Page 27

Rhue

I thought hazing was going to be fun.

It’s the only reason why I drove all the way out here, ignoring the lines in the fine print about inclusivity and safety guidelines.

The stories I’ve heard from college grads sound like horror and thriller flicks compared to what this is.

Buncha’ snowflakes. Worst of all, Mackenzie was true to her word.

She fucked me, alright, as soon as she paired me off with Madison. This is a fucking drag.

We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes, though I’m not sure where we are, so I take out my phone and turn on the map app.

Soon enough, the GPS pointer puts us smack in the middle of this forest. Madison keeps walking for a few more yards before she realizes I’ve stopped.

I can feel her glaring, but I’m more interested in the quality of the map zoom on this phone.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Trying to figure out where we are. Obviously.” This is the most we’ve talked since we were paired off and sent into the woods. “I’m hoping we can find one of those cabins sooner, rather than later.”

She frowns, but accepts my reasoning, then crosses her arms and looks around.

It’s dark and quiet. With that comes a strange sense of peace and tranquility, as if the whole world has suddenly vanished.

There’s no college. No career and life expectations.

No social pressure. No family. Nothing but me, her, and these giant old trees.

The fresh air fills me up to the brim, and for a moment I imagine what it would be like to never go back.

“There should be paths,” Madison says after about minute.

“It’s what I’m hoping to see via satellite images,” I reply.

She shakes her head. “You’re not going to see them from above. The canopy is too thick. We need to—”

“No, wait. Look here,” I say, so into what I’m doing that I forget the hatred that’s supposed to exist between us.

Madison moves closer to look at my phone screen.

“This is the clearing. It’s got to be. The country road is here,” I say, the tip of my index hovering above the map.

“It thins out here, which is basically where we left our cars. According to the pin here, we’re headed south.

Another three miles, and we’ll reach one of the residential roads beyond the woods. That won’t do.”

“Right. We should head north-east from here, then,” Madison replies, gently pointing at another section of the map. “There are better chances of finding a cabin on that side. If I were a hunter, at least, it’s where I would build one. See that creek?”

“What about it?”

“I’d build my cabin close to the water,” she says. For what feels like forever, our gazes lock on each other, and nothing is said.

Tonight, the ball is in my court. I decide how this will go, it seems. Madison is keeping it civil. I can either follow that line or be a dick again. The latter comes too easily to me. Maybe I’ll challenge myself. Maybe.

“Let’s go, then. I’m pretty sure the Acolytes will be tailing us soon enough.”

“Aw, you spoiled the surprise,” a man’s voice slices through the darkness.

It’s followed by popping sounds and pellets whizzing past us, barely missing our heads.

Instinctively, my hand juts out and I find that I’m grabbing Madison, pulling her by the hand as I bolt towards the north-east. She cries out as one of the pellets hits her side, but as long as she’s running, we’re good.

“Come on!” I urge her. “We can’t let them beat us!”

We’re somehow in sync, now. We’re gliding across the forest floor, jumping over swirling roots and rocks like deer.

My breath is even but getting shorter. I lead us through a thickening cluster of pines.

Some of the branches are too low and slap my face as I move faster.

The needles scratch my cheeks and break the skin, but I cannot let those bozos win.

Madison and I aren’t friends, not even close, but she lucked out today because my need to win is apparently bigger than my hate for her.

“You okay?” I ask but don’t wait for an answer. I do get an “Uh-huh”, so that answers that.

It takes us a while, but we manage to leave the Acolytes behind. My guess is they’re meant to just spook us and stop us from lingering in one place for too long. We’re supposed to seek refuge in a cabin, after all.

“That son of a bitch,” Madison snaps when we finally stop to rest for a few minutes. She’s holding her side, face crinkled from the pain.

“They got you, huh?”

She nods once. “And then some. That son of a bitch,” she hisses, knowing that we can’t be too loud if we’re to keep them off our tracks.

Slowly, she raises the hem of her tee, and I’m treated to a portion of her hip and lower abdomen.

The skin is soft and almost white in this darkness, with only the moon rising above as a source of light.

Madison uses the flashlight on her phone to reveal the reddened area. It looks painful.

“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!