Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men (3 page)

“I’m asking,” she said.

She looked so sad now, and it made me ashamed. She was once so strong, that warrior woman from the drive thru, the one who knew her way around an aggravated assault. But now she loved me and it showed, and she was standing in front of me like a little lost puppy.

I couldn’t leave her like that.

The other girls were worried about Maggie, wondering why she’d left without saying goodbye, but they all seemed to feel a little bit better as my special cookies became the hit of the bake sale, bringing in twenty dollars for a net gain of approximately thirty-eight cents.

I think Mia was suspicious, so I took her out for dinner on a quiet stretch of beach off Pacific Coast Highway. I laid out a feast of scallops and white wine on a set of Maggie’s porcelain dishes and Riedel crystal, all sprawled out on the sand atop a white linen tablecloth.

I knew after that there would be questions from Juanessa, so I brought her out to a picnic lunch in the scenic wilderness just off Tuna Canyon Road. The tree-covered hills there make you feel like you’re hours away from the city, and I chose a place for us with a view of where the rugged landscape meets the endlessness of the ocean and the blue sky above. I think she knew what I was planning but she didn’t seem to mind.

By the time I’d chewed my way through the entire group, I realized that something had changed in me.

I said goodbye to LA and the meth labs of the valley beyond. Ads on craigslist and some rather mediocre fan fiction had led me to believe that there were more women like me in Portland.

I’ll find them and I’ll love them, and then I’ll eat them and make it look like an accident.

But I know that one day I’ll meet someone special, a beautiful woman I can love and mentor just as Maggie had done for me.

Whether I want to or not, I know I’ll give myself over to her, that she’ll be everything I am and more.

And then, if I’m lucky, she’ll bash me over the head with a long-necked crystal vase and eat every last piece of me.

If I’m lucky she’ll love me enough for that.

“I WANT
you to neigh for me,” she said.

I had no idea who was talking to me.

I’d already figured out where I was, from the smell of manure and the rustle of wood shavings beneath my sweaty running shoes.

She was giggling while she said it; I couldn’t see anything but I could definitely hear it, the kind of chuckle the cool girls in high school use on pretty much every other girl to keep them in their place.

I used to do it, too. I was doing it just a few months ago.

I missed high school already.

“This isn’t funny,” I told her. “I can’t see a thing.”

“That’ll wear off, stupid.
Gawd
.”

“How can you know?”

There was a pause; I know she rolled her eyes right then. “It’s so much easier dealing with men. You muffin-top girls are a waste of time.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” I asked. “Like there’s something wrong with not having a spray tan or a silver spoon crammed up my ass?”

“I think my nose is being thrown the biggest insult here. You smell like hog manure. Seriously.”

I stepped towards her and felt my knee slam against a metal stall.

“You’re locked in, stupid,” she said.

“What? Why are you even doing this?”

Another pause, but I didn’t sense an eye roll. “I’m not doing this to you, Amanda. You did this to yourself.”

I heard her hard-heeled boots walking back down the concrete hallway.

Then it was quiet. And still completely black.

I think it was only twenty minutes or so before I started seeing light in my eyes. It was just a lighter shade of dark at first, but then it was like when you close your eyes and you’re facing the sun. Then there were splotches, then blobs, and then I was in a box stall in a well-lit stable, at one end of what seemed almost an endless expanse of empty horse stalls.

The stall was like a prison cell, with iron bars running from the half wall up to the ceiling, and a heavy padlock on the gate.

I’d been shivering from the start in the wet air, still dressed in my basketball gear, and still unsure of what had come after I’d walked into the changeroom after skills. Did the other girls end up here, too? There was no one else in the stable with me, but since I’d never been locked into a horse stall before, I didn’t have much of a frame of reference.

If I was living in a teen sitcom, I’d be the star player on the championship team, kidnapped by ne'er do wells from the other school just before the big game. Of course, I’m only on the team because there are hardly any girls in Dover who play basketball at all, and it’s nice to be “good” at something; we’ve got one girl from Finland who’d never even heard of the game before we signed her up for skills camp. And Sayra’s from Guatemala and has yet to figure out the meaning of man-to-man.

There’s really no reason why anyone would want to kidnap me, some off-white girl from the poorer side of town who doesn’t even know who her father is. I’m like the worst possible candidate for getting a ransom.

She came back after an hour or so, dressed in red jodhpurs and matching boots, along with a man who was dressed somewhere between a farrier and a farm vet. He was carrying a large duffel bag and a long yellow wand.

“See?” the girl said. “I don’t think she’s responded to any of it.”

The man walked up to my stall and put his bag on the floor. And then he stared at me.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked.

He kept staring. “She’s quite aware of her surroundings,” he said. “Quite aware.”

He took a key from his pocket and opened the padlock on the metal gate.

“Watch her,” the girl said.

The man bent down and unzipped his bag. “I have ways to control you,” the man said to me. He held up the yellow wand. “For beef cattle and crowd control. You’ll be good, won’t you, darling?”

I nodded. I always lie when I’m planning on kicking someone in the balls.

He opened the gate.

I went at him.

He stabbed the wand at my chest. The shock ran through my body, every muscle convulsing. I fell.

“Don’t do that again,” he said without any hint of surprise.

I nodded again. I meant it.

He checked me over, inspecting me more like a prized mare than a person, even checking my teeth like all I really needed was a good deworming.

“Do you know where you are, Amanda?” he asked me.

“In a horse stall,” I said.

“Yes. A horse stall. In Vermont. Only a short drive from Rutland. Do you know where that is?”

“Not really. I’ve never been to Vermont.”

He smiled. “And now you live here. There’s a trail that runs north of here that takes you right over Gorham Bridge. It was built in 1842.”

“Why should I care?”

“I don’t expect you to,” he said. “I’m just seeing if you’re paying attention.” He turned to the blond girl in the rich girl suit. “She’s immune,” he said. “Ms. Shannard was right about her.”

“You’re kidding,” the girl said. “Like for real, immune? She’d said the same thing about how many others, but look where they’d all ended up.”

“Immune. You can pump her full of however much fluid you’d like, but she won’t become suggestive at any point. She’d be dead long before.”

“Dead? How much would that take?”

“That is not how we do things, Cadance.”

“Then what am I supposed to do with her?”

“Feed her to the pigs.”

Cadance bobbed her head up and down. “Like... just throw her in alive and everything?”

“Can you guys stop talking like I’m not even here?” I asked.

The man sighed. “That was meant to be a joke. Ms. Shannard wanted me to bring her confirmation before she gives me further instructions.”

“I don’t care about her stupid instructions,” the girl said. “You should be talking to my father.”

“No, you should be letting me go,” I said.

“Your father isn’t in charge,” the man said. “It won’t be up to him. Just keep an eye on this one.”

“I’m not a babysitter.”

“No, you’re a grown-up now, Cadance. Try to act like one.”

He stared at me for a moment. He licked his lips and stared a little more.

He opened the stall and walked out, grabbing his duffel bag as he left.

He hadn’t closed the gate.

I ran out past Cadance and turned towards the nearest door, the opposite way from where the man had gone. I pulled the sliding door open and stepped outside.

I looked back to Cadance, who was following me, but about as slowly as a person could walk. She looked more disgusted than worried; I’m tall but I’m not really that scary looking.

I kept running anyway, heading past two huge trucks and horse trailers, toward paddocks teeming with well-bred warmbloods.

I opened the first gate I came to, pushing past a few curious horse noses and continuing towards the distant tree line. I knew enough about Vermont to know that if i kept running long enough I’d end up somewhere with a crowd of syrup-guzzling tourists and their cell phones.

Cadance was still behind me, but the gap was widening quickly.

Something didn’t seem right.

I climbed over the fence into another paddock, one field closer to the woods.