“What are you smiling at?” she asked, scowling.
“You. You’re like a cactus you’re so prickly.”
“You’re not all that warm and fuzzy yourself.”
“Yeah, well, if your boyfriend hadn’t come back from the fight, I don’t think you’d be all that cheery right now either.”
“So he’s your boyfriend now? We’re talking about Bodo, right?”
I stopped walking, my smile disappearing in an instant. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She stopped and faced me, her legs spread apart and her eyebrow raised in challenge. “Well, before you left, you kept making sure all the guys around here knew he wasn’t your boyfriend. Now he’s missing and suddenly he is. Seems like you’ve had a change of heart, that’s all I’m saying.”
I shook my head slowly in disbelief. What a bitch. “Screw you, Coli. And don’t frigging walk with me any farther or I’m going to forget how helpful you were trying to be and punch you in the face.”
I stalked off, trying to ignore the spinning, spinning, spinning of my brain, but my feet wouldn’t obey. They walked me diagonally instead of straight, and I got tangled in some roots that were just off the side of the path.
I went down like a drunk sailor into a pile of rotting weeds, landing on my hurt arm. Intense pain to shot up into my shoulder. I screamed with the frustration and burning sensation coming from my injury, rolling over onto my back.
“Goddamn it! Fucking swamp! Fucking asshole canners!” I was crying now, big fat tears rolling out of my eyes. I sat up so they’d stop going down into my ears, and they quickly amassed on my chin and jawline, dripping down to land on my bandages. I didn’t bother wiping them away. I just sat there hunched over, drowning in my sorrow.
I heard Coli walking over, her feet swishing in the leaves I’d kicked over onto the path. For once she wasn’t being totally silent. She put her hand down to help me stand back up on my feet.
“Come on. Get up.”
I slapped her hand away. “Get that out of my face.”
She put her hand back where it was. “Let me help you up. You’re too weak to go alone.”
“Fuck you, Coli.”
“No thanks.” Her hand remained in front of my face.
I’d had enough of her callousness and jealousy and whatever else it was that made her such a jerk to me all the time. Even now, her temporary niceness was laced with cruelty.
Without thinking, I grabbed her hand with my good one and yanked on it, rocking back and lifting my legs at the same time.
Her body flew forward, her balance thrown off by my unexpected move and unanticipated strength, allowing my feet to make contact with her chest.
I pulled down on her arm and pushed up with my feet, all the while leaning back and using the momentum created by her shifting weight to send her forward. I grunted with the effort of sending her flying over me to land on her back behind my head.
As she laid there, gasping for breath, I let go of her hand and scrambled around. I jumped on her, planning to land on the side of my good arm but not quite making it. I screamed with the pain of my stitches popping, while she yelled in anger at being taken by surprise and thrown into the rotting vegetation.
She tried to buck me off and was partially successful. I grabbed onto her shirt to pull her with me.
We started rolling around in the leaves and dirt, both of us yelling and screaming, grabbing for each other. I landed a solid slap to her chin and she punched me hard in the boob.
“You bitch!” I yelled.
“You slut!” she yelled back.
“I am not a slut!” I screamed, completely confused as to what I’d done to earn that nickname but feeling totally justified in using the one I’d chosen for her.
“Yes, you are,” she grunted out, pushing my face into the dirt from behind.
I arched my back and elbowed her off, ignoring my freely bleeding arm. I grabbed a handful of her hair and plowed her over with my upper body, slamming her head down into the muck with every word I was yelling. “I’ve…never…done…anything…slutty…in…my…life!” I let go and backed off a little, sure I’d bashed the fight out of her.
But I was wrong.
She lifted herself up fast and slapped me across the face, hard.
My head whipped to the side, but I caught myself with my arm behind me before falling back all the way. I lifted up my leg while I was still on my knees and kicked her in the shoulder, sending her back down.
“You flirt with everyone while you lead Bodo on!” she yelled from the ground.
I had lifted my leg up to attack again, but froze in the middle of stomping her, my foot poised above her abdomen. I slowly lowered it and let it drop beside me, falling ungracefully into a sitting position and moving my arm so it could rest in my lap. My legs drew slowly inward, until I was cross-legged.
I couldn’t believe what she had just said. As if I weren’t feeling crappy enough, now I had to face the fact that people, or at least Coli, felt this way about me.
Coli laid there, doing and saying nothing further.
I stood up eventually, swaying on my feet, brushing the swamp garbage off me as best I could. My efforts mostly just smeared the clumps of damp earth and other things into my clothes.Out of the corner of my eye, I could see bits of leaves and twigs in the sides of my hair. I reached up and pulled them out, flinging them angrily to the ground. Stupid leaves. Stupid swamp. Stupid Coli.
I gave up on my mess of a hairdo after less than a minute and stumbled away, leaving her on her back on the swamp floor.
“Where are you going?” she called out.
“Go to hell, Coli,” was all I could think to say. What does she care anyway? I’m just a boyfriend-stealing ho-bag. I weaved my way to the outhouse, forcing my feet to take one step and then another, hoping Coli wasn’t following me. I used to find her annoying, but now I downright hated her.
The whole time I was sitting on the wood bench that served as a toilet seat I fumed. Who does she think she is? I don’t want to steal her stupid boyfriend. If he’s dumb enough to go out with her, he’s definitely not my type. Besides, I was with Bodo, and he’s way better than any of those other guys. But the things she said about not admitting he was my boyfriend still stung, probably because they were mostly true. I had refused to acknowledge it for some stupid reason I couldn’t even remember anymore, and now he wasn’t here for me to tell him I was sorry and that I hadn’t meant to deny it.
He told me he loved me, and I didn’t tell him back. What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I just tell him the truth? The blood from my arm trickled down to my hand and dripped from my finger to the floor, but I disregarded it. I leaned my head up against the wall, crying silently as I thought about all the times we’d goofed around together, kissed, been intimate. Bodo was gone, and there was nothing I could do about my selfishness now.
***
The first sensation I had was the sound of voices tickling my eardrums … then the smell of the outhouse burning my nose.
“Just be careful. She’s ripped the stitches out of her arm,” said the voice of the girl I hated. I wanted to lash out at her, but I couldn’t; I was paralyzed for some reason.
“Watch it! Her leg’s caught,” said another. I knew the voice but couldn’t place it. “Coli, pull her pants up for me.”
I wanted to die of humiliation. I was being rescued from the toilet by a guy. I felt my shorts being roughly yanked up to my hips.
“What the hell happened here, Coli?” said Trip. He sounded mad.
I tried to open my eyes so I could glare at him and tell him what a ho-bag his cousin is, but my eyelids wouldn’t obey my command. All I could get out was a low moan that I wasn’t even sure anyone heard. My arms and legs felt like rubber bands.
Slowly, other nerve endings woke up, and I stopped worrying so much about what they were saying and focused more on the burning pain that was coming from my arm. I groaned louder this time, but the voices around me continued to ignore my wordless pleas.
“Give her to me,” said the third voice. It was familiar but more serious than I remembered anyone other than the chiefs ever sounding around here. It sounded like Kowi, but it wasn’t.
“You shouldn’t be doing that. Your leg…” said Coli. Her voice cut off in the middle of her sentence and she said no more.
I felt myself lifted up into someone’s arms; they were warm and strong, reminding me of Bodo. It wasn’t my boyfriend who held me, though. This person smelled differently. Not bad or anything, but not like Bodo. The tears came again and I ignored them, instead blocking out the sounds and the feelings that tried to come. I wanted to escape into oblivion again, but Coli’s annoying voice wouldn’t let me.
“I don’t know why you’re babying her like this. She attacked me.”
“You probably deserved it,” said the voice carrying me. It was more familiar now with a smiling tone added to it.
“Shut up, Paci. She’s the one who deserves to be slapped around a little. Always walking around here like her stuff doesn’t smell.”
“Take a look in the mirror, Coli. I think you’re talking about yourself. It’s called reflection,” said Paci.
“Shut the hell up,” said Trip. “Let’s just get her back to the clinic and we’ll figure everything out there.”
“I’m not going,” said Coli. “I’ll see you guys later.”
“Not so fast,” said Trip. “You’re going with us. I’m executing my power as chief over you, officially.”
“Are you kidding me? That’s bullcrap. I am not responsible for her attitude. I have nothing to say anymore about it, so you don’t need me there.”
I heard the sounds of scuffling and tried to open my eyes, but my brain didn’t want to let me.
“Let me go, Trip!”
“No. You’re coming with us.”
“Fine! I can walk by myself. I don’t need you babysitting me, you jerk.”
She was really fuming now, and all I could do was smile.
I heard a quiet voice near my face. “I see you smiling. Good for you. Just hang on to that,” said Paci.
His words were for me, and I doubted anyone else had heard them. Coli was making too big of a stink right now.
I was finally able to open my heavy lids and look around a few minutes later, as we were entering the area around the clinic. All of the pallets outside of it were gone now, and just a few kids from the canner place remained inside. One of them was LaShay.
I avoided looking at her or Paci, closing my eyes instead. I was embarrassed to be coming in here like this when there were so many other kids with bigger problems than mine.
“What’s her deal?” asked LaShay.
Paci laid me gently on a cot, and I opened my eyes again. Before I could thank him, he stepped back, limping out of the hut but keeping his eyes on me the entire time. It should have probably made me uncomfortable, but I clung to it, hoping at least he didn’t hate me like everyone else did.
He smiled at my desperate look, and it immediately made me want to look away. I decided it was a bad idea to smile back, just in case anyone would take it as me leading him on, like Coli had accused me of doing before. Plus, the realization that he’d rescued me from the toilet seat was more than a little embarrassing. I wondered who had pulled my pants back up for me, since I couldn’t picture Coli doing it.
I closed my eyes again so I could focus on getting my world back under control. Everything was in a chaotic mess for me, but everyone else seemed to be fine. Even the kids with horrific injuries were taking things in stride and starting the healing process. The knowledge that I was acting like a baby and feeling sorry for myself made me even more depressed. I felt like I was falling into a dark, dark hole that I couldn’t get out of.