11. Into The Roots
Into The Roots
Frogs screamed in a blurred pitch. Marlowe rolled heavily to her stomach and spat out blood and teeth. Anchoring her hands in the mud, she tried to get her feet under her.
Striking pain flashed between her shoulders and she hit the ground again, panting out a groan. Prying her eyes open, she caught a glimpse of Heather’s outline. She brandished an oar above her, ready for a third blow. A small ring Marlowe had never seen glinted on her left hand. “Where is he?”
Marlowe formed the word through her split lips. “Gone.” She braced for another hit. It came a second after, driving her back to the ground. Pain flashed through her shoulders.
“Where, Marlowe?”
“Dead,” Marlowe said, grinding out the word with loose teeth and split lips.
Between the spots blinking in her vision, Marlowe thought Heather’s weapon wavered as she turned toward the bloody truck bed. Her shoulders slumped under the deep green of her camp t-shirt. Twigs littered her limp curls.
Heather had run all the way from cabin 9, through a mile of forest, and Kenny had been dead before she even started.
Marlowe was glad she finally got to see little Miss Perfect as she was, rotten down to the tacky little bow in her hair.
Heather’s syrup-sweet voice dried to a hollow, brittle shell, as if she said it any louder, it would have more truth to it. “You killed him? And brought him here, where that thing is? And for—” her voice choked out, then spiked with a hysterical tone. “For what? Jealousy? To get back at me?”
Marlowe’s face spasmed into a smile, cheek pressed against the cool ground. “Jealousy,” she rasped. “You got me.”
The oar thudded to the ground next to her but Heather’s voice sounded far away. “He came from a rich family…a ransom note? Nothing…you didn’t even give him a chance!”
“You.” Marlowe’s gaze unfocused, Heather’s legs going blurry. The patterns of the dark lake melted into shards of glass. “I wanted you.”
Heather scoffed, but she hid a kicked-dog whimper under her breath. “You already had me, Marlowe.”
A laugh broke from Marlowe’s lips. She instantly curled into herself with regret, her chest spasming and throbbing.
Marlowe had never possessed Heather’s attention the way she wanted.
Not at camp, not in the following years when they didn’t talk about summer of `71, not when Heather showed up at her apartment the morning of the funerals.
At least the lipstick smear on Marlowe’s thighs had attended her parent’s empty-casket charade, unlike Heather.
“I wanted”—Marlowe winced and pulled in a sharp breath through stabbing ribs—“to kill you.”
Saying it out loud, after years of hiding behind petulant comments and cut-short orgasms, should have been cathartic. Marlowe had been right. Confession was like finally surfacing from the depths.
A sour expression pulled at the harsh seam of Heather’s lips. “Is this about cabin 13? God, Marlowe.” Her composure cracked for the second time tonight. “Why is it always about cabin 13? It’s been 9 years. We’ve moved past it. We have good times, we—”
“You were the reason they locked me up,” Marlowe gritted out, copper heavy and foul on her tongue as her bitten cheeks bled. Her heart thundered in her tight chest and the warmth of the night pressed on her like she was again locked in the stifling cabin.
“I stood by you,” Heather said, as if she believed it. “No one else wanted to, but I brought you lunch, I made sure you weren’t alone. What did you expect me to do, control the flood? They shut off that side of camp, I—I thought they already rescued you.”
Digging her hands in the muck, Marlowe lifted herself an inch, two, off the bank.
Heather pulled the oar back, poised, ready to strike again.
Useless, pretty lies were all she ever knew.
“At least I tried to move on,” she whispered.
“I have—I had a fiancé and friends, I made myself a life. You don’t know what it’s like, trying to get rid of those urges.
It breaks a person.” Her voice warped, like a damaged record.
“You had it easier than me, Marlowe, you had a choice.”
Marlowe’s forearms trembled from holding herself up.
She eased back on her heels and spit blood clots across the ground.
If Marlowe was a romantic woman she could have droned on about how love was never a choice even though she was bisexual, and love often found people at the most surprising times and if obsessive love had been a choice, Marlowe and Heather never would have agreed to it.
But she wasn’t romantic. Marlowe scrubbed floors and fucked hard, and she knew love hunted relentlessly until it stole the common sense right out of a person.
Marlowe made her best attempt at a shrug. “It was just a kiss.”
Hurt flashed through the shadowed features of Heather’s face. Hurt. As if she were the one who had her life upended by one, stupid little kiss.
Heather swung.
Marlowe cursed as she lurched to the side, rocks digging into her stomach, and staggered up on one knee, but it was enough. The wood flashed past her and thunked into the mud. Splinters wedged under Marlowe’s nails as she grabbed at the oar, planting her feet and thrusting back at Heather.
The end slammed into Heather’s nose with a crunch. Blood spattered across Marlowe’s face as Heather screamed and recoiled, and Marlowe’s hands skidded against the wood slippery with blood-pine-vanilla.
Heather ripped the oar away from her. She struck.
The broad edge slammed back into her sternum and Marlowe’s air left her in a pained wheeze, doubling her over.
The next hit sent her sprawling into the shallows with a yelp.
Her shoulder cracked and popped. Heather stood over her, hair snarled across her blood-sticky face, oar pulled back for a final blow, chest heaving in ragged breaths.
The lake lapped against Heather’s sandals and muddy water wicked up her pant-leg. Marlowe squeezed her eyes shut. Her muscles contracted and ached, as if they were trying to pull apart her body instead of knit back together.
Wet fabric rustled like Heather was crouching in front of her. “People like me get away with a lot, Marlowe. I could show you the same mercy you showed my fiancé .” Her voice was strung tight. “But there’s power in forgiveness. I forgive you, Marlowe. For everything.”
Getting preached at after being beaten was a new low for her.
And she had seen some lows over the years.
Marlowe traced every trial and tribulation back to Heather—the kiss before cabin 13, her parent’s boating accident 4th of July, being trapped by a lake monster—but she could have finally been at peace if she had only killed her. A now unrecognized, futile dream.
“Go to hell.” Marlowe dug out the words from the roots of her clenched teeth and spat them at her.
She wouldn’t forgive Heather, even if she had five minutes to live, even if she ended up serving thirty years in a concrete cell.
Forgiveness was freedom, but resentment had given Marlowe a backbone and ensured she was still here, even if—
“Marlowe.” She could barely hear from the dirt crusted in her ears. But it didn’t sound like Heather. Too quiet, almost scared. She said her name, louder.
Marlowe’s eyes cracked open. Her hand brushed against something rounded and heavy, the small lake waves rolling it against her. Her fingers curled into the pitted surface and her thumb squelched into Kenny’s eye socket. She snatched her hand away, stomach churning.
But Heather wasn’t looking at her. The familiar smell of decay wormed into Marlowe’s nose. Her chin scraped along the ground as she slowly turned her gaze to the lake, searching, hardly daring to hope. Something dark rose from the water out of the corner of her eye.
“Hey, easy…I remember you…” Heather’s coaxing voice dripped like acid into Marlowe’s ears even as it wavered with a note of uncertainty. “I have someone coming…to help—”
Pike leaped from the water in a flash of bloody teeth.