Chapter Six:
Cool Kids
It was an ocean of green beyond Cameron’s bedroom windows—one of those views that you find ensnared in the pages of a calendar, images that people wallpaper onto the desktop of their computer at work, like they need to be reminded of something—perhaps a primeval memory.
My nose was nearly pressed against the patio doors that led to a small balcony outside Cameron’s bedroom. I was two floors up from the ground, overlooking an egg-shaped, in-ground pool and a yard of thick, golf-course-grade grass. At the end of the pool area, where the terracotta interlock stones touched the lawn, there was a pink pool house with crimson flowers bunched within the windowsills. Fifty feet from the house, the grass stopped and was overcome by an infinite forest of evergreens and maples and jade hills in the horizon that divided the treetops from the expanse of blue sky.
As far as I could tell, we were somewhere within a densely forested valley. The view from the second floor was breathtakingly beautiful and terrifying all at once. I had no idea where I was, and the fact that I couldn’t see any roads or signs of human life beyond the border of trees hadn’t escaped me. The problem: this didn’t really scare me. There was a part of me—a big part—that wanted to breathe it all in, take a mental picture, and frame it in my mind so that I would never forget it; the other part was mutely terrorized by the first part.
I eventually peeled myself away from the glass and went through my Rubbermaid bins. Everything was there—clothes, school books, bathroom necessities … down to the indigo ballerina lamp that had been next to my bed and the ragged copy of Rumble Fish that I kept under my pillow. Opening the rubber lids—one after another—was like Christmas morning; my worldly possessions made exciting again in this surreal place. I tried to imagine my bedroom back in Callister, what it would look like stripped to its bare bones, but thwarted the eerie feeling of knowing that someone had had to meticulously go through my stuff to bring it to me.
I was incredibly grateful to have it all with me; this was what I focused on.
I found something quick to wear—after wearing my running clothes for however many days, even a potato sack would have done the trick—and went to the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth. Like the rest of the house, the bathroom was a showpiece that could have easily graced the cover of one of those snooty home architectural magazines. It was cleaner than the main-floor bathroom; in fact, it was pristine.
I emerged from Cameron’s bedroom looking, feeling and smelling like myself again. But when I heard roaring laughter coming from the kitchen downstairs, I came to an abrupt halt at the top of the stairs, my paranoid instincts flickering … only to be confirmed by Rocco’s excited pitched voice that echoed through the house.
“It smelled like chow mein!” was what I heard him say. This was quickly followed by another wave of laughter.
There was an audience.
I stood, deliberating whether to go back into the hidden comfort of Cameron’s bedroom or face the music, now knowing that I would have to face it all eventually. My grumbling belly answered my dilemma—food before pride.
I took a full-lunged breath before slowly walking through the archway into the common room. With all the hefty men that sat, shoulder to tight shoulder, around it, the extra-large dining table looked like a child’s craft table. Rocco was standing at the head, emceeing for the breakfast crowd, while Carly and Spider had their heads bent together at the other end, entranced in a whispered conversation and feigning interest in the papers that were stacked in front of them.
Cameron wasn’t there. I told myself that this was a good thing: at least I wouldn’t have to be in the same room as him, trying to hide my neurotic stares, while his angry girlfriend sat a few measly feet away from me, and with a tattooed man who glared at me like I was the fly that flew under his flyswatter—it would only take one small motion of the hand to annihilate me.
“The girl thought that the boss had sent me to take care of her,” Rocco proudly recounted for the crowd. Another roar ensued. Rocco looked fleetingly insulted this time.
Cameron was also missing his kid brother’s great tale—an added bonus, I thought.
Annoyed and horrifically embarrassed, I pursued with my brave face to the table. Rocco was the first to see me and took it upon himself to announce my arrival.
“Hey puke-breath, your ears must have been burning.” All massive heads followed Rocco’s gaze. Spider and Carly’s communal head shot up too: Carly grimaced when she saw me; Spider resigned himself to his usual nasty glare. The whole room had gone tensely quiet.
My ears were burning, like I was wearing hot coals for earmuffs.
In an instant, Carly and Spider were out of their seats. With an added faint whistle and nod of the head from Spider, all of the men rose with them, rushing to grab last morsels from their breakfast plates.
Everyone except Rocco and me trudged out of the common room with Carly and Spider. I was officially back to my first day in high school when I had mistakenly sat at the seniors’ table in the cafeteria.
Rocco whistled. “That was fast. You sure know how to clear out a room. Do you have rabies or some other kind of contagious disease that I don’t know about?”
I shrugged and chewed on the corner of my lip while he started stacking dirty plates.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” he said, his head bent over his task. “They’re a tough crowd to break. It took them a while to get used to me too.”
I clasped a few of the dirty cups and glasses between my fingers and followed him into the kitchen. “How long have you been here?”
“I got here over a year ago, I think. I’m not really sure. Time seems to stand still around here.”
“Where are your parents?” I wondered.
His eyes shot up. “My parents? I don’t know. They’re somewhere out in the world, I guess. Who cares?”
“Isn’t this your parents’ house?”
“That’s funny,” he said, shaking his head. He grabbed a frying pan from the stove filled with what looked like canned beans fried in ketchup. “Are you gonna want any of this?”
I shook my head.
“Suit yourself.” He scraped the remnants into the garbage and flung the pan into the dishwasher without rinsing it first.
“Help yourself to some food if you’re hungry. That’s the way it works around here. You grab what you want,” he said. “But just don’t expect to be served. I may have to clean up after these guys, but I don’t serve anyone.”
For whatever reason, he was trying to make a point.
I grabbed a bowl from the opened cupboard and poured cereal from the box that was lingering on the counter. I got the milk jug from the table and poured it over my Captain Crunch.
“Where’s Cameron?” I tried to keep my voice indifferent.
“I don’t know.” Rocco’s hand quieted over the dishwasher. “Why?”
“He’s your brother, isn’t he?”
“Doesn’t mean I keep a leash on him,” he said, taking his frustrations out on the plates that refused to fit into the fully loaded dishwasher.
In the meantime, I was pulling at invisible straws. “You left your parents and came here—on … purpose?”
“I left my mom; never knew my dad. There wasn’t much to leave behind. My mom got a new boyfriend,” he said, like this explained it all.
“So … you came to live with your brother?”
“No,” he corrected indignantly, “I came to work for my brother.”
We were getting somewhere. “What kind of work do you do for your brother?”
“Right now, I look after the administration of the house,” he said as he looked over at me, like he guessed what I was going to ask next. “Meaning I do whatever Spider tells me to do, like cleaning the stupid kitchen.”
“And putting all the groceries away,” I added.
“And driving Miss Daisy.”
I remembered the argument between him and Carly the night before. “This isn’t the work that you want to do?”
“Do you know anyone who wants to spend his time cleaning up after a bunch of jerks? It’s not work a man should be doing … No offense.”
“None taken.” I closed the dishwasher door and searched for the start button, letting him vent.
“I mean, this was supposed to be temporary so that I could prove myself,” he continued without my encouragement. “I’ve proven myself and should be working for Cam now.”
He pushed me aside and started the dishwasher.
“What kind of work does Cameron do?” I asked him, but the one called Spider had come to the kitchen to interrupt us.
“Kid, if you’re done in here, go air out the boss’s car. It smells like death in there,” Spider ordered.
Rocco winked at me, and with a salute and an “aye-aye, sir” to Spider, marched out of the kitchen.
Spider ignored the fly in the kitchen and walked out too.
When I’d finished my second bowl of cereal, I rinsed out the bowl and tucked my dishes away in the second dishwasher. I’d forgotten how great it was to have a dishwasher instead of a sink full of dishes. I then went outside to the warm May sun, looking for more answers.
Cameron’s car was parked at the top of the circular driveway. All four doors of the Audi were opened and Rocco was crouched over the passenger side seat with a spray bottle.
There was so much happening outside and big people walking around that it took a while for my brain to fully consider what my eyes were seeing. Four white, cubed passenger minivans with darkened windows were lined up at the far end of the driveway. Men were buzzing around the property, some leaning against the vans, basking in the sunshine, and others walking about, intent on some mysterious task. Then there were the men that were away from the driveway, past the grass clearing, all the way down to the edge of the woods; these men stood in a row along the property line, about twenty feet from each other, and watched the scene from the shadows of the trees—their long barreled guns either in hand or holstered over their large shoulders.
I sped to Rocco who was muttering and shaking his head, absorbed intensely in a discussion with himself.
“Need any help?” I offered keenly, withholding the alarm in my throat.
He glanced up and chewed on my proposal for a minute.
“Better not,” he said, sighing. “I don’t want to get in trouble again for talking to the inmate.”
“Is that what I am?” I wondered, keeping a corner of my eye on the gun-wielders.
Rocco shrugged. “Apparently.”
While he sprayed some kind of deodorizer on the front passenger seat, I sat on the backseat, with my legs swinging out the side. I leaned my face forward in the outside air—because it was really stinky inside the car.
“Who are all those people?” I asked him.
He didn’t look up. “What people?”
I pointed my thumb in the direction of the gunners. “The men with the guns,” I said, to start with.
“Guards,” Cameron answered as he approached the car with Meatball at his heels. I noticed that he had showered. His hair was still dripping, and he had changed from jeans and red T-shirt—to jeans and gray T-shirt.
“What are they guarding?” I managed to ask.
“Precious cargo,” he replied quickly before changing the subject, starting with a cruelly charming smile. “I heard you got my kid brother back for putting that bump on your head.”
“Whatever,” Rocco mumbled without lifting his head to acknowledge his brother.
Still smiling, Cameron glanced at me, motioning his head toward Rocco, silently asking me what Rocco’s problem was.
I shrugged in response; though my guess was that Rocco had probably been berated by the one called Spider for chitchatting with me—the prisoner—earlier.
Cameron wasn’t fazed by his brother’s crankiness. “Come on. I’ll show you around.” By the time I realized that his hand had grazed the small of my back to lead me back to the house, he had already pulled it away. Meatball happily followed us.
“Where are we … exactly?” I probed.
“Vermont.”
“Were not in New York State anymore?” I said before I had time to take the shock out of my voice.
He peered from the corner of his eye. “Vermont is a different state, yes.”
“Okay,” I said slowly and took a breath while he kept his eye on my expression. “And what is this place?”
He pointed to the house. “It used to be a shelter for forest firefighters back in the day. I bought it a couple of years ago.”
I was stunned. “This is your house?”
He nodded. “It was basically just a barn, but I had it fixed up. I kept the tin roof and restored the façade. Everything else is new.”
He led me through the front door, past the archway and through the now familiar kitchen, toward the hallway where I had been accosted by Carly the night before. We stopped in front of the washroom.
“I never realized how filthy it was until I actually had to shower in it,” he said, his lips curled in disgust. He quickly closed the door and we kept moving.
“Spider … Tiny … Rocco,” he pointed out as we passed each of the three doors on the left. Spider’s room looked untouched. The bed was made up so tight you could bounce a dime off it. Rocco’s room was a pigsty: the bed unmade, clothes piled on the floor.
“Who’s Tiny?”
“You can’t miss him,” he chuckled, “He’s the fat guy who usually hangs around Spider or me.”
My eyebrows drew together. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why call him Tiny … if he obviously isn’t?”
“That’s what makes it so funny,” he said, but I caught him slightly rolling his eyes as he said this.
“Besides,” he added as he opened one of the double doors at the end of the hall, “would you be willing to call that guy fat to his face?”
Cameron had a point.
When we walked through the double-doors, Cameron watched as my chin dropped. It was a room of tall bookshelves and pale suede chairs and couch. The high ceiling had exposed dark wood beams that ran across it. There was a fireplace between the two long windows that faced the back of the property, and the opposite wall was layered of soft gray and rose stones.
“It’s gorgeous,” I whispered, instinctively letting my hand slide over the stones as I strolled deeper into the room.
“Nobody ever uses this room,” he said after a barely audible clearing of his throat.
I folded my arms and investigated the book titles on the shelves, rising up and down on my tiptoes, while Cameron stood by.
“There’s a piano in the corner. You can come here and play whenever you want,” he told me.
“I wouldn’t put anyone through that kind of torture.”
“Don’t you play?”
There was accusation in his tone and I could feel myself reddening.
“I’ve been subjected to piano lessons my whole life,” I explained dully. “My last piano teacher ran off crying after accusing me of purposefully being tone-deaf. She had a nervous breakdown.”
Cameron’s eyes widened, and suddenly a full bellowed laugh escaped him. It was so unexpected, that I took a step back.
I noticed something different about Cameron—something that had been there since he had arrived that morning, something that had only intensified since he had come to meet Rocco and me by his car. His cheeks were slightly flushed. The tired and anxious creases around his eyes were almost gone. He looked decidedly younger.
It was like a mask had been taken off … or put on—I couldn’t be sure … but I liked it more than I ought to. We headed back through the foyer and down the stairs to the lower level.
“How old are you, Cameron?” I wondered aloud as we walked into a den.
“This is where the guys hang out when they’re not working,” he explained. The space had everything to keep overgrown children entertained: a stocked kitchen, ping-pong and pool table, a big screen TV, and a wall of movies and video games. It also had patio doors that opened up onto the pool outside.
“Are you avoiding my question on purpose?” I put to him.
“What? Oh, I’m twenty-six,” he answered, distracted.
While my thoughts were trying to process how my twenty-six-year-old tour guide slash kidnapper could afford the mansion I was sightseeing, we were making our way down another hallway.
“Some of the night guards sleep in here,” he whispered, pointing at the bedroom doors that were closed. I could hear off-tempo snoring and wheezing through the door.
At the end of the hall was a pumpkin orange, fully equipped gym with windows that looked out onto the pool.
There were also two men in the middle of the room and a large opened box next to them.
“It’s a high-speed treadmill,” Cameron proudly announced. “You know, so that you can still do the same stuff you normally do.”
We paused to watch the confused men arguing over the instructions manual, surrounded by pieces of something.
“Well,” he added, “it will eventually be a treadmill.”
When I had figured out that this gift was meant for me to use while I served my indefinite sentence, I said thank you, put an unadulterated smile on my face, and followed him out to the pool.
By that point, I had so many questions for Cameron that I didn’t even know where to start. My jumbled thoughts were only worsened by the luminous smiles he kept throwing my way. I didn’t understand any of it and it was hardly a fair fight.
We rolled up our jeans, and plunged our feet into the cool water. Cameron peered over my knees with a huge grin on his face.
“What?” I stuttered.
“I’m looking for that weird toe you were telling my brother about,” he chuckled and glanced back at my face.
“News sure travels fast around here,” I mumbled, red spots speckling my cheeks.
“Rocco thought it was pretty funny,” he said with a shrug. “Why did you name your teddy bear Booger?”
“It’s not a very good story,” I stalled.
“Try me,” he pressed.
I sighed, “Booger was my brother Bill’s bear before it was mine. Bill had already named him Booger before he gave him to me.”
Without blinking, Cameron moved on from my boring story to another one. “And your favorite book is Rumble Fish. Isn’t it a bit childish for you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never read it.”
“It looked used,” he challenged.
I glared up. “You mean the copy that you found hidden under my pillow in my room?”
He nodded and shamelessly grinned.
“I keep trying to read it, but never get past the front cover,” I explained. When I peered up, I saw the confused look on his face.
I sighed again. “I had just finished reading the first chapter when my brother died. Now I can’t seem to pick up where I left off and move on to the next chapter.” I could feel the golf ball rolling around in my throat as I said this.
The look of discomfort on Cameron’s face was one of the reasons I avoided talking about Bill. There was always that point when people hesitated, trying to find the right thing to say, only to realize that there was nothing that they could say to make it better.
Cameron simply moved back to the safe, but boring story. “Did Booger ever recover from the ironing incident?”
I mirrored his sly smile. “My nanny Maria sewed a button on top of the melted eye, but it was too big and the wrong color. Booger never looked at me in the same way again.”
I realized my mistake as soon as it was out of my mouth. I never used the word nanny; people automatically associated it with the words trust fund.
But Cameron thankfully didn’t seem to notice—though I still couldn’t fathom why he’d want to hear about a bear called Booger.
“Where’s Booger now?” he asked, enjoying himself.
“On my bed, in my parents’ house.”
His brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you take Booger with you to college?”
“I didn’t want to be the weird girl who still sleeps with teddy bears,” I quickly replied. Then something occurred to me, “How’d you know I’m in college?”
“Some of your bins were stacked with thick school books. I assumed that you were a college girl,” he quickly answered.
“You seem to assume a lot.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Was I wrong?”
“No.” I sulked.
“Explain to me one more thing,” he said, his eyes unyielding. “Why did you tell Rocco all that stuff about yourself?”
“I was trying to form a bond between us so that he wouldn’t want to kill me anymore,” I admitted with embarrassment.
He laughed. “Where did you get that from?”
“TV—I think.”
A moment of quiet came, and we dangled our feet into the warm water. He smelled like shaving cream—I took a long breath, and I carefully started to gawk at him from my peripheral. When his hand pressed against the ground to slightly readjust his seating, the muscles of his forearm tightly shifted with him. I also noticed a marking peeking out below the sleeve of his T-shirt.
Without warning, he turned his head and caught me staring. “What?”
Words briefly escaped me.
Like an idiot, I reached past his chest and touched the skin of his arm. This seemed to have caught him off guard. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t move an inch either.
“Is that a tattoo?” I asked shyly.
He finally understood and lifted up his sleeve. There was a cross tattooed on his bicep.
“You have a scar in the middle of the cross,” I remarked.
He watched my expression before he explained, “Bullet wound.”
I tried to hide my shock. “Did the tattoo come before or after the … bullet?”
“After,” he replied, never taking his eyes off my face. He seemed to debate something before pulling down on the collar of his shirt. On the middle of his upper chest, was another cross, with another mark—bullet wound—in the middle.
“This one came close,” he explained, his voice guarded.
I took my time with this new information.
“You mark the spots where you’ve been shot,” I quietly surmised and glanced up to read his face. “Why?”
His lips thinned. “Reminds me to be thankful that I’m alive.”
“You need to be reminded?”
“Some days are easier than others,” he said darkly.
“Does it happen a lot … you getting shot at?” I struggled. I was trying to collect rational thoughts and push out the horrifying images that were crowding my brain.
“On occasion,” he answered with caution. “But the bullets rarely reach their target.”
I kept his eyes. “By target you mean you?”
He forced a smile. “Do you want to know how many of these crosses I have?”
“There are more?” My voice was shaking.
“Three more.” He lifted up his shirt and showed me the cross tattooed on his stomach. “I have another one on my leg and on my back.”
The door to the pool house opened all of a sudden, and I jumped. Carly walked out, carrying a stack of papers. She was wearing a cute sundress, her silky black hair falling down her back. With her olive skin and her petite frame, she looked like a porcelain doll, almost breakable.
She threw a disapproving glance in our direction as she pursued her path on the other side of the pool and went into the house without a word, banging the door behind her.
I was suddenly conscious that I was leaning into Cameron and that Cameron’s girlfriend had caught me staring at her boyfriend’s stomach. My cheeks burned up.
“You’re blushing,” Cameron said, laughing.
“I don’t think your girlfriend likes me very much,” I said, trying to mentally tone down the color that was rising up my cheeks.
His eyes widened. “My what?”
“Your girlfriend, Carly,” I clarified.
“Oh! Right! Carly, my … girlfriend!”
He burst out laughing.
“I can’t wait to tell her that. It might actually make her feel better, or at least make her laugh a bit.”
He finally settled down and shook his head in amazement.
“Carly’s not my girlfriend,” he explained. “Actually, you should probably not tell anyone else about your theory, or I’ll need another cross to hide the new bullet wound.”
I tried to stay indifferent about this stirring news.
While I pulled myself together, Cameron told me that Carly lived in the pool house. As the only girl, he explained, she needed her privacy.
“Well, she used to be the only girl here,” he added with a wink.
“Does she work for you then?” I blurted.
“Where did you get that from?”
I recounted for him my first meeting with Carly and her argument with Rocco about working for Cameron, the boss.
He sighed, clearly displeased.
“Yes, Carly works for me,” he answered dejectedly.
“What does she do?”
“She’s a whiz with numbers. She keeps track of all the money, coming in and going out.”
“So … she’s your accountant?” I gathered.
He looked at me, smiling. “Yeah, I guess she’s my accountant.”
I could hear the pulsation of car stereo systems resonating in the distance. The sound was becoming louder and louder. I tried to ignore it.
“And Spider works for you too?” I continued.
He nodded his head in affirmation and, anticipating my next question, added, “Spider deals with all of the security issues.”
“And the … guards?”
“Yes, Emily, they all work for me,” he answered with slight impatience. “Everyone here works for me.”
“Rocco doesn’t work for you,” I noted.
“No, I guess you’re right. Rocco is the exception. He’s my brother. He can live here as long as he wants, but he doesn’t need to work for me.”
“But he wants to work for you.”
Cameron’s smile disappeared.
“Rocco is young and has the chance to do anything he wants. Anything,” he emphasized and looked me in the eyes. “I won’t let him make the same mistakes I made.”
The desperation on his face reminded me of that day, in the cemetery … when he had turned around to find me as his witness to his crime.
“Cameron,” I said and took a breath, “I don’t know what happened in the cemetery or why you killed that man … but I’m sure you had your reasons.” His brown eyes were still locked on mine. I was feeling my nerves fading. “You have to know that I would never tell anyone what I saw. You don’t need to keep me here to keep me quiet because I’m not going to talk.”
“Things are a lot more complicated than that. It’s not just up to me. There are other people who have an interest in this.”
“Spider?” I asked, remembering his furious glances at my expense.
He smiled. “No, it’s not Spider.”
I mustn’t have looked convinced because he added, “I know that Spider comes off a bit … intimidating, but he’s a good guy who’s just trying to do his job of keeping us safe. And believe me, sometimes I make his job very difficult.”
Like his ears were burning, Spider came through the doors of the main floor and walked to the edge of the balcony, peering down at us.
“We gotta go,” he directed Cameron, tossing a harsh glance in my direction.
“I’ll be right there,” Cameron replied, waving Spider away. Spider reluctantly turned around and went back into the house.
Cameron got up, rolled the legs of his jeans back down, stuck his feet back into his sandals and looked down at me. “I know that this is hard for you to understand, but I promise you that this house is the safest place for you to be right now.”
“I don’t know what that means Cameron.”
“I know,” he said, softly. “You’ll just have to trust me on that.”
“How long am I going to stay here for?” I had finally asked the question—one of the questions—that I really needed the answer to.
“A while,” he admitted and a sly smile crossed his lips. “At least you’ll finally have room to unpack your stuff and won’t have to live out of those rubber bins anymore.”
He took a few steps, before looking back. “I need to ask you a favor.”
I peered up.
“Don’t use my real name when there are other people around … I mean when there are people other than Rocco, Carly and Spider around.”
This then brought a smile to my lips. “What am I supposed to call you then?”
“Anything you want—just not the real thing.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “You can’t call me that either. It’s too freaky … We’ll have to think of something good later.”
The boss walked away and, with Meatball at his heels, followed the cobblestone pathway that led around the house. They both disappeared as they turned to make their way to the front of the house.