Educational Experience

Chapter Twenty

Author's note: This may be the last chapter I post on Wattpad until I have completed the entire first draft. I may also wait 'til I've done some marketing of the final draft before posting--I'm mulling it over. Some agents and publishers are fine with sites like this, and some aren't. And I want Colt to have a shot at the "big time."

But not having you out there following along...I dunno. THAT is going to be tough. So...we'll see! If I get too lonely...I may be back sooner than I thought!

Saddest and most important chapter yet, this one, though! I think it will explain many things and raise a few new questions, too...

20.

“What…is this?” Wyatt asked, as I reached for her hand.

We were standing on this gravelly old dirt road that ran over a culvert in a wash ‘way out northwest of the city. To get where I wanted to take her, you had to walk down into the wash, and the gravel made that a little tricky.

So I’d got down in it first, and reached up to her. But she definitely didn’t look like she wanted to join me.

So I said, “I used to live here.”

And I swear to God, she went chalk white.

And said, “Where?”

“Well, under there and…there’s other places. All up and down the wash here.”

She turned this way…that way…and then to me again.

“How do you live…”

She couldn’t even say “…in a place like this” or whatever she was thinking.

And it was spooky looking. I knew that. It was hidden in a stand of old, gnarled up cottonwoods and mesquites. Sort of half dead, most of them, and all twisted together in this weird way, like something out of one of those sadistic fairy tales where a couple of kids get chased by some kind of witch or wolf or something else awful.

But that’s why we could live there. You had to be pretty damned desperate to walk out into something like that deliberately, looking for shelter. And at that time, we were a step beyond desperate, even. We’d worn out our welcome at all the shelters and there was this homicidal maniac trying to get his hooks into Gracie.

He was legendary, this Wes guy. He had a little army of victimized homeless “bitches” who stole for him and set up house for him in all these squats. It was like he “owned” them, the homeless people who lived in them and the squats themselves. 

And his women would lure in other women. They knew just which ones to go after. So he would woo the new bitch for a bit, and then rape her and threaten to kill her if she didn’t “behave.”

Lucky for us, in a backwards kind of way, Gracie was the way she was, and didn’t really “get” it. She couldn’t do any of the things he made the other ones do—totally useless for theft or recruitment purposes. Most purposes. But she was beautiful and sweet and I think he fell in love with her for a minute. Like how Frankenstein’s monster loved pretty things.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt her. He slapped her around because she wasn’t able to fight back or think her way out. And he was sick like that. Enjoyed watching other people suffer.

We were saved by this old crazy woman who’d been running wild out there so long she’d damned near turned into a plant herself. They called her Doc, because she could fix you up if you got sick or hurt out there. She knew how to make splints and even something like a cast if you broke something. And I guess she knew about medicinal plants, too, but I wouldn’t have swallowed anything she gave me.