Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers (23 page)

“Jesus Christ, Natalie! How much did you drink?” Lola asked with an exaggerated pinch of her nostrils as she climbed into the backseat of the sports car.

“Not that much! Oh my God, I really smell?”

“Uh, yes!” Lola told her. Nikki and Regina snickered.

“My mother is going to kill me.” Natalie was beginning to panic. Nikki glanced into the rearview mirror to see Natalie attempting to smell her breath by placing a cupped hand in front of her mouth, then lifting her shirt to her nose to determine whether she could detect the odor of alcohol.

“It’s not your clothes, Nat, it’s coming out of your pores.” Lola informed her through bouts of laughter. Natalie was charged with anxiety.

“Calm down! We can go to my house. You can take a shower and drink some water,” Nikki told her.

“But …” Natalie began.

“Don’t worry; my dad is out of town for work. There is no one there,” Nikki told her.

“Are your parents going to freak, Lola?” Nikki asked.

“No. They’re probably already asleep. So how was the party?”

“Amazing!” Regina spoke first. “The music was incredible, everyone was dancing. There were a ton of drinks. We are probably all going to get it tomorrow. Some idiot is going to go home drunk and the word will be spread between all of the parents that there was liquor at the party,” Regina said.

“Dad, I swear I didn’t drink. I didn’t even see any beer!” All of the girls burst into laughter listening to Nikki’s sarcastic recital of the monologue that she would give her father when he got back into town and heard the news.

Dust rose in front of the headlights of Nikki’s car as they drove up into the gravel driveway. The house was completely dark. The girls stumbled out of the car into the fresh air of the night, joking and playing before they stood for a moment on the hill looking out at all of the rolling blackness that had them surrounded. None of them could have known that only three of them would come out of the house alive that night. Nikki went into the house first, turned off the alarm, and flipped several switches, bringing the slumbering giant of a home to full vitality. Regina and Lola fell upon the couch and Natalie spread her limbs out across the cream-colored carpet and closed her eyes.

“I am so tired,” Natalie proclaimed. Nikki went up a step into the kitchen that overlooked the living room and pulled out several bottles of water, which she began tossing to the girls. “Heads up,” she yelled. Regina caught the bottle that came at her. Lola tried to catch the fast-moving bottle that whipped by her, almost hitting Natalie on the floor, but instead landing with a thud close to one of Natalie’s arms.

“Hey! I’m not a football player, you know!” Lola teased as she finished typing something into her phone.

“Sorry,” Nikki said as she soft pitched another bottle across the room.

“Speaking of football players …” Nikki started. Lola made a sarcastic face already able to discern the direction of the conversation. “Carter asked about you tonight.” Nikki told her. “He was very disappointed that you were unable to attend the party.” Regina added with a taunt.

“Ugh. Carter freaks me out! What is with him?” Lola asked.

“I like him!” Regina countered in his defense.

“I guess he’s OK, but he is just not my type, and besides, he is younger than us. At first, I admit, I thought he was cute, but now it is just getting weird,” Lola told them. Regina sat up on the couch and looked at her friend. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know…it’s just like…like…like…he is a little puppy or something following me around and yesterday he left a flower on my locker,” she confessed.

“What?” Natalie broke in as they all fell into cackling laughter.

“A flower?” Nikki asked. Lola could not help but join the laughter.

“Hey! Stop laughing at my boyfriend’s little brother!” Regina said, barely able to curb her own guffaw. “So what, he’s a little awkward. He is a perfectly sweet boy,” Regina told them.

“You guys are feeling good and I’m stone cold sober. Do you have anything?” Lola looked to Nikki who raised her eyebrows in intrigue.

“Well, well, well, aren’t you being sassy tonight?” Nikki teased her friend who usually did not drink as she opened the refrigerator and dug her head inside. “We have beer and vodka,” Nikki announced with her head still inside the refrigerator.

“Beer,” Lola answered.

Nikki came out with a bottle of beer and walked it over to Lola.

“I need some air.” Lola said suddenly becoming serious as she cracked open the bottle and took a lengthy sip. The girls followed her outside where they all convened around a picnic table. Long pieces of wood were strewn about the yard.

“Be careful,” Nikki warned. “My dad has been back here building.”

“Your dad built this?” Regina asked as she stepped up to sit on top of the table. “Yup! Renaissance man, I tell you!” Nikki joked. Regina and Lola sat on top of the table while Natalie and Nikki spread their bodies on the benches. Lola gazed into the sky while taking another sip of her beer.

“Do you guys know Valerie Torch?” Lola asked. All of the girls were silent for what seemed like hours. “Is that the girl that moved here from Edgarton?” Natalie asked.

“The one who doesn’t wear underwear?” Nikki asked. All of the girls looked at Nikki unable to hide their inquisitiveness. “What?” Nikki said defensively with a sly smile. “She told us in gym once when we were changing, I mean she had to give us fair warning, right?”

“You are a pig in lipstick,” Regina said as she threw a piece of grass down on Nikki that she had been fiddling with in her hand.

“No,” Lola snapped. “Not the girl from Edgarton that does not wear underwear!” Nikki and Regina exchanged a comedic smile in response to Lola’s scolding.

“She is a little girl that goes to Redding Elementary, I tutor her in English. Her father owns the gas station at I-48 and Culliver,” Lola informed them.

“So?” Nikki asked.

“Yeah, what about her?” Natalie wanted to know.

Lola swallowed hard. “Yesterday she told me that she just started piano lessons with Glen DeFrank.” Immediately Natalie and Nikki sat up and the four girls sat facing each other like the four corners of a moral compass. Natalie dug her head deep into her palms and tried to massage away all of the atrocious thoughts that were now creeping into her brain.

“I thought he wasn’t taking any more students. We were the first and the last.” Nikki’s voice quivered with every word.

“He hasn’t taken any students since us, but who said that he was never going to take any again?” Lola asked.

“So did Valerie tell you that …” Natalie began.

“No!” Lola quickly stopped her before she was able to finish. “She hasn’t told me anything, she’s only had one lesson, this past Wednesday. She goes back next Wednesday,” Lola explained.

“Well we don’t even know if he is going to do it to her,” Natalie wondered out loud.

“Of course we know!” Lola shot back with a fierceness that was fresh and feral. Natalie’s eyes dimmed and she sunk, unnoticeably, back into the garden landscape.

“What are you suggesting?” Regina asked, leaning close to Lola trying to read in her the things that her lips would not say. The crickets chirped, frogs made their calls, and the barrage of country insects sang in a steady buzz that floated innocently in the air. Lola’s eyes darted to each of her friends before she spoke.

“We have to tell,” she said, feeling the despair that began to vibrate within each of them. A low groan escaped Natalie.

“No!” Nikki jumped into the air. “No, we can’t tell. We can’t. We cannot!” she declared into the night. Nikki pointed a stiff and direct finger at Lola and moved toward her slowly. “I will never tell anyone! Do you understand?” Her face knotted in anger at every point.

“Well what do you suppose we do, Nikki?” Lola questioned vehemently, she was now on her feet as well with her chest pressed firmly against Nikki’s shaking finger.

Regina’s nerves began to round themselves up, her anxiety plainly marked in the few wrinkles of her teenage face.

“Maybe we should just let a bunch of new little girls go out there and get raped, huh? Is that what you think?” Lola antagonized. All of the anger that was being held in Nikki’s face suddenly drained, leaving only dramatic creases of sadness into which her tears began to flow through like depressing rivers down the sides of her face before emptying onto her chest. Lola instantly felt pangs of remorse for spewing her heartless words and did her best to atone for it by comforting her now weeping friend.

Regina stood up. “Wait, just wait! Calm down. Let’s just think about this for a minute. Maybe…maybe he felt bad about what he did to us. Maybe that is why he stopped for so long. Maybe he can control himself now, right?” Regina looked around at the girls, hoping desperately that someone would confirm her theory.

“Right! We don’t even know that anything is going to happen to this girl, Lola. For all we know we could come out with our story and the police would not even believe us.” Natalie finally gave her opinion.

“Yeah, Black Water is a small town, everyone will know what happened. I can’t take that, Lola, please. Can you imagine what it will be like when everyone finds out all of the sick and dirty things he did to us? The stares, the whispers, my father will die. He barely recovered after my mom killed herself, he felt he didn’t protect her; he won’t be able to live with this, not one more thing. Listen, Lola, I’m sorry for that little girl, but I can’t tell and if you do, I will say it’s all lies!” Nikki threatened.

“Quite honestly, I don’t give a shit about this kid.” Natalie spoke harshly causing everyone to take notice of her change in demeanor.

“I am not about to ruin my life because Valerie Torch is taking piano lessons! Our senior year is next year. It has been years since what happened to us and it is over! Do you understand me? It’s over and I for one do not want to relive it because you all of a sudden decide to grow a backbone!” Natalie’s voice was calm and unwavering. Regina’s eyes were the size of the moon now as she witnessed the transformation that was taking place before her eyes. Nikki’s mouth dropped open. Natalie was shedding her usually quirky self and emerging from the falling skin was a dark figure that frightened Regina. Natalie was always calm, but there was a stillness in her voice now that was unnatural.

“Neither do I,” agreed Nikki. All of the girls’ attention focused on Regina as they waited for her answer; the deciding vote. The world was on the shoulders of Regina Dean, or at least she felt it was there, teetering, threatening to fall, hit the ground, and shatter into a million pieces. Lola’s eyes pleaded with her for reason and Regina ached with the compulsion to give it to her, but there was something holding her back. Regina felt the muscle paralyzing uneasiness surging up through her legs, into her stomach and finally in her throat.

“Neither do I, Lola.” She released the words that became a nuclear bomb that would blow them all away from each other forever.

Lola opened her mouth to a stutter, barely able to speak her words without them tripping over one another. “I cannot believe you guys! I can’t believe you. Glen DeFrank is a sick bastard and you don’t want to tell anyone about what he did to us and possibly save a child from his sick crap because you don’t want to ruin your senior year? Because you don’t want people to whisper about you in the cafeteria? What kind of monsters are you? You’re just like him!” Lola said, holding up an accusing finger that she swung across the night air like a pendulum laying it upon every one of them. “He made me keep it a secret for too long because I was
scared, but I won’t let you keep me silent too. Don’t you see? You guys are just buying all of his lies.” Lola told them. “
You can’t tell anyone. No one will believe you. People will think you’re disgusting
,” she mocked. “You’re just continuing to believe everything that he told you, that he shoved down our throats. Well I can’t do it anymore. I have got to tell, I can’t keep this secret anymore. It is eating me alive!” Lola screeched clawing at her own neck with the wretched fury of a wild animal.

“Don’t you understand?” Lola asked. And they did understand. Each of them fought her personal battles with the demons that made their calls upon the girls when night fell, when they thought too much, when they dreamt, or even when they encountered the most innocent of scents, melodies, or scenes that offered even the slightest reminder of the DeFrank home. But they wanted to continue fighting them in the isolation of their own skin because inside of their skin the atrocity was not visible to the naked eye.

Regina stepped toward Lola in a gesture of comfort, but Lola erupted into a flaming rage, throwing Regina onto the ground with a scream, succumbing to gravity herself in the process. Her black hair was matted against her tear-soaked face. She lifted herself back to her feet in a swift move and began retreating from the girls who were more strangers to her and her to them with every backward step.

“You won’t stop me!” Lola warned the girls.

“No!” Regina screamed as she saw the thick piece of wood come cutting through the night air. Lola turned to face her attacker just in time for the weapon to make contact with her skull with a sickening crack. Lola was propelled several feet across the grass, her feet stumbling one over the other, unable to brace herself against the surprise assault. Regina squeezed her eyes closed at the sound of the second crack that sounded as Lola’s head hit one of the jutting rocks that decorated Nikki’s yard. Blood began gushing from both sides of Lola’s head.

“Natalie!” Nikki yelled. Regina crawled across the dewy lawn, grass staining the knees of her white jeans. Regina drew an unconscious and bleeding Lola into her arms. “Lola! Lola, please!”
Regina cupped Lola’s lifeless chin between her thumb and index finger as she screamed her name.

“What did you do? What did you do?” Nikki was screaming in the frenzied chaos that surrounded them.

“We couldn’t let her tell.” With the deadly weapon still in hand and blood splattered across the side of her face, Natalie spoke with the same thrilling calm.

Regina’s mouth gaped open at the sight of the empty shell of a person that Natalie became in a matter of seconds as her soul escaped from her there in the garden.