Page 6 of Redemption Island

“You tell me. You’re the one who saw Mary Jane,” Colton teased, raising his forefinger and thumb to his lips, signifying smoking.

“Fuck off,” I barked, feeling surlier than normal this morning. Maybe it was the near-death experience that only caught up with me once she ran off. She’d fully intended to kill me last night. “I can’t stay here.” The words sounded weak. Can’t implied incompetence. I wasn’t a wimp, but I didn’t wish to die either.

“Why not?” Garvey asked, peering up at me from the seat he’d given himself on the stump of a tree.

“She’s here,” I hissed again, sounding like a madman as the words escaped.

“Tell me about her,” Garvey asked as he picked up a stick, took out a knife and began to scrape at the tender outer covering.

“She tried to kill me,” I sighed. Colton’s head shot up and he twisted to face his father.

“Why would she do that?” Garvey questioned, continuing to whittle, and I wanted to shove that stick up his ass.

“Because she’s crazy.” She’d already killed Rick. She wished death for me next.

“Is she?” Garvey muttered, and my anger grew.

“Fuck, yes. She came at me with a knife last night.”

Garvey fumbled for a moment, and the stick snapped in half. A jagged edge pointed toward me.

“Would she have reason to kill you, if that were a solution?”

I pondered the question. Unequivocally, my first thought was no, but then the words haunting me since last night returned to me.

I didn’t do anything.

I hadn’t prevented anything from happening to her. I watched as Rick took his turn—sickened and anxious, awaiting my chance. Then I faltered as I pressed over her. Her eyes caught me so off guard. I played along, as I often did when Rick led. I followed his lead, forging my own rules behind him.

We’re going to play this my way. I’d said the words to her, but I don’t think she heard me. Her eyes glassed over after that. It was as if I watched her shut down under me. What would be the point of taking her, if she didn’t remember me? Forcing myself into her pliable body wasn’t going to etch me in her memory. This wasn’t how I expected the club to be. I knew it was only Rick’s initiation or some kind of sick game. And once again, I’d given in. I don’t know why I found a conscience in those few minutes.

“I don’t think so,” I lied, feeling the weakness of my words on my lips. I spit in reaction as if I could remove the disgusting taste from my mouth.

“Huh,” Colton said, and I looked up to find his taunting eyes sparkling. He was about my size, and I wondered if he’d consider a tussle. I could use the beating, or better yet, to beat on something.

“Don’t huh me,” I barked again, fists forming at my sides. Colton’s smile only grew, curling larger, brightening his clean-shaven face. I hated how put-together he looked. I stepped forward, and Colton unfolded from the sand where he had sat down next to his father.

“Stop it,” Garvey snapped, pointing his mini-jackknife in my direction. “This isn’t helping you. You need to get over your anger. Learn to control it, not invite it in. That’s how you got into this mess in the first place.”

“It wasn’t anger that got me here,” I retorted. Sex was the reason, but I didn’t offer that explanation. As if reading my thoughts, Garvey responded.

“Anger was the very thing and nothing else. Taking a woman against her will is about control. Angry control. Anger repressed and out of control. Possibly anger toward someone who controlled you.” Each statement ticked down a figurative list, and my body tensed with each comment.

“I’m not angry,” I growled, giving proof that I was. I swiped a hand through my unruly hair once again. “Just get me off this island. Get me into anger management counseling or something.” I tried to smile, willing the muscles to raise my lips in my false plea. I wasn’t going to any damn shrink. My mother had been in and out of therapy for years and it had done nothing for her, but aide her addiction to pretty-colored pills.

“That wasn’t an option. Jail or the island. You picked here.”

I didn’t choose. I wasn’t given a choice. My father thought it best for the company if I came here, like a vacation or a sabbatical, not a punishment. I was promised I couldn’t be traced. No one would know other than Garvey, Colton and the restorative justice team. But she knew I was here, and this brought me full circle.

“I can’t stay here with her.”

“Then get her out of your head. Start journaling.” With that Garvey rose, and Colton followed. They didn’t believe me. She wasn’t a hallucination; she was an in-the-flesh human being. The thought struck me as sharp as the wood Garvey whittled and stuck in the sand—she was an innocent person, and I’d tried to take from her as I always had.

+ +

I hate you, I wrote in the journal. That was the most I had to say on paper in the three days after Garvey’s visit. I blamed her for my being on this island. I cursed her for disappearing again. I’d searched for her, wandering the trails I’d formed from my tent oasis to the pond and around it. There was no sign of her existence, and I questioned my own sanity. Had I imagined her after all, as Garvey suggested? Was I hallucinating without any substances?

I lay in my tent for the third stifling night, wanting to keep the tent flap open for air and knowing I couldn’t because of things that go bump in the night. I hadn’t been frightened of the island once, until the reality of her standing there, knife raised, brought into perspective that she wanted me dead. There were moments in my life I’d wished the same thing. The time my father raised his hand to me. The time I found my mother on the bathroom floor with pills beside her. The time I sat handcuffed in a holding cell.