And it ended with me.
I tried to drown Amy, couldn’t, and Trav stepped in, stepped up. Punctured her belly with a fillet knife, and proved his devotion. His bloody loyalty. Trav was a minor, so he was lucky. Amy not so much. Her family moved away, out of state, I heard. Trav was sent away, and police sealed the file.
Then Heath burned the cabin down. Luke was pissed about that. Their friendship didn’t survive the fire. As the cabin turned into embers, so did the last pieces of what they were to each other.
My mind drifts back to the conversation with Chris.Tell me about the fire.
I was there when Heath burned the cabin down, but I didn’t tell Chris that. Didn’t tell him how flames licked up the wooden walls and smoke poured out the window, thick and dark, curling into the sky with the smell of pine. How the roof groaned as it caught and beams snapped with loud cracks.
I only told Chris that a local saw the smoke and called the police. I didn’t tell him that Heath, Trav, and I were questioned, along with the blood boys. And I didn’t tell him that six years later, I left Kangaroo Bay and changed my name in an attempt to sever the ties to all that had happened there.
I pause in the woods, remembering the fire. Ash floated up like gray snowflakes, and Heath watched it all, bloodless and defeated. I hugged him and noticed how his shoulders slumped with that invisible weight he carried everywhere. I wondered if he felt guilty about what happened, and I should have told him it wasn’t his fault. None of it was. The violence in the blood boys was rooted too deep, simmering too long. Heath stood in front of them, trying to hold it back, but their instinctual rage took over. Not even Heath could hold back tidal wives of violence with his bare hands.
The town kids stopped meeting at the creek after school. Many dropped out in grade nine, traded their high school education for a fishing rod or their dad’s concreting business.
We never went there again.
But someone has.
I creep forward, pausing at the charred entrance. A snake skull hangs from a rusted nail, bones shining in the blood light.
A heavy animal smell makes my eyes water as I step inside. The sun is sinking low and fast, and the red-gold rays funnel down through five holes in the roof. The first thing I notice is that the wood-plank floor is splattered with blood.
Fresh.
Cobwebs hang loose from the roof, rusty spanners dangle from decaying hooks, looking like they’ll fall at any moment. A roll oforange extension cord is nestled on the workbench, and around me there’s a scurrying sound, like a family of mice trying to hide.
Under the blackened windowsill are four femur bones, thick with flesh, moist and pink, dangling like Christmas stockings.
The animal smell grows stronger. I survey the back of the room, pausing. A shower curtain is strung limply across the center, partitioning the room off, swishing in the warm wind. The curtain would have been pretty, once. A winding row of butterflies in a field of buttercups and leafy vines. Now it’s an abomination. The colors are dull, peeling and discolored. Spots of mold dotting the buttery field.
And worse.
I creep closer, pinching the curtain between my fingers. It’s stiff and crunchy; splattered across it are fat droplets of blood.
I pull it up, ducking my head as I step under. The smell is everywhere, heavy, eye-watering, like the back of a butcher’s shop. Something feathery brushes my cheek. I tilt my head back, lookingup.
Hanging from the ceiling, strung up by their bloodied tails, are four kangaroos.
Decapitated.
Chapter 21
The sky is the ocean. Blue-black and roaring, whitecaps hurtling past like clouds. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth, a rattle in my teeth. I’m stretched so tight that if I don’t bend, I’ll break. I’m waiting for something. Someone.
My father dives out of the ocean-sky. His voice slides wetly down my ear canals:You can hear it, too. Can’t you, Min? The ocean? Calling and calling?
Because it’s a dream, it makes sense. Of course the sky is the ocean. Of course Dad is sharpening his knife in the cabin, inspecting the blade. Pointing its black tip at me.
Hungry?
He thrusts a kangaroo leg into my mouth, and I tear off meaty strips, hungry as a shark, letting them dangle down my lips like noodles before slurping them up.
Chris grimaces at the cabin door.What are you eating?
I turn my face away, chewing frantically.Nothing. It’s nothing.
—
