Part 5

The three panting teens just stared at each other for a while trying to think of something appropriate to say.  Dean was about to ask this Zoe girl about her bruises and torn up clothing, but he didn’t get the chance.  He started, “How did you g-”

    His head swivelled around as he noticed movement coming from the entrance of the treehouse.  Still on edge from the sudden appearance of a new and unknown person, Dean didn’t hesitate a single second to react.  He reached into the rusty pile of metal parts next to him and grabbed hold of a rusty wrench.  He threw it in the direction of the movement.

    Thud.

    “Ouch, dude!”

    The owner of the hoarse, rumbling voice clearly was not phased by the hurled wrench.  Even though it hit him square in the chest, he had a thick layer of muscle from years and years of wrestling and football.  He continued to lift his gigantic and strong body into the treehouse before plopping down on the other side of Victoria as if intruding on someone’s hideout was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Mind if I join y’all?”  He was smiling and had perfect blonde curls situated on top of his chiseled face.  His thin, light blue t-shirt made his pale blue eyes pop.  The shirt had patches of moisture formed around his upper back, chest, and underarms, but other than that, his clothes seemed completely clean compared to the tattered and dirt-coated apparel of the other three teens.  His cheery disposition and cocky tone immediately rubbed Dean the wrong way.  “And who might this beauty be?” The blonde stranger asked as he gently took Victoria’s tiny hand in his rough palm and bestowed a kiss on the top of it.  

Luckily, it was dark enough that no one could see her blush.  After turning around and seeing the rage in Dean’s eyes, she pulled her hand away with a flirtatious, high-pitched giggle.  She could feel Dean’s gaze burning past her and at this stranger.  She nervously fixed her hair and cleared her throat as to adjust the flirty tone she had instinctively put on when a sweaty, strapping classmate took her hand.  “I’m Victoria,” she had over corrected the tone of her voice, and the words came out eerily low and raspy, “Who are you?”

He sat up, ran his fingers through his golden locks, and responded.  “I’m Connor.”  He looked right into Victoria’s eyes and smiled a greasy, charming smile.  

Dean’s face showed that he was obviously perturbed by this mystery sleazeball who had added to his claustrophobia and stolen the attention of his girl.  “Keep your voice down, Connor.”  Dean hissed.  

“Shut up,” Connor replied under his breath and quickly returned all of his attention back to Victoria.

“No, Connor, you shut up!” Dean hissed even more ferociously.

“Whatcha gonna do about it, shrimp?” Connor reached across Victoria’s sitting body and gave Dean a smack on the back of the head.  He retracted his hand and eyed Dean eagerly, waiting for a reaction.

Connor had elbowed Victoria in the nose when he had reached across her.  Her nose was throbbing now, and she was getting tired of observing this hushed pissing contest.  “Oh please, girls, you’re both pretty!” She snapped.  

There was a faint chuckle from the dark corner where Zoe was sitting.  It was only the second time she had made a sound since she entered the treehouse.  

“Woah, I didn’t even see you there.”  Connor said in the direction from which the chuckle had come from.  

There was a long, awkward pause.

“Welp,” Connor squirmed a little bit where he was sitting, “since we’re gonna be waiting awhile, I say we get to know each other a little better.”  He glanced around expecting some kind of positive response from these strangers.  “Okay, I’ll go first then.” He said clapping his hands together and rubbing them.  “I’m Connor Kelly.”  He looked around the tree house again, but everyone was just looking at him with either complete disinterest or complete disgust.  “I’m heading off to Berklee this August, and I’m nervous  as s**t to be surrounded by a bunch of yankees for the next four years.”  He looked around once more to make sure he hadn’t offended anyone.  Seeing that everyone maintained the same uninterested or disgusted looks, he assumed that he had not and continued.  “But there’ll lots of babes, though” he added.  

“You’re pathetic” Victoria grumbled.  She wasn’t in the mood for a circle of trust right now.  This wasn’t a middle school sleepover; this was a matter of life and death.  “And this isn’t the breakfast club, Connor.”  His name remained as poisonous as mustard gas in the air.  She looked at Dean whose eyes were warm and relaxed.  She could tell that he wished she would calm down.  So she did.

She begrudgingly continued with their annoying circle of trust.  “I’m Victoria Fields, and I’m attending Duke University this August.”  Every time those words came out of her mouth, she couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud of herself.  She caught herself before she could let the proud grin creep across her face.  

“Damn, Vicky!”  Connor exclaimed as his eyebrows shot up.  

“Thanks,” she said flatly, “but don’t call me Vicky.”

Connor shrugged his shoulders, rested his hands behind his head, and sat back against a corner of the treehouse.  “How about you, shrimp?” Connor mocked nodding in Dean’s direction.  

Dean sat with his head between his knees and stared at the floor in front of him.  He didn’t avert his eyes, and continued to stare at the ground while he responded.  “L.S.U.”

“What about you?” Connor threw at the dark figure he could barely even see in the corner of the treehouse.

“Huh,” a mousy voice emerged from the dark corner, “me?” There was another awkward pause as Zoe cleared her throat, which was red and raw from crying and screaming.  “I’m not going to college.”  An awkward silence ensued as the other three tried to think of something appropriate to say.  This always happened to Zoe when she told anyone that she wasn’t going to college.  She was getting kind of exhausted of the whole ordeal.  Normally people asked why, and she had to explain about the money and her grades.  Her family was not especially poor, but she was the youngest of 8 siblings.  Her parents had done everything right.  They started saving early, bought groceries at the Food Lion instead of Harris Teeter, and eventually pulled together enough money to send eight kids to an in-state, public university.  Then Zoe’s, older sister Bianca decided that an in-state, public institution “was not for her.”  Bianca wanted Zoe’s share of college money to attend Haverford, a small, expensive, liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.  Bianca had convinced her and Zoe’s parents that college was “not for Zoe.”  Zoe hated that phrase, but Bianca managed to weave it into every single conversation.  As proof, Bianca used Zoe’s 1.09 GPA and social issues.  Her parents sided with Bianca.

“After a lot of thinking,” Zoe’s father had said to her one day, “your mother and I have decided that college isn’t the place for you.  College can be very demanding academically and socially.  It might be a little too much to handle.”  Her father had placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder, kissed her on the forehead, and left the room.

Zoe glanced around the dark space at the three uncomfortable expressions staring back at her.

“Oh,” Connor muttered, embarrassed now that he had made such a big deal about the colleges everyone was going to, “so what’re ya doin’ after the summer?”

Zoe let out a huff of air as a muffled kind of laugh.  “Damned if I could tell you.”  She felt a hot tear fall from her already raw and red eyes and land on her torn shirt.  Her voice cracked as she tried to say, “I really don’t know where to go from here.”

Connor could see that his proposed game wasn’t going as planned, and he wanted nothing more than to take back the pain he had put this girl through.  He assumed that her embarrassment and shame for not going to college was the thing eating her up.  He didn’t know about what had happened before.  “Well I don’t think we’re gonna die tonight,” he added rather inappropriately trying to lift everyone’s spirits.  “Even if those psychos come back, we’ll go down swinging.”  He leaned over Victoria and grabbed a foot-long, rusty, steel pipe.  He swung it around his head and made ninja noises.  His joke was not a hit.  He dropped the pipe and sat back against the wall in defeat.  

Suddenly a gun sounded from right next to the treehouse a bullet crashed through the wall above Zoe’s head, knocking the poorly supported ceiling beams onto the dumbfounded teens.  They were fish in a barrel.  

Another shot went off and this time hit one of its marks.  These sprayed bullets came up through the floor next to Connor.  A couple of the bullet fragments caught in Connor’s arm.  There was a frantic grunting sound.

When the others turned to look in the direction of the grunting sound, they first saw Connor’s anxious eyes with welled up tears.  Then, there eyes were immediately drawn to the gory stump of hanging bone and dripping blood that should have been his left hand and forearm.  

Dean didn’t have much room to move around, but he jumped up into a kneeling position and dragged Connor’s groaning flailing body away from the hole in the floor.  And just in time.  Another spray of bullets came through the floor in the exact same place only narrowly missing Connor’s legs.  

Then a miracle happened.

Dean stared at the gaping hole in the wooden floor waiting for another spray to tear and splinter the wood.  His eyes were fixed and he waited intently.  But instead of another gunshot, he made out some red and blue flashes.  The flashes became more distinct and were eventually accompanied by sirens and a robotic voice commanding: “WEAPONS DOWN, HANDS UP.  WE WILL SHOOT.  WE WILL SHOOT!”  

  Dean held his breath for the next two minutes and sat perfectly still.  He did not inhale or move until a police officer placed a hand on his shoulder.  He sat still and watched as a shaking Victoria descended the ladder.  He could not help but admire the determination in her eyes that he had noticed when she first saved his life.  The same determination remained as she handed the revolver over to a police officers and climbed down the trembling rope ladder.  That look had never left her eyes, and in that moment he loved her for it.  It was what had kept him alive.

He sat still and watched as a police officer asked Zoe a question.  Her thin but strong exterior snapped and out gushed the pure hopelessness and shame that had been lying beneath since she had been raped.  She was reduced to nothing but a sobbing heap and had to be carried down and out of the tree house by a large officer.  

He could not find the will to move as paramedics and police officers tore Connor from his grip, put him on a stretcher, and drove off.  Ever since the second shot the only sound in Dean’s ears had been the one-toned, low, moan emitted from Connor’s pale body.  Sometimes Dean can still hear that tone in his head.  

As Dean sat alone in the tree house he looked around at the pipe Connor had just been fooling around with a matter of minutes ago.  He noticed some peppermint lip balm that must’ve rolled out of Victoria’s pocket.  Then he saw the flesh and blood of Connor’s arm that had splattered on the two ceiling beams that remained.  Dean looked to the ground and noticed a heavy streak of blood on the floor that had formed as the paramedics dragged Connor out of the treehouse.

Dean’s vision tunnelled and he fainted, falling into the pool Connor’s blood.  Dean’s white t shirt had so much blood from so many different bodies stained all over it, that you would have thought the t shirt was red instead of white.