Chapter 2
For months, we never missed a week. After that first night, a passion I thought was dying bloomed. Finally, I had something to look forward to. Despite the beatings I would wake up to, I was excited every time a Friday came around.
“Fuck.” Groaning, I slowly curl up from my hay bed, feeling the weight of work and my uncle’s punches from the night before.
“You like this, right? This is what you want?”
I can still smell the undercooked steak on his breath when he grabbed me by the collar, fist cocked to take another swing.
I was ready for it. Shit, I even took it without complaint.
If that’s what he needed to make his point, then that’s fine.
I was still going to fight. They should all be aware of this by now.
Besides, none of these beatings felt like the first one.
Clara dropped me off in the clearing before the barn, asking, “Are you sure I can’t bring you any closer?”
“Nah, I’m good. Thank you.” As carefully as I can, I pull my bike off the top of the car and ride off on flat tires into the field. I watch their taillights disappear into the growing fog, waiting until the vehicle is entirely out of sight before hightailing it home.
Pedaling as quickly as I am able, I find myself behind the property in minutes.
Without triggering the lights, I place the bike where I found it and creep toward the bed.
For a second, I believed everything was normal, that I did what I wanted and got away with it.
When I pay closer attention, I realize how wrong I am.
The air feels different.
The animals are jittery in their stalls when they usually sleep the entire night. Sensing their anxiety, I slow my pace, swallowing my racing heart until I see my uncle leaning peacefully in my space.
He has the same rage in his eyes as my father, and that’s one thing I can’t slow my heart against.
The sun begins to creep through the open slats of the barn, giving him sight of all the bruises and split skin. As his gaze roams across each one, every bit of pain becomes amplified.
Standing at his full height, my uncle takes two steps toward me, stopping half a foot away.
It’s usually at this moment that my father would spit whatever hurtful insults he could think of my way.
Anything he could use to hurt me, he spared none of it.
My uncle has yet to utter a word. Almost eye to eye, and he just stares.
I open my mouth to address him, to voice a semblance of an apology for going against his rules.
I don’t even get a syllable of his name out before his fist cracks into my jaw.
For the sixth time tonight, my cheek breaks against my teeth.
At this point, I think chunks of my flesh are missing, and unlike earlier this morning, I can’t keep myself standing.
Head colliding into the dirty ground, stars dance in front of my eyes.
Before they even have a chance to fade away, my uncle pulls me up by the back of my neck and lands another blow in the same spot.
It hurts more with his nails digging into my flesh, though I fear that’s my fault.
Had I had my shirt, maybe he would have picked the collar instead.
“You fucking stupid, boy?” He ends the question by throwing me to the ground, topping it off with his foot against my ribs. All night, I held back my groans of pain. Not now, though. Now, I fail, letting a sharp cry spit with the blood past my lips.
“Get the fuck up, boy!” So, I try, only to be thrown back down by the violent swing of his backhand.
My head connected with the corner of our brown Morgan’s stall, leaving my consciousness sputtering in and out. The sequence of events becomes hazy after that. All I can remember when my clarity flickered back is his heavy body on mine, fists barreling into any part he could hit.
My ribs cracked when his booted feet swung into them.
When he stomped on my wrist, the bones fell at an unnatural angle.
At some point, my left eye wouldn’t open anymore, and my mouth refused to close, allowing me to drool a puddle of blood that grew beneath me.
That’s how my uncle left me after my first fight. He gave me the grace to sleep in the next morning, doing all my duties for me, but the day after, it was back to normal.
Until Friday.
I fought with my broken bones and lost, but damn, did it feel good to let my rage flow free. I knew what I’d go home to, but it was never as bad as that first night.
“Cade.” My uncle’s deep drawl comes from the side of the barn, full of concern and apprehension. Not typically the emotion I sense from him, I seek him out, stopping when I see his crouched form.
Crouching beside him, I eye the little holes he’s examining in the barn. “What is it? Termites?”
“Looks like it,” he moans, “fuckers.” Sighing deeply, he rises, placing both hands on his hips as if he can glare the infestation away.
When that proves to be unsuccessful, my uncle turns to me, mustached lips set in his perpetual frown.
“I need you to drive down to Holly’s, pick up some of her homemade pest control shit.
We’ll get this fixed up before nightfall. Then tomorrow, we’ll do the repairs.”
I don’t bother responding because he isn’t looking for one. His eyes are fixed on the itty-bitty holes and growing pile of dust falling to the ground. After heading back to my corner and throwing a sweatshirt over my jeans, I jog toward the truck, where the keys wait patiently in the ignition.
The drive is as peaceful as usual. There’s no traffic or animals crossing the road.
The weather is threatening more rain, which would be nice if it didn’t drip on me all night.
I’m thinking of making those repairs myself when a flyer on a telephone pole catches my eye.
I’m driving too quickly to see what it was, but how interesting.
There are never any advertisements this far out.
Hm.
It’s almost been forgotten about when I see another one on the next pole. And then another one.
And another.
“What the fuck,” I whisper as they become more prevalent, lining every pole, wall, and window in sight.
The glass of Holly’s shop is covered in them.
The oddity of it all becomes too much, so I shut off the engine and hop from the truck.
My feet crunch on the loose stones in the gravel of the empty lot.
I take in how vacant my surroundings are.
There are no trailers lining the parking spaces or deliveries waiting to be picked up.
The usual chaos of a bustling crowd is gone, leaving me standing alone in a ghostland.
“Holly? Clara?” I call out as I walk toward the door marked 'Closed'. My hand reaches for the knob, but my eyes catch the poster taped to the glass.
Missing.
Heart falling into my stomach, I rip the paper from the door and read it with shaking hands.
Clara Emily Parker, last seen at 9 PM Tuesday.
She left home around 2 PM to visit a friend and never returned.
Clara was last seen wearing a pink sweater, blue jeans, white sneakers, and a gold, heart-shaped locket.
Clara could be seen with a baby blue Schwinn bicycle with a beige basket in the front.
If you have any information on Clara’s whereabouts, please call—
“Clara!” I call for my friend with an invisible rope around my neck, running around the side of the property to her home in the back. “Clara!”
Holly meets me before I can reach the door, tears in her eyes and bags so deep her sockets turn black. “Cade.”
“Where’s Clara? What-What happened?” My thoughts race a mile a minute. Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why—
“Have you seen her?”
“No. Not since last Friday night.” I don’t say where. I don’t think it matters.
Tears welling in her eyes—eyes that so clearly match her daughter’s—Holly hangs her head. “I don’t know what to do, Cade,” she cries, face in her quivering hands, “I don’t know what to do… my baby.” Her sobs shake the earth beneath me, making the reality impossible to ignore. My friend was gone.
“Where did you last see her? Did anything—did you fight or…”
“No,” Holly sniffles, “No-thing like that. We had lunch around one-thirty, and then she w-was going to have a girl’s night with Kassidy. I-she never came home. I-I called Kassidy’s, and they-they haven’t seen her. Kassidy doesn’t know where she is, and-d I—my baby.”
Holly doesn’t say anything else to me before turning around and shutting the door.
“Holly?” I knock, “Holly!” but she never comes back.
I don’t know if the police are involved—if there’s a fucking search party forming.
I don’t know what the fuck to do. My body moves on its own, my mind completely detached from my form until I find myself standing outside Kassidy’s home.
I didn’t know where the fuck she lived, and yet, somehow, I made it here. Within minutes, my fist is banging on the door, the plastic screen rattling until she opens up. Unlike Holly’s, Kassidy’s eyes are dead, not a glimmer of life in those brown irises.
“What—” Before I can finish my question, Kassidy throws her arms around my neck, buries her face between my jaw and shoulder, and sobs a sob to rival Holly’s.
There’s nothing I can do but return the gesture.
Folding my arms over her shaking muscles, I hold her and let some of my fear leak out with hers.
After three painful, breathless minutes, Kassidy mumbles against my skin.
“We got into a fight.”
“What do you mean?”
Pulling back, she wipes the tears and mucus away from her face, staring off into the distance. “I wanted to tell her mom… about us. And she-she didn’t want to, and I fought with her, Cade! I fought with her, and she took off…I,” she breaks, “I just wanted to be with her out loud.”
While Kassidy breaks down in front of me, I run through her story again and again, dissecting every word, trying to make sense of what could have happened.
It doesn’t make sense… “Where would she have gone?”
“I don’t know, Cade! I’ve gone to all our places! All of our secret spots! She isn’t anywhere!” The blame Kassidy carries on her shoulders is potent and undeniable, but it can’t be true. Clara can’t just… be gone. No. No, people don’t just disappear.
Kassidy startles me with a squeal while I’m in the middle of my thoughts. “We have to go tonight!”
“Go where?”
“The bait shop! She has to be there! She’d never miss a night!”
“What makes you think she’ll be there when you guys haven’t seen her in days?” I ask, hands somewhat flared at my sides, shoulders rising toward my ears.
Kassidy appears to question it for a second, fingers tangled at the roots of her fading platinum hair.
“Because she has to be. Because she wouldn’t miss the chance to see you fight.
She wouldn’t miss the opportunity to make money off you!
Because… because she has to be! Because if she’s not, then-then I don’t know what else to do… where else would she be?”
Sensing her panic begin to stir, I agree, promising to meet her here at midnight.
“I’ll drive” is the last thing Kassidy tells me before turning back into her house and locking herself away.
My uncle was pissed when I came home empty-handed.
Without even listening to my explanation, he walked away and told me to stay out of his sight until I could do what I was told.
Still having Clara on my mind, I didn’t even bother trying with him.
I let him simmer in his fury until I’m about to leave, and only when he catches me do I attempt to speak.
“I’m not fighting,” are the first words out of my mouth. “So before you lay into me—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Cade.
” He utters, glancing at me from his seat on the front porch, cold beer in his hand.
His eyes roll back toward the distance, scanning the dark horizon beyond the trees.
I would like, for once, to enjoy this peaceful moment with my uncle—to feel like family and not just another animal he's taken in. Then I remember I’m not family.
These people couldn’t care less about me. All we share is a name.
There is one person who cares. “Holly’s daughter is missing. She didn’t come home. A friend and I are going to look for her.”
I wait for his response, hoping to see a glimpse of a warm, beating heart, but of course, why would he give a fuck? Why would he show any sympathy at all?
“If she’s anything like you, she probably left on her own—causin’ her mama stress for no reason other than sheer selfishness.
” I stand at the bottom of the porch steps, processing the vile shit my uncle spits from his pursed mouth.
It doesn’t fully register, not until he grumbles, “Trash. That’s all you two are.
Fucking garbage that stinks up our lives. ”
I saw the blood on my knuckles before the pain of his teeth in my skin registered. It sticks out from between the bones of my first two fingers—a momentary shock until it falls as I take another swing.
“Fuck you!” Blood spurts onto my skin, but I don’t know if it’s from my wound or his broken nose.
Either way, it coats my skin with sticky, crimson iron.
The element of surprise and a boost of adrenaline were all I had to get him on the ground.
The window was small, but I took every shot, driving my fists into his face, ribs, and throat until he resembled the trash he labeled me as.
Huffing, I rise onto my feet, unaware of when I began straddling him. It had to have happened after that first swing when my fist collided with the front of his mouth. I’m not entirely sure, though. I’m not entirely sure of anything right now.
With a vise around my throat, I choke out a garbled “Fuck you,” ending this interaction with a final kick to his gut.
His silence follows me as I run back to the barn, and for a split second, I worry I killed him.
Then, as I pack a single backpack, I hear the muffled sounds of a groan, and any guilt I felt vanishes.
“I’ll be back, guys,” I vow to my roommates. “When all this settles, and I’m sure he won’t kill me, I’ll be back home with you,” I promise the animals who have kept me company that I won’t abandon them—that I’ll be back to share the nights with them again. I just gotta go now.
“It’s only for now.” And then I ran.