gave you your last out.”
My thumb slipped off the lighter, but I couldn’t move. I remained crouched down, the lighter to the tree branch and my hand never trembled.
This isn’t payback. This is your punishment.
She wanted to destroy me, but she had only hurt me. I fought back. When I was down, I got back up. She hadn’t destroyed me.
Shut up and get her.
I dropped the lighter. My hand jerked as I felt their first hit, their first punch, their first kick, and when I dropped to the ground. I felt them again. They were closing in on me. I’d been so close to escaping.
You can’t kill her. Let’s go.
When would she have stopped? She had wanted to do more damage that night. Her friends stopped her and he was hurting her now, but it didn’t matter. He was killing her on the inside. I heard her cries and I knew that agony. It had been me, but at her hands.
I reached for the lighter again. This time there was no wavering and I waited until the branch was burning before I tossed it towards the truck. Then I ran.
When he saw the fire, Ben was supposed to call the fire station and the cops. I wasn’t going to wait and see the fireworks. I needed to leave. As I sprinted across the road and over to the next running trail that would take me back to Malinda’s, I froze for a second.
Kate saw me. Even from this distance, I could see the pain in her eyes.
They were right there, pressed against the side of the wall. He had taken her near the dumpster, but I could see them. A passing car wouldn’t be able to, and I knew that was why he chose that spot. Only someone walking or running by would see them.
He had a hand to her throat and another hand between their bodies. I didn’t know what he was doing, and I didn’t want to know.
BOOM!
The explosion had enough force to it to push me back, but I didn’t look away.
Budd let her go, and he ran around the side of the gas station. “What the hell?!”
Kate pushed herself up, but she didn’t look away from me. Her hair was matted, and she had scrapes over her face. It was red from where he had slapped her. Her throat was already bruising, but she mouthed, “Thank you.”
She knew.
I jerked my head in a nod. She had hurt me and I had saved her. The irony was not lost on me, but I didn’t wait to see what else happened next. I took off. As I pushed up another hill, just nearing the trail to Malinda’s, I heard sirens in the distance. I couldn’t help myself so I stopped and looked down. There was a tiny opening between some trees so I could see Quickie’s. The flames had lifted high in the air, but that wasn’t what I cared about. Budd was pacing back and forth.
I laughed to myself.
He tried to get inside the gas station, but he couldn’t. The doors were locked. Ben and Kate stood inside and watched him. He kept trying, but when he heard the sirens, he started running.
He wouldn’t get far enough. I heard him yell, “F*ck!”
I turned and started walking now. The need to run had left me. I wanted to savor this. He’d gone after Mason. He’d gone after Logan, put Nate in the hospital, and terrorized way too many others. Budd Broudou was going to jail. I knew it, and he knew it. It was a day that I would enjoy for a long time. Maybe Mason was right. Maybe taking control into your own hands was the best way to serve justice?
I remembered Kate’s whimpers and my conscience was clear. I did more for her than she had done for me. It was good enough for me.