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“Here we go again,” Dylan said, laughing and throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the detail following behind them as they began their walk home from school. He still wore his North Face jacket but had opted for a T-shirt and jeans for his second day at Carnegie High. With his styled hair and All-American good looks, he still made even that look fashionable.
A twinge of jealousy flashed behind Michael’s eyes, based on an assumption that his new friend’s fine looks meant he’d had a fine life. Then he remembered how Dylan had skipped from place to place, never really staying in one area long enough to develop strong friendships or even keep those that he’d made.
Another assumption. What was it Sam had called that? He looked down at the ground for a rock to kick. Projection. Just because he’d been tossed from home to home without ever making any friends didn’t mean Dylan had been in the same boat.
And yet, he felt a kinship with the boy. Strangers in a Strange Land. He laughed, remembering the title of one of the books the fat guy at the library was always trying to get him to read since they both liked the same graphic novels. Michael kept turning him down, preferring to keep to books with pictures, but for some reason, he liked that title and felt it applied somehow to him and Dylan despite having no idea what the actual book was about.
“Everything okay, Badass?”
“Huh?” Michael looked up to see what appeared to be genuine concern in Dylan’s expression. The boy had narrowed his eyes on Michael, brow furrowed, lips pressed flat.
“Oh, yeah... I’m okay. I just daydream a lot.”
Dylan stopped and fixed Michael with a grave look. “Something on your mind? Not to sound stupid or anything, but, you know... I’m happy to listen.”
Michael shrugged. “Thanks, but really, I’m good. Sometimes, I just overthink things.”
Dylan chuckled. “Sounds serious. Fortunately for you, Dr. Dylan has the solution.” He nodded at the cop car trailing them. “But we’ve got to ditch your entourage first.”
“Entourage?” Michael scrunched up his nose with distaste. “Really?”
“What?” Dylan laughed. “Too big of a word for you?”
“I know what entourage means. I just don’t think I’ve ever heard it used in a sentence before, and I’m sure no one has ever used it to describe the one or two people who don’t even remotely want anything to do with me. Those two”—he jerked his head at the police cruiser—“are getting paid to follow me around.”
“Okay, bodyguards, then. Shoot me.” He threw his palms up. “On second thought, I shouldn’t say that to you since you’re in with the cops and could probably have me shot.” He laughed again, and this time Michael laughed with him. “I have to say, though. They sort of make me feel important. Like I’m a senator or something, and they’re my personal protection.”
“You look like a politician.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I sense some negativity in your tone.” Dylan placed his hands over his heart, frowned, and sniffled. “That hurts, Badass.”
Michael snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re real torn up inside.”
Their conversation lulled as they walked toward the first shortcut. Michael huffed. He knew he couldn’t ditch them. Sam would have a fit. But a stubborn pride rose within him. I’m friggin’ fifteen years old. I don’t need a babysitter.
He sighed, the pride subsiding. Don’t be stupid, Michael. Even though Dylan had seemingly let it drop, he felt he owed his friend an explanation. “I can’t. Sam would kill me.”
“Hey, man.” Dylan smiled warmly. “It’s cool. Not trying to pressure you. I just have this awesome spot I really can’t let your bodyguards know about.” He shrugged. “No biggie. We can go when you’re off home arrest or whatever. In the meantime”—he punched Michael in the shoulder—“I may have to stop calling you Badass, though.”
He stopped, and Michael turned to see him staring at his butt.
“How’s Fatass sound?”
“Fuck you,” Michael tried to say angrily but trailed off in a giggle. He punched Dylan back in the arm.
“Hey, easy, man! That’s assault! The cops are my witnesses. Why aren’t they arresting you?”
“Actually, it’s battery. The assault is putting you in apprehension of an attack, but Sam says sometimes it’s different in civil law versus criminal.”
“Good to know, I guess.” He pointed ahead to the stone wall at the back of the lawn. “So are we still taking the shortcut?”
Michael scowled. “Where’s this place?” The question came out before he could stop it. Dylan hadn’t pressed him, he didn’t think, but the change in nickname somehow felt like a challenge.
“No, it’s cool, buddy.” Dylan shook his head. “I’m not trying to get on your mom’s bad side—”
“Where is it?” Michael blurted, that stubborn pride returning. Dylan sounded genuine, but everything he said had the effect of making Michael feel anything but badass. He liked the nickname, but Dylan was right: his actions weren’t earning it. Still, logic told him he was being stupid. He didn’t even know his new friend’s last name. Plus, the detail was assigned for a reason, though since he’d been back, it hadn’t seemed valid.
The man attacked Sam. The cops should be following her, not me.
Dylan smiled mischievously. “Come on. I’ll show you.” The two darted across the lawn to the stone wall, where Dylan halted. The police car had already turned around and was speeding away to meet them on the other side of the shortcut.
“Now, we double back,” Dylan said, a glint in his eye. He reversed direction and ran back the way they’d come.
Michael followed. He knew what he was doing wasn’t very smart, but his accelerating heartbeat made him feel... good? It felt good to be bad, to throw caution at the wind, to do something that felt dangerous, even if he knew there was very little danger in it. No one was or had been out to get him.
“Won’t they come back this way?” he asked.
“Most... likely not,” Dylan said between panting. He took a right down Courtney Street, which ran parallel to the street on the other side of the shortcut, following the direction the police car had gone. “We need to find someplace to hide.”
Michael scanned the neighborhood for a quick and convenient hiding spot. The houses were modest, one-story homes, most having equally small but fenced-in front yards. In the nearest driveway, a large black F-150 was parked. As he heard an engine drawing nearer, Michael pulled Dylan by his sleeve over to the pickup. They crouched beside the rear wheel and slowly circled the back of the truck as the police car passed. Once the cruiser had turned, the boys stood.
“They’ll be back,” Dylan said.
“What are you kids doing to my truck?” shouted a man from the front porch.
Laughing, Michael and Dylan took off running, farther down Courtney Street, taking a right then a left until they were heading in the direction of Brentworth Hospital. They were nearly there, too, when Michael slowed to a stop.
He bent over and placed his hands on his knees, his breaths quick and shallow. “Wait!”
Dylan, who’d already slowed to a trot, halted and turned around. “I doubt we’ve lost them yet, but we’re really close.”
Michael winced at a stitch in his side. Still breathing quickly, but consciously trying to take longer, deeper breaths, he asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“I told you—to my spot. Don’t worry. You’re going to like it.”
“Is it at Brentworth?”
“No. Why? Is that a problem? I thought you go there all the time?”
Michael didn’t want to explain to a kid he was just getting to know that his detective foster mother had been attacked the last time they’d been there. The many reasons not to ditch his detail, play with strangers, or go anywhere near Brentworth flooded his thoughts like a tidal wave, and his legs wobbled as if they might give out. But to turn back then, without any real, tangible reason for fear, would just be stupid. Cowardly. And worst of all, he might damage his chances of actually making a new friend.
“Okay. I-I just don’t want to go to Brentworth.”
Dylan’s braces twinkled in the late afternoon sunlight. “Just come on. We won’t be going anywhere near that place.”
As it turned out, “near” meant something entirely different to Dylan than it did Michael. After following his new friend for another half mile, they stopped in front of Brentworth Hospital. A sprawling complex, Brentworth was an old brick and mortar structure that looked more like an Ivy League college dormitory that had been left unattended for half a century than a healing center. Though Michael wasn’t born until after Brentworth’s heyday and had always known Charlton Memorial Hospital as the place to go if you were hurt or sick, he’d learned all about Brentworth when he found out Tessa would be sent there.
Michael hadn’t been born yet when Brentworth was the city’s only hospital. After the more advanced Charlton opened, Brentworth had become the home for several specialties, a walk-in clinic, and run-off emergency services when the load on Charlton became too much. But most people, Michael included, thought of the place as the “nuthouse.” Though his tune had softened a bit when he started going there to see Tessa, the massive hospital always intimidated him. It had three stories at its center and wings sprawling out in all directions, kind of like his high school. But much of it went unused and neglected like it was two steps removed from being a fine location for a horror film.
As they approached, the hospital looked alive. People in street clothes and scrubs entered and exited every few seconds. An ambulance was silently waiting out front, red lights swirling. A car that looked like Sam’s was parked a little ways behind it in a tow-away zone.
“I thought you said no Brentworth?” Michael asked, more annoyed with Dylan’s deception than anything else.
“Relax. We aren’t going in there.” He pointed to the lane that led to the back entrance. “We’re going behind it.”
Before Michael could protest, Dylan marched ahead. Michael shuffled his feet, wondering whether to follow. His hesitation came with anger, a spark at first that ignited an ever-growing flame. He was so tired of being afraid—afraid of being bullied at school, of what the other students thought of him. Afraid of what he might see if he held hands with a girl or, God forbid, let someone hug him. Of living his life in fear of all the crazies in Sam’s and, to be fair, the crazies that he’d found all on his own. He just wanted to be normal, to do normal kid things with other kids.
So he wasn’t normal. Fine. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t or shouldn’t have a taste of it now and then. The world was a dark place, but living in fear left no room for light. Or friendship. Or fun. It had left him with no real life to lose.
He clenched his jaw and ran to catch up with his friend. “So, what’s your last name, anyway?”
“Jefferson,” Dylan said. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew that.”
“You know mine?”
Dylan poked him in the arm. “You mean it’s not Badass?”
“That’s my middle name.” Michael frowned. “But seriously. It’s Turcotte.”
“I know.” Dylan smiled. “I paid attention during roll call.”
Michael squinted. “Ms. Alvarez did a roll call? I don’t remember that.”
“Like I said, I paid attention.” Dylan laughed and Michael joined him.
They continued to walk down the lane toward the hospital’s rear entrance. There, the parking lot had gone unmaintained, its surface riddled with long cracks and uneven pavement. Weeds shot up through the asphalt like tufts of stray feathers on a plucked chicken. Smaller trees lined the back of the lot, their larger brethren beyond them, a massive army standing at attention, spanning into darkness.
Michael remembered the lot well. He’d been there only six weeks ago, wielding an ax to save Sam’s life. The memory came to him vividly, and he scanned the tree line for any sign of the man in the Indian mask. He clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists. I’m not afraid of you. As much as he wanted to be brave, the lie crumbled to dust under wobbly knees and hesitant feet.
“Come on!” Dylan called from the lot’s edge. He was heading into the forest. “It’s just a little ways through here.”
“Aren’t there, like, ticks or something?”
Dylan turned and shrugged. “Probably. You coming?” Without waiting for a response, he stepped past the first row of trees. A few more steps and Michael could barely see the blue of Dylan’s jacket.
Michael again examined the trees for anything suspicious, then the back of the building and the remainder of the lot. He saw no one. Nothing stirred. He was alone. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. That was when he realized the extent of his idiotic pride and his desire to be normal. It had left him alone and at risk. And though he saw no one, he felt as though a hundred eyes were on him.
He ran after Dylan. “Wait up!” As he sprinted into the woods, he could no longer see his friend. He looked left and right but saw nothing but telephone-pole-thin firs, some black and rotting. Their needleless lower branches reached out like skeletal hands to claw at his face and arms as he ran. Roots and twigs, half-covered by moss and underbrush, tried to knock his feet out from under him, but he recovered from each stumble before they could succeed.
About a quarter mile in, he skidded to a halt and looked back, not sure if it was the direction of the hospital. Everywhere he turned, the forest looked the same. Panic rose within him as his heartbeat pounded in his temples. Sweat dripped from his forehead and down his spine. Where are you, Dylan?
“Over here!” Dylan was barely twenty yards away, diagonally to Michael’s right, as easy to see as the trees directly in front of him. He was waving his arm over his head. How Michael had missed the boy he could only explain as a result of his minor bout of hysteria. He sighed, his eyes welling as he plodded slowly through the brush to Dylan, giving himself as much time as possible to regain his composure.
Dylan beamed as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Welcome to my home away from home, Badass.” He swung his arm back, directing Michael’s gaze to a thick trunk with wooden rungs nailed into it. The planks that weren’t cracked entirely appeared to be splintering, and all could only loosely be described as horizontal, but Michael understood their intent. He looked up.
“Wow,” he said, hiding his enthusiasm. “I doubt that thing’s up to code.”
“It’s sturdy enough.” Dylan dropped his backpack beside the tree, reached for a rung, and began to climb. “Come on!”
Michael gazed at the treehouse, a plywood box perched on forking branches that, from thirty feet or so below, didn’t look much thicker than his calves, which Sam referred to as his chicken legs. The wood appeared weatherworn and maybe even termite infested. He watched Dylan climb as gracefully as a monkey, without the slightest hesitation or misstep. Michael wished he could be like that, and not just in climbing shifty ladders.
He sighed, tossed his backpack near Dylan’s, and grabbed the rung just over his head. But when he tried to step up, his sneaker slid right off the plank. His shin banged into it as he slipped, causing a stabbing pain to shoot up his leg. He groaned and cursed, then studied the rung, realizing his error almost immediately. Each rung was wider than the base of the tree. Stepping on the end of the rung would allow him to use the ball of his foot to climb rather than just his toes.
Placing the middle of his sneaker on the end of the rung, he tested his weight on it. He and Dylan were roughly the same size. If anything, Dylan was slightly taller. If it supports him... Michael began to climb.
He was about halfway up and becoming comfortable with the climb when one of the rungs spun vertically as he planted his foot on it. He gasped and threw his body against the tree, the scare quickly passing as his other three grips remained firm.
He yelled up to Dylan, pissed his friend hadn’t warned him. “Some of these ladder rungs are shit!”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry!” Dylan called back from somewhere beyond Michael’s sight.
Michael shook his head and continued without further incident. At the top, he pulled himself up to a landing that served as a sort of porch without railings for the treehouse. Cautiously rising from his knees, he took in the view and immediately wished he hadn’t, his legs going shaky again on what might have been less-than-solid footing. He’d never been afraid of heights, but just knowing how easily he could fall from getting dizzy or the slightest careless bump from Dylan, and the treehouse’s interior seemed all the more welcoming.
It was much bigger than it appeared from the tree’s base, and the branches supporting it were much thicker. It still looked like a box made of rotten wood, and in contrast to the haphazardly constructed shack the rest of the thing was, it had saloon-style doors that swung on double hinges.
“Howdy, partner,” Michael said as he ducked his head and pushed through the doors.
Save for two folding chairs, one of which Dylan sat upon, the inside lacked any adornments. Small windows were carved into the sidewalls, facing what Michael thought was the way back to the hospital and the way deeper into the woods. Facecloths were thumbtacked over each window, probably to keep out bugs and weather. The window facing Brentworth was clear, its facecloth folded and tacked above it. Under that, a pair of binoculars leaned against the wall.
Dylan spread out his arms. “Pretty amazing, huh?”
Michael didn’t know how he felt about it. Warmth flushed his cheeks. Maybe he was way too old for a treehouse. It seemed like something younger kids did, normal kids—not like him. He’d never been in one before, and he guessed... yeah, that did make it kinda cool.
“I guess.” He shrugged, downplaying his elation, then took the seat beside Dylan.
“Let me guess,” Dylan said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’re thinking we’re too old to have a treehouse?”
“It might’ve crossed my mind. You build it?”
“Nope. Found it.”
Not knowing what else to talk about, Michael watched as a nasty-looking bug emerged from the crack where the wall met the floor. He grimaced as the thing, possibly an earwig, scurried toward his foot. He lifted his sneaker and slammed it down hard on the bug, then froze, the branches below him creaking and groaning in protest.
“Don’t do that.” Dylan’s face had gone a lighter shade. He laughed nervously. “Besides, the bugs up here aren’t so bad. Especially the roaches.”
Dylan reached over to the wall and retrieved a small lumpy white cylinder that looked like a cigarette without a filter. “You smoke?”
Michael had never smoked weed before, but he knew it when he saw it. He thought about lying to make himself sound cool, but Dylan would probably see right through him, so he stuck with the truth. “I’ve never had it before.”
Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He put the joint to his lips and inhaled as he lit the already blackened end. As he breathed in the smoke, the end of the joint brightened. Michael found the light sort of pretty and then thought himself weird for finding it so. Dylan removed the joint from his mouth and appeared to be holding his breath. After a moment, he blew out a cloud of smoke that tingled against Michael’s face. Then Dylan held the joint out to him.
Michael leaned away. “I shouldn’t. I’m probably giving Sam enough to worry about right now.”
“Which is exactly why you should. You seem like the type that’s always worrying about other people, what they think, and what they feel about you. So high-strung. This will help with that. It’s medicine for your soul.”
Michael scoffed. “Medicine for your soul? Where’d you hear that bullshit?”
“I don’t know.” Dylan laughed. “But it sounded good, didn’t it? It’s cool, though. It doesn’t usually work the first time anyway.”
The boys laughed together, and Dylan took another hit. Michael would be lying to himself if he said he didn’t want to try it, curiosity getting the better of him. With it being legal for adults in Massachusetts, he expected half the students at his high school had already tried it. Hell, half of them are probably high at school. How bad can it be?
“All right.” He held out his hand. “Pass it over.”
“Badass!” As Dylan passed him the joint, he explained how to grip the end and take a hit so Michael wouldn’t close it off. Michael put the joint to his lips and did as Dylan instructed, inhaling as deeply as he could.
“Now hold it in,” Dylan encouraged.
Michael coughed. Smoke exploded out his nostrils before he opened his mouth. A coughing fit ensued that lasted over a minute. Every time he tried to speak, a tightness would return to his chest, and he’d start coughing all over again.
Dylan apparently found the whole thing hilarious. Between bouts of laughter, he said he would have offered Michael some water but had forgotten to bring it. He shrugged and raised his palms. “Sorry!” He laughed some more before taking another hit himself.
When Michael was able to talk again, his own laughter prolonging the attempt, he said, “I pegged you as a quichebag, dressed like you were the first day. I never expected I’d be ditching the”—he made finger quotes— “entourage and smoking weed with you in a treehouse behind a mental hospital on day two. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow? We gonna steal a car?”
“Yeah, that cop car that’s been following you. Er, was following you.” Dylan blew out a puff of smoke. “What in the hell is a quichebag?”
“You know, like a goody-two-shoes.”
“What the heck is that?” Dylan burst out into laughter.
It was infectious. “A choir boy?”
“Now that, I understand.” Dylan’s face went deathly grave, and he fixed Michael with a stare that unnerved him. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Badass. Like where I buried all the bodies.”
Michael stared back at him in silence for another second before both boys exploded into laughter. Michael had tears in his eyes by the time he’d finished. “Give me that,” he said, pointing to the joint.
Dylan handed it over. “Go easy, now.”
But Michael didn’t want to go easy. He took a long hard hit that resulted in another coughing fit, but he didn’t care. It felt good to hang out and have fun, to let his cares go. To not be a burden on anyone else for once and be where someone actually wanted him to be.
After passing the joint back to Dylan, he pointed at the binoculars. “What are those for?”
“Well...” Dylan leaned over and grabbed the binoculars in his free hand. They appeared to be high quality, like something hunters or the military might use, not those cheap plastic things you could get at a dollar store. “That’s so I can see who’s coming. As you probably know, we aren’t supposed to have this.”
He handed Michael the binoculars. “Go ahead. Take a look. You can make out the back door to Brentworth if you aim it just right.”
Michael took another hit, returned the joint to Dylan, then grabbed the binoculars. He kneeled in front of the window and peered out it, but everything he saw through the lenses was blurred. His fingers adjusted the small gear on the top of the binoculars and cleared the resolution.
“Wow!” He scanned the top of the trees and could see well beyond the start of the forest. “I can see like a mile with these things.” But he couldn’t see Brentworth, the trees standing much taller. With minute movements, he lowered his gaze, lower and lower until—
He shrieked, dropped the binoculars, and scuttled back from the window.
“What?” Dylan asked, reaching out to help Michael up. “What is it?”
Michael’s lips trembled. He was so stunned that he couldn’t get out the words that were terrorizing his mind. Instead, he pointed at the window.
Dylan stubbed out the joint and picked the binoculars off the floor. Gazing out the window, he again asked, “What did you see?”
“Th-Th-Three,” Michael stuttered, “maybe, f-four men... w-wearing Indian masks. Looking this way. Looking right at us.”
“Where?” Dylan continued to look out the window. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Toward Brentworth, b-b-but in the woods.”
Dylan looked again. After a moment, he said, “Well, there’s no one there now. And if anyone was there—”
“They were there!”
Dylan took a deep breath. “And if anyone was there, there’s no way they could have seen us. Are you sure the weed’s not making you paranoid? It does do that to some people.”
“I’m not being paranoid.” Michael spat out the words as if there was no contesting them, but he had to consider the possibility he’d imagined those figures. He’d only seen them for a second. Maybe the drug had caused it, but as far as he knew, weed didn’t make people hallucinate. “We should go. It’s getting dark.”
“Go where?” Dylan began to pace, head tucked so he wouldn’t scrape it along the ceiling. “Let’s say I believe you. Wouldn’t we have to walk right into them? Either that, or we’ll just end up lost in the woods.” He nodded in the direction of the back wall. “I don’t know what’s out there.”
“Do you know any other ways back?”
“No.” Dylan ran a hand through his hair. “Mike, you’re freaking me out. Is this the reason the cops are following you? I thought you said it was just one guy?”
“It was just one guy!” Michael’s heart thudded in his chest. His lungs hurt as he sucked in air, wheezing out the last remnants of smoke.
“Okay, okay.” Dylan stopped pacing. “Let’s just stay calm. Here’s what we’ll do. The sun’s going to set any minute now. We wait for that, then we quietly creep back to the hospital, where I’ll get my dad to drive us home.”
“But we won’t be able to see them.”
“And they won’t be able to see us.”
Michael nodded and forced himself to breathe deeper, unsure if he was panicking for nothing. He knew what he’d seen—four people standing side by side, each wearing that same plastic Indian mask Sam’s attacker had been wearing six weeks earlier. But that day, there had only been a single man in a mask. And Michael hadn’t smoked.
Am I high? He didn’t know what being high felt like to know whether he was or wasn’t. I hope I’m not just being paranoid, for Dylan’s sake. He chuckled despite his fear, wanting more to have not lied to his new friend than to actually not have any real threat in the first place.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
Dylan tugged on his chin. “Well, we should get down after all. We’re sitting ducks up here.”
Michael exited the treehouse and crouched on the landing outside, readying to climb down.
Dylan patted his shoulder. “Not that way. Too slow, and what are you going to do if halfway down you see someone waiting at the bottom?” He pointed to the far side of the treehouse. “Watch me.”
On the outside of the structure, someone had rigged up a rope and pulley system. “Now this, I built,” Dylan said, a big metallic grin on his face. He tugged on one end of the rope, the other end attached to a tree far below like a clothesline rigged between two tall buildings. As Dylan tugged on the upper rope, the wheels on each end of the contraption squeaked. Michael glanced nervously over his shoulder to see if the noise had attracted any unwanted attention but saw no one. A bucket rose slowly from the base of the tree, affixed to the upper rope. Something shiny twinkled inside it in the dying light.
Hand over hand, Dylan drew the bucket up. “When I let go of the rope, the bucket will automatically go back down. I’ll put the grip back in it, but you’ll have to pull it up just like I did.”
Letting go of the rope with one hand, he removed a silver bar with a doughnut at its center. It looked like a giant eye bolt with two arms or something to work out his arms at a gym. It might have been the handlebar from a scooter. Dylan shuffled past Michael to the tree’s trunk, where he reached up to clasp the bar to a cable Michael hadn’t even noticed.
“Always put it on this way,” he said, holding the bar over the cable. Then he pressed until the wire squeezed through a small break in the doughnut’s center. “If you do it upside down, the hole in the bar is up, and you and it go straight down.”
He winked and grabbed both arms of the bar. “But don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe. Just like in the movies. Lift your feet and make sure you let go before you slam into the tree at the other end. And whatever you do, don’t grab the cable to try and slow down. I’ll put this back in the bucket when I land.”
Michael mouthed wait, but Dylan was already zipping down the cable. When he let go of the bar, he hit the ground with bent knees and tumbled head over heels until he was back on his feet, no worse for wear. The bar hit the tree with a twang that made Michael cringe. He hoped he and Dylan were the only people in those woods who’d heard it.
Dylan ran over to the bar and dumped it into the bucket, then gave a thumbs-up. With a deep breath, Michael began pulling the rope. It seemed like the wheels squeaked louder with each tug. When the bucket reached the top, Michael swallowed hard as he reached over the drop to grab the bar. It was much heavier than he’d anticipated, and he teetered on his toes over the ledge for a panicked second before regaining his balance. Heart in his throat, he connected the bar to the cable, took the grips in his hands, and prayed to any god who would listen.
Then, he closed his eyes and jumped. He whipped toward the ground at a much faster speed than he thought, and his instincts screamed at him to slow down. Halfway down, he forced his eyes open and glanced up at his hands. One grip was much lower than the other, the bar venturing vertically and probably to disaster. Without thinking, he released his higher hand and grasped for the cable.
Fiery pain ripped across his palm and he cried out, letting go with both hands and crashing onto his feet. He heard a crack as he landed, either snapping bone or twigs, as more pain shot through his ankle. His momentum pitched him forward, and he slammed face-first into pityingly soft, damp earth.
He looked at his hand as he laid in dirt and pine needles. His glove and the flesh under it were shredded, the muscle beneath raw and sticky.
“That was close.” Dylan grabbed him under his arm and helped him to his feet. He gestured at a tree, only a half foot or so from where Michael’s head had landed. “Can you walk?”
Michael tested his ankle. As he put more weight on it, he found it sturdy enough to limp on. It was probably just a mild sprain. He nodded.
“Good,” Dylan said, still propping him up. “Sun’s nearly set. We should start heading back.”
Together, the two crept quietly toward the lot as the sky turned from lavender to deep purple. The woods fell into night. Dylan’s shoulder served as a crutch until Michael’s pain dulled enough for him to walk on his own. Every now and then, Michael would freeze and throw a finger over his mouth, swearing he saw a face in the dark, only to look again at where it was and find nothing. His hand hurt, his ankle hurt, and he’d scared the hell out of his new friend, and for what? Weed-based paranoia? Dylan never saw anyone Michael thought he saw.
They were no more than a few feet from the lot when another face rose from the shadows. It rushed at him.
“Now, I’ve got you, you little bastard!” a female shouted.
“Wait,” a man said, his voice filled with alarm. “Don’t touch his—”
A cold hand clasped around Michael’s neck. He began to seize.