Page 42 of Love is Angry

“You’ll have a nice bruise in the morning,” I reply in a bid to encourage her, though my voice can’t seem to get the meanness out of its tone, despite how nice my actual words are. “Consider it a scar from your hazing battle. Wear it with pride.”

She scoffs. “I would’ve dressed accordingly, had I known that this was what they were going to do to us.”

“Dress accordingly? Do you have a SWAT outfit at home?”

She gives me a wry smile and shrugs. “The airsoft tournament from three years ago, back in Rochester. Dad insisted that I get proper gear for that. It would’ve come in handy, now.”

The airsoft tournament was a charity event put together by my mom and sister with the purpose of raising funds for the homeless vets still struggling at the time in Rochester. It was one giant Call of Duty rip-off with airsoft weapons and excellent marketing techniques. I didn’t participate, but I know they raised a lot of money. It feels strange to look at Madison now, knowing she was one of the players.

“You never told me you were there,” I mutter.

“It never came up,” she replies.

That’s true. As things are, I’m not feeding her to the woods. For now, I’d like to keep it that way – if only for the sake of winning. God knows, if too much of Rochester gets brought up in any conversation we have, I might be forced to remember all the hate I have for her. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”

Twenty minutes later, we come upon the creek. Its rushing waters tumble over greenish rounded rocks. There isn’t much else to see around here, since there’s little moonlight to work with, and we don’t want to use up our phone batteries on flashlights just yet. It’s not even midnight, so we’ve got lots of hours ahead of us.

Madison smooths her hands through her hair before braiding a lock over her shoulder. I don’t know why I’m watching her, but I am. She’s focused on what she’s doing, so she doesn’t notice the attention I’m giving her.

A smile dances across her lips, but only for a moment before she pulls her mouth back into a straight line. Somehow that sends a pang of guilt through me. It shouldn’t. I know that. But I guess there’s a difference between watching her be torn apart when my actions are doing the tearing and seeing her hide her smile just because I might see it.

I decide that I’ve been so busy hurting her that it wouldn’t do any harm to give her a reprieve tonight. If my mood gets sour or the past decides to throw daggers into my chest, then I can take that all out on her again. But for now, I guess I’ll just have things be the way they are.

I steal another glance at Madison and wonder how much longer I’ll even have the energy to carry a full-out war against her. I’m tired. She must be tired, as well. How much longer can I really keep this up with our paths crossing so often?

“Okay, we’re getting somewhere,” she says, looking up and down the widening stream. “South of here, about three miles down, the residential areas begin. The uppity farmhouses, I mean.” It draws a chuckle out of me. She’s talking about those city folks who move to the countryside thinking they can just build a farm and live off the land and whatnot, when most of them can’t even weed out a garden. I remember having a conversation about this with her before. I also remember how hard I laughed. How happy I used to be just sitting with her shooting knowledge back and forth. How we used to get along.

“We should head up the stream,” Madison says, and I give her a nod.

“We’ll probably—” A pellet hits my right shoulder. “Ah, shit!”

They found us. We’re running again. This time, it’s Madison leading the way.

The Acolytes are much more persistent now, though. I hear laughter. Feminine laughter. “I told you that I’d screw you tonight, Mr. Echeveria! Here we are!” Pellets fly past us. Someone’s gun clicks as a new clip is loaded.

“Through there,” one of the Acolytes calls out. They’ve got their eyes on us.

“What the hell is Mackenzie doing out here?” Madison asks, her breathing ragged as we bolt upstream without looking back.

“I must’ve irked her,” I reply, my shoulder burning.

Internally, I feed myself with the same encouraging bullshit I gave Madison. It’ll be a cool bruise in the morning. Until then, however, it hurts like a motherfucker. The flesh feels raw and singed, as if a million volts passed through the muscle. Hell, I think even the joint and bones hurt!

“Yeah, I can’t imagine how you pulled that off,” Madison retorts. I deserve the sarcasm, even Laura would agree. My sister thinks that my hatred of Madison isn’t really hatred but compulsive rage. She says I can’t help it. But I can get over it if I just admit that it takes two to tango, and that my father was the mastermind, not Madison. Well, she wasn’t an innocent, either, since—a second pellet hits the same shoulder, and I cry out in agony.

“Motherfucker!” I growl, worried my right arm might fall off.

My fingertips tingle, but that’s pretty much the only sensation left as the pain subsides into something akin to numbness. That has to be my brain shutting down some of the pain receptors since the lizard part of it is focused on survival. This is what we’re doing out here, in a sense. Surviving. The seniors want to take us down and humiliate us. I feel bad for undermining the seriousness of a BB gun injury. Safetyguidelines could do with some amendments, I’m thinking. Shit, I would ban BB guns forever from everywhere. Son of a bitch!

“There!” Madison says. She wraps her fingers around my wrist and drags me farther up the stream. We’re moving uphill, I realize. It’s more of a mound, actually, but steep enough to make our calves and thighs work a bit harder as we make our way toward…the cabin. I see it.

“Holy shit,” I hear myself mutter.

“Salvation,” Madison chuckles.

Behind us, Mackenzie is laughing. Twigs crack. Leaves rustle. Boots thud on the ground.

“We’re coming, Rhue! I’ll make you black and blue before I let you walk into that cabin, you smug prick!”

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