The Remedy (8 page)

“It’s still a little ways. We could get lucky, though. It may hold off.”

Though the seemingly immortal pessimist who lived inside Leigh had her own thoughts on the subject, she was able to reply with a pretty convincing “Fingers crossed,” before Eliza yelled from behind.

“You guys! Look at me!”

The couple turned to see Eliza holding up a digital camera to her eye. Leigh didn’t have a chance to adjust her hair or even smile before she was blinded by a flash of white light.

“Oh, thanks Eliza,” she said, trying to rub away the floating white dots that hovered in her vision. “I’m sure that will be a good one.”

Rob, who had stopped to retie the laces of his black Converses, jogged up to Eliza’s side and shook his head when he saw the camera in her hands. “I can’t believe you brought that thing. Don’t you already have enough embarrassing photos of us to put on Facebook?”

Eliza’s retort was a point-blank flash right into his eyes. Rob blindly tried to snatch the pink camera from her grasp, but she evaded his swipe with a quick sidestep, giggling the entire time.

“C’mon, you guys,” she said, backing up to take a group shot of her three companions. “When else are we ever going to find ourselves smuggling pot through the woods? These are memories, people!” Her finger pressed down on the shutter button with an audible
click
. “Besides, it’s so beautiful here!”

Sam nodded. “You guys did choose a good time to travel through this way, while the summer’s still holding on.”

“We didn’t ‘choose’ anything,” Rob muttered, taking the lead as he pushed his way in between Sam and Leigh. “Labor Day was just our last chance before school started.”

Leigh let Rob walk ahead and didn’t bothering commenting that he didn’t know the way. Instead, she turned to Sam and asked, “What day does your semester start?”

Sam hesitated, biting his lip. “Actually, JCV’s fall semester is already in session. We began August 25.”

“So why were you home? Did you get Labor Day off?”

“Not exactly.” Sam’s voice lowered. “I’m at the end of serving a campus suspension.”

Rob stopped in his tracks and spun a sneakered heel. “Hey, now!” Despite Sam’s best effort to keep the comment between himself and Leigh, Rob’s keen ears had picked up every word. “Things just got a little more interesting! All right, Sam, let’s hear it.”

Even in the dim light, Leigh could see the red blossoming in Sam’s cheeks. “It’s nothing, really,” he said. But Leigh knew from experience that Rob wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easy.

“Sam…”

Leigh stepped in front of him. “He obviously doesn’t want to get into it. So let’s just leave him alone.”

“No, it’s all right.” Sam pulled on the brim of his cap, a nonchalant gesture that Leigh couldn’t help but notice helped conceal his eyes. “Let’s just say I was defending the honor of a lady…and I may have gone a little too far.”

Rob gave Sam an approving slap on the back and shook him playfully. “Sammy! Kicking ass for the ladies! How chivalrous. Fuckin’ Knights of the Round Table and shit.”

“Ha,” Sam gave a forced, unenthusiastic laugh. “No, it was nothing like that. Just a brief loss of control that I’ve paid dearly for.”

Leigh gently placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He returned her gesture with a warm smile. “Thanks, but it’s in the past. And believe me, I won’t ever make the same mistake.” He seemed momentarily lost in the troubling memory, but with a shake of his head pulled himself back. “Let’s keep going.”

“Lead the way, Sir Sam,” Rob said. Usually, Rob’s sarcasm bothered Leigh to no end, but she found this comment quite comforting. All it took was one vague fight story to turn Sam into “one of the guys.”

Leigh looked back down the trail to see that Eliza had wandered a little off the path to take a picture of two squirrels chasing each other up a tree. She circled the trunk, trying to catch the rodents in a still frame.

“Eliza!” Leigh shouted. “Let’s go!” Her loud voice froze the squirrels in their dance; they became statues at the threat of a nearby predator. It was just the moment Eliza was waiting for. With a quick zoom in on their furry faces, she was able to capture a succession of perfectly framed pictures.

The squirrels eventually finished their frenzied race up the tree and galloped off across the awning of tangled branches and leaves, leaving Eliza satisfied for having captured such a spontaneous moment. Snapping the cap back on her lens, she ran to catch up to her friends.

She reached Rob first and was just about to wrap her hands around his eyes and whisper “Guess who?” when he walked through and then let go a thin branch stretching out into the middle of the path. The branch whipped back at Eliza, lashing the flesh of her neck just below her jaw.

“Ow!” she shrieked as the scratch created a line of stinging pain that coursed across her skin.

Leigh twirled around at the sound of Eliza’s cry. She saw her friend holding a hand to her neck and a mixture of hurt and anger welling in her eyes.

“Rob!” Eliza took a swing at her boyfriend. Her knuckles just brushed his collarbone. “Shit, that really hurt!”

“Damn.” Even Rob seemed surprised at his own carelessness. “I’m sorry, babe. I had no idea you were behind me.”

Eliza didn’t seem at all impressed with Rob’s apology. “You should be more careful!”

“It was an accident!”

After having witnessed quite a number of their previous fights, Leigh knew the bickering would only escalate if someone didn’t intervene right away. Pushing Rob aside, Leigh approached Eliza and coaxed her to remove her hand from the wound. The cut was clean and very shallow—more of a long, red mark than an actual laceration.

“It looks fine,” Leigh said, relieved. “It just scratched you is all.”

“Still hurt,” Eliza grumbled, returning her hand to the tender flesh.

“Is she okay?” Sam had made his way over to Leigh’s side and inspected Eliza’s neck.

“She’s fine. I think we’re good to go.”

“Yeah,” Eliza agreed, and with a hard jab to Rob’s ribs added, “But I’m walking in front of you from now on!”

“Fine!”

Rob’s voice was completely drowned out by a deafening rumble of thunder that erupted from above.

Sam’s shoulders sank. “Here it comes.”

As if Sam were a biblical prophet, the weather obeyed his proclamation in an instant. The sky opened and the rain began to fall, starting as a gentle trickle that became a steady downpour in mere seconds. Rob and Eliza’s argument was already forgotten as everyone’s soaked clothing began to stick to their bodies.

Under the dripping brim of his trucker’s hat, Rob mumbled perhaps the first thing that Leigh had ever completely agreed with:

“This sucks.”

The trees initially provided them protection from the downpour, but soon the small clusters of leaves provided by the ash and maple trees wasn’t keeping them even remotely dry.

Leigh was just about to ask Sam if he had any ideas that might save them from walking the rest of the way in a thunderstorm when he spoke up and offered the drowning foursome a life raft.

“If you guys want, I know a nearby deer camp we could hole up at till the rain passes.”

Eliza stuffed her camera into the pocket of her jeans to protect it from water damage. “How nearby?”

Sam pointed to a bend in the trail several yards ahead. “It’s coming right up on the trail. If we hurry, I think we can make it there before it
really
starts to come down.”

“Then what are standing around here for?” The deafening percussion of raindrops was making Rob’s voice, like all of theirs, very hard to hear.

Leigh considered the tempting proposition but realized there might be one problem. “What about the owners? They won’t mind?”

As miserable as she was, Leigh had no desire to add trespassing to the day’s itinerary. She was, after all, already involved with international drug smuggling, and one crime per day was more than enough.

But then Sam shook his head. “No, it’s okay. They won’t be there.”

“How do you know that? Isn’t it hunting season?”

“They’re dead,” Sam said, and nothing more.

“Well then,” Eliza said, breaking the momentary silence. “In that case, I’m in.”

“You know I am,” Rob added.

Leigh exchanged glances with her company, realizing that her vote was the only one remaining. She was already involved with drug smuggling. Did she want to add trespassing on top of that? But as more and more large, icy cold raindrops landed on Leigh’s neck, she made up her mind.

“I suppose we don’t have a choice. Alex and Marshall will just have to wait a little longer.”

“Then let’s get moving,” Sam said, taking steps forward. “The worst of this downpour has yet to come.”

The rest of the group followed, single file. Leigh brought up the rear, walking directly behind Eliza, who was now lightly raking her fingers horizontally across her fresh cut.

“I wouldn’t touch that,” Leigh warned. “You’ll get it dirty.”

Eliza stopped and turned to face Leigh, a look of excruciating discomfort distorting her face. “I know, but I can’t help it,” Eliza whined. “It really itches.”

“Just hold on a few more minutes. I’ll help you clean it when we get to this cabin, or whatever it is.”

Eliza nodded and reluctantly removed her hand from her neck. But before she turned back to continue the hike, Leigh’s head jerked, what she saw on her friend’s skin causing her to do a double-take.

To Leigh’s amazement, it looked as if the cut had already started to show signs of infection. The flesh surrounding the laceration was discolored, a few shades darker than the rest of Eliza’s throat. But the abnormal coloration didn’t at all resemble the usual pinkish hue of agitated tissue. Even red or purple splotching, though probably a call for concern, would’ve been less alarming: what Leigh saw was startling enough to draw her eyebrows up to her hairline and leave her mouth hanging open.

Eliza’s skin was tinted green.
Green
.

Leigh inhaled to say something about her peculiar observation, but decided to shut her mouth about it instead. It had only been a glance, and her perception of the color spectrum must be suffering as a result of the stormy skies.

Satisfied with this logic, Leigh followed her three companions to the safe haven of a dry shelter, convinced she’d been mistaken.

Frigid water numbed all five of Marshall’s toes as his sandaled foot fell into another rain-filled pothole. He and Alex trudged along in search of Miller’s Road, their feet making wet, squishy noises with every step.

It was hard to believe how drastically the tables had turned on Marshall Thomas. It felt like only minutes ago that he had been basking in the celebration of having a van to shield him from the elements while Rob and the others miserably marched through the drenching, autumn rainstorm. Now here he was: on foot as well and probably getting even wetter than the rest of his friends since he didn’t have any tree branches to provide protection from the falling rain. And damn it all to hell, they still had that weed, too. All he had was a girlfriend so furious she was making PMS look like a good mood.

She did have a right to be upset; Marshall could admit that much. After they’d discovered the circular saw blade—probably the same one that had been used to chop down the road sign—Alex had initially reacted calmly.

“Well,” she said, shrugging as he tossed the round, jagged blade into the brush, “we can just put the spare on, right?”

That’s when it got bad.

“Um…” Marshall didn’t want to say what he was about to. He could already feel the storm about to break, and it wasn’t from the dark clouds above. “Rob didn’t pack the spare.”

For a moment, Alex stared at him as if he’d just spoken in a foreign language.

“What?”

Marshall’s eyes drifted to the tops of the swaying trees. The horrible moment had come.

“He took it off to make room for the keg.”

“You have
got
to be kidding!” Alex screamed, her voice booming above the rumbling thunder that had just arrived.

But it was true. Rob had removed the spare tire from the rear door of the van and instead used the harness to attach a keg of Molson he’d purchased while in Montreal. The spare had been left outside the brewing company headquarters on the St. Lawrence River after the conclusion of their booze-filled tour. The girls had been out shopping in the meanwhile, and Rob had bet Marshall that none of the ladies would notice the switch until they reached home.

“I
cannot
believe you agreed to that!” Alex yelled, even louder. She’d started in on the arm gestures, too.

“What! We agreed that if we got into any trouble we could just hire a mechanic and split the cost!”

Alex had now gone silent, staring at Marshall and giving him the cold shoulder in order to convey her shock and disappointment. He continued to rant. “How we were supposed to know this was going to happen? A saw blade in the road? It’s gotta be a one in a million chance!”

His girlfriend kicked a stone off the road. It rolled along the shoulder before falling off into some thick, long grass. She mumbled, “Well, isn’t this just terrific? Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Ever since dropping his friends off for their trek through the woods, Marshall’s emotions had gone on what felt like the steepest roller-coaster ride known to man. One moment he was completely enamored with his current lover, and the next he didn’t want anything to do with her. Well, maybe if he somehow got control of his feelings he could still enjoy the coaster’s exhilarating drop that had to come when he and Alex made up.

“Look,” he said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “We’ll just walk back the way we came, find Miller’s Road, and get the border patrol to help us.”

Alex twisted around to face him. Judging by the look on her face, she wasn’t at all satisfied with this solution.

“Do you realize how long that’s going to take?” She was still shouting, despite the soothing tone Marshall had switched to. “What about the rest of them?”

“What can I tell you? They’re just going to have to wait for us instead of us waiting for them.” A single raindrop landed in his mop of hair and found its way to his scalp. “Is that really so bad?”