Page 84 of Behind These Four Walls
James is jolted into action. He rushes to kneel next to me, his hands hovering over my body like he is casting some sort of magic spell to telepathically pull the glass out. Roger moves toward me. Stops. Pivots. Moves there. Stops. Pivots. Comes back. Stops, too afraid to get closer to me.
James yells, “We need to get help.” He goes to touch the glass like he’s about to pull it out.
I flinch away from his hands, guarding the glass with a block of my hand. What if it is the only thing keeping me from bleeding out? There isn’t much blood. Not yet. But there will be. And then there will be no more me.
Danny is still in shock. His hand is at his mouth, and all he can do is stare at what he’s done.
“Ay, yo! Where the hell is everybody?”
“Bennett,” Danny whimpers, fresh tears of uncertainty and fear forming. It’s one thing for Danny to trash-talk me when Bennett does and throw his weight around. It’s another thing entirely to have hurt me. There is no way of knowing how Bennett will take this and who will feel his wrath.
The three of them run for the door, leaving me alone, to cut Bennett off before he walks in and sees me. I have only a moment to decide. We are on a precipice. The wild card is Bennett. What will the story be? There is already an admission, which is all I wanted. For one of them to say in his own words what happened so that when I tell my father, there can be no question. The money was never a factor. I didn’t want Bennett’s money, wherever he got it from. I only wanted them to admit what we did.
Bennett can blame my getting hurt on them. He can spin the story to say they acted on their own. But they will say he told them to bring me here. There are too many variables, and they all point to me. I am the piece that needs to be removed. And if Bennett is anything, a survivalist is number one. He has too much to lose. I know too much about him.
If I stay, Bennett may finish what Danny started.
I move, but the pain rips through me, and a gasp tries to escape. I suck it in. I can’t be heard. Distancing myself is the only way to ensure I have a chance. My hand brushes against the glass and recoils, then moves to clutch it to keep it from shifting or coming out. I need to get to the road.
With the decision made, I grimace against the way the glass teases that it’s still there, probably causing more damage. But I’m more afraid of removing it and bleeding out. I hold it firmer, determined not to let it move more than it is, and I get up. I can hear the guys arguing out front. The four of them are talking at once, so how they can understand the others, I have no idea. Danny is desperately trying to soften the blow, explaining his story from the beginning. Somehow his linebackermove morphs into a defensive maneuver from my Mace and as he tried to deflect my attacks on him. James and Roger interject, James saying we need to hurry. Bennett is asking, “Hurry and do what?” Because no one has cut to the chase yet. He’s demanding to know what’s happened.
“Where. The fuck. Is Edie?”
I am stumbling toward the back door and squeezing through the ragged gaping hole in the corner of one of the back stalls that easily crumbled away after years of abuse by Mother Nature. I’m in such a rush to get away quickly that as I move through the hole, my bracelet, the one that matches my mother’s locket chain, catches on splintered wood and breaks off. I hesitate, about to stop and grab it, but they’ll be after me at any moment, and I won’t be able to outrun them. Not in this condition.
I walk as stiffly as I can so as not to slice my insides in half, because I have watched too muchGrey’s Anatomy, and they always leave in the impaling object until the ER doctor can miraculously pull it out and save the patient. Or not. I use the shadows to my advantage, the routes in these woods coming back to me as if I never left. I avoid the gully over there, which has grown wider. I stumble over broken branches and bite back against the sharp pangs of pain. I close my eyes and reopen them when the blurriness hits to clear my vision and trudge on.
The muggy night sticks to me, and my breath is shallow. There isn’t enough air, especially when I hear Bennett scream.
“Where the hell is she?”
Then Danny yells back, “She was here a second ago.”
“Oh my God, she’s gonna tell. We are fucked!” Roger exclaims.
James says, “Just find her, okay? She’s in a bad way, and we can’t leave her like this.”
Only James cares, I think. If things had been different. If I hadn’t been a Corrigan and he some regular guy who was smart enough to get noticed by Bennett and be in his orbit, James and I might have had a chance. James was too sensitive for this lot. And so was I. And he was too weak to fight them for what he knew was right. Such was the case back then. Such is the case now. And so I begin to run.
My pace quickens. They are going to look for me, and I’m not moving fast enough. I zig and zag so that maybe they’ll move parallel and won’t pick up my tracks. Luckily the dark hides any blood trail I might leave behind.
All I can think is that no one knows I’m here. No one knows I came back except them and Isla. But Isla doesn’t even know who I really am. And what if Bennett finds out about her? What would he have done to a girl who no one would miss? I can’t think about that. I don’t even want to think about the animals that may be out here, smelling me.
My steps are uneven. The world tilts, and the blood flows freer, my body automatically ejecting this foreign object. The branches scrape my skin, the underbrush tries to catch me, and sticky brambles hang on my clothes and somehow get inside my pant leg, pricking my ankles. I am a human pincushion.
But the tree line begins to thin, and I see a break in it. It is something unfamiliar, a narrow and overgrown road. One that surely has been closed off. A single vehicle has rolled up on it slowly, the brake lights the only things on. It’s not the guys. They are somewhere behind me. It is help.
I hitch toward it, grunting as I go, my legs barely holding me up, warning me they only have a little gas left in the tank. My vision blurs again. Out. In. Halfway. It’ll have to do.
“Help,” I croak, my voice barely above a whisper. It is raw from inhaling the capsaicin from the Mace. “Hey!” I can’t be too loud. They’ll hear me and come running. The world tilts sideways, but I manage to make it go back right.
Once I’ve seen help just ahead, my body betrays me, and my legs give way, pitching me forward. The person leaps forward and catches me in their arms, holding me up as if I weigh nothing. I am fading fast, as if coming down from an extreme high, the adrenaline and survival instinct seeping out of me like the blood from my wound.
“Please,” I say. “Have to get away. I’m a—” Am I really going to do it? Invoke the name I’ve shunned for two years because now it willsave me? “A Corrigan,” I finish with much effort. It’s getting harder to breathe. “My father will pay anything. Vic—Victor Corrigan.”
Bennett calls my name in the wind. “Edie, please. Come back.”
He actually sounds concerned. For me. For himself. Who knows. I nearly say something. But I’ve been tricked by his faux concern before. Never again.