Girl in a Bad Place Read online

  I take the opportunity to glance around. You’d think that with about two dozen residents all swimming here, it’d feel really crowded, but it doesn’t. Not everyone is staying near the dock, though. Some swim farther out, some are off to the side, fishing.

  … Fishing?

  “Hey, aren’t you guys vegan?” I ask a girl who’s near me, pointing.

  She glances toward the small group casting lines into the water. “Oh, yeah. Sometimes people like to fish. They throw them back.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  Here’s the thing. I’ve been fishing. I mean, only, like, three times because worms are gritty and fish are slimy. But I know that you can have the best intentions and still potentially kill a fish by accident. Those hooks are sharp and sometimes the fish swallow them. I feel like if you are a commune of people who are vegan for animal rights reasons … I don’t know. Shouldn’t that bother you?

  I’m overthinking. Cara would tell me I’m overthinking if she weren’t so busy perusing the shoreline with Avalon.

  “I’m Brigit, by the way,” says the girl I just spoke to.

  “I’m Mailee.”

  She laughs. “Of course I know who you are. It’s not every day we get visitors.”

  “Do you like living here?” I ask, which is a totally dumb question, but I’ve only really talked to Alexa and Firehorse so far, and I’m curious how other people feel. Brigit is black, and she’s the only person I’ve seen here who isn’t white. It’s not entirely surprising—Montana is a pretty white place—but I wonder if it’s uncomfortable being the only one who isn’t.

  “It’s better here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived.” She waves a hand to drive off a flying insect that dives at her face. “I’ve just … never quite belonged anywhere. And here, I do. I felt welcome from day one.”

  “People here are definitely nice,” I agree. My eyes sweep back to the group that’s fishing. “Except that one guy seems kinda glowery.”

  Brigit giggles. “Yeah, Finn? He’s actually a good guy. Just not too trusting of strangers. He’s been with Firehorse since the beginning, basically. I think he was the first member recruited to the commune. So he’s a little protective. We’ve got a good vibe here, and a wrong person can totally sour it, you know?”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.” Am I a wrong person? Finn didn’t glare at Cara the way he glares at me. I feel like a virus, poised to sweep through and destroy the whole group without warning.

  There’s also something to the way she said it, something bitter. It makes me think of Opal, the girl who died. And of the way Alexa seemed to blame Opal for what happened to her. It seems like maybe there’s a bit of a survival-of-the-fittest mentality here.

  “Do you ever get to see your families?” I ask, and then hope it’s not too personal of a question.

  “If anyone desperately wanted to, sure, but we’re here to get away from all that stuff, you know? A lot of people here have bad families to begin with. And outside people tend to bring in toxic stuff, too, which isn’t necessarily good for us.”

  “Toxic stuff?”

  Brigit furrows her brow. “You really weren’t told much about us, huh? Didn’t Firehorse give you a link to his site? Usually he gives it to everyone.”

  “I, uh … he gave me the link. I’ve just been kinda busy.” Pretty much the weakest excuse I could’ve come up with, but she lets it pass.

  “It’s worth a read,” she says. “I know you’re not here to move in, but it’s still good stuff to think about. You feel so much better, healthier out here, away from all the poisons in the air and in the food, but even back in civilization there’s things you can do to protect yourself.”

  “I’ll read the site,” I promise. And I really might. Who knows. “How long have you lived here?”

  “A couple years. Everyone here has been with us at least a year now. We haven’t been recruiting lately,” says Brigit. “Firehorse keeps saying that we don’t need anyone else, unless someone really good comes along, someone really necessary.”

  Necessary. Huh.

  “How do you know if someone’s necessary?”

  She shrugs. “That’s above my pay grade.”

  “You get paid to live here?”

  She laughs. “No, no. That’s just a joking way of telling you it’s not a group decision.”

  “Oh.” My cheeks flame with embarrassment because, yeah, I’m a moron. “I guess I didn’t realize you actually recruited members. I figured you all just kinda found each other.”

  “I mean, it’s not like the military.” She shrugs. “And a lot of people ended up here because of Firehorse’s website, but it’s easier to keep a place like this running if you have the right numbers. There’s a balance between making sure you don’t have so many mouths to feed that it becomes unsustainable, but having enough hands to get all our tasks done. Cara must have told you about how scheduled we are?”

  She told me no such thing, but I nod anyway.

  “Yeah, she seemed to really like that aspect. Anyway, it’s hard to get all the things done in a day that need to be done if there aren’t enough people to do it.”

  “Well, it’s nice that you guys have let Cara and me visit, even though we probably disrupt your schedule,” I say. “We’re obviously not gonna be moving in.”

  “No?” Her eyes dart to Cara, who’s still hanging out with Avalon and a couple other girls. She’s totally relaxed, happy. But why wouldn’t she be? Everyone’s just hanging out. It’s no different from being at the beach anywhere else.

  I laugh it off, though. “Of course not. We’re starting our senior year this fall. And then we’re going to college in LA, hopefully. Or New York, if not.”

  Brigit’s mouth twists. “I hope all of that works out for you, Mailee,” she says earnestly. “Commune life isn’t for everyone, and it sounds like you know what you want, so … I hope it all goes like you dreamed.”

  “Thank you.”

  My stomach twists into a knot. The way Brigit says it is like she doubts things will work out like I planned, and that’s ridiculous. It’s immortalized in the Book of Life Goals. And so far, everything Cara and I have added to our plan in that thing has worked out perfectly. Maybe there’ve been a few bumps in the road this summer, but we’re still on track.

  I’m starting to get chilly, so I excuse myself and wade back to the dock. I can lounge in the sun for a little while, maybe.

  As I reach for the wooden ladder to pull myself out onto the rough wooden planks, something big and brownish black with too many legs scurries across right where I was about to touch. I yank back my hand and let out a bloodcurdling shriek, and much to my embarrassment, everyone stops talking so they can turn and stare at me.

  “Dock spider,” I say in a shaking voice.

  It is so gross. My skin crawls. I don’t want to be anywhere near it. With its gigantic body and its inches-long legs and the way it just appeared out of nowhere. Like a giant baby, I stand in front of the dock and wait until someone comes and shoos the spider away.

  “It’s okay,” Alexa says, herding it off the ladder with a brush of her fingertips. I want to throw up. “I was afraid of them at first, too.”

  “And then what?” I ask in a voice that was meant to be light and joking but is still wobbling. “Did someone throw a bucket of them over you so you got acclimated?”

  Thankfully, she laughs. “We do a lot of camping. Spiders aren’t so bad once you’ve seen enough of them.”

  I have seen plenty of spiders in my day and I would have to disagree. But I guess if I lived in a metal shack in the woods, maybe I’d feel differently.

  Except no. I wouldn’t.

  Alexa follows me as I make my hurried escape from the dock. “I have towels in my house,” she says. “You can get dried off there.”

  I guess technically these shacks are their houses, but it’s jarring to hear her call it that. They’re so small, so unhouselike. And I hadn’t planned to get dried off yet—I was just goin
g to come sit on the beach. But she’s already walking away without me, so I throw a nervous glance behind me and then follow her. Cara seems fine hanging out with the others in the water, so I don’t know what I’m worried about.

  When we reach the shack, I notice that there’s the same logo carved into it as there was in the door to the root cellar. It’s not hard to guess what the H stands for—Haven. But I’m curious about the Latin word verum, and its relevance to this place. The shack’s metal door opens with a shriek. Inside, it’s pretty dark. Sunlight can’t pierce the metal, and there’s only one small, high window. It’s stuffy, though. The metal’s heated up from the outside, and allows little air flow. The floorboards are wood, and two camping cots with blow-up mattresses take up nearly two entire walls. An overstuffed bin of toys sits near the door, with a dresser along another wall. A couple high shelves hold books, and a super-tiny end table perched next to one of the beds holds a gas lamp. And that’s pretty much it. I know tiny living is, like, a trend right now, but whoa.

  “Hey, so what is it that made you decide to come back?” Alexa asks me the second her door closes.

  “Cara wanted to,” I say. “It seemed to mean a lot to her.”

  “But what about you?” Alexa asks. She’s being really intense and she’s super close to me, majorly piercing my personal bubble.

  “I don’t know.” I take the towel she offers. “That’s really all. I didn’t want to say no to Cara. She’s having a pretty rough time right now.”

  “That’s nice,” Alexa says, backing off a little. “I’m glad that you’re such a good friend to her. But this place, it’s not a joke or something to come and gawk at, you know? We live here. It matters to us. This is our home and our life and if you’re not serious about it, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know that.” I feel a tad guilty because I did come the first time with a little bit of an observing-creatures-in-their-habitat mentality and that’s definitely not fair. But it isn’t why I’m here now. “I didn’t mean to make you feel disrespected by coming back here. Cara seems pretty attached to your daughter. She lost a sister who was right at that age, and it only happened a couple years ago.”

  Alexa frowns thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry.”

  “Hadn’t you noticed how quickly she got attached to Avalon?”

  Alexa shrugs. “I figured she was one of those people who really loves kids. You know the type. She’s been great with Avalon, though. If she were here all the time … it’d be wonderful.”

  “She won’t be, though.” My voice is harsher than I meant. I’m starting to get a little worked up at everyone for trying to keep Cara.

  “I know, I know.”

  Alexa smiles placatingly, but I’m worried that I’m coming off like a jerk again.

  “Anyway, I promise, I have nothing but respect for you. I couldn’t live like this.” I gesture to the living quarters before me. “I think it’s really cool that you live off the land. And that you’re not afraid of spiders.”

  She smiles. “I used to miss it all. The city, the electricity. All the shopping and TV shows and everything else you all do outside of here. For the first year I lived here, whenever I’d go into town, I’d get jealous. I wondered if I’d made a mistake, and I thought maybe I should try to find a job and an apartment and move back. But there’s more to it than just the amenities. There’s so much more. I’d never try to explain it all to you because Firehorse does it so much better, but, Mailee … ” She pauses to reach for my hand. The hair raises on the back of my neck. “Just think about all the things you believe. Question them. Really dig into them. Things are very wrong in this world. Very wrong. A place like this … we might just be a little safer from it all.”

  She lets go of my hand, slowly, fingers sliding against my palm as she releases me. I suppress a shiver. It feels like she’s relaying some sort of message to me, but I don’t know what it is. I’m not naïve. I know the world is not a sunshine and rainbow place, but her tone almost makes things seem … dire. Like it’s all going to come crashing down.

  If it does all come crashing down, though, is this where I’d want to be? I don’t think so. What difference would it make? Let’s get apocalyptic here, and picture some kind of nuclear explosion gone wrong, or a meteor, or some other cataclysmic event. Is being out here going to help me survive any longer? Maybe, but how much longer? And would I even want to, knowing I was just prolonging the inevitable, and doing it away from my family and my boyfriend and my friends?

  And if the world goes to war … that’s a much realer concern, but I doubt Montana is target number one, and I doubt it matters if I’m nestled in the woods or if I’m in town.

  “Is that … what the purpose is, of this place? To, like, be sheltered from … from, you know, everything?” That did not come out well and I probably offended her again, but oh well.

  “I mean, there’s not a purpose, exactly. Firehorse wanted to be away from all the technology and the propaganda and the lies, so he bought this land about five years ago, and came up here to live with a few of the others. Being out here, it clears us of all the toxins in the modern world, all the electromagnetic waves and the mercury poisoning and the filth—everything. We usually get a new addition or two every year, though Firehorse has been getting pickier. There can only be so many of us, you know? Otherwise the resources of the land get stretched too thin.”

  It’s hard for me to imagine the resources around here getting stretched too thin, but combining this with what Brigit said earlier, it makes sense.

  “Do you ever miss your family?”

  Her face darkens, and I regret my question immediately.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you that. It was too personal.” Me and my mouth, seriously.

  “No, no, it’s okay.” She waves a hand. “I do miss them, sometimes. But I missed them before I came here, too. Before I stopped living with them. My parents were so embarrassed that their daughter had a baby at seventeen. They could barely look at me. I knew they didn’t want me living with them anymore, but they didn’t know what to do with me. I graduated high school, but I couldn’t even think about college. I was overwhelmed at the thought of going out of state, by myself, with Avalon. But to stay and just, like, bear their judgment every day? I couldn’t deal with that, either. Meeting Firehorse felt like stars aligning. It saved me from all of that. So yeah, I miss them sometimes. And I wonder if they miss me. But they were done with me long before I came here. I told them I was leaving and they didn’t care one bit.”

  “Wow. That’s … I can’t imagine my parents doing that to me.”

  Her mouth twists into a sad smile. “Neither could I.”

  She pushes open the door of her house with another shriek of metal, and we step back out into the sunlight. I feel like I’m looking at everything about this place with new eyes, after talking to her. It’s not just a commune where everyone eats vegetables and works the land. It’s a saving grace for people who felt unwanted, abandoned. There’s a little ache of fondness in my heart now, for Firehorse. He might be weird, but look at the good he’s doing here.

  “Alexa!”

  We both jump at the sound of a sharp male voice calling her name. It’s Firehorse, who is at the bottom of a steep path leading up into the trees. He strides toward us, face set in displeasure, and the fondness I was starting to feel subsides.

  “Cara’s here, too,” says Alexa without so much as a greeting. “And Mailee and I just had a great talk.”

  A long look passes between them. I can’t read it, but I don’t like it. When Cara asked to come back here, it had never once occurred to me that I wasn’t welcome, but more and more I’m feeling like these people just are not at all fans of me. It makes me self-conscious. I like to think I’m a pretty nice girl. But maybe not everyone feels that way? No one at school seems to hate me. I’m too deep into drama club to be mainstream popular, but no one ever acts like my mere presence offends them the way
these two are doing right now.

  “It’s nice to see you again,” I say, holding out my hand to Firehorse.

  “Yes.” He gives me one of his big smiles. “It’s nice to see you again, too.”

  “I’ll gather everyone,” Alexa says. “Now that you’re back.”

  “Thank you.” He squeezes her forearm and she stares up at him for a long moment. I look away because it’s kind of intimate and I wonder if something is going on there. They’re both adults, so I guess that’s okay, but Firehorse is still a lot older than Alexa. “And please let them know I’m disappointed.”

  She scurries off and I’m alone with Firehorse, which is just great. I look at his cheaply made dreamcatcher necklace and for Gavin’s sake, I want to ask what store he bought it from. So he feels embarrassed.

  But I don’t quite have the spine to mention it.

  “So, Mailee,” Firehorse says politely. “What compelled you to return to our little corner of the woods?”

  “Cara,” I say simply.

  “Ah, I see.”

  The others are returning from the water now. There’s a weird vibe coming off them. They don’t seem sad, exactly, but the carefree laughter is gone. They’re very quiet.

  Were they expecting Firehorse to be gone longer? What was he disappointed about? Were they not supposed to be swimming?

  “Hey, Mailee.” Brigit grabs my arm. “Want to help us prepare lunch?”

  “Definitely.”

  I’m relieved to be away from Firehorse, who I’m pretty sure is simmering under the surface with some serious irritation. Brigit gives me some carrots to slice, and she doesn’t say much after that. Everyone else is doing chores, too. I spot Cara with some of the others putting away firewood. I don’t want to be difficult again, but I have all these questions and I feel like if I don’t ask, they’re going to clog up my lungs.

  “Were you guys, um, not supposed to be swimming?” I ask timidly.

  Brigit barely glances at me. She’s sprinkling garlic between slices of a loaf of bread. Garlic bread without butter on it? No thanks.