Page 45 of Treasured By Them
ILY isn’t her saying she loves me. She’d never write it like that. Especially when she hasn’t said the words out loud to me first.
Something in my gut tells me she isn’t joking around. No—this message is a sign that something is seriously wrong.
Why the fuck did Caleb leave her there?
“Troy!” I cross the living room and head toward his bedroom.
“What is it?” he shouts back.
“It’s Danica. I?—”
He appears in the hallway, sees my face. His gaze hardens. “Tell me on the way.”
Danica
Malcolm yanks me to my feet and starts shoving me across the lawn, toward the lake. I stumble when he aims us toward the water’s edge, where the dock meets the shore.
“Malcolm, please.” I struggle to sound calm, not hysterical. Inside, I’m screaming. “I don’t remember whatever it is you think I remember. Camp was a blur. That’s why I was looking at the scrapbook.”
“You remember.” His voice is flat, matter-of-fact. “You wrote down my name. I told you to forget. You said you’d forgotten. But you didn’t.”
I stumble again and use the momentum, trying to pull us both down.
He’s too strong. He jerks me harder against him. My wrist aches like a motherfucker.
I was scared. Now I’m pissed off.
“I did forget,” I say. “I don’t know what you think I know?—”
“Stop bullshitting me. You were there that night.” Now he sounds angry.
I followed him that night. I had that little-kid crush on him and I wanted to see where he was going. At eight years old, I didn’t have any plans other than following him. I wanted to know everything about him. Afterward, I probably would have giggled about it to my friends.
Going limp in his arms isn’t working. He just drags me along.
We reach the shore, right next to the dock. Mud squelches against my bare feet and I shudder.
So much mud. It smells wet, dirty, rank. It smells like rotten, decaying things.
Now I know why I’ve avoided the lake, especially at night. In the daytime, I can see what’s around me and I’m distracted by the visuals. As it gets darker, like it is now, the memories rear their ugly heads, like beasts sensing weakness.
This happened before. I remember it now. I saw Malcolm with Britney that night.
These are my nightmares, my panic attacks. Mud covering me as I sink into it. No, as I’m pushed into it.
But first, it happened to Britney. He yelled at her. I couldn’t hear the words, but he was angry. I was mad at her, too—mad that she had his attention, mad that I’d followed him out here only to find him spending time with her again.
Shame threatens to push me out of the memory. I don’t want to think of my own feelings of anger, because I was furious at the wrong person.
Britney pleaded with him. He shoved her into the mud. But her head hit a rock or a log or something—I don’t know what happened, I just know she didn’t get up. He straddled her stomach, shook her shoulders. He began sobbing and shouting at her.
At that point, I started crying.
He heard me. He came over. I thought he was going to comfort me, I thought he would explain what I’d seen, say it was an accident and Britney was okay. Or better, he’d tell me it was all a bad dream.
But he pushed me into the lake. The water was shallow, muddy. He held me down. I flailed, trying to escape his hold.
Just like I’m trying to escape him now.
