Camp Where The Hell Are We? | ✓

25

They were his favourite weapon.

He said it felt...intimate. He liked the way he could find pleasure out of the very object that caused Marley's mother pain. Marley and Jacobi weren't supposed to hear those words from him, but it was a late night, and they had found themselves locked in the coat closet by the front door.

It was one of their father's poker nights, and the siblings made the mistake of going downstairs for dinner while he and his friends smoked on the back patio pre-game. They hadn't eaten. They should've gone to bed hungry.

When the door slammed open they knew they didn't have time to run to the stairs — the landing was in perfect view of the patio doors — so Jacobi grabbed Marley by the back of her shirt and dragged them into the shoe closet. In retrospect, it was the worst decision they could've made.

It was impulsive. For survival purposes. But from their bedroom, everything was muffled. On this night, they were in the very centre of the worst they've ever witnessed from the closet before. Jacobi couldn't hum, either. He couldn't make a sound.

He held his hands over her ears, but it didn't cut out the noise enough. His hands shook, and Marley held his hand because he was crying. Being three years older, he understood more than she did.

That night is muddled and foggy in her memories too, as if she was underwater instead of in the closet. Marley now appreciates the lack of understanding she had.

But she remembers her mother's cries in perfect, unadulterated clarity.

She was their waitress, serving them beers and cold cuts and whatever else her husband and his rowdy friends wanted. Their house was small, so the main floor typically smelled like sweat, smoke, and booze for days after any of the poker nights. They were crowded around their round wooden table shouting at each other and speaking of what should be unspeakable. Marley remembers the hanging light above the table most vividly — it was always swinging and casting sinister shadows over everything.

Her mother would be cautious about being close to her father and his friends. She'd place things down when her husband was busy with his cards or very attentive to his game. She was strategic, but she couldn't always miss his focus.

When she didn't is when he would objectify her somehow. She'd scamper away or slap him on the arm impulsively.

The slaps earned her the very reason why Marley has a cigarette trigger.

There's a...burning smell that comes with the butt end of one digging into skin. It's unpleasant and unnatural, a wrinkle to the nose. Marley remembers the laughter of his friends and the cries of her mother. She remembers the burns on her stomach and her lower back. He was careful not to expose them.

Marley has a single scar. She doesn't remember how or why she earned it, she was too young to remember and now her father doesn't chance it. Marley could very easily report him to her school, and he'd never see outside of a prison cell again. But there was once, and the proof is under her armpit right where the straps of her bra cover. Right where her bathing suit can tie around.

Even Gabby hasn't seen it. Hasn't a clue it exists. Marley tries her hardest to ignore it, but the night before Halloween it was burning as if he'd done it seconds ago.

The morning of Halloween would probably be more accurate. It was 3:37 am. A loud party had gone on in the girls' cabin earlier, one that everyone apart from Marley and Gabby wanted to go to. Marley was still frazzled from her fall into the lake and Gabby doesn't attend parties unless she has to.

He stayed all night. Aiden.

His logic was that with a loud party going on outside where Marley slept, she was left vulnerable. So Aiden Matthews — notorious bad boy, partier, and manwhore — chose to play UNO on the floor of her bedroom instead of hanging out with his friends and drinking the booze he typically finances.